Path of Exile: Harvest - New Brand Gems and Brand Changes

New Brand Gems and Brand Changes

In Path of Exile: Harvest, GGG introducing several new Brand skills and one Brand support gem, and has revamped existing Brands.

Harvest league has introduced three new Brands are Arcanist Brand, Penance Brand, and Wintertide Brand. These come alongside new options for how you can build and play Brands, like the new Swiftbrand Support. They also reworked existing brands and made Brands a lot more versatile while also reviewed how their mechanics work.

This article details the new brands and some other very interesting tweaks to existing skills in Path of Exile: Harvest.

Arcanist Brand

Arcanist Brand is a new Brand skill that also supports any triggerable spell linked with it. Each time the Brand activates, it triggers a supported spell, allowing you to build your own Brand setup, potentially even triggering multiple different spells in succession.

This new Brand is all for the spellcasters. By supporting a certain skill, it triggers when the brand fires. The skill fires off projectiles spawned from the supported skill, which can then spread the brand's effect to other mobs. These projectiles apply the Brand and explode, spawning more projectiles. Pierce, Chain, and Fork effects can be used with Arcanist Brand too.

Arcanist Brand has a shorter duration than other Brands, so isn't something you'd use on any build to passively trigger effects, but when building for Brands it can be very powerful. Like other Brands, Cast Speed affects the activation rate, so it benefits from most spellcaster investments.

Penance Brand

Penance Brand

Penance Brand is another new skill. It builds up energy on the branded target with each activation, though at first, the activations don't deal with any damage. Each activation also spreads energy to another enemy, and then that enemy can then spread it to another uncharged enemy the next activation, and so on. This means that with repeat activations it can rapidly spread through a group of enemies, energizing them all.

If you use Brand Recall or if the enemy dies, the built-up energy in each enemy is released in a massive explosion. This releases an explosion around each enemy dealing physical damage with a portion converted to lightning. The more energy the enemy had on it, the greater the damage and area. You can pick and choose which mechanics to focus on to detonate your Penance Brands.

You can shorten the duration of the Brand to have them automatically go off after a brief time, or use Brand Recall to force detonations when you detach the Brand.

Wintertide Brand

The new Wintertide Brand will allow builds to apply a Cold damage DOT effect and a chill to enemies. This is done via Brand that applies an intensifying effect each time it's activated.

When the Brand is removed (such as when its duration expires, it is recalled, the target dies or the Brand is replaced), the damage over time effect is released in an area. This affects both the branded enemy (if they're still alive) and all other enemies around them. This means that if the damaging effect has grown in intensity through many activations, it could apply very potent damage over time effect in an area.

Unlike other Brands, Wintertide Brand has a base limit of two Brands per target. This will combo with other Cold damage skills for some very interesting rotations that play very differently to other skills in the game.  This particular skill could have some very interesting DoT build potential Can't wait to see what the community comes up within Path of Exile 3.11.

Swiftbrand Support

The Swiftbrand Support greatly lowers the active and inactive duration of a Brand but increases its activation rate. For a single Brand being cast once, it's not as good as other supports, but if you're rapidly placing many Brands, it's a huge damage increase. You can play a much more aggressive Brand playstyle with this support. It also works very well with Penance Brand to rapidly detonate, as well as Armageddon Brand to make the most of its short cast time.

Brand Recall and Brand Mechanic Adjustments

Brand Recall still instantly moves your Brands to you and activates them, but no longer refreshes the Brand's duration. It now consumes mana based on the Brands recalled. This prevents Brands benefiting heavily from the Archmage Support without the same mana upkeep the Support usually requires.

Brand Recall now consumes mana based on the skill used, rather than the way it worked previously. Players will also notice that duration will no longer refresh on Brand Recall in Path of Exile 3.11. Also, management will be easier. Brands now return to their original or recalled location when dropped by monsters, rather than the dropped monster's location.

When can you play the Path of Exile Expansion Harvest? The expansion should go live on June 19th, 2020 on PC. Gamers on PS4 and Xbox One will need to wait until the week of June 22nd, 2020. You'll all get to harvest monsters very soon! Of course, while running a new game, a sufficient PoE currency is essential. Fortunately, Eznpc.com has a massive collection of most of the common and special items, such as Exalted, Chaos, Jeweller's Orb, Orb of Fusing, and Regret. You can buy PoE currency with real money here, sufficient inventory, instant trading, and 100% safe. At the same time, you can also use the coupon code "POE5" for a 5% discount.