The Cool Cat Sabertooth finally viable! Beastmaster build and notes | 0.9

Primalist
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Sabertooth got a nice tree rework in the latest patch and since the only other minion build I’ve made is solo Abomination, I couldn’t resist trying to make Saber work(though I really should try out multi minion builds…). Also because I searched both lastepochtools and forums and only Sabertooth build I could find was a levelling build by Boardman and a build around his set that didn’t seem to be using Sabertooth much…

The Build (current): Beastmaster, Level 97 (LE Beta 0.9.0d) - Last Epoch Build Planner
BTW this build uses 4-5 mandatory uniques some of which can be hard to farm(Frostbite shackles, Last steps, Morditas reach kinda rare), I am also using a few exalteds/sealed affixes but they are pretty suboptimal so I wouldn’t worry too much on those as I am mainly using blessings to cap resists.
Will put up an ideal planner (just T20 rares and uniques) also maybe.

Build Mechanics:

Damage: Artor’s Loyalty and Natural bond limit you to one companion in exchange for big Damage. Clearing and Single target with a Solo Sabertooth is carried by its skill Flurry Swipes, hence we get all the proc chance on attack, boost its damage with guaranteed crit from being on low life and use Frenzy totem to reset the skill cooldown and boost attack speed further(Note: Frenzy totem is also SUPPOSED to have an interaction with Sabertooth where it doublecasts Flurry when totem is active this is currently bugged and does not work). Fury Leap is amazing as it allows to reposition your Saber and also snipe key targets like packs of embermages if you leap and cast Flurry swipes. We also pick ALL the more Melee dmg on the tree that we can, Snow stalker is a key node giving 54% more dmg at 3 chills. There is actually very few sources of chill for Beastmaster minions(only 1 I could find) and it is from Warcry, However that only works for cold minions(applying chill yourself is quite suboptimal IMO) hence we need to use Ice Tiger to make Saber a cold minion. Aspect of Shark for attack speed and dmg and Aspect of Lynx for crit multi are perfect fits, Viper is only taken for the attack speed.

Defense: Since we need to be on Low-life for our Flurry swipes to crit, Exsanguinous and Last steps of the living are must haves. Low life Primalist gets access to the strong Berserker node which gives 35% reduced damage taken which stacks with the 30% from Boar and 16% from nearby enemies. As Shark stacking requires up close melee action and Primalist does not have any ward gen, I picked the reworked Serpent strike as the dodge would help ward regen. Since the dodge scales with cold res stacking, Frostbite shackles is a pefect fit. This setup results in around 4k ward and 70% dodge with around 300 cold res. The kill threshold is also useful for proccing shark and killing anything that survives a flurry. However the catch is Serpent strike requires a spear the best option available being Morditas spear(God I hate this spear! minion dmg/melee dmg/DoT dmg, pick a lane!) which surprisingly works perfectly here. Aside from this we have the usual capped res and crit avoidance, endurance is useless as it doesn’t affect ward.

Uniques and required rares: Morditas Reach to enable Serpent strike(can make do with a regular spear with melee minion dmg I guess), Exsanguinous, Last steps of the Living and Frostbite shackles(needed for low life, I was actually farming empowered monos without shackles I would recommend having atleast 2 out of the 3 before making the build), The Fang amulet(decent choice with flat dmg, life=ward and resists)/Death rattle(nice dmg, int=ward, increased dmg feels only an issue on big targets like T4 bosses). Build is also kinda reliant on +2 Sabertooth relic, as losing chance to proc flurry feels bad. +2 Serpent strike and Primal serpent stuff is just filler(Fraility chance from serpent seems nice tho, I’d ditch the serpent speed nodes)

Achievements/Gameplay
Sadly my system is not good enough to record videos, choppy gameplay of my attempt to record arena waves is the best I can get https://streamable.com/z32h3s
this vid and most of the arena attempts was when I had only 3k ward (no heorot blessing and worse gear)
T4 arena goes down pretty easy https://imgur.com/a/auScEp2
T4 Julra down(it is RNG on her void beams, first fight Saber only died once. Second fight she just stood in the middle and Saber died like 4 times) https://imgur.com/a/0Tj3pGx
T4 Julra bossfight
Last Epoch Solo Sabertooth Beastmaster Julra kill - YouTube

Too lazy to unlock the other dungeons up to T4
No real issues with other content.

Notes/Ideas
Sabertooth is a kinda awkward skill, a minion that IMO works better alone which fits the theme (though some species apparently lived in packs like lions, EHG Pride themed unique giving multiple sabers when?). Firstly, its a beastmaster exclusive summon making it better for melee focus rather than spell as it is unusable by Druid and Shaman which have more minion spell support. It also notably does not buff other minions in any way making combining it with wolves/crows a bad choice as you could just have an extra wolf/crow. Regarding other companions Scorpions and DoT could have some synergy but scorp specializes in poison while saber in bleed, Spriggan could be good support with crit but scales off spells while saber is melee(the spell line looks pretty bad), Raptor is another can of worms, Bear has some nice bleed synergy but seems like it would be better off on its own focusing on thorn burst. Regarding other support minions thorn totems have the cold synergy but again melee vs spell, Spriggan and maybe also Summon spriggan Vines could potentially be a good addition but would require to ditch the Aspect buffs unless you could pull off multiform…

The defensive combo of Berserker, Serpent strike, Frostbite shackles seems pretty good but kinda niche to use. Frostbite with Swarmblade and Humming bee (dw or 1h + shield/ward offhand) could be good? But I heard Frostbite nerfs were pretty hard… Also I don’t think Berserker boosts ailment damage. Hit based serpent strike is in a rough spot.

This build diary is less of a guide, more of a showcase that Sabertooth is viable. Has anyone else tried experimenting with this meme skill and what are your results/ideas ?

Also Sabertooth new model when???

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Ive tried every minion/companion that can work solo, including Raptor/Scorpion and Sabretooth, last time I tried Sabretooh was well over a year ago on my Crow build, decided to try it out with the Ice Vortex nodes as I had a Crow build capable of doing 250 corruption - tried Sabre in a lower Empowered and he died on the first pack of 3 white mobs and did basically no damage, I couldnt even clear the mono, pretty cool its viable but I wanted to see a spell version of that Ice Vortex work

Raptor gets pretty juiced from Frenzy totem, ive been playing the D4 beta and my Frostbite build kinda sucked, I actually might look into trying a Raptor build afterwards, but keeping up a totem all the time is pretty tiring

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Neat, is it bleed Raptor or crit? I wanted to try that once but never got around to it.

If Saber wasn’t Beastmaster exclusive then spell may be viable, so much of the Beastmaster tree is exclusive for melee. Frost nova is also not very synergistic with Ice vortex as you’d want Lynx to max frost nova and the DoT nodes are useless for Frost…

Yeah with Flurry Saber, I mostly only use totem for bosses or if I’m getting overwhelmed(Proc on attack is enough for clearing)

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This is a quick Raptor build on youtube

Problem with Raptor is they have 2 good nodes purely on kill which wont work on bosses, build would still work but you are losing 15% more damage plus 4 or so nodes in a boss fight, Raptor also has low AoE but does actually make up for it with its really high speed

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Interesting build. I was also trying to build a beastmaster build using sabertooth. The main mechanic is the cornered beast node which says that if you or the sabertooth below half health, the flurry swipes will always crit. And I also use swipe to make the sabertooth use flurry swipe. To get low health, I use the legendary armor called ‘Exsanguinous’ so the sabertooth can always crit while swiping. The damage is quite decent, but it seems to be very hard to maintain the ward for a primalist.

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Yeah, main ward generation sources are from Humming bee sword(on hit) and Uhkeiros(elemental spell cast, but it converts health so you need leech and a spell that actually does damage)

My build is only reliant on Exsanguinous and Last steps ward gen. High dodge and damage reduction helps stay alive long enough for it.

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Added T4 Julra kill video Last Epoch Solo Sabertooth Beastmaster Julra kill - YouTube
Julra is an awkward boss for minions as there is no way to stop minions from dying to the beam if she is standing in a corner/middle. You can see towards the end of video that even using move minion to place does not work. Also I am new to record and was kinda bad gameplay(mistimed Frenzy totem) but build holds up. 2 min Julra kill ain’t the fastest, but its pretty doable as long as her placement isn’t horrible.

Bonus: Video also showcases how useful Primal serpent is /s.
Dies at beginning of fight and proc rate is so low it does not spawn even though I am continuously attacking the boss.

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So finally got around to testing after the Snow Stalker bugfix

1:45 even though I’m a little out of touch. Maybe if the frenzy totem+sabertooth node gets fixed build can kill Julra in 1 min.

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