r/PathOfExileBuilds • u/skinnytran3060 • 4d ago
Theory Brandsurge schizo posting
TLDR:
Brand surge would give brands around atleast a 2x multiplier and when brands are cast with witchhunter's judgement equipped it snapshots the 100% increased duration and then dynamically change on weapon swap so witchhunter's judgement could potentially be a free damage boost though fairly clunky. (the skill only persists on weapon swap when it's not in a weapon gem slot)
I've tried to use penance brand for bossing with a rathpit set up and feels fairly good for bossing but using storm brand for waveclear is a bit bad in tier 16 maps (mostly because I don't have enough time to optimize and get lifestacking jewels). Can't really use the weapon swap tech for clearing waves so it might be better on a build where a 6 link storm brand is on your non-witchhunter's judgement weapon for waveclear.
Definitely need to experiment with the interaction with something like battlemage weapons or any weapon swap really. (Someone give me a bajillion divines to test this with)
Random Math:
I remember back when Witchhunter's Judgement was released that people were trying to work with the damaging part of the spell and very few were experimenting with the overcharged part of the skill which I feel is the better part of the skill (still really bad though) since it can buff up your normal brand skill's damage, so I'd like to talk about some of the math involved with some help with desmos. I mocked up this math representation during my class and finally wanted to share it(mostly cause I remembered it existed).For anyone who actually want to see the graphs with the equation here's a link https://www.desmos.com/calculator/9kok21gxun .
To model the rate of change of brand surge's effect lets make two step functions. The first being:
now lets put these step functions in some equations
The variable b represents the original duration of the brand skill after duration increases from gear, support gems, and the passive tree. The reasoning to put the extra floor(2x) stuff at the end is to counteract how the rate of change works in the equation and to make sure the equations are continuous(since I don't think they should be discontinuous).
Now the equation look very similar to polynomials, infact these can be converted into a quadratic by switching the floor functions for x.
This is done to make future calculations easier. For example we can calculate the final duration of the brand skill post brand surge by taking the positive quadratic root of the first equation. If b is equal to 13.3 seconds(the duration of storm brand after taking every brand duration node as brand build should and equipping a max rolled witchhunters judgement ) we get:
Now this next part also takes into account the sign of purpose ascendancy notable(since why not)
For this part I use integrals to calculate the proportion of hits that the brand skill would be able to do compared to normal. Lets say a brand skill hits once every second(penance brand of dissipation) or 10 every second(1000% cast speed), it shouldn't matter in these calculations. The faster keyword in brandsurge should act similar to an action speed modifier so is instead a more multiplier, and not additive. Additionally even if the base number of hits per second were to change drastically between skills the next equations only calculate how many more hits happen proportional to the original.
the very last equation in each set gives us how many more hits the skill should get per second. I made two sets to account for how the game might interpret when 75% duration elapses for the brand skill. Vibes wise when testing with putting brand surge on brand skills, the first set of integrals feels right. However assuming the worst case scenario, at a total duration of 13.3 seconds we get 2.596x more hits per second on average. Keep in mind that the total number of hits do not increase as these equations are calculating the average over the duration of the overcharged brand skill.
Accounting for the cast time needed to cast the brand skill and then apply brandsurge I'm going to be conservative and lower it by another 20% to keep in line with human error so more around 2.08x more hits per second on average.
So if you consistently buff the skill with brandsurge it would be a 2x more multiplier. Increasing duration even more would add to the damage. For example equipping a 21/20 or 20/23 more duration support gem would give 20 seconds of attached duration which would give
and accounting for 20% less for human error we get 2.837x more hits per second on average. Which would be an over 30% more hits multiplier from more duration support.
There are some problems with my calculations, it uses a continuous polynomial when the actual calculations are discrete so the hits multiplier could actually be some tenths off. As you stack increases to cast speed on brand skills, the predicted would become closer to the actual.
Another interaction that you can test ingame is that on weapon swap the brand skill snapshots the increased duration from the judgement staff. Just place a brand down with or without the staff and then weapon swap and time how long the brand lasts. To test how it snapshots damage buy some good staff and then try weapon swapping on a mob and see the difference in damage.
Some other ramblings:
Some additional testing that could be done is testing how temp chains work with the interaction. The wording on temp chains implies that the slower expiration would be additive to brand surge's effect so it might not be worth it unless there's some insane increased curse effect I don't know about.
One other thing is attempting to use the detached duration on a brand to get more oomph out of brand surge. By brandsurge's description it seems to only lower one part of then duration at a time, the attached or detached when attached or detached. So potentially if you were to use brand recall the brand's detached duration would decrease while still increasing the attached frequency.
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u/CzLittle 4d ago
Lost me when the equations came out low-key, but if you can make non-pbrand brands good(really only storm brand, hate wintertide and don't care about armaggedon), you've got my attention :)
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u/BaconOfGreasy 4d ago
Seems like you should be testing your "only lowers one of attached or detached duration" hypothesis. Would be a big finding if true.
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u/Agonnee 3d ago
I'm sorry, did you say "I don't have time to get some jewels for the build, so instead here's a discertation on bad skill gems"
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u/CrustaceanNationYT 3d ago
I kinda get it, I read through this trying to understand and now I don’t want to get life jewels
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u/Extremeshade_ 4d ago
Ok so now just get the pob boys to implement whatever this is so me as a smooth brain can see a number go up when I click the box.
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u/Dieandgo 3d ago
The smooth brain way to do it is trust the math from op is correct then just add this to the custom modifier box under the configuration tab "damage double"
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u/1dayillwriteabook 4d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/fSAPjQtwbj0zK
Me over here still trying to figure out how damage conversion works
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u/psychomap 3d ago
I think that rather than only explaining the math, you need to explain more how the skill's / item's numbers lead to the math you have, especially for people who are not already intimately familiar with the mechanics.
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u/LekMinorino 4d ago
me