Hey everyone this is Thyworm with a new build for Last Epoch, the Quaker. If you are enjoying Last Epoch content, consider subscribing. Let’s start with the build philosophy.
[build philosophy]
This character was created specifically to conquer the monolith and while a lot of my other builds failed, for various reasons, this one has been very successful so far. I made it to timeline level 100 at the moment, around echo 13, and here it seems to halt a bit for now. That’s very acceptable however, as my character is only level 81 and by levelling up, you can definitely get more tanky and dish out a bit more damage, and then I’m sure you’re going to be fine.
The Quaker uses the revamped Earthquake, which received buffs the last 2 patches, as its main damage source. Other skills are used to augment that damage and provide movement, defences and buffs. I have facetanked most of the bosses in the monolith with this, only at timeline 90, with Harton, I needed to move. I’m not suggesting you facetank everything, but you can, and that makes this build ideal to learn the monolith.
A good monolith build has a few traits, I’ve discovered. It needs to be super tanky, it needs to be mobile, it needs to do damage, it needs various layers of defence, and you need to be able to take and dodge a few hits. In the current version of the monolith, version 0.7.9E, a very, very decent build is simply required to properly conquer the monolith, without dying and causing a lot of frustration. Damage output is really secondary. I’ve tried some more glass cannon kind of builds, or avoidance-based builds, but you simply get oneshot and set back 7 or 8 echoes, and that’s not fun. So unless 11th hour games removes this mechanic, I consider those type of builds not viable.
On top of all this, you will need a lot of good gear. Beginner-friendly builds for monolith don’t really exist anymore, because good gear is a prerequisite if you are going to be glancing blow capped, crit capped, have high protections and some secondary defensive layers as well. There is however simply no way around it. Only with all these requirements in play, you will be able to get very far in the Monolith and beat it.
The Quaker does offer all of this, however. It’s tanky, does damage, it’s fun to play with the skill set, and most importantly it allows you to take a lot of hits from bosses, because of health leech and high protections, so you have a lot of time to learn the boss mechanics for later runs. It offers everything you’d want, apart from the movement during the monolith maps itself, which makes the build somewhat slow. But going slow is safe and I will give you a few options to go a lot faster, at the expense of damage output.
We’ve chosen a shaman for the mastery passive. The additional elemental resistance is really great. You could theoretically go another mastery, but that won’t really help you, unless you somehow want to throw a lot of wolves in the mix. Your defences will suffer, but damage will increase. Our build definitely airs on the safe side though, for all intents and purposes. With over 25k Earthquake crits however, it’s no slouch.
If you have any questions about the build, feel free to join my discord, we have a nice, active and helpful community over there. Link down below in the description.
Let’s see what the main stats are that you want
[WISH LIST]
We’re looking for simply a lot of defences and a bit of phys scaling. Glancing blow, crit avoidance, vitality, elemental resistance and flat and increased % physical damage, are your most important statistics.
Earthquake scales with physical damage, at least in our build, and everything else is pretty straightforward, I’d say.
Let’s look at the skill specialization and skills we’re using
[skill specialization]
We are using Earthquake as the main skill. The main issue with Earthquake is the mana cost. Last patch however, the primalist received a way to get mana back quickly using tempest strike. We’re summoning thorn totems with tempest strike as well, which provide us defences and chill enemies, we have a frenzy totem for damage, and finally our dodge skill is Leap Slam, to get out of sticky situation or to enter the fray in maps.
Earthquake. Our main damage ability, and that’s because of a few nodes in here. The Earthquake tree can be divided into 3 parts. Initial hit damage, getting more initial hits, and making the initial hits undodgeable, which turns out to be rally valuable. First, damage. Take 2/4 Lethargy, take 3/3 Outbreak, because that additional area is mandatory in the monolith with the pack size, and then take 5/5 shatterquake. This deals 150% more damage, multiplicative, against chilled enemies. It’s not hard to chill enemies, and we’re using totems to do it, but we will get to that.
Then, get more initial hits, take 4/5 Rupture, for initial hit damage, take Seismic smash, removing the aftershocks and adding that damage to the initial hit instead, and finally Seismic Tide, making the initial hit occur 3 times. It’s costly, and it adds a cooldown, but 2 seconds lines up perfectly with the time we need to get mana back, so there are no issues here.
Finally, we move bottom left, take 1/3 Torpor, 2/3 Buffet where the mana efficiency is actually quite helpful, and make earthquake always hit by taking Deep Impact.
If you feel your build is too slow, you can remove the Deep impact and nodes that lead up to it, and invest in Overwhelm, granting haste and frenzy after using earthquake. It works really well and it’s a personal choice for sure.
Earthquake basically gives us 2 problems to solve. Mana and chill. Let’s first tackle mana.
We are using Tempest Strike to regain mana. It doesn’t do a lot of damage for us really, but it does offer a ton of mana. Take 4/4 Reinforced Stone, which is important for the earth spike proc, and to get to 5/5 unspent power, giving us 20 mana each tempest strike hit that doesn’t proc a secondary effect. This doesn’t always work, but it’s consistent enough, together with some passives we get, that you get a lot of mana back. Enough to sustain Earthquake on a small mana pool.
The second thing we’re doing is using Tempest Strike to summon thorn totems. You have idols for this, but we free up those and just use the skill tree here. Take ½ Earthquake and go 4/4 Earth’s Aid. Every time you know proc earth spikes, you summon thorn totems. And those thorn totems make use of the thorn totem skill tree.
Finally, we just take a little bit of damage, with 5/5 elemental imbuement, and the final point goes into Augury, which increases proc chance every time you miss, ensuring that we aren’t too long without totems.
This was quite a balancing act, because there’s this balance between gaining mana, or gaining totems. You can’t have both. After some tweaking however, this is the sweet spot, and it works beautifully.
Then, Summon Thorn Totem. This skill tree consists of 2 parts. The top part, with 3/3 forested expanse, ¾ eternal forest and Grove mind, just gives you 5 totems. The right part, with 2/5 memories of eterra, 5/5 venom tipped thorns and Ice thorn totems, converting that poison in to 100% chill chance, allow us to have chilling totems. They don’t do a lot of damage, but they allow us that 150% earthquake multiplier to kick in, and that does massive damage. We got a really nice synergy going on here. You have 4 points left and I spent those working towards some armor shred, as that theoretically lowers physical resistances, and these totems shoot a lot of projectiles, but I am not sure how effective this actually is. You could also give the totems a bit more health, for example.
Our final 2 skills are just there to augment our damage.
Frenzy totem is a pretty big damage buff, it’s on autocast, and we’re going the tethering route as we don’t have any companions. Take 5/5 grounded, reducing mana cost and granting 25 flat phys damage, take Dig In, enabling the tether and giving 100% increased damage while tethered, take 4/4 totemic reach, increasing tether range for obvious reasons and 5/5 dig deep, for 250% increased crit chance while tethered. Critting with earthquake hits feels pretty good and while we’re not focusing on crit too much, 250% is a lot. Finally, increase the frenzy buff’s effectiveness by taking 4/4 rabidity and then you have 1 point left, which I put in reinforced totem. I would advise against going Berserker Frenzy. The damage increase is massive, but taking more damage is really bad in the monolith, so this is not a route you want to take when learning boss fights at least. If you are more comfortable with the monolith, by all means take this and reduce the tether range to get the points.
Finally, Leap Slam. It’s basically just our skill to avoid big boss damage AOE attacks, but you might as well use it to augment your damage, so we’re doing that too. Take 7/7 warrior’s entrance, increasing global damage by 105%. 3/3 Rage gives a lot of attack speed, mainly useful for quickly getting of earthquake, which otherwise roots you in place while casting. Attack speed has no impact on tempest strike, by the way. We went 5/5 ambush predator, damage against enemies on full life, which is a nice way of killing off white packs. The pull node, Gravity, is nice for pulling in enemies, so you can then Earthquake them. The final 4 points went into Crater and Savage impact, for a bit more damage. You could put all points in crater too.
Time to look at the passives.
[passives]
I’m level 81 currently, and the numbers aren’t displayed correctly in the base class, as I have 35 points in there. That’s a small bug.
Take 1/8 natural attunement, because we have a point left. Take 5/5 Tempestborn, for the % phys damage and move to 5/5 Thorn bond, for 4% increased damage which is doubled with an active minion. Totems are minions. We always have an active totem, so this 40% increased damage. Take 8/8 Primal Strength, because strength scales our attacks and provides armor. Go to 6/6 Survival of the Pack, for increased melee damage and health leech. Leech is a big part of our survivability and earthquake hits so hard, that health leech is really effective. Finally, invest into the newly added Ancestral Weaponry, 10/10. Insanity of course, 40 flat phys damage for a 2-h axe, so get that Kraken Beak and bam, there you have 130 flat phys damage, out of nowhere.
For our mastery, we go shaman, for the elemental protections and the totem interaction it provides.
Take 8/8 Silent protector, giving 80 flat protections when a totem is active. Take 5/5 Totemic Fury, increasing attack speed, just to get that earthquake off quickly. 8/8 Tempest Form is great for us, because it gives some health, chill chance which we wanted, and of course 8 mana when using Tempest Strike, which is pretty amazing. Take 9/10 Wind bringer, for a bit of dodge and increased phys. Take 5/5 protective circle, which was nerfed but still okay, for 25 prot per active totem, and we usually have 6, so that’s another 150 protections. Finally, take 8/8 Storm Blade, for 32% melee damage per active totem, times 6, that’s almost 200% increased melee damage.
Finally, we’re working on even more defences, with the beastmaster nodes. Take 8/8 Ursine Strength, for strength and health. Then take 5/5 boar heart, for 15% damage reduction which is massive. And increase that to 30% with porcupine constitution, 5/5. I’m not there yet, but soon. We also take the shark buff package, with 1/8 Savagery and 1/8 Ambush, triggering the aspect of the shark, next to the aspect of the boar. The boar primarily is just huge, and flat damage reduction is massive these days. You need something like this and because we’re getting hit a lot as melee, this is constantly active. You probably want to take this before the highest nodes in Shaman honestly, also to unlock Frenzy totem.
Then, also very important, Gear
[Gear]
In my previous builds, I sort of prided myself of creating builds that worked, even without good gear. It worked, because those builds weren’t made to push arena or high monolith. With the current system, those days are mostly over. Gear is essential now. I still tried to keep it relatively achievable, with none of the set affixes included and only rares.
You can find all the gear in the tunklab link → Gear Planner
Let’s talk defences. I’m glancing blow capped, using the glancing blow set. You could use the woven flesh unique too, and then get a single glancing blow suffix. The Leech works well, but you would miss out on a lot protections.
For crit avoidance, I’m using idols. These you find quite often and it’s a great way to get crit avoidance capped, 100%, without making too many sacrifices on your gear, so I suggest you use those. Apart from that, my main focus is on more defences. Vitality, flat protections, more protections, it’s just extremely important. I equipped and crafted a Kraken Beak, the best 2-h axe in the game currently, and gave it some phys scaling, because we have a lot of flat phys already. It came with leech, not bad. You could put flat crit on there as well and you could reach something that’s close to the crit cap honestly, with all the buffs. I went for a bit more phys scaling on the helmet, the implicit, the amulet and the relic. My remaining idols involve crit and more phys damage as well.
Here are some stats to aim for:
100% glancing blow
100% crit avoidance
800-900 protections without any buffs or totems
300% increased physical damage, unbuffed
If you go to the training dummy, with your stat page open, you can see that melee damage gets a big boost from having totems out. When I jump in with Leap Slam, it’s also a decent buff. During combat, it’s not uncommon to reach 600-700% increased damage, just on the stat sheet. Add to that the scaling from the Earthquake tree, and the massive flat phys damage, and you see some serious damage numbers, while still being very, very tanky.
Three initial hits hit for around 60k on the training dummy. That dummy isn’t chilled however. And none of those are crits. In the monolith, I’m regularly critting for 20-25k on a single earthquake hit.
As you can see, the gear is pretty decent. Not absolute top tier or best in slot, but very decent. Anything less than this, and higher monoliths are going to be very problematic for you.
Unfortunately, the best way to get this gear is to gamble for pieces that are your worst pieces. Keep upgrading that way. Dropped loot is usually of horrible quality, and hovering over each piece is depressing. Gambling is depressing too, but it’s a lot more efficient at least. And once you are geared up, you can just run the monolith without looking at loot. 99% of it sucks anyway, so you’re not missing out.
[Levelling]
Leveling is easy and I would advise you to just level using these skills. You can practice the interactions already, most skills are available early, and levelling should be extremely smooth. Also during levelling, just focus on defences.
I’m incorporating a new section in here, the monolith
[Monolith]
Generally, I don’t mind giving enemies health, crit avoidance, crit chance (because we’re immune to crit anyway), chance to slow, chance to chill, or any of the healing modifiers. Those are all safe modifiers to take, because we do decent damage.
You could give them dodge, and while earthquake can’t be dodged, everything else is, and it just feels bad. You could give them stuff like deadly, but then be sure you don’t rush the monolith. If you have a couple of ranged deadly enemies raining hell down on you while clearing a shrine, you will die. All the modifiers to rare enemies are relatively safe, but just beware that you don’t turn those rares in to bosses, because there are a lot of them.
I would really try to avoid giving enemies damage. Before, this was kinda fine, but these modifiers translate to bosses as well, and a new boss fight, or one you’re unfamiliar with, where the boss deals 100% increased damage, is just a death sentence. You’d rather have them have a bunch of health instead. It’s much better to learn the fights.
I would also advice you to skip the level 80 timeline, and go 90 instead. It’s much easier overall, you don’t have to fight the broken Lagon fight, and you lack mobility, so avoiding that beam is going to be difficult anyway and no matter how many resistances you have, that beam will kill you, setting you back, so I would honestly avoid it like the void.
[play style]
Here’s the build in action.
While mapping, you make use of a 3-combo piece. First, you dive in using Leap Slam, buffing damage. Then you hit with tempest strike until you summon your totems. Your totems now chill everyone and then you earthquake, usually killing the whole pack. Rinse and repeat.
On bosses, you should use leap slam to avoid boss AOE.
It’s a very active playstyle, you are supposed to do a lot yourself. I would put frenzy totem on autocast, so it’s always active and you get all the buffs. Everything else, it’s all you. So go out and conquer that monolith, because this is a build that can do it.
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.