thoughts on brand?

[{quoted}](name=Arde Liliruca,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NvuomA6V,comment-id=0009,timestamp=2015-10-23T18:57:08.512+0000)

hes pretty hot :^)

flaming corpses are kinky

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He is a fun and unique champ with lots of obvious strengths and weaknesses. His spells combo together in various ways, so you get different effects depending on spell order. His combo diversity, burst potential, and squishiness feel like playing LeBlanc. His strong team fight, cooldowns, mobility, and dot damage feel like playing Zyra.

The downside to playing him is that you just never feel like you have the gold to build what you need. He's very mana hungry, his cooldowns are very long early, and his passive requires tons of spell pen (marks, quints, boots, void, and Liandry's). You never really feel like you're going ham until you've spent about 11,000 gold.

So when you play him, you really have to pick your build order on a game-by-game basis. No matter what you build first, you're going to struggle in other areas. If you go Liandry's first, you'll have long CDs and go oom after 2 rotations. If you go Morello, your dot damage suffers and you don't really have the regen to go fishing or siege spam. If you go Athene's, your build path blows and you have a long ramp-up time in exchange for late-game spamming.

Overall, Brand is very satisfying when played well. Just be aware that it's not like playing where you can build a Morello and start spamming your way across the map.

I think he is too similar to right now, thematically and gameplay wise.

His passive needs more depth, make it a mini-game not an add on to his spells.

He does have significant weaknesses with item builds. I tend to go then or depending on the comps. Seems the most optimal. He needs multiple rotations on his spells so the CD is good but he doesn't have the self peel to be successful.

• I like that he requires multiple rotations. With that and his passive he really feels like a mage/fighter. (fighting with spells).
• An interesting ability - He extinguishes the flames of his passive to restore mana and create a spell shield. What sucks is that this is similar to , but some some sort of mechanic where he delays the flames of his passive to stop his momentum would be nice.
• As a flame spirit that represent hate and the sun you would think he needs fire to survive, not just a host

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Brand is beast, that passive is strong but miss your defensive stun (E/Q) and your probably lunch and he has mana problems if you dont manage your spells. what i love, post 6 you can turn a gank into a double kill.

Yeah, he needs self-peel/survivability to get his rotations off. In the right hands, he is pretty hard to gank post 6 since he can 2v1

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Brand was like my first midland "main." He's a super fun champ. Probably one of, if not one then THE most fun mage in the game. He's a lane bully with great wave clear, a fantastic passive, a long stun and extremely high damage. But he's absolutely completely immobile. So your only get away is to hit the stun. And the bigger problem of trying to stun someone when your running away is that you have to actually hit two spells to even stun the guy, and one of those is a skill shot. So let's say the jungler comes mid to gank you, and you have to run. The only way your going to be able to efficiently get away without using flash is by hitting him with E, then immediately throwing a Q at him. If the q hits he's stunned and you get away. But if he dodges the q, or if it takes too long for you to combo, then that's your ass. The good news is with his good wave clear you can clear and roam a lot while the enemy is pushed. His ultimate is awesome in low elos. Most low Elo teams group up in a close space together and with brand you can do a W-E-R combo where it's going to prioritize champs and do some insane damage. But the better the competition gets the smarter they are at spreading out, zhonyasing his ult, etc; riot said they fixed his ult so it will continue to bounce if a champion goes invulnerable but so far that hasn't been the case from what I've seen. Always max w first for insanely high damage. His best combo is when a champion is in range of you, cast E-Q-W. This will start the burn with e, stun him with q, which then gives you the definite landing shot of W(which does 25% more damage if he's already burning and if you hit the combo he will be). For wave clear you want to W the Mage minions and then E them(after your first back if you get an AP item this will kill the Mage minions immediately with just one combo) the later the game you'll be able to kill almost all minions with one combo clear. Try to always burn your opponent before casting ultimate so it prioritized champs. And same with w. Poke with w, use e on a burning minion when the enemy laner is nearby, so that way you can get the e to hop on the enemy laner and it will do 8% health damage dot. Brands fun as hell, just play him safe, and remember you are there to make the enemy team burn.

I like how is ult is close to lava or plasma. Fits thematically. (His hatred in one shot) and it gives context on what brand was and can do as a spiritual force.