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Lvl 44 mono - Bladedancer, Level 44 (LE Beta 0.8.5c) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Lvl 55 mono - Bladedancer, Level 55 (LE Beta 0.8.5c) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Lvl 70 mono - Bladedancer, Level 70 (LE Beta 0.8.5c) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Lvl 80 mono - Bladedancer, Level 80 (LE Beta 0.8.5c) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Lvl 85 mono - Bladedancer, Level 85 (LE Beta 0.8.5c) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Lvl 91 mono - Bladedancer, Level 91 (LE Beta 0.8.5d) - Last Epoch Build Planner
LOOT FILTER: Dorothy.xml (37.8 KB)
Intro
Hello lovely people, Thyworm here with another extensive and honest build guide for Last Epoch Patch 0.8.5d. This is a guide where I level a character from scratch, without cheating, and give you a fair take on a build. Please check all the links in the description for all info, planner, loot filters, second channel, etc.
This character, Dorothy, is my take on a throwing build for rogues. It’s fairly successful, does regular empowered timelines well, but most of all, it is a very fun build. It’s fast, it looks cool, it’s decent, but it doesn’t work on higher corruption, at least with my gear. Scaling throwing damage is not all that easy, it turns out. I still want to put builds like this out there, to keep it real and to show you what builds can, and cannot do.
Pros
Here are the pros
It’s a fast mapper, with decent damage, and decent clear speed. In this patch, where killing monsters is more rewarding, that’s nice to have.
Levelling with shuriken works fairly well
It’s a satisfying playstyle, because the monster animations and rogue animations are well made, especially compared to other classes. It feels good to play.
It has good performance in terms of framerates
And there’s only 1 autocast, which you can self-cast too, making this controller-viable
Cons
Then the cons
The build is not very tanky and relies on dodge, meaning you can get oneshot
Scaling throwing damage into end-game is not that easy
Doesn’t handle high corruption or T4 dungeons well, because of a lack of damage and defences
Uniques
Let’s start with the build requirements
There are no real requirements. I will cover here the uniques I’m using, but they’re probably not the best items for this. I just like using some, but if you don’t have these, you can totally still play the build, no issues whatsoever.
I have the woven flesh, mainly for crit avoidance. Just getting that capped is nice, and the leech is useful as well. This drops from the abomination in the first timeline.
I use a legendary version of the Thorn Slinger, which has throwing attack speed, movement speed and +1 to physical skills, giving us some skill points. This is a common random drop.
And finally, Li’raka’s claws, also a common random drop, providing up to 130% crit multi, and 2 projectiles for shuriken.
The only other unique to consider would be the Riverbend Grasp maybe, which synergizes well with our build too.
Build Philosophy
Then, the build philosophy
This build is just fun to play, and I wanted to see what throwing abilities on a rogue are like these days. With decent investment, it is not amazing, but it is workable. My builds are achievable though, this is all solo self-found, and it’s a realistic approach. That’s worth something as well.
We’re dual-wielding, because a rogue should carry 2 weapons, right?
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 get 100% crit avoidance. Early on, you can use the woven flesh for easy crit avoidance. The blessings in the monolith can help a lot here too, as well as idols. Furthermore, you want health and dodge and glancing blow.
In terms of offence, we’re scaling dexterity and all sorts of throwing stats we can find. We’re going a crit route too, with crit chance, and crit vulnerability.
Mana isn’t all that important once you have the reduce mana cost affixes on rings.
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.
Shurikens
Let’s start with Shurikens. I turned Shurikens into a single chakram with the node Chakram, which has twice the size of a normal shuriken, and 30% more damage. If you take Keen Throw, you get 10% more damage per shuriken you would otherwise throw. By default, you throw 3 shuriken. We’re taking 2 nodes that give us 2 extra shurikens per node, so that’s 7. And then we have the unique, Li’raka’s Claws, for 2 additional shurikens, bringing it to 9 total. That means that 8 of those get converted into 80% more damage, which is a lot of damage. We go the crit route too, with jagged edges and Massacre. Final points I put in Alacrity, because throwing speed just makes a skill like this feel a lot better to use.
Shift
Up next, Shift, our movement ability. This skill serves multiple purposes, apart from being a movement skill. First we path to the bottom right, to Lasting Presence, which creates a shadow. Shadows throw shurikens too, by the way. And then, Dancing Shadows, making you use Shadow Cascade at the end of shift. We’ll get to this. We’re using emergency flask for automated potion usage when you’re below 50% health, which is really useful. I’m using swift recovery, to regain some mana, because we’re using shift a lot. I have only 1 point in Sleight of hand, because it’s honestly not that important, but still nice to throw a chakram after shifting. We take consumed by shadow, giving shift culling strike, instantly killing anything we hit that has less than 15% health. And finally, hidden blades, meaning we stack up shadow daggers when we hit enemies. Once you reach 4 shadow daggers, they crit the enemy, it’s a guaranteed crit, and this ability does physical damage, which we’re scaling. This is some nice additional damage for the build.
Shadow Cascade
Then, let’s go into Shadow Cascade, which we are casting at the end of shift. Reason we’re picking this skill is because Shadow Cascade has a bunch of throwing damage nodes in the top right. Starting with Dagger Dance, throwing 4 piercing daggers when you use shadow cascade, so at the end of shift. Then, up, porcupine’s wrath, for 3 extra daggers and 90% more damage. And then Shadow elegance, stacking up more shadow daggers on enemies. Then, Daggerflow, making the daggers fly further. And finally Fray, because honestly there aren’t any other points you want to take, as the melee component of shadow cascade isn’t working anymore. Maybe you could go armor shred instead. The final points I put in onslaught, for mana refunds, Fight in the shadows, for more mana gain, and Gloomstalker, for more shadows, meaning more shuriken, more mana, and more umbral blades.
Umbral Blades
Talking about Umbral Blades, this is our single target skill. Shurikens is for the trash, and this is for the bosses. I turned umbral blades into a single massive rotating homing blade, that is very convenient to use, and procs automatically. The skill itself is rather clunky, with recalling and such, so automating this is quite nice. Let me explain. First node we path to is Sword Thrower, which makes umbral blades just throw 1 massive blade instead. Cacaphony of steel makes the blades spin, hitting enemies 2 times per second. There is a maximum of 3 bladestorms. Steel torrent makes the bladestorms wider, meaning they hit more targets, and they now last longer. And Loathing turns them into homing missiles, they will now seek out and follow enemies. It’s not very fast, but definitely worth it. Then, Lethal darkness, once again building up shadow daggers. I’m sure you can see the synergy by now. Precision cuts make you throw the blades where you point the mouse, which is very useful. And then the automation part, first take edge of obscurity, making the blades deal more damage per dusk shroud on you. We will have around 8 stacks or so, and it’s doubled for smoke bomb, so that adds up. It’s 128% more damage, which is a lot. And then finally umbral remnant automates the blades, because whenever a shadow expires, it casts a blade. And shadows expire quite a bit. We generate shadows and make them expire using smoke bomb, but also using shift, and also using shadow cascade. Shadows expire all the time, they then cast umbral blades, to a maximum of 3, which then start doing damage and seek out enemies. You, in the meantime, can just cast shurikens.
Smoke Bomb
Finally, Smoke Bomb. A few things are important here. First, go north, to Shrouded in darkness, giving dusk shrouds. This scales our umbral blades damage, and it provides dodge rating and glancing blow chance. Then, rapid concealment, for twice as many dusk shrouds. Then we go south, to lingering fumes, for increased duration. This means the smoke bomb is almost permanently up. Smoke blades, giving us 50% increased throwing attack damage per second, up to 200% throwing damage, which helps a lot of course. Blood bandit does a decent job leeching health, together with woven flesh you’re around 8-10% leech. And umbral assault creates some shadows in the cloud. 25% chance is enough, you don’t need many shadows, you can only have 3 umbral blades active at the same time, after all.
Passives
Time to look at the passives.
I will highlight a few interesting decisions, as most of this is rather straightforward.
In the base tree, take swift assassin for attack speed and phys damage, Twin blade lets you dual-wield, something we use a lot in the tree as well. It does make you take 15% increased damage, which is one of the reasons you are not that tanky, but hey, we’re a rogue. Dodge and parry is nice, defensively. And duelist is a good hybrid node, some dodge and some attack. Critical precision you can fill up for more crit, but I didn’t feel the need to be crit capped. Late game, I started working on evasion, for less damage taken while moving.
Our mastery is blademaster, starting with pursuit, also for the movement speed. Once is a lot of added damage, which is great. Cloak of shadows is more dexterity and glancing blow, and shroud of dusk is some nice health and more dusk shrouds. Then we take some crit nodes, 5 points in flash of steel, for the bonus over there, providing throwing attack speed. Critical eye is great, because of critical vulnerability. You now have a 25% chance to afflict enemies with an ailment that makes them 5% more likely to be crit. And this stacks. You can read this as you getting 5% base crit chance, which stacks. In short, on trash this doesn’t do much, but on bosses, this guarantees you will be crit capped, because we’re hitting the bosses a lot with all our spinning blades, shurikens, shadows, etc. Really great node. All in is good for 75% crit multi. It doesn’t matter our regular attacks do less damage. We kill trash anyway, and for bosses you want to the multi. I take one point in shadow master, for 1 extra shadow. And finally, Asuvon’s pact, more dodge and damage while at full health, which we typically are. There is one node you probably should take here, Argent Veil, for silver shrouds, basically a free dodge if you drop health. Especially for bosses, this is great.
We put some nodes in marksman too. Focus fire, 7 points, for the dex and because we need to spend the points. Concentration, another buff. It gives us 120% increased damage if we’re not getting hit. Because we’re ranged, and because we dodge a lot, we’re typically not getting hit, so this is a great buff. If you do get hit, you lose the buff for 4 seconds. In the UI in-game, you can’t see you have the buff. Only the debuff, the 4 seconds, is showing, for some weird reason. Meditation reduces the cooldown, and gives flat dodge. Reflection is additional dodge, and movement speed, both very nice.
Gear
Then, also very important, Gear
I’m basically getting all the flat and increased throwing damage I can, as well as mana reduction. For daggers, you want obsidian daggers, because they have 4% flat crit, up to 80% physical damage implicits, and ideally you roll them with crit multi and increased phys damage. The rest of my gear is once more not amazing. This is just stuff I found while playing. My relix doesn’t even have +2 umbral blades, so there is a lot of room for improvement here. I just want to show you, once again, these builds with achievable gear if you just play the game, instead of taking super high-tier items and basically or actually cheating the game.
Idols
For idols, I am taking the crit multi when dual-wielding ones, plus some defensive ones to fill up the resistances. Because I’m taking a few uniques here, you’re struggling a bit with resistances. It makes a build more fun, in my opinion, finding a use for some of the uniques, but it’s not optimal. My idols compensate a bit for this.
Blessings
For blessings, I’m taking all the resistance blessings, because I don’t want to deal with resistances. It’s really nothing special, check the builder. I’m not even capped on grand resistances, because I can’t be bothered to grind all of them.
Loot Filter
I created a loot filter specific for this build. I used this thing myself from the start. I levelled all the way to level 91 using this filter. 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, plus some really good affixes. The loot filter shows normal items till level 10, it hides all non-rogue gear except uniques, set items and exalted items, and it shows in the end-game only top tier daggers. 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.
It’s very stylish I feel, very fun to play, spinning blades everywhere, and rogues still has the best animations and movement abilities in the entire game. It just feels good to play rogue, and throwing out all this stuff is great. Just using shift unleashes all sorts of mayhem in a map, something I really appreciate.
For bosses, it’s really not bad, because you can stack 3 umbral blades on the boss, and those things do a lot of damage. In the meantime, you should hide in your smoke cloud, stack those dodges and defences, and throw chakrams. I use decoy as well, sometimes, on the right mouse button.
Levelling
Talking about Levelling for a bit. At the start shurikens don’t really do damage. You need some gear, but once you do, and you’re a shadowdancer, it gets better. After level 25 or so, it’s really smooth. Before that, especially on bosses, consider using flurry with your melee weapons. It probably does more damage.
Monolith
Let’s talk some Monolith modifiers
You can honestly take anything. Even crit avoidance, because we shred crit avoidance. And that’s it.
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.