Magic Pen of course

Mana Regen of course

Cooldown Reduction

and you can either follow with more CDR on quints, or I preferably go for Movement Speed as I don't really get defensive items in my build.

Start with your Meki and 2 pots as this combo will let you spend as much time in your lane as possible.

As soon as you can afford a tear and boots recall, and buy them up. Lots of people think that you need to start buying AP early for a purely offensive build but with Brand and his passive early on, spam will end up doing more for you.

Next, as soon as you can afford your Sorcerer's shoes recall again

recall for your blasting wand

recall for your Archangels

From there most people start building Rabidon's, and that's how I used to do Brand's item build as well, but I changed it to Will of the Ancients after Archangels and found that I ended up with a lot more survivability and the boost to your teamates can lead to some pretty swift domination in the team fights around this point in the game. If your team is utterly failing or you don't think you are going to benefit from WotA then feel free to go straight to rabidon's.

After that I go for Rabidon's for some serious hits, and because I spam Brand's 'Q' some serious healing as well. By this point they should be grabbing magic res in an effort not to melt every time they see you, so grabbing the void staff here is a natural counter. I don't usually make it to the Void staff honestly, and have very very rarely made it to the Banshees. I always grab Banshees as a late game defensive item because late game it is just too powerful not to own, but if you want to grab a Lich Bane for the extra nuke if you feel you cant finish people off, feel free.

Make sure to buy wards as needed throughout the game, usually around the first or second time you recall its a good habit to ALWAYS buy a ward, trust me it is worth it.

Brands W is one of my favorite skills in the entire game, it is just too versatile and powerful not to max first, its farm is awesome and its damage is extremely good.

Most people choose to max Brands E next, but in my opinion it is a very poor skill. It has a poor range, does very poor damage, and is very unefficient when it comes to mana, only drop 1 point in this skill as it is your combo starter. @ level 1 its mana req is soo low you can feel free to pop it off on minions if the resulting aoe bounces brands passive to a champion for harassment.

Brand's passive is strong enough that 1 W mid to late game is all you need to actually kill any minions that it hits, they will die from the resulting DOT

Brands Q skillshot has a very low mana cost, very high damage, extremely low cooldown and gives you his stun, this is by far my favorite of brands abilities and I spam the **** out of it. If you pick up an evil tomb with full CDR runes this baby has a 3 second cool down when it is maxed out, lots of people don't realize just how potent this spell is.

Now for the combos

Stun combo
E - Q - W

theres no point in not dropping the W for the extra dmg as it gains another 25% if someone has been hit with another one of brands spells

Team Fight Dmg Combo

Q - E - W - R - Q - W

Hit them with the initial Q to get the burning passive going on 1 target, then hit that target with E so that it spreads the passive to all of his teamates, then drop W with the extra 25% dmg and release your ultimate and watch it bounce around @ lightning speeds. By this time your Q should be ready to go again, and you can pop another 4-500 dmg nuke with a 2 second stun that will finish out your cool down on your W again =D Make sure you Ignite the target you want to kill after releasing your ulti of dewm.

Brand is a very very powerful aoe nuker, although he sometimes lacks the muscle to instantly nuke down another champion, he more then makes up for it with the aoe dmg he does in team fights. He can turn the tides in a couple seconds.

His weakness is definatly the 1v1, you dont ever want to be caught going toe to toe with another champion as brand unless its late game and even then I don't recommend it. Brand is pretty weak, so I don't really bother with defensive items as I personally don't feel that they help him in any way, but because of this my build is extra squishy and may take some getting used to.

Brand is great at hit n run because of his long range and short cool down on his stun, you are going to be the other teams first target so don't be afraid to drop an aoe, release ur ult, Q and run off to see you is going to chase you or lose aggro from the other champs. I've found dropping a few spells and then retreating out for a couple seconds before entering to do it again works best as brand, as it usually gets the enemy team to chase you, and kiting is something you MUST know how to do if you ever want to be good at playing Brand.

Brand is extremely squishy and other then his 1 skillshot single target 2second stun he has no defensive abilities at all, so picking up some spellvamp as mentioned before can give you a lot of survivability. Don't get frustrated if you are dying, he takes some getting used to, pay attention to you positioning on the team fights, stay @ the edges of combat or you will drop so fast you don't get to react.

Pretty standard Caster masteries, I opt out of the improved experience as I personally dont feel that it is needed, especially with Brand's great aoe farming, you can put the points where you see fit, but I usually end up dying 1-2 times each game so I dropped them there.

Flash is a must

I personally go with ignite, but you can use improved exhaust in the same manner, and it does work for escapes. I have also used clarity if you decide not to start with the meki pendant.

I've seen the ghost / flash combo used well with brand as well

IMHO every other summoner ability is really just a waste on Brand