Occultist, as an Ascendancy class, is mainly related to Explode construction in Path of Exile. The monster actually explodes and does considerable damage to nearby enemies. In POE 3.23, however, Occultist reaches new heights, thanks to the new Transfigured Gem: Penance Brand of Dissipation!

Here I’m going to share our build guide for Penance Brand of Dissipation Occultist! If you’re interested in creating this character, don’t miss this build guide!

Skill Itself

Our skill choice is Penance Brand of Dissipation. You create a brand, which will connect to an enemy and start collecting energy, dealing more and more damage per energy. When the maximum energy is 20, the brand will deal maximum damage until the end or the target dies and jumps to another target.

But to be honest, I don’t think the build will ever reach max stack because in Sanctum, most people will die after the first damage. Even the supreme boss will die after 2 seconds. But we can use the new Specters added to the game in this patch.

Specters And Other Minions

So why am I not using any Specters in Affliction League? Since I always try out some Uber Boss content, and Specters die easily on the map, it’s annoying to buy new ones every time. What’s more, if they weren’t in Sanctum, they were zero threat.

However, in Sanctum, the effect of Specters is completely different. So we use Specter, Perfect Spirit of Fortune. It will bring us Wrath Aura.

Another Specter is Perfect Hulking Miscreation. This gives us 20% of physical damage as bonus lightning damage. This is a big damage buff for this build.

To further increase our damage, we will use Animate Guardian in a basic setup, with Dying Breath as a weapon, which will give us more damage and also increase the aura effect used by Guardian.

Because we use Guardian’s Blessing, and select Haste Aura, we will move faster and cast spells faster.

We also use Leer Cast as a helmet, which also gives us more damage. Gruthkul’s Pelt acts as body armor, which will give him health regeneration. Southbound Gloves will also increase his maximum health.

To keep Specter and Animate Guardian at their best, we’ll use Convocation on left-click. This way they will transfer to us every few seconds and gain life regeneration.

How We Scale Damage Even More?

Because this build is focused on critical hit damage, we’ll be using a lot of unique items that will give us more and more damage.

But I want to talk more about body armor, Dialla’s Malefaction. We need 2 red sockets because red sockets increase the gem level by 2. We insert Penance Brand and Empower here.

Other sockets need to be green. In green slots, they will gain +30% quality. This is the biggest damage increase and is much better than gem levels.

With all this, our gemstones will have 50% quality and Penance Brand will also reach level 27.

We’re going to convert all damage to lightning, and then convert it to cold with Call of the Brotherhood. This is because we can deal with cold damage better than lightning damage. And we can also freeze enemies so we can reduce the risk of getting hit in Sanctum.

Since this build has such high cold damage, we can also use Heatshiver. Based on cold damage, we take additional fire damage. We also take more damage if we hit a frozen target.

Malachai’s Loop deals with more spell damage and also grants 2 additional Power Charges. We can also use Badge of the Brotherhood to increase our maximum Frenzy Charges to 10.

Also, we cannot ignore Ralakesh’s Impatience, which will give our character Power Charges. So all 10 Power and Frenzy Charges will be activated and it will also give us Endurance Charges.

Items

In this build we also use some unique items which will give us extra damage.

• Weapon: Void Battery
• Helmet: Heatshiver
• Shield: Malachai’s Loop
• Body Armor: Dialla’s Malefaction
• Amulet: Badge of the Brotherhood
• Ring: Call of the Brotherhood
• Gloves: Pandemonium Hold
• Belt: Ambush Trap
• Boots: Ralakesh’s Impatience

Flask

Next, let’s take a look at some of the important flasks you’ll need in this build.

• Divine Life Flask: Restores minion health. I’m not sure if our minions are strong enough to survive, so I just use it to play it safe.
• Silver Flask: Has cast speed.
• Quicksilver Flask: Has higher movement speed.
• Diamond Flask: Has critical damage for the duration of the effect.
• Taste of Hate Unique Flask: Deals extra cold damage.

Passive Tree

Then I would like to highlight some key points from Penance Brand of Dissipation Occultist on Passive Tree, as well as some of the unique jewelry used.

Each Frenzy Charge deals with damage at 2% movement speed and penetrates elemental and all elemental resistances.

Watcher’s Eye takes additional physical damage as lightning damage while affected by Wrath. We get Wrath Aura from Specters, so it’s always active. And its movement skills have a good cooldown recovery rate when affected by Haste. This will give our Flame Dash a very short cooldown.

Militant Faith Timeless Jewel with carved to glorify a new faithful converted by high Templar Dominus. Note that we assign Inner Conviction here because it may convert the node you are using into a bad node.

Green Dream Viridian Jewel will give us extra cold damage.

Ascendancy

We use Occultist as Ascendancy.

• First Lab: Void Beacon. This reduces the enemy’s cold resistance and they cannot regenerate health.
• Second Lab: Frigid Wake. You will deal with more cold damage and cannot be frozen and chilled. You also take less damage from frozen enemies.
• Third Lab: Forbidden Power. You gain additional energy and increase the area of effect and damage per energy.
• Last Lab: Vile Bastion. Each recent enemy kill by you or your minions restores 2% of Energy Shield per second, up to a maximum of 10% per second.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that Penance Brand of Dissipation Occultist is one of the best builds in Path of Exile 3.23 in terms of bosses and maps. While this build feels clunky at first, it gets better later on, especially if you’re already equipped with everything mentioned in this build guide!