Hey everyone this is Thyworm with a new build for Last Epoch, the Serpent Strike Beastmaster. If you are enjoying Last Epoch content, consider subscribing. Let’s start with the build philosophy.
[build philosophy]
Serpent Strike is a skill I hadn’t used much, and it’s a really interesting skill. It does massive poison damage, it’s got a versatile skill tree, and it requires a polearm to use. I hope we’ll get more skills with some niche requirements and some restrictions. It makes you more creative, in many ways, which may seem counterintuitive, but often by imposing restrictions, people get more creative. Hong Kong protestors in Animal Crossing for example. And then china banning that game.
The Serpent Strike Beastmaster inherently lacks a bunch of defences, but you make up for that by just going full dodge. The build requires 2 uniques, apart from that, there aren’t many requirements. I made it to around wave 130 in the arena. Monolith is smooth too.
Some of the pros. I thought it was a super fun build to play, stabbing your enemies from a distance while your pet takes care of whatever remains. It has good synergy with your pet, and you can make use of specific passives to boost that synergy. Levelling was really easy as soon as you reach level 12 and get the serpent strike ability and overall, it’s a good all-round character that does well in Arena and Monolith.
Primary setback is honestly the performance of this build. We have companions running rampage, there’s totems everywhere, green poison clouds, it’s an 11 FPS build in the arena. Which is not great, but it is what it is, right now. It’s a great build to stress test the game and your PC. Another drawback is that I’m expecting incoming nerfs to both poison and entangling roots, which will definitely negatively impact this build. I make builds as sort of blueprints however. You can follow them step by step, and you’ll be fine, or you can extract the main core of what makes this build good, and use that to experiment.
If you want to discuss this build in more detail, you can find me on my Discord. Feel free to join, link is in the description down below.
Let’s dive into the passives.
[passives]
We’re looking for poison damage, damage over time, attack speed, minion damage, and some defenses, primarily dodge.
We take 6/6 Gift of the Wilderness, granting our companions and us some health. 5/5 Prima medicine for minion damage. I took 1 point in primal strength, and 2 points in survival of the pack, for some leech. Take 1/5 hunter’s restoration, just to get to 4/5 Hunter’s Emanation. Those two nodes combined provide a very decent buff to your minions, every 3 seconds, increasing their damage by 44% for 3 seconds. In theory, this buff is always available. In practice, it’s up quite a lot as well, because we’re attacking a lot. Our last point goes to Ancient call, it’s just a good value proposition, 15% minion health for 1 passive point.
Up next, we invest in Beast Master, which is our specialization. Take 8/8 Feline Bond, it’s a lot of dodge for us and our companion. Take Artor’s Loyalty, which limits you to 1 companion, but it makes that companion a lot stronger. And we really only need one companion, the scorpion.
To the left we take a defensive buff, boar heart. Take 5/5 Boar Heart, grating a buff that reduces 15% damage when hit, the aspect of the boar. Take 5/5 Porcine Constitution, getting that reduction up to 30%. And I took also 3 points in Primal Strength, which procs aspect of the boar on hit. 12% I found a good number, as we’re usually hitting multiple enemies.
On the right side of the tree, there is a nice damage buff. Take 1/8 Savagery, just to get to 1/8 Ambush. You really only need one point to get the attack speed buff, which is what we want. 10% attack speed feels good. Take 1/5 rending maw, just to get to 4/4 Hunters of the Deep. It grants aspect of the Shark to your companions, and increases its duration.
Top left, we find a lot of poison. Take 5/5 Envenom, which is super good value. Take 10/10 Viper Fangs, granting aspect of the viper. This is really the bread and butter of the end-game build. It increases attack speed by 30% for you and your companions. It procs on hit 30% of the time, and once it procs, it gives 100% increased damage over time and poison hit chance. Absolutely a game changer. I took 4 points in Rattlesnake Rattlesnake, increasing effectiveness and duration, because I found that enough to keep aspect of the Viper up at all times in the arena.
Our final points in this tree are in 10/10 Hawk Wings, for a bunch of dodge and some haste on hit. And finally, take that point in Natural, strengthening your companion even more.
I started levelling the druid skill tree, because there’s more poison damage over here. Take 10/10 Barkskin, mainly for the health. I would max out Spirit Claws, for some flat damage and then take 10/10 Return to Dust, which works very well with our build and provides some more health restoration.
Skills are up next
[skill specialization]
We start with serpent strike, our primary skill. It has a 140% chance to poison on hit, which means it applies 1 or 2 poison stacks every time you hit an enemy. This poison last 40% longer as well, which is why particularly attack speed is so good with this skill.
Go bottom right, 5/6 Nagasa Venom, for additional poison chance and 50% duration. That’s pretty sweet. I took 2/3 debilitating poison, inflicting blind on enemies, reducing their accuracy. We go south, 1 point in plague bearer, just to get to 5/5 spear flurry, for 35% increased attack speed, which is absolutely huge. take 6/6 primal reflex, granting 60 dodge on hit, for 4 seconds, which stacks by the way. So the more you hit, the more you dodge. If you hit a group of enemies a couple of times, dodge spikes up to 80%. Finally I put 1 point in primal serpent, which occasionally summons that serpent. We have some minion stats, so he does pretty well and usually stays alive for a bit.
Then, our main pet, the scorpion. At first, I tried the top right corner, with the poison novas and clouds, but I found it lacking damage. Instead, I went for baby scorpions and poison damage. Go bottom left, to 3/5 Steel Carapace, making the scorpion tankier. Then 3/3 Maternal Instinct, summoning baby scorpions. Take 2/2 Fertility Rites, increasing the summoning speed, and take 4/4 scurry, making the babies attack a lot faster. That’s really a massive damage increase, because these scorpions apply all the poison hits much faster now. Take 4/4 Temper Tantrum, mainly for the poison chance, and finally 4/4 Concoction, for some guaranteed poison stacking on hit, but maybe more importantly, +20 health on hit. Combined with all your passives, your scorpions heal themselves, and I never have to revive the big scorpion anymore.
Third skill, thorn totems. We take our standard top part, with 3/3 Forested Expanse, ¾ eternal forest and 1 point in Grove Mind, instantly summoning 5 totems. Then we turn these into poison totems, so take 2/5 Memories of Eterra, just to get to venom tipper thorns, 5/5, giving thorn totems 100% chance to poison on hit. That’s a lot of poison. We increase the poison damage further by 2/3 Lasting affliction, increasing duration, and 4/4 Rotten Core, which makes the totems explode into a poison cloud on death, or when they are resummoned. Because of some idols, I’m constantly resummoning totems, so we have poison clouds all over the place, killing our framerate. If you want more frames, don’t take these nodes.
Moving on to frenzy totem, which synergizes quite well with this build. It grants frenzy, which is attack speed, to us and our companions. Take 1/5 Revitalizing totem, just to get to 5/5 Venomous intent, granting global poison chance. That’s very good, that’s another half a stack of poison on hit, on average. We then want to make our totems last a little longer, so take 5/5 reinforced totem. Let’s increase the range of our frenzy totem, taking 5/5 reach. Finally, increase the buff itself, take 4/4 Rabidity, increasing the frenzy effect by 40%.
Our final skill is pure utility, it’s the completely overpowered skill Entangling Roots. Probably up for a nerf, this one. But not yet, ladies and gentlemen, not yet, as patch 0.7.8 is not here at the moment.
You use entangling roots primarily for it’s slow, the snare effect. I believe enemies are slowed 80%, which is just ridiculous. Let’s make Entangling Roots sustainable, so pick 4/5 Nourish, so it heals us. Then take Bountiful harvest, some more healing and go to Mana bloom, which grants anyone standing on the roots 1 mana per second. This skill basically pays for itself now. While you’re at it, take Roots of Lapp, spreading the spell over on 4 patches, super useful in arena. We want to make this stuff last longer, so go ¼ reclamation, just to get to 5/5 lasting briar, increasing the duration by 75%. Then make your way south, 3/3 grove master, for 90% increased area, making it hit more enemies. Take 2/3 imbued sap, increasing our allies’ damage. Basically, everything friendly is an ally, so your totems, your companions and later party members. Take 2/5 Venomous patch, giving serpents and scorpions an additional 60% chance to poison. This skill does it all.
Time to look at the gear.
[Gear]
This build has 2 mandatory uniques, in my opinion. First, There’s Draalsting, which is just made for this build. Mine rolled 175% poison damage and 163% chance to apply poison on hit. Combine this chance with the default serpent strike chance of 140%, and you have over 300% chance to apply poison, which means you apply 3 poison stacks each hit. That’s a lot of poison, ladies and gentlemen.
The other unique that is super common and works really well with our build is the vipertail, for more poison chance, attack speed and a good chunk of dodge, plus a bit of slow chance. Just an amazing unique for this build.
All other gear is focused on defences, meaning that I’m glancing blow capped, I’m crit immune with 100% crit avoidance, and there’s a lot of dodge going on. 49% by default. Start hitting a single target dummy however, and it spikes to 76%. Only by using serpent strike. It can be much higher hitting multiple enemies and using more skills. Elemental resistances are abysmal, as you can see, but I’m making it to wave 130 nonetheless, simply because of the dodge. And because I know by now which enemies to avoid and which enemies do elemental damage.
Finally, the totems, just get a bunch of summon thorn totem on hit. It resummons the thorn totems, which creates all these poison clouds, it’s beautiful. And there’s really nothing more to it.
[Levelling]
It’s super smooth, levelling this build. You start with whatever, a wolf or something. At level 12, you specc into Serpent Strike and you will immediately see the effect. Make sure to equip a polearm, or this skill doesn’t work. Then, at level 18, you equip the Draalsting, and the rest of the campaign is history. I never died, up until the very last zone, where an ice elemental oneshot me, because also back there, I didn’t have cold defenses.
Don’t go overboard on the poison damage while levelling, but get some of that dodge as well to balance it out. Poison is strong, you will kill enemies and bosses fast. Make sure you take care of at least some defences while levelling, or you’re not going to have a good time with this build, because without dodge, it’s very squishy.
Finally, the play style during end game
[play style]
Here’s the build in action.
It’s rather straightforward honestly.
Your main job is to keep your distance and poke enemies with serpent strike. When you get surrounded, cast entangling roots. I took Fury Leap on my skill bar, as an escape tool. Summon Thorn Totem doesn’t need to be on your bar, as you’re automatically casting that because of your idols. You plant a frenzy totem near you and your allies, for that sweet attack speed. And then it’s just move and poke, move and poke, move and poke. Don’t stand still for too long, because there’s no way you can see what’s going on, as the thorn totems create poison clouds and anything below that becomes practically invisible.
It’s one of the most enjoyable builds I’ve played however, despite the framerate issues. During the campaign and in the monolith, framerate is totally fine. In a confined space, like the arena, it’s not.
I hope you have fun with the build and that the guide was useful. Thanks for watching and making it to the end. See you all soon! Bye bye.