The Shattered Yeti
Endgame LE Tools with recorded progression of skill & passive trees: Spellblade, Level 97 (LE Beta 0.9.0j) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Loot Filter:
The Shattered Yeti.xml (45.8 KB)
Intro
Hello lovely people, Thyworm here with a build guide for Last Epoch patch 0.9. This is my Shattered Yeti, because it’s using the Shattered Lance set and it’s a monster. Ye, sorry about that, but I like giving my builds a name, for easy reference. And this is all I could think about. The good news though, this is a very, very solid, shatter strike build, that well exceeded my expectations. It’s easily clearing 200+ corruption so far, it has very few downsides, and it is I feel an interesting way to play this skill. And it’s fun, I’m level 97 with a fresh character, I’ve been grinding it out. So let’s dive in. All sorts of useful links are in the description.
This is more of an intermediate build, as it does require some items, and I do have good gear, but still, I’m always aiming to create honest build guides. This one is no different. So let’s look at the pros and cons.
Pros
Here are the pros
It’s a well-rounded character, able to do maps and bosses alike
We’re freezing the majority of enemies, which is cool. Pun intended
It works on low budgets, but also scales with various interesting uniques
Shatter Strike clears a large part of the screen, and for a melee ability, it feels amazing
It is tanky, due to a ton of ward generation
Levelling is smooth too, with mana strike and shatter strike as soon as you pick your mastery
Cons
Then the cons
It’s pretty slow, that’s really the only downside. This could be countered with legendary boots, which I’m not using.
Uniques
Let’s start with the build requirements
There’s really only one requirement, and that’s that you need to Shattered Lance Set. They both drop from God Hunter Argentos, from the stolen lance timeline, and each piece has a 50% chance to drop. So farm him for a little bit, and you should get this set. That’s the only must-have to play this specific build, and other uniques are decent upgrades, but I will cover those in the gear section, and explain why they’re good.
Build Philosophy
Then, the build philosophy
My build philosophy in general is just that I want to play fun builds. I don’t start theory crafting up front, I just start with a simple idea, usually an item I want to use, and then I start levelling a character. In this case, I wanted to use the shattered lance set, and see how far it would get me, and this set does not disappoint at all. Let me explain how it works, and why it works.
This set has 2 pieces, and an interesting set bonus which we’re using, of course. The relic is the least interesting piece, it just provide sort of standard freeze and cold stuff, plus health regen. The sword is much more spicy, because apart from pretty decent flat cold melee damage, plus more freeze and health regen, is has a unique buff, called deicide. Whenever you kill a rare or unique enemy, you gain 20% more movement speed and damage, for 15 second. This does offset the slow movement speed a little bit, plus it’s a nice more damage multiplier. The most interesting part however, and the staple of this build and why it works, is the set bonus, which provides 15% increased melee cold damage per 10 health regen. This is what we’re scaling. I’m currently at 320 health regeneration, which equals 480% increased melee cold damage, just from the set bonus alone. You could take it much further, I think double this number is actually achievable, but you would be giving up too much other stats in my opinion. So that’s the whole build philosophy. I chose to not venture into crit, but make this a non-crit hard hitting build instead, leveraging more relics and multipliers.
Wish List
So, what do you need in terms of stats? Here’s the wish list.
In terms of defences, make sure to get res capped of course, and ideally get 100% crit avoidance. I don’t have that however, and I’m not dying very often, due to high ward. The blessings in the monolith can help a lot here too, as well as idols. Then, we don’t really scale health, but we use ward, pretty much as soon as we get access to it, so around level 30 or so. That means you get ward, ward on hit, ward generation, ward retention, all that stuff. Also intelligence helps here. Mana and mana regen are nice, because shatter strike does cost a pretty penny.
In terms of offence, we’re scaling health regeneration. There’s flat health regen on helm, boots and gloves, and increased regen, on pretty much any gear piece. Both are equally important, and a tier 6 or 7 flat health regen piece is going to give you tons of damage. Health regen is a very common affix, which helps. Other offence should be flat melee cold damage. Only after this you would look at anything that scaled elemental or cold damage, because your health regen already gives you so much scaling. You really don’t need to craft that on other items. Instead, take more niche stuff, like chill, frailty, armor shred and cold penetration. Those stats will benefit you much more, as increased damage has diminishing returns.
Skill Specialization
Let’s look at the skill specialization and skills we’re using
I will not discuss each point invested, but instead focus on the most important nodes. You can see everything in the build planner yourself, including the order in which I levelled up the skills.
Mana Strike
Let’s start with Mana Strike, because that’s your levelling skill until you can access Shatter Strike. I first pathed towards Spark Charges, because those do some AOE damage. I also levelled using the Firestarter’s Torch, which is an excellent twink levelling item for this. As soon as you get shatter strike, you respecc Mana Strike, and turn it into a mana resource. Shatter Strike is very expensive at the start, so you need this to regain mana. First take Swift Sap, followed by Mana Drain, And then to Arcanists blade. Then I filled up Sprite Blade, and finally I took Rage Sap.
Flame Ward
Up next, Flame Ward. I autocast this ability, by the way. You don’t have to. I first focus on damage, to help us get through the campaign, so take dilation, fire aura, and frost ward, to turn all the bonuses into cold. Then we scale flat damage, with 4/5 through flames. Then we take ward with energize and recollection, and finally we get more tanky using 2/3 prismatic buffer and barrier, for 40% less damage taken.
Shatter Strike
Up next is our main ability, Shatter Strike. I first pathed to 2/2 Whiteout, making it cast 3 times in total, but also making this skill very expensive. In the campaign however, it’s fine. To offset the mana cost a bit, take 5/5 Icy Flow. I then took 5/5 Shiver, 4/4 absolute zero, for a more damage multiplier, and any remaining points I had I put in increased attack speed, to offset the debuffs a bit, using iceblink. You could argue adding an additional damage multiplier with cold presence, but this one is situational and only works on high health enemies. It’s good for bosses I guess, but I’m not a big fan of situational damage.
Enchant Weapon
Then, a huge damage buff, autocasted by the game itself, it’s enchant weapon. Starting with 4/4 concentration, increasing its duration. Then, path to kindling blade, so it autocasts. I’m taking desperation, because you’re often on low mana when you cast enchant weapon. We then take 5/5 frostbrand, for a ton of flat damage. We do another 5/5 celerity, for attack speed. And we round it out with the remaining points in frozen sparks, and efficacy, to reduce the mana cost.
Teleport
Then, our movement ability, teleport. You can specc teleport in many ways, there’s no real right or wrong here I feel. I felt I didn’t need damage, so I wanted the buffs, mostly. Take 5/5 time dilation to make those buffs last a long time. Then I went for the whole ward cluster, with ether barrier, out of body, which works well because we’re typically at full health, 5/5 stable bubble for a load of ward retention, and that’s it.
Passives
Time to look at the passives. I’ve recorded, link below, the progression of the passives, so you can see that for yourself in the planner. I’ll just pick out a few nodes that I want to highlight. Arcanist is good for int and resistances. Mage flurry is amazing for attack speed, and 5/5 warden you want for ward retention. The spellblade tree focuses on more flat damage, more ward generation in all sorts of ways, more attack speed, and some mana generation with mana reaver. Volka’s razor deserves a shoutout, because our shatter strike costs more than 10 mana, it gains 150% increased elemental damage, making these 10 points very efficient.
Gear
Then, also very important, Gear
I already explained the set pieces, but there are a few more interesting upgrades. I chose to not scale crit, which is probably contentious, but okay. Instead, I though I’d make use of the 15% more singularity idol I found. That prevents you from crit damage, but we don’t scale crit at all, and 15% more damage after some testing is actually worth it. On bosses, there’s another idol you could use, the Throne of Ambition, dropping from Argentus as well, like the set items, and this thing when stacked up provides 40% more cold damage. And while bossing, that’s very achievable. Just don’t use this in echoes, it’s pointless. Plus, I found another Ocearion ring, which shocks enemies and easily reaches 10 shock debuffs, because we attack so quickly, so that’s another 10% more damage. On bosses, this really adds up, and each piece you use here, is very significant. But don’t worry, I didn’t start with all of this, and I still did fine progressing the monolith. I found most of these uniques much later in the end game.
The rest of the gear clearly focuses on health regen, as our main scaling stat. I found a +3 shatter strike chest, which clearly helps. And a +3 enchant helmet, also amazing. Overall, this is definitely good gear, but it’s far from min-maxed. It’s part of the reason I’m calling this an intermediate build guide. Finally, I opted for a catalyst, because I think it’s hard to beat the ward you get from this thing. And you do need a good amount of ward, or you will start dying left and right. If you feel squishy at any point during your playthrough, get more ward generation and ward retention, it’s a life saver.
Idols
For idols, I am using the singularity, the throne of ambition, and then idols with ward generation on them. Just fill out the idols to your own needs, also for resistances.
Blessings
For blessings, I’m taking mostly resistance blessings, because I don’t want to deal with resistances. I do however have the cold resistance shred blessing, which on bosses provides 10 stacks of cold res shred, which is -20% cold res, which is another 20% more damage multiplier. You can see why bossing at some point becomes quite convenient and smooth.
Loot Filter
I created a loot filter specific for this build. Please use this at your own risk, however, because it’s tailored to my needs and it might contain mistakes. For example, I put in level restriction so that at some point, at certain character levels, the rule doesn’t apply anymore. I did use this thing myself from the start and I levelled all the way to level 97 using this filter, so it’s pretty good, but I’m sure it’s not 100% perfect. Let me walk you through it. I recoloured idols for you with affixes you want. I made flashy green all the affixes that give you levels for the skills you’re using. I made grey all items outside your build with at least T4 class specific affixes, so you can disenchant those. The loot filter shows normal items till level 10, it shows the best usable one-handers until character level 68, because that’s when you can use the set sword. And movement speed boots are green. And then there are more colors for all your other loot, starting at the bottom with yellow and gradually getting stricter all the way to purple. At some point, I put a level cap on most of those rules, so yellow items will show up until a certain character level, and then not anymore. Should be smooth sailing.
Play Style
Here’s the build in action.
You will notice this build is slow, which could be countered by a good legendary boots, I just don’t have those. However, killing a rare, or finding a movement shrine, eases the pain considerably. This is really the only downside of this build that I can think of, because otherwise, it shatters everything, still at this corruption level which is over 200, and I’m sure it can do much higher corruption as well. I just don’t want to keep farming corruption stacks, I’d rather try out a new build.
The playstyle itself is very straightforward, you teleport for movement. You shatter strike a bit, and you mana strike to get mana back. You only need to hit 3 times or so with mana strike to be at full mana, so it’s not much of a hassle. You’ll get into the rhytm of using the two abilities soon enough, especially in end game.
Bossing works just as smoothly. The amount of ward generation enables you to tank through most of the bosses abilities, barring the most devastating ones. Also at 200+ corruption, I have up to 1250 health and around 2-3 times that in ward, that’s around 3500 to 4000 health. Add to that a bunch of less damage taken multipliers, and you’re all of a sudden quite tanky. It feels good to play, it’s solid, its damage is solid, and the set proves to be very usable.
Levelling
Talking about Levelling for a bit. It’s quite smooth, although this time I did use twink items, like the Firestarter’s Torch, The Falcon and Mourning Frost. And this shouldn’t be a starter build anyway, because you should already have the set, meaning you probably have a few levelling uniques too. As soon as you are a spellblade, start using shatter strike.
Monolith
Let’s talk some Monolith modifiers
There aren’t any modifiers that are detrimental, although chill and slow can be detrimental to your sanity while playing this build. We don’t crit, so crit avoidance is okay. We freeze most enemies, so stuff like enrage and frenzy is fine. Deadly is not. But deadly is never fine. And watch out a bit with giving monsters 139% increased void damage, but ye, that goes without saying I suppose.
I spent a good chunk of time on these guides, which is why I don’t release many of them. If you appreciate the effort, consider liking or subscribing, it really helps me out. Thanks for watching. See you soon, love you all, bye bye.
