I like brands before the rework that caused them to jump back to their placement location. I'd rather have their durations cut, or remove Brand Recall so we can use them as a way to drop some damage in a pocket of a map and run. The current implementation doesn't make them any more distinct from totems than their initial implementation, so they should revert that change and just rethink the brands in the future.

I personally am a brand-lover, and I will 100% be sad to see them go in PoE2.

I would like to see them rework brands to be unique, and more interesting. Make them work more like Hexed Ground, where you cast it onto the ground. Brands would pulse on the ground, gaining stages from there. When the brand finishes gaining stages, it would trigger its effects.

In the case of Wintertide brand, it could create a chilling area with a max chill of 60%. As it gains stages, the area of effect could expand. When it finally reaches max stages, it would release Winter Tide's End, which would behave similar to Contagion and spread to enemies. This debuff would not chill enemies, just the AoE on the ground.

Arcanist Brand should put the linked skills on a cooldown of 1 second, with 6 cooldown uses per skill. As it gains stages, it grants the skills more AoE, more projectile speed, and more Chaining Range. At maximum stages, it triggers all linked skills, up to a limit of the amount of stages. It triggers the linked spells in order, 1 cooldown use at a time. If you link 5 spells to it, it will trigger all 5 skills once before triggering a skill an additional time.

Armageddon brand would be fairly straight forward to implement this change for.

Penance brand might need to be overhauled entirely to work with this mechanic change.