Hello, This is my very first guide so any criticism is appreciated.
My in game name is PleasureKiller for those wanting to know, I am only in silver 5 at the moment due to it being so hard to climb out. Brand is by far one of my favorite mid laners because of his overall potential and is just quite fun to play.

I like having the Magic Penetration marks to do a little more damage early on making first blood much easier.
Armor seals are just a rule of thumb in my opinion just in case you do get a surprise gank.
Scaling MR glyphs I like to use because it helps throughout the game especially in lane
Straight AP quints are just what you need since you have no other AP except from masteries

What I have put down is just a basic APC mastery page so nothing really special there :P

I see a lot of people recommending Athene's as a core item but I do not feel that it is very helpful unless you are behind. Many people like to use brand extremely aggressive and as a very high burst mage but I personally like to use him more to a pokeing advantage. Which is where Rod of Ages and Rylais comes in very handy. With Will of the Ancients it works very well because Sear, Conflagration, and Pyroclasm are all single target spells and each bounce of Pyroclasm is counting as a single target.

I like to use flash and ingite mainly for first blood potential as well as the fact that brand has no escape other than flash. Teleport can replace ignite if you want to be able to gank that way for split second choices but anything else I feel is pointless with his kit.

Pros
- Has many different ability combinations
- Has very high burst
- Very good against High HP tanks
- Very easy to poke and has great wave clear
- Will be able to stun Jungler with your q most of the time if you aren't over extended too far
Cons
- No escape tool
- Early game mana costs are high
- Is a very high target for ganks especially if you get first blood

Brand wave clear is very good between pillar of flame and then conflagration almost every wave will be instantly cleared after RoA and Sorcerer Shoes. The most important thing to remember though is that you shouldn't be doing it too much early game because his pillar of flame costs a lot of mana that you don't have.

Brand is one of the best team fight mages because he can easily use his combo on the adc with a stun pillar of flame and ult. brands ult alone is very useful in team fights as against enemys in small groups like 2 or 3 so that it will hit the same target more than once.

What is very unique about brand is his skill combinations
I personally like to use my Conflagration and Sear combo most often and then follow up with Pillar of Flame. What this does is Conflagration begins your passive and then Sear stuns the burning target, Pillar of flame then does 25% more damage while burning from your passive and is hard to dodge while they are stunned.
When farming I like to use Pillar of Flame and then Conflagration which clears almost the whole wave because conflagration becomes a firecracker basically when the target is ablaze

So overall Brand is very burst has a good cc burst combo, and is still quite great even if you get behind. He is very versatile in different assortments of situations and is good going against all sorts of matchups. Thank you for reading my guide I appreciate it and hope to have good or bad criticism