Runebinder is a must-have for any brand build

Hey

Unlike any other keystone, runebinder is mandatory for any brand skills, which makes classes that are far from it (ranger, shadow, duelist), a problematic choice for that archetype.
I think it should be changed somehow to make it less mandatory.

Thanks

You have to travel for some keystones that's just the way it is. Duelist and Ranger are not naturally brand users. Templar is, so it is near templar. Shadow is more so, but it is not that far for Shadow to travel if they want it. Perhaps a little awkward if you are wanting it to level with, but I also think shadow is one of the most powerful classes at the moment, so it doesn't need much more help with levelling or late game. If you are on Templar and want to use Pointblank or those ballista totem nodes, they would also need to travel.

I think you are missing out the most interesting concept of the game.
While Templar is a natural Brander, it's other classes's mechanic that can be intresting
To try.
The game's fashion not to ''force'' build to take certain nodes.
Thats how it was with EE and EO and ignite builds.
Warden and deadeye can be strong choices for brand skills, but travelling to far makes it difficult to do so.

You can either change the keystone, or allow more methodes to obtain it, like skin of the lords

If you allow access to everything on all classes they loose their identity. They have a good middle ground in POE where it is possible to make builds by travelling and they are not hard locked into their section of the tree or archetypes. The way the tree is set allows for it to be done, but with some friction.

You can play CI on Marauder, but you need properties on your build that make it worth going over to those areas. I made a spell caster gladiator in necro/settlers that travelled up to the templar section. It was good enough to overcome the travel cost of getting out of the weapon/physical section of the tree, into the spell/elemental section of the tree. If the duelist section has access to all those other sections of the tree, without having to travel, it looses its identity as a class. That defeats the purpose of the skill tree, just choosing whatever skills you want at no cost, with any ascendancy and no restrictions.

I have only played a brand build once, but it was a Shadow and had easily the most damage on any build I have played, by 5-10x. For Duelist and Ranger, they probably have to go through some less desirable pathing, so it might be more difficult, but I'm sure it can be done if there is a good reason. The keystone could be moved more central, but that changes the balance, and would probably be worse for Templar.

For levelling it may be more difficult. I have not had much experience with levelling brand builds. If they are rough for levelling, it may be some adjustment can be made, making them easier to use while levelling. A lot of these travelling builds need to be levelled with alternate skills or not league started. A lot of powerful builds are like that. Levelling with CI can be difficult for example. Often you need to start with something different, then jump across once you reach a high enough amount of skill points or item power to cover off aspects of the build.

Most ARPG's hard lock characters into their skill and attribute choices. POE has a large level of freedom beyond this, which is what makes it great, and allows for a lot of different skill and build combinations. If the freedom goes further than this, allowing access to everything, you would start to loose the structure of the game.

To a lesser extent, the available skills offered to the characters also influence this. It is possible to get all skills on all characters, but they are not readily available at the start of the game. There might be some room to soften some of these limiting factors, but the classes begin to loose their identity. There is nothing stopping the Witch from being a melee character, but they are innately better at spells than melee. So if you want the build to be a melee Witch, you need to find a way to build it, that overcomes most the benefits for melee being in other sections. It would need to utilise benefits the Witch has, to enhance the melee build, that typical melee character do not have access to. Which is what I assume you are talking about with using Duelist or Ranger ascendancies. There is something good in them that the other spell caster classes don't have access to. Every character being every archetype removes the reason for having different classes.

Also cluster jewels help on builds with a lot of traveling if you plan accordingly.

You just have to be able to make up on the suffixes on your items that you may normally have stats on, but you get them by traveling instead.

When you path like this having the right clusters is even more important.

I don't think u understand my point.
Brands = runebinder
There is no other way
And thats not something GGG usually do.

i played a psn brander pf in hctrade a couple leagues ago and killed uber eater with it. Im sure the brand keystone would have been more dps but i still played the game without it. Penance brand was broken at the time though.

i did rip to uber eater later. that was stupidity though.

If you're playing sctrade and all you care about is maximizing dps your point may be true. idk.

Same as it was with ignite archetype and EE + EO.
They made them useless for ignite but buffed the skills themselves

The easiest solution for this is to allow players to select their start on the tree. Like day i wanted to play a non crit non poison attack based shadow. Instead of having to go to marauder duelist for all the relevant nodes I found select marauder or duelist as a start location.

Thats a bit overkill IMO, there are other solutions:
1. change they keystone to be less powerfull
2. move it to the center
3. allow other ways to get it through unique.
4. make it a cluster keystone (like lone messenger for herald focus builds)

Im sure there could be other solutions