TbXie's Wintertide Brand Occultist Gear, Jewel & Flasks (PoE Necropolis)

TbXie

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Summary – TL;DR

As per usual, nothing matters more than capping your Elemental Resistance before anything else. This means modifiers on gear are subordinate to Resistances as long as you’re not capped. Since you’ll be running a decent amount of Unique items, it’ll be important to look out for a lot of resistances on your Rare pieces!

We’re providing you with an extensive analysis further down the page but chose to start off with an overview / recommendation.

Our recommendation:

Item Slot Item Name
Head Rime Gaze Rime Gaze
Amulet Citrine Amulet Citrine Amulet with a lot of Attributes, Mana Reservation Efficiency, Resistances and % maximum Energy Shield
Chest Vaal Regalia Vaal Regalia with as much Energy Shield as possible, resistances and some attributes
Gloves Sorcerer Gloves Sorcerer Gloves with as much Resistances & Energy Shield as possible
Boots Sin Trek Sin Trek
Belt Bated Breath Bated Breath
Rings Mark of the Shaper Mark of the Shaper & Rare Elder Influenced Ring w/ Resistances
Weapon Rare Wand with Spell Damage, +1 Cold Skills, Cast Speed and Trigger Mod
Shield Aegis Aurora Aegis Aurora

For crafting Rare items, you can check out all the affixes that can roll on an item base, depending on its level, influence, and many other factors, using our affix tool.

Armour Pieces

Helmet

Rime Gaze Rime Gaze is absolutely ludicrous for these kinds of build. 50% Damage over Time Multiplier is absolutely insane and is a non-debatable pick.

Body Armour

We have another very easy and cheap Unique item for your Body Armour slot. Since you’re using a lot of Attack Block & Armour, you’re mostly worried about mitigating Elemental Damage a little further. Incandescent Heart Incandescent Heart does just that. It basically reduces your Elemental Damage taken by 25%, as it converts incoming Elemental Damage into Chaos Damage, for which you are immune due to Chaos Innoculation. Additionally, it happens to be a Armour – Energy Shield base which also helps the Armour we get to build up! Other than the #% increased Armour and Energy Shield roll, not of the rolls matter whatsoever as they don’t apply to you so try to get a 240% one!

Optionally, a well-rolled Regalia is about as good defensively & opens up a few more affixes you get to control. Do note that you shouldn’t take a sub-450-ES regalia as then the Incandescent Heart is just outright better.

Gloves

Your Gloves are one of the few Rare pieces you’ll be wearing. The fact that you are running so many Uniques implies that the stress on Resistances on the few rare items is fairly high! Giving up a little bit of Energy Shield might be a necessary evil to acquire enough resistances! The best base here obviously is a pair of Sorcerer Gloves Sorcerer Gloves, as that has the highest Energy Shield potential.

  1. +#% to Elemental Resistances (until cap)
  2. Total Energy Shield (around 150)
  3. +# to maximum mana (nice extra)
  4. +# to Intelligence (Intelligence scales your Energy Shield a bit)
  5. +# to Dexterity (as much as you need – if you need more)

Boots

Sin Trek Sin Trek just fill out this slot fairly competitively whilst remaining an easy pick. On the higher end, it can get beaten by a nice pair of rare boots but you usually have better upgrades to make.

Belt

Bated Breath Bated Breath is impossible to beat here. Because of Wicked Ward, you want as much Recharge Rate as you can find. Combined with nodes in the tree, this basically means that whenever you don’t take damage for 2 seconds, you’re going to be regenerating almost 2,000 Energy Shield per second, no matter what. That is absolutely insane and is why Bated Breath should never be swapped out! Try to Catalyze it as that gets you over 150 total Energy Shield in my setup!

Accessories

Amulet

Your Amulet is another one of these very few rare pieces and, unsurprisingly, is very demanding on the affixes. You’re going to need it to be a Citrine Amulet Citrine Amulet because of your Dexterity & Strength needs, and on top of that it should most likely have an All Attributes roll that is fairly high (unless you got Dexterity on Gloves – then you can potentially get a way with just Strength here). The reason why you want an All Attributes roll is because in that case, it can also have 2 resists. If there is an open prefix, you should craft % increased Maximum Energy Shield on the crafting bench. If somehow you’re lucky enough to see one of these combinations for sale with a +1 to Level of all Cold Skill Gems you shouldn’t hesitate to pick that up as that is your best offensive stat here. Lastly, you need a source of Mana Reservation. An amulet is a fairly good source of finding that.

  1. #% increased Mana Reservation Effcicency of Skills
  2. +# to all Attributes
  3. +#% to Elemental Resistances (until cap)
  4. #% increased Maximum Energy Shield
  5. +# to Level of all Cold Skill Gems

Disclaimer : If you struggle to get the Mana Reservation Efficiency here, you can now find it on your jewels too. It costs you a jewel-affix, which will lower your energy shield or damage but it’s a covenient way to make up for some reservation.

Anoint

With the recent nerfs to Reservation, you need to anoint Charisma.

Disclaimer : With newly available mana reservation jewels, it is technically possible to get 5% per rare Jewel. If you get 3 of those, which is a stretch, I’m just putting it out there for all of you grinders out there, you can anoint Tranquility for about 15% more damage.

Rings

Since you’re so defensively built you really want to squeeze out some extra damage here. You do this by fitting in one Rare and one Unique ring. The Rare ring needs to be an Elder base, because you want it to activate the effect of your second ring, the Mark of the Shaper Mark of the Shaper. A Mark of the Shaper, when Catalyzed with Caster modifiers, grants up to 90% Spell Damage as well as 25% Elemental Damage, some flat damage to spells, and a decent chunk of Life. This is definitely a piece that’s worth having! In case you’re playing Solo Self-Found, you’re looking for as much damage as you can find on both of your rings. Opal Ring Opal Rings are a good start with perhaps some crafted Fire Damage. The affix priority for your Elder-base ring is as follows:

  1. +# Elemental Resistance (until cap)
  2. +# to Maximum Energy Shield
  3. #% Faster Start of Energy Shield Recharge

Weapon

Since you get so many benefits of having a trigger weapon, I’d argue it’s almost mandatory for the build to perform at high levels. Otherwise you would have to manually cast 3 of your buffs on any challenging enemy which is incredibly annoying. The most ideal and optimal way of getting everything you like is finding / crafting a wand with Spell Damage and +1 To Cold Spell Skills and then Craft 3 modifiers on it. The crafted modifiers are the trigger mod as well as some Cast Speed, as that is so big for damage and QoL.

  1. Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill
  2. +# to Level of all Cold Spell Skill Gems
  3. #% increased Cast Speed (at least 17%)
  4. #% increased Spell Damage (at least 80%)

Shield

Aegis Aurora Aegis Aurora really is the only option here. It provides you with about the same recovery as a regular ES when you Block shield whilst providing you Armour, maximum Resistances, a high amount of Block and Resistances and a decent chunk of Energy Shield. It’s one of the cornerstones of the build and should not be skipped!

Flasks

I believe flasks are highly preference-based. One isn’t just outright better than another one for specific / certain builds. Obviously, sometimes, there’s a set in stone set of Flasks you should be using just because they synergize with your build so well. I wouldn’t say those really exist in this setup, but I’d strongly advise you to stick with the setup listed here.

For the utility Flasks, I recommend at least running a Silver Flask Silver Flask for the Onslaught Effect, a Basalt Flask Basalt Flask for the extra armour (only at high ends of Armour, check for yourself in Path of Building whether a Granite Flask is currently better for you or not) and a further layer of mitigation and a Quicksilver Flask Quicksilver Flask because Movement Speed is a nice form of Defense and QoL! Lastly, you’re going to need an Enduring Eternal Mana Flask Eternal Mana Flask to keep your Mana up. As you want to be permanently “casting” multiple spells, there’s hardly a way to ever get enough Regeneration to drop the Mana Flask. Ever since the introduction of the Enduring prefix though, Mana Flasking is much less of an issue. Lastly, because of the amount of Cold Resistances we stack, a Taste of Hate Taste of Hate is a brilliant addition to the build.

Regardless of which utility Flasks you go for and whether you follow our recommendations or not, you’ll need to stick to the suffixes we have picked for you (Staunching, Warding, Iron Skin). The affixes on your non-unique Flasks can be changed around, but I recommend the following setup (based on the Flask duration, charges, and affix priorities):

Our recommendation:

Slot Flask
1 Chemist’s Silver Flask Silver Flask of the Iguana
2 Experimenter’s Basalt Flask Basalt Flask of the Armadillo
3 Taste of Hate Taste of Hate
4 Enduring Eternal Mana Flask Eternal Mana Flask of Warding
5 Chemist’s / Alchemist’s Quicksilver Flask Quicksilver Flask of the Cheetah

Be sure to check out our Flask Crafting Guide to learn everything you need to know about how to set up your non-Unique flasks.

Jewels

Rare Jewels

Since I personally really like to be safe, and generally think the extra couple %‘s of damage wont matter much in the long run, I always like Life or Energy Shield on my Jewels. Other than that, Cast Speed is really valuable as it makes your brands do optimal damage faster and thus helps you be more efficient while clearing and have higher damage uptime on bosses. Lastly, (Cold) Damage over Time Multiplier is definitely your best DPS stat. A combination of these three affixes is obviously ideal!

  1. #% increased maximum Energy Shield
  1. #% increased Cast Speed
  2. #% increased Cast Speed while holding a Shield
  1. +#% to Cold Damage over Time Multiplier
  2. +#% to Damage over Time Multiplier

Cluster Jewels

Cluster Jewels are incredible for Brand builds and more so for Brand builds that want to scale Activation Frequency. Especially the Medium Cluster jewels carry the build so extremely hard. Since you want to run 2 Mediums at least, you’re going to want 1 Large Cluster Jewel to socket them in to.

If you are looking for the most optimal way to acquire your Cluster Jewels, or have any other questions whatsoever about them, such as how to craft or price them, we refer you to our complete guide on Cluster Jewels.

The Large Cluster Jewel Large Cluster Jewel really shouldn’t be anything to special. Ideally, take one with 8 Passives but even an extra one doesn’t really matter too much. You probably need a Prismatic Heart here because the build is so stressed for Resistances. Other than that, Deep Chill is the best offensive notable but things like Cold-Blooded Killer or Blizzard Caller are also okay.

The Medium Cluster Jewels are a source of Cast Speed, more damage multipliers, Brand duration and Attachment Range. You want at least 1_Remarkable (Probably 2 if you focus on map clear, just 1 if you want to be more of a bosser), 1 Brand Loyalty and 2 Grand Design notables for maximum Efficiency. All of these are incredible in their own way and getting Medium Clusters should be a top notch priority!


Watcher’s Eye

Another very not-necessary item to have, but I’m putting it out there just to give you options. I would only consider running a Watchers Eye if you can get the Malevolence Damage Modifier alongside any good Determination mod (Phys Reduction, Flat Armour or ideally Critical Strike Damage Reduction). I’ll showcase 3 modifiers in the picture – A 2 stat Watcher’s is definitely worth though.

Main Page / TL;DR

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