Welcome!
Feel free to comment if you have questions or suggestions to improve the build or guide.
Note for beginners:
This guide contains spoilers, its recommended to explore the game at your own for your first playthrough.
About the Build/Guide
- solo viable
- no mana regenerating abilitys needed
- fast and aggressive playstyle
- variant of Lightning Blast with chain lightning between multiple enemies
- many defensive layers → good survivabilty & all content viable
- not autocast friendly (could lead to mana issues)
- obviously an homage to Enki’s Arc Witch
Table of contents:
Showcase
Beginner’s Guide
- Resources
- General
- Skills & Passives Progression
- Gear Progression
- Endgame
Credits & Shoutouts
Version & key Build specific game changes:
BETA 0.8.1
- Fractured Crown came back
- Endurance System got introduced
- new Blessings for Endurence and Lightning Resistance shred
BETA 0.8D
- initial posted
SHOWCASE
Gameplay & Character
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Videos, level 91
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Build Planner of my current char, level 100 (for BiS see below):
- LE Tools Build Planner
- press S key to view skills, P key for passives
BiS & Lootfilter
I prefer Wand & Catalyst against packs, because of the base crit. Staff is better against Timeline Bosses, we don’t need the Catalysts base crit there because it’s easyier to stack up LB’s ‘Closed Circuit’.
Gear details
- swap ‘cast speed’ on wand/staff with ‘increased lightning/ spell damage’ until you have the idols & >=300 max mana
- swap ‘freezerate multiplyer’ on wand/staff with ‘chance to blind’ until you have 100% Critical Strike Avoidance
- depending on your Item’s Mana rolls and character level, you can swap the ‘Arcanist Robe’ with ‘Celestial Robe’
- not 100% min-maxed yet, there are still some things to test
For the Fractured Crown collect Gilded Crowns, craft with ‘Glyph of the Guardian’ until you have ~50 Instability, leave at least one Affix on Tier 4. Then craft without Support on the T4 Affix which now should have 20-25% Chance for a destructive Fracture. If its a Destructive Fracture it turns into Fractured Crown.
As of the time writing this, Tunklab’s DB is not up to date regarding ‘Oceareon’.
It can drop from:
- area-level 74+ (needs clarification)
- gambling on ‘Sapphire Ring’ (character level 74+)
Until you have ‘Oceareon’ or don’t want it you can use a Sapphire Ring with e.g.:
- Lightning Damage / Freezerate Multi + Cold Resistance
- Mana Regen
- Endurance Threshold / Resistance / added Dodge rating
- added Endurence / Resistance / added Dodge rating
Idols
It’s very rare to roll both Affixes.
These are more common. Frostbite is a DoT Ailment that reduces freeze avoidence, granting Ice Barrage a higher Chance to freeze mobs with high maximum Life.
Blessings
| Timeline | Blessing (Empowered) |
|---|---|
| Fall of the Outcasts | “Mark of Agony” 51% to 80% Increased Adorned Idol Drop Rate |
| The Black Sun |
“Emptiness of Ash” +(27% to 40%) Critical Strike Multiplier or “Shadow of the Eclipse” +(61 to 100) Dodge Rating |
| Ending the Storm | “Mysteries of the Deep” +(25% to 50%) Chance to Shred Lightning Resistance on Hit |
| Reign of Dragons | “Survival of Might” +(50% to 70%) Critical Strike Avoidance |
| The Age of Winter | “Vigor of Jormun” +(80 to 150) Endurance Threshold |
| Spirits of Fire | “Embers of Immortality” +(15% to 27%) Endurance |
Lootfilter
here are two options:
- Heavy’z CLF less strict but with sane defaults.
My lootfilter which is less strict until level 72 to support experimentations with diffrent bases/ affixes. It automatically switches to strict once you reach character-level 73.
Until level 72 you may want to edit the specific ‘Hide unwanted subtypes of * until level 72’ rules once you have out-leveled a certain base-item/subtype and don’t want to see it.
Some of the prefixes and suffixes are interchangeable between some gear-slots, the strict lootfilter-rules take this into account.
Always use the ‘duplicate’ function in the lootfilter-window before you make edits so you can go back to the former version if you mess something up.
Hold X key to view all items unfiltered.
the recolor rules highlight Items you may want to stash for shattering, color depends on rarity of the Affix
How to Import Loot Filter:
from Heavy’z CLF Thread
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Method 1:
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Copy .xml files into root partition, most likely [C]:
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C:\Users\User\AppData\LocalLow\Eleventh Hour Games\Last Epoch\Filters
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Method 2:
- Copy pastebin content → In-Game Open Loot Filter (Shift + F) → Select No Filter → Import Filter → Paste Clipboard Contents
Mechanics
General
Damage dealt to Mana before Health
- together with Resistances and later Endurance and Dodge our main defence
- we get upto 50% from the Fractured Crown and more during Flame Wards uptime
- each point of Mana shields 5 Health
Leech
- reliable source of Life sustain
- because of Lightning Blast’s zero Mana Cost (through wand/ staff implicit), we can always keep attacking to leech our Life back even if a Flame Ward stun proc pushes our Mana to zero
Ailments & Shred
todo
Skill specific
Lightning Blast
-main damage skill
-Can either chain between 5 enemies or 4 enemies and back to our self (controllable through distance).
-Has a chance to double/quadruple cast.
’Closed Circuit’:
- every time it chains to our-self we gain for 4 seconds:
- 15% increased global damage. (can not double dip)
- 40% increased crit-chance.
- with sufficient cast speed we can stack this more than 25 times.
’Lightning Attunement’:
- When casting LB we have 5% chance to gain ‘Lightning Aegis’. Good incoming damage reduction (25% multiplicative) and ‘50% increased lightning damage’.
- We can gain “+(26-100)% Incresed lightning damage while you have Lightning Aegis” from each Idols Prefix.
’Shattershock’:
- ‘more damage’-modifiers (multiplicative) against shocked or chilled enemies
- We get both factors for the damage-multiplication if an enemy is inflicted with both ailments.
’Frontloaded’:
- an additional ‘more damage’-modifier
’Storm Razor’:
- Improves Lightning Blasts base critical strike chance (+5%) which gets added to the base crit chance from our offhand-catalyst.
The total amount of this sum gets scaled through passives, Fractured Crown and the buff from ‘Closed Circuit’ to calculate Lightning Blasts crit chance.
Ice Barrage
-main utility skill
-Projectiles apply shock and chill (and other ailments) to distant and off-screen enemies so Lightning Blast can instantly hit harder (‘Shattershock’)
-Helps to keep the ailment-stacks up during bossfights if we need to disengage and can’t attack with Lightning Blast.
-even though IB’s damage gets also scaled through Lightning Blasts ‘Closed Circuit’, it’s damage output is not that high
’Subthermal Velocity’:
- When the projectile’s hits apply freeze on one enemy we gain 10% increased cast speed for 4 seconds.
- This buff can stack 3 times
- Synergy to Lightning Blast’s ‘Closed Circuit’ (the faster we cast , the higher our double/quadruple cast chance during 4 seconds, the higher the total amount of LB’s ‘Closed Circuit’-increases)
’Aura of Frost’:
- Applies stacks of chill to nearby enemies
(debuffs cast speed, attack speed, movement speed) - Helpful when we get swarmed. ‘Closed Circuit’ forces us in mid- to close range combat.
Flame Ward
-Procs when we get stunned.
-30% less incoming damage multiplicator during uptime
Skilled for offense to help with damage against bosses/tanks until we have the Fractured Crown and can equip the damage-Idols:
- another 8% less incoming damage multiplicator, 480 + (12% of missing health) Ward burst.
-damage boost during Flame Wards uptime → better leech
-Grants ‘haste’ during uptime if we need to disengage and Teleport is on cooldown.
Skilled for defense after equipping Fractured Crown & Adorned Idols:
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another 40% less incoming damage multiplicator
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’Mental Aegis’:
- 45% of incoming damage dealt to Mana during uptime (each point of mana shields 5 health).
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depending on your Fractured Crown’s ‘Damage dealt to Mana before Health’ roll and max Mana, this skill needs to be balanced individually:
- we don’t want that a stun proc eats up all our Mana
- but we also don’t want to die to stuns
- ‘dodge rating for 4 seconds on potion use’ on belt helps to protect our Life and Mana if we use a potion directly after we get stunned
Teleport
-movement
-grants elemental Resistances, Armor, Stun Avoidence, and increased Cooldown Recovery Speed for 8 seconds
’Decoy Position’
- Teleport leaves one taunting Mirror Image at departure.
Arcane Ascendance
-toggable Buff that locks us in place
-helps during bossfights/ dealing with large packs
-grants 50% increased cast speed during uptime and Haste when we leave AA
-we can still use Teleport during its uptime to avoid telegraphed attacks etc.
BEGINNER’s GUIDE
Resources
General
-Feel free to branch out from this guide for own experimentations at any point. You can always respec.
-If this is your first character or you play ‘solo’ don’t waste all your gold at the gambler during the campaign.
-Gold is better invested in some stash-tabs to help you organize your loot that you want to keep, stash-categories are free.
-You don’t need to sell loot at the vendor. The sell-prizes aren’t worth the time and monsters drop good gold on death. Only unique/set items you don’t want to keep can be sold for a good prize.
-Read the tooltipps. In some cases the wording or the information is lacking, but mostly they provide good information. Also note the ability to press the ALT key or ALT + CTRL key during you view a tooltip to gain additional information.
Bosses:
-When you first encounter a new boss learn how to avoid his one shots, what the wind-up animations look like and which attacks could be safe to tank, then kill it.
-Read the modifiers listet under the bosses health bar top of the screen when you mouse-over them. Sometimes there’s a hint.
-Here is a complete Guide to all Monolith boss mechanics if you need help.
Crafting
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Use ‘Glyph of Stability’ as long as you’re above ‘90% of Success’ with them - when you change the affix to craft, the chance may be diffrent, depending on the affix tier.
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From ‘90% chance of Success’ and below switch to ‘Glyph of the Guardian’. This Glyph provides 25% safer crafts.
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When you start on an empty base-item, make sure it has 0 instabilty (for example if you have used ‘Rune of Cleansing’ on it).
At endgame it may be necessary to take higher risks during crafting, depending on the importance of the possible upgrade:
Expand the number of crafts with the ‘Glyph of Stability’ to reduce the ‘Instability’ added as much as possible (‘75% of Success’ is a sane breakpoint).
Then use ‘Glyph of the Guardian’.
Good crafting Bases:
A good crafting base is an item from the desired base-type (for example ‘Sapphire Ring’) that has an exceptable roll on it’s implicit(s) and some or all of the needed affixes already on them. The higher the tier-level of these affixes, the better. Those items have lower ‘Instabilty’ then
identical items which we have crafted ourselfes (CGG - Instability and Fractures).
The item’s implicit(s) can be rerolled with the ‘Rune of Shaping’.
Press ALT + CTRL key during you view an items tooltip to see the possible rolls on affixes and implicits.
If there is one or two additional not needed affixes on the item you can try a ‘Rune of Removel’. But think twice if there is a high-tier needed rare affix on it, sometimes it’s better to shatter those or deal with the item the way it is.
If an item has very good implicits, 0 instablity but the affixes on it are all not wanted, you can use a rune of cleansing. But keep in mind that you wont reach high tiers for every affix on this item before it fractures. But for the campaign and early to mid endgame this can be a way to obtain sufficient gear.
Vendors can also have good crafting bases in their assortment.
Skills and Passives Progression
The provided checklists are made to complement each other and with gear- and story/endgame progression in mind.
Copy the checklists into .txt file(s) on your pc so you can edit in and save your progress.
Gear Progression
Campaign and early Endgame:
-Gear how you like and experiment - lootfilter provided is less strict until level 72.
-Get familar with some crafting.
-Look out for good crafting bases for either instant upgrades or later.
-Most BiS base-type items drop from early on.
-Have some physical resistances on gear (most common damage-type throughout the game).
-Idols can be used to patch other resistances depending on the content you face.
A rule of thumb is
- ‘resistance %’ >= Area-level (until resistance-cap of 75)
but since we have ‘damage dealt to mana befor health’, ‘Lightning Aegis’ and later ‘Endurence’ to mitigate or avoid damage its not mandatory to cap resistances for this build but keep in mind that we don’t invest much into Life and profit from an aggressive closer-range playstyle, so the more resistances you have, the better.
Press TAB key to open the overlay-map; the Area-Level appears on the upper right of the screen.
‘Invoker’s Static Touch’:
- Unique set-piece-ring that can drop from area-level 16+ and can be gambled from character level 16 on from 'Sapphire Ring’s.
- Very likely that it drops at least once during your journey.
‘Stormtide’:
- Unique boots that can drop from area-level 24+ and can be gambled from character level 24 on from ‘Iron Greaves’.
- Also very likely that it drops at least once.
Obtaining the two other Uniques is covered in the Endgame section.
Preperations for Endgame:
One mandatory key-point in the character progression is equipping the Adorned Idols. We need at least 300 max mana to get the most out of them. This will be achieved through passives and item implicits.
- it’s very rare to roll both affixes on one idol. Having a good rolled suffix is sufficient.
One key item is the Fractured Crown. We can obtain it after reaching character level 72. It boosts our damage output and mana.
This is what the gear could look like once we have the Crown:
Affix-tiers on all the items in the following gear-planner are kept as low as possible, in case you want to craft one or two pieces from empty bases.
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We want good Mana implicits on our body armor and both rings.
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While the chosen base-items are considered BiS, you can use others for some of them.
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Note that some of the prefixes and suffixes are interchangeable between some gear-slots so look out for possible other combinations if you find good bases, but you can’t have every affix on every item and items have diffrent Affix-Effectiveness (Affix-Modifier). Use the Tunklab-Gearplanner to plan for your needings.
Endgame
After completing all story content check if you have done all quests that grant idol slots and passive-points:
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you should have unlocked all idol slots
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the total ammount of all the passive-points you’ve spent till now should be equal to the sum of (your current character level) + 13
(we get 15 passive-points from quests, but don’t get passsive-points from the first two character-levels)
Monolith of Fate Progression
-Drops inside the echoes are limited by the timelines area-level (you won’t find a level 72 base-item inside a level 55 echo).
-Quantity of the drops from the reward-chest after each echo depends on how much enemys you’ve killed.
-Regularly visit the shop to stock up on ‘Runes of Shattering’.
>Around 30 should be sufficient for now, they also drop more often in the Monolith.
Echo-Mofifiers:
-We play a crit-build, don’t choose echo-modifiers with high crit-avoidance for enemies, especially before boss fights.
-Once you have 100% crit avoidence you can safely run higher crit-chance for enemys.
We want to reach the ‘Ending the Storm’-Timeline without detour, inside its echoes we can farm for all the higher-level base-items and gain more xp.
After getting the Fractured Crown we can move on to the ‘Reign of Dragons’ Timeline to unlock the level 90 ones.
When all three level 90 Timelines got completed we can empower all Timelines to Level 100 to grind their Blessings.
Feel free to branch out and explore the other Timelines, especially if you hit a wall/ need better gear.
I won’t cover all the Timelines in this guide but here are the first three:
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Fall of the Outcasts (55)
- most common damage types: phys, necrotic, some elemental*
- after defeating the timeline-boss choose the path which unlocks ‘The black Sun (65)’
- don’t sell the unique bodyarmor ‘Woven Flesh’ that drops from the boss, you may want to wear it
- BiS Blessing: “Mark of Agony” - 30% to 50% Increased Adorned Idol Drop Rate
- rerun to unlock the other path or move on to the next Timeline
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The Black Sun (65)
- most common damage types: phys, void, some elemental*
- BiS Blessing: “Emptiness of Ash +(20% to 26%)” Critical Strike Multiplier
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Ending the Storm (75)
- most common damage types: phys, elemental*
- on second quest-echo Choose the path to unlock ‘Reign of Dragons (85)’-Timeline
- You can already try to beat Lagon, but doing it after getting the Fractured Crown is recommended.
- BiS Blessing: “Mysteries of the Deep” +(10% to 20%) Chance to Shred Lightning Resistance on Hit
*since it’s random which enemys you face in non-quest echoes, damage types can differ.
Fractured Crown
Once you have collected some Gilded Crowns and are at least character-level 72 you can craft the Fractured Crown:
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Make sure you have equipped the ‘Arcanist Robe’, ‘Sapphire Ring’ & ‘Invokers Static Touch’
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Push with ‘Glyph of the Guardian’ one Affix to T4, the other 3 evenly until 50 instabilty
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Craft without support on the T4 Affix.
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If you get a destructive Fracture, it turns into Fractured Crown.
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Once you have it and reach >= 300 Mana with it you can equip your Idols
Late Endgame Gear
‘Oceareon’:
can drop from
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area-level 74+ (needs clarification)
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gambling on ‘Sapphire Ring’ (character level 74+)
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this Ring is nice to have and not mandatory, a ‘Sapphire Ring’ like discussed in ‘Gear Deatails’ in the BiS Chapter can also be fine and in some cases the better choice.
Take a look at the gear-planner linked under BiS in the ‘Showcase’ section. We now want high tiers on all the defensive affixes so we can swap out some of our former affixes with some other useful ones. Even if we swap them out for low tiers of other affixes, the bonuses we gain are worth it.
To achieve these high affix-tiers it may be necessary to take higher risks during crafting, depending on the importance of the possible upgrade:
Expand the number of crafts with the ‘Glyph of Stability’ to reduce the ‘Instability’ added as much as possible (‘75% of Success’ is a sane breakpoint).
Then use ‘Glyph of the Guardian’ - which provides 25% safer crafts - to finalize your gear upgrade.
CREDITS & SHOUTOUTS
@HEAVY - for proofreading the guide and improving the lootfilter.
@TUNK & @DAMMITT - for the ressources you provide and maintain for fans of ARPGs.
@ANDREWTILLEY & all others involved in creating and maintaining the Community Game Guide.
@FOE - His elemental nova boy. Strongest sorc with Lightning Blast specced for single target damage.
Action RPG - similar variant of lightning blast.
@ApprenticeCorner - his version of a budget friendly Lightning Blast
Eleventh Hour Games - Thanks for this gem of a game.
Everybody is free to use parts of this guide in their own content.
If i abondon the game or this guide, everybody is free to copy, update and maintain it.
