💀┃acolyte

[night hemlock]

I could very well be wrong though

Could test it on a dummy in game

[ripe cipher]

I would imagine so but also as I understand it hungering souls is only applying ignite cuz soul fire is making it firey

this was made known to be by Kzb. could be an alternative for the boots

@night hemlock at any event you've given me a lot to think about thanks very much. I'll re-jigger the build and see what I can make. thanks very much

god this is tricky

maybe I should drop the curse of perserverance

hmmmm but with out that what is the point of putting so much effort into ignite and damage over time?

hmmmmm choices choices

[night hemlock]

Those boots would be a great pick yeah

[ripe cipher]

I do really like the idea of profane veil and wandering spirits combo as a sort of "oh shit button combo"

but I suppose they might be taking up too much space

[ripe cipher]

hmmm maybe I should just ditch the fire route

would make certain choices easier

hey how do people feel about?

[muted mist]

I have yet to see a single compelling build posted that uses it

(this may speak to my tastes than to the item)

I have not heard anyone defend it other than EHG devs, either

Most notably, it will cast a fissure that replaces your fissure but not pop your infernal shades, so it doesn't work for the obvious build to include it in (or so I have seen reported, I have not tested it)

[ripe cipher]

oh that does suck

ok yeah not that then

god I really hope the devs fix a lot of this shit during the next update

[ripe cipher]

thanks very much for that info btw. you guys are insanely helpful

god I love the extra penetration from this and i love the idea of fire ghosts but I am wondering about the over all usefulness of it

[pearl snow]

It scales your fire damage, which intern scales your ignite damage. From my understanding.

[pearl snow]

Besides fitting into the theme of your build. Wandering spirits is also incredibly weak right now so if you don’t need the manner from it or the small amount of war in that, you could also get from wandering spirits, it is probably better to just replace that skill entirely and the ring

But then again, everyone likes the extra penetration from the ring

[pearl snow]

It only spreads a single ignite stack at a time so it’s incredibly underwhelming

I tried making a build around it and it was incredibly disappointing overall

[ripe cipher]

ahhh good thanks

shame about wandering spirits

[pearl snow]

Yeah, it’s in an awkward spot. It needs more attention to really start living on its own, but right now it’s nothing more than a support skill at best and even then most people don’t like taking it for that

I’ve had some success with it as a manager generator, but that really is the only case where I’ve had success using watering spirits in the current version of the game

Mana generator*

[ripe cipher]

yeah its a shame cuz hitting profane veil and having ghosts spew out of you looks really cool

[pearl snow]

My phone really can’t handle the idea that there’s custom names for a video game. It keeps auto correcting.

[ripe cipher]

all good

[pearl snow]

Trye

True

[ripe cipher]

it's an extra shame cuz it feels like tat ring should work amazingly since it makes wandering spirits fire and you can make profane veil fire

it really brings the build together for a feel. but if it's not good it's not good

hmmm I'm thinking maybe this buuut maybe a generic basic ring + red ring would just be better

[pearl snow]

It only works on hits and I dont think Spirits actually “hit” unless you have them do the putrescence node for poison

Ashes is great for high volumes of hits such as Chaos Bolts. I may be weak in your build because I’m not sure how fast HS really is

[muted mist]

you can get something like 11 hits on a single target per cast using the Curse of Perseverance staff; Chaos Bolts can generate a lot more hits against dense packs, but I don't think it generates as many single target (at least not without investment)

[pearl snow]

Oo nice, yeah CB is dependent on its skill tree a bit if we are talking consistency on hitting a single target

[ripe cipher]

yeah consistency of tons of single target hits with hungering souls is one of the base ideas for this build. (tons of single target hits + tons of stacks of ignite = dead bosses?)

ok so here is attempt # 12 to get something resembling a build that might be considered good. I am not happy with the damage mitigation, specifically armor but maybe the ward makes up for that? I've only got 1t7 and 1t5 afixes stuff on cuz that seems reasonable to me. https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/ollk57Vo let me know what you think, as always any changes/suggestions/criticisms are welcome 🙂

[stuck owl]

Warlock, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (20) / Lich (19) / Warlock (74)

General:

▸ Health: 3,465, Regen: 23.6/s
▸ Mana: 249.51, Regen: 11.44/s
▸ Ward Retention: 308%, Regen: 212/s
▸ Attributes: 8 Str / 18 Dex / 133 Int / 8 Att / 42 Vit
▸ Resistances: 105% / 108% / 79% / 75% / 108% / 276% / 101%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 693
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (85)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 15% (459)

Used skills:

Hungering Souls / Bone Curse

[ripe cipher]

I have absolutely no idea of what other 3 skills to use at this point

any recomendations are welcome

[drowsy finch]

I just tried creating an Acolyte and I really like the Lich builds. What skills should I invest in to get through the early game more easily?

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d really appreciate hearing them

[ripe cipher]

i've not played lich myself unfortunately but you might get some ideas from here if you haven't already seen them https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides?filter[build_guide_type][filters][0][taxonomy]=taxonomies.build_guide_type&filter[build_guide_type][filters][0][value]=archive&filter[build_guide_type][filters][0][operation]=!%3D&filter[build_guide_type][filters][1][taxonomy]=taxonomies.build_guide_type&filter[build_guide_type][filters][1][value]= &filter[build_guide_type][filters][1][operation]=NOT EXISTS&filter[classes][taxonomy]=taxonomies.classes&filter[classes][value]=acolyte&filter[classes][filters][0][taxonomy]=taxonomies.classes&filter[classes][filters][0][value]=lich

[pearl snow]

If early game for you is just campaign + normal monos then you can kinda use anything. Lich is really good at anything early on.

Harvest for melee, chaos bolts for both spell dmg or DoT

A lot of people prefer leveling as Warlock or Necro and swapping too

Fissure Warlock is great for leveling and has several guides

[muted mist]

Aura of Decay was shockingly effective when I leveled with harvest and bone curse. At least at clearing swarms

Even unspecialized it did work

I did convert everything to cold so I could use the avarice gloves for leech

[obtuse quest]

Wait how did you convert it without specializing it

[waxen sedge]

i read it as liking aura even when unspecialized but eventually specced it

[muted mist]

I converted Harvest to cold immediately which gave me in-combat leech via avarice; I planned to add AoD as my fourth spec at 35, but found it useful even before I got far enough to spec into it and convert it. Not sure if it would have been viable without the leech from Harvest (if I'd been going physical harvest, I wouldn't have had any useful leech online yet because the starting Lich leech is spell leech). Had a great time with the build overall though I didn't take it very far, 7/10 harbingers or so. YMMV, IIRC I had a T6 sealed Blighted 2H weapon from a very early nemesis.

[obtuse quest]

Starting leech? Lich’s starting leech, the passive from picking your mastery, is 1% generic damage leech. Did you mean the first passive node? (Which is indeed spell leech)

[muted mist]

Yeah the first node, sorry

[ripe cipher]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/ALKNjkko what about something like this?

[stuck owl]

Warlock, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (20) / Necromancer (8) / Lich (11) / Warlock (71)

General:

▸ Health: 4,162, Regen: 0/s
▸ Mana: 284.51, Regen: 11.44/s
▸ Ward Retention: 362%, Regen: 166/s
▸ Attributes: 18 Str / 28 Dex / 148 Int / 18 Att / 53 Vit
▸ Resistances: 105% / 108% / 89% / 79% / 108% / 299% / 124%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 832
▸ Dodge Chance: 5% (132)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 22% (869)

Used skills:

Hungering Souls / Bone Curse / Chthonic Fissure / Infernal Shade / Profane Veil

[ripe cipher]

I've pretty much given up on some kind of theme build with curse of perseverance that is also good, and I am now just trying to make any kind of warlock build that is good.

actually I should probably get rid of the throne of abomination

ahhh damnit at the idols are off

[rich stag]

Did you turn your build into a Flame Whip build?

Scorching Invoker set is a great affix to craft on one or both rings depending on if you want to go full damage or not.

[ripe cipher]

I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it. I was just kinda trying something else and I thought titan plate might give me better damage mitigation

then I stumbled across the big fat sword and thought "wow thats a lot of extra levels for spells that I'm probably gonna use."

so I grabbed the sword

but yeah I guess it does turn my spirits into flame whips

hmmmmmm

[ripe cipher]

anywho thanks for the feed back, this build is giving me such a friggen headache

[rich stag]

Flame Whip is very strong, can stun lock everything short of Uberoth, maybe even Uberoth with enough investment.

[ripe cipher]

really? I did not know that about flame whip

huh that is good to know

origonally I wanted to make a warlock build that just spammed out all the ailment overload novas on bosses through the virtue of this item. just stacking massive amounts of ailments on the bosses and triggering ailment overloads all the time

but for the life of me I can not seem to put a build together around it

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/Qqdnkp2A my latest version of that was this build but without much damage mitigation it feels like paper

[stuck owl]

Warlock, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (20) / Lich (19) / Warlock (74)

General:

▸ Health: 3,465, Regen: 23.6/s
▸ Mana: 249.51, Regen: 11.44/s
▸ Ward Retention: 308%, Regen: 212/s
▸ Attributes: 8 Str / 18 Dex / 133 Int / 8 Att / 42 Vit
▸ Resistances: 105% / 108% / 79% / 75% / 108% / 276% / 101%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 20%, Threshold: 693
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (85)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 15% (459)

Used skills:

Hungering Souls / Bone Curse

[ripe cipher]

it all really started with my obsesion with that damn staff

and I am kind of starting to hate the damn thing

[rich stag]

Just noticed you don’t have any way to deal with crits

That’s a pretty big hole in your defences right there

[rich stag]

It do be like that sometimes

[ripe cipher]

OMG right? I am really hoping for a of shit to get streamlined in the next update.

there is lots of cool janky mechanics that I feel like I could put all kinds of builds if only they could actually survive abberoth .

is this weapon any kind of good?

cuz I kinda want to like it

[obtuse quest]

Niche use cases. You would use it if:
You need an easy source of spreading flames to trigger something.

Example use case:

Otherwise: It is one of the top leveling uniques.

[ripe cipher]

good to know thanks

probably not as good with since it turns possesion into ignite

[obtuse quest]

This grants more damage over time against enemies with Spreading Flames if Hungering Souls is converted to Fire

[ripe cipher]

true

huh

hadn't thought of that

[obtuse quest]

Soulfire converting posses into ignite IS why you use firestarters to trigger the node.

[ripe cipher]

that's kinda tasety

ok

cool thanks

[obtuse quest]

PS: the node boosts all DoT damage, not just Hungering Soul's.

[ripe cipher]

really? wow

[obtuse quest]

It's effectively a debuff on the enemy.

[ripe cipher]

nice!

[ripe cipher]

thanks again for the feed back, it is always appreciated

[obtuse quest]

o7

[rich stag]

Really amazing for leveling but endgame there are usually better alternatives

[fleet reef]

it was also used in world first s3 uber kill

[ripe cipher]

really? that is kind of surprising

[fleet reef]

it has a more damage multiplier and has low lpl so easy to get 4lp

[ripe cipher]

very true so mayhaps it could be good for an endgame build

I do like that more damage multiplyer

[vapid kindle]

it’s bis for acid flask and shield throw of the top of my head, fire throwing builds seem to be the best use case for it

spell builds have ladle and melee builds usually want other stats but throwing doesn’t really care about many weapon stats

[old hull]

Ignite builds generally, too

[muted mist]

hrm. I want to make a build with Deathchill Golems, Cryomancers, and Lich's Scorn work, but not sure whether to go with a single golem, archmage, and the Everlasting Poison node for Dread Shade to buff both, or if there's any better approach. It would be really nice not to have to replace the minions due to the everlasting poison, but I don't see any way to get dread shade coverage unless I go with death knights, which I can't cold convert. Also eyeing using skeletons and profane oblation as my last spec, that will not be fully cold converted either but possibly the added damage coefficient is high enough that it would be a net DPS boost anyway. Anyone have thoughts?

I leveled as DOT with Chaos Bolts and Aura of Decay providing Frostbite, but in the process of shifting to crit now that I hit empowereds and am finding exalted shared crit or skeleton added crit chest and helm mods

[obtuse quest]

Profane oblation is not speccable?

Also unless you're buffing the numbers via infernal shade, dread shade would provide the same amount of damage overall from being converted, excluding the cold pen per int

[muted mist]

I'm already specced into Skelly mages and can spare the point for profane oblation easily, it's just not very good unless I also spec into regular skeletons. Or at least too fiddly to try to combine with chaos bolts which is the other main option I'm eyeing.

And yeah, definitely running infernal shade to get the flat damage from the Lich's Scorn. I could do something like twinned golems and an arch skelly mage, all with infernal shade, and dread shade just the archmage, and not have everlasting poison. Or infernal shade five Skelly mages and two golems, dread shade a mage, and then glove swap, which I suspect is the best option for low to medium corruption.

Getting reforged lich gloves with experimental missing health is probably not something I can manage before I drop the character, but I think the flat damage from the offhand snapshots so a glove swap might work

Or I could run the set-related primordial unique ring but that doesn't seem very efficient

An early rift beast dropped the Bone Wisp wand so that's what I've been using but that probably will be an apogee eventually

[obtuse quest]

I assume you'll use chaos bolts for the damage boost =max mana buff?

[muted mist]

That's my default, yeah, though I'm not that attached to it, the offhand can give so much flat damage and infernal shade gives so much speed that it doesn't seem that critical.

[ripe cipher]

well this certainly is an ignite build that I am trying to make

[muted mist]

I thought that turned out to be a bug with some source of increased stun being incorrectly treated as 'more' instead of 'increased'? I think that got fixed already but I don't remember for sure.

[obtuse quest]

No, this was the main source of flame whip's stun, which you built naturally anyway.

[muted mist]

Building around Chaos Bolt is probably way easier than the staff. If you put the minus mana cost on a firestarter torch that will dramatically reduce the mana issues

[wintry flame]

it does snapshot

[muted mist]

Though the staff might make a nice complement to a witch fire build, which I would expect to have good clear but weak bossing

[muted mist]

Any idea what happens to my active shades if I lose the Lich set bonus (of +4 max shades)?

[obtuse quest]

Firestarters is better for witchfire, because the % more fire damage works on witchfire as well, and enables using HS as a buffer for a %more dot modifier.

[wintry flame]

nothing

you can't recast them to get that many tho

[obtuse quest]

Isn't it "nothing until you attempt to cast another shade which then kills them down to your actual max"?

[muted mist]

That's strong then. Very strong. I don't need to ever cast any shades if I don't lose minions once I'm set up

[wintry flame]

yeah but they last forever so you just don't recast them

[muted mist]

(if I avoid the everlasting poison version)

[wintry flame]

correct

[obtuse quest]

It's more or less the reason why Lone Watcher is effectively a default Dread Shade pick

[muted mist]

RIP builds with a mix of melee and ranged minions

Wait, are people snapshotting the dread shade and then removing the offhand as well?

[obtuse quest]

You now understand one of the reasons why army builds are not as good.

[muted mist]

If I wanted good I wouldn't have rerolled from my abom build >.>

[wintry flame]

army build is good

this is it with snapshotting lmao

33sec dummy kill

but yeah you gotta pick a minion variant can't really mix and match melee/ranged

[muted mist]

They might need to remove some more snapshotting mechanics with the big wrench

I just wanna run golems and mages, sigh. EHG why you gotta be like that

Ah well

[wintry flame]

I mean you can always just force your ranged minions in melee

[muted mist]

true. just frustrating the amounts of hoops to jump through when solo-minion builds just go brrrrrrr.

[obtuse quest]

They realistically removed most of the more headache inducing snapshot stuff already

Buffs being snapshotted is effectively part of LE right now, since it's basically unavoidable.

[muted mist]

it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to go through the list of buffs with unlimited duration (or everything 20s or so) and flag them to be recalced periodically, but I am not a game dev

[obtuse quest]

LE is coded in a way for skills to 'snapshot' any buffs it has during cast and don't double check if the buff still existing during it's duration.

Example: If I have a +100 flat spell damage buff for 2 seconds and cast Fissure, the Fissure would keep that +100 flat for the whole duration it exists, even if the buff expired.

This works the same way for applied DoTs and such.

Probably easier to code this way rather than making exceptions for buffs that are long (Which are not common)

[muted mist]

i'm not a game dev but i am a dev and special case exceptions are more of my job than i care to ponder deeply, lol

[obtuse quest]

Knowing how LE spagetti code cases, I admittely not sure if it would be done properly lmao

They could

But would they?

Corrupted form is STILL bugged since the start of the season

[muted mist]

when i tested teh other day, i tentatively confirmed that both more damage modifiers for sacrifice's blood specters dont' work. i assume that's been around since mid to early beta

also, anyone know if the MTX for aura of decay is any better for visibility than the cold conversion? i feel like i can't see ground effects very well between it and my minions and the chaos bolt explosions

[obtuse quest]

I know they're supposed to only work if they're spawned from sacrifice and not harvest, but I'm not sure if that changes anything

[muted mist]

that's how i was testing

(sacrifice to spawn them)

[obtuse quest]

So blood specters are even more useless then

Other than sacrfice fodder

[muted mist]

the 200% bleed chance works and you can have 30 of them. and converting AoD to phys does convert the minion bleed bonuses.

but that is about all they have going for them, yeah.

no AOE on their attack so minion AOE boosts don't improve their clear

[obtuse quest]

But those bleeds would hit like tissue paper because they don't have damage multipliers

[muted mist]

yeah. i think before this patch i started struggling around... 175, 200 corruption? this patch i could get to 250 or 275 IIRC. but the build is just too much damn work to play. the skeletons dont' all summon at once, so you have to COUNT to six every time (until you memorize the timing). or you mistime your sacrifice which wastes mana. and mana -> MOAR MINIONS is the entire point of the build so efficiency is the name of the game

it does trivially saturate the ward/minion passive, at least

hrm. should the rift beast you summon with the evolution's end amulet count as a minion?

nevermind, i thought it wasn't picking up the buff from The Gate but it does seem to

[obtuse quest]

It does count as a minion.

[muted mist]

if you reroll the mods on an Evolution's End, does it not reroll the rift beast mods? I think I recall that was a pathc note? I got an EE with an Apian mod, which is potentially bonkers for a minion build i think (it's a LOT of bees if the fight lasts for a bit)

[obtuse quest]

Not too sure on that one

[muted mist]

well. my plan to use a Horn of the Bone WIsp for this build is right out. Forgot the minion damage from infernal shade scales with your stats

[obtuse quest]

You mean the self-damage the minions take from infernal shade?

[muted mist]

yep

minion army did not last very long in combat

or out of combat

[wintry flame]

Since it lasts forever you can kill your stats to snapshot a weak infernal shade

[muted mist]

The wand gives a bunch of plus skills so taking it off is a pain. But I got a profane oblation version working. I got the node for jumping infernal shades so I can put it on the skeleton warriors while I set up the snapshot, and the passive that heals other minions when a minion dies gave me a good amount of in combat sustain for everything.

[wintry flame]

that's good mhm

you can also run some fire res idols to mitigate the dmg for minions

[muted mist]

Yep, I actually specced out of the phys conversion in Infernal Shade after i checked my idols and realized I had quite a bit more fire res for my minions than phys, currently at 65% vs 45% (thank you lastepochtools.com for adding that up for me)

[wintry flame]

thats good

[muted mist]

Hrm, any thoughts on good primordials for a cold minion Lich's scorn build? Is the T-rex optimal even if none of my other damage is phys? I was going to run the wand but I can't slam minion spell+melee flat onto it.

[wintry flame]

if you snapshot the catalyst you can swap it for the ancestral bones catalyst

or run a T8 of some sort

[muted mist]

weirdly T8 centurion's on gloves might be a good option. or T8 shared crit on chest or helmet, might be overkill, would need to math it out

or weapon swap to a primordial exalted weapon after snapshotting

[wintry flame]

stuff to test, also idk if you mana stack but that might be an option too

[muted mist]

the node for more skelly mage damage based on maxed mana doesn't snapshot, right?

i was mostly going to INT stack for the pen from the offhand, and i probably won't get to a 3LP weapon to slam manaforged

[wintry flame]

No it doesn’t as far as I know

[fluid spire]

Hello, Does int from passives work diffrently then int from other sources?

[violet forge]

the chance of casting extra projectiles with hungering souls stack or they have their own roll?

[wintry flame]

one of the tooltips wasn't updated 2% ward retention is correct

[fluid spire]

Alright, thanks

[muted mist]

Most such effects add their chances together and make a single roll, AFAIK

[muted mist]

Hrm. Anyone tried to combine Profane Oblation with Doom Brand for a Necro caster build? Doom Brand has 400% added damage coeff and 200% more damage, and skeletons return more mana than they cost so you have tons of mana to spam, I dunno, chaos bolts or ghostflame at the same time

[muted mist]

okay it would be REALLY funny to make a Harbinger of Stars necro using profane oblation + skeletons to fuel the meteors

[lost gale]

profane oblation scales with minion stats (your skeleton mages cast it) and doom brand scales with player stats so it's a bit of a non-starter

sacrifice & doom brand both scale with player stats, if abomination sac worked properly you could maybe do that with the dread shade on the Abom, inflicting doom brand on all other minions around it.

[muted mist]

i was wondering if you could scale the doom brand damage and just use profane oblation as a way to very rapidly trigger it over and over. killing the minions with sacrifice would be better but it's very hard not to kill the minion with dread shade (and putting dread shade on enemies is bad for clear). the only way I can think of is volatile zombies specced to cast sacrifice and spawn vanguards, and that's insanely mana intensive, whereas oblation is free and the mage can cast it while you're casting something else (like the skeletons, or chaos bolt if you have enough resummon chance on the skeletons).

it's probably bad though

[lost gale]

ah well doom brand is just much worse damage than sacrifice

zombies specced to sac skeletons will do more than doom brand could

and I think the AOE on it is smaller too

[muted mist]

hrm yeah i forgot how many more damage nodes there are in sacrifice's tree

[bleak barn]

Please tell me if anyone plays Lich.
Has the Corrupted Form passive been fixed? Does it work as stated, "Always Count As At Low Life," or do you still need to lower your HP below 35%?

[green hinge]

my lich keeps creating skeletons and i dont know from where T_T

[old hull]

It's your boots

[green hinge]

oof im a dumbass and blind. thank you very much ❤️

[old hull]

Skeletal vanguards also from lich passive tree (near bottom left)

[green hinge]

oh yeah thankfully i dont have that taken but these 3 skeletons were really puzzling me xD

[obtuse quest]

Not fixed eyt supposedly.

[ripe cipher]

ok so stupid question here but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere but I am 99% sure that the answer is no. Do I still get the buffs from Dread Shade with Symbiotic Apparition if I also spec into All For One? So I think the obvious answer her is no cuz the obvious intent is that All For One wants only the targeted minion to be affected. However it's text only says that it only no longer affects other minions. so I feel like that could use some clearing up.

[obtuse quest]

Is there an aura for you to be affected by Dread Shade? The answer is effectively the answer you're looking for.

[ripe cipher]

ahhh yes I see so the "No Aura Buffs" takes precedence, thank you!

[obtuse quest]

Well, you can't be affected by an aura if an aura doesn't exist.

[lost gale]

One day we'll be able to cast dread shade on ourselves

[ripe cipher]

who knows maybe with the next update

[old hull]

Honestly could be a pretty cool unique item effect

[lost gale]

• lich's scorn necro caster

[ripe cipher]

bleh none of the builds I try to make happen seem to pan out. I really like the idea of unholly trinity on hungering souls using 3 wraiths as the qualifier (1 wraith lord and 2 stable wraiths) but I just can't seemt o get it to the level of some of these other insane builds out there. it is mildly annoying.

I hope we get some serious over haul next season to make more skills more viable

[obtuse quest]

You're like 3 seasons late to that being good

Everything else just got stronger.

[ripe cipher]

yeah it's really frustraiting

[obtuse quest]

People generally rely on skeletal vanguards for that instead of wraiths so you don't need to commit a unique helm for it and having to manage health bars.

(yes that means it eats dirt during boss fight, use unspecced skeletons for bossing)

[ripe cipher]

wow skeletal vanguards huh? odd. would not have expected that

[obtuse quest]

Cause you get them for easy.

[ripe cipher]

wow here I was thinking it was coming from shepherd of thralls

[obtuse quest]

That requires you to spec a skill, and ain't nobody got time for that

Unholy requires you to have specifically exactly 3 minions anyway

[ripe cipher]

yeah no I see it now. honestly I hadn't even considdered that node from the lich skill tree passives

kinda sad, it seems from an outward glance that the 3 wraiths would be perfect for it. but yeah I see what you mean 100%

[ripe cipher]

thanks once again for your advice

[obtuse quest]

WAsting a whole helm unique slot is kinda overkill

[ripe cipher]

yeah, it was kind of a waste compared to other wraith lord builds. the idea was that while the wraith crapped out damage I would also crap out damage with hungering souls. But, that get's messy when you try to balance it out. Focusing either on minions OR focusing on your own damage output is far better

[obtuse quest]

You have learned rule 1 of build crafting:
DO not split your damage.

You do not have the stats for that.

[ripe cipher]

sad face but yes

I had gotten even more hyped when I learned I could also get buffed from dread shade

and I was just thinking about mega large singular necro nukes from hungering souls

but I bet those vanguards are just not gonna stay alive

and constantly recasting dread shade seems like a pain

le sigh.

ahhh well hopefully they shake things up next season

[obtuse quest]

Hybrid builds rarely work

I think we only got two kinds.
One that makes it so the minion gets a copy of your stats anyway so the hybrid problems don't matter. (FG, Falconer)
Or:
The funny earthquake bear. (takes double multipliers)

[ripe cipher]

yeah that sounds about right.

I've heard of those builds

I really need to suck it up and stop trying to force builds to work that are not going to work

[river lagoon]

okay can someone help me understand this. im leveling an acoytle using a chaos bolt build and i keep getting health when fighting bosses and i dont want that as i am using wards. where is the health coming from?

im using chaos bolt, bone curse, cthonic fissure, spirit plague and rip blood. rip blood is specced to gain ward instead of health. i have no gear that gives me health on hit or life leech

only explanation i can think of is that this doesnt actually convert the health gain from rip blood to ward

[obtuse quest]

What's your chaos bolt tree.

[river lagoon]

oh its not that, i seem to be gaining health when i hit a cursed enemy

[obtuse quest]

And are you Lich?

[river lagoon]

ah right i see the problem, its the cursed blood node

[obtuse quest]

It doesn't count as leech btw, so there's almost no way to stop it from giving you health.

[muted mist]

I dug out my old blood specter build, it's surprisingly not terrible. At 275 corruption, harbingers melt within 2-3 of their attacks, very good single target damage by my standards. Aura of Decay is a big multiplier for them: +100% bleed chance, 75% more bleed damage, and I'm getting -85 enemy phys resist shred with my current INT. Then you get more DoT for minions based on Vit, that's another 35% more, with room to grow. And I slammed T7 shared phys pen with bleeds on a Doublet so that's 62% phys pen, 91% bleed chance, and +100% duration. I've gotten to 35 specters during clear. And I don't have the T-rex yet and I'm using a 1H+catalyst (to help with resists), a Scales 2H axe with T7 minion DoT would be another big boost. The biggest problem is that so much of your damage comes from Aura of Decay, so you're basically a melee build, and that's especially rough since you can barely see bosses through all the blood specters. Second biggest problem is swarmers in arenas due to the complete lack of any AOE. Surprisingly tanky though (I'd massively overbuilt for health back in 1.0 when I last played this char due to sustain issues).

[ripe cipher]

I messed around in Chtonic Fissure skill tree and noticed that Return Below is kinda awesome. it lets you rappid fire out infernal shade out for some pretty insade levels of damage in my observation

[obtuse quest]

it's only issue being unusable with Spine/fire whip

[ripe cipher]

I know fire whip but what is spine?

[obtuse quest]

You know, the big sword that converts spirits into flame whips.

[ripe cipher]

oh right the big sword thanks I forgot it's name

ye that is a shame

[river lagoon]

im using a chaos bolt leveling build and im about level 69 now. any recommendations for a good speedfarming/leveling lich build? im missing almost all the new uniques

but this is a legacy character so i have all the previous season uniques

oh, i might have the new skin boots? need to check

[river lagoon]

oh i have army of skin but i dont have traitor's tongue

well i just got one via rune of ascendance

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/harvest-lich-guide#passives-header i guess i can do this build

[rich stag]

Flay is good, just don’t go mana flay until you have somewhat decent gear

[river lagoon]

its a bit confusing when to switch from flay to harvest. my understanding is that you are supposed to hit the boss 13 times with flay to get max stacks of excoriation then switch to harvest?

[rich stag]

Depends on how much max mana you have and whether you have all the required uniques

That’s what Maxroll guide recommends

[river lagoon]

im talking about the skill, since the harvest lich build uses both harvest and flay

it looks like you are supposed to build up to 13 stacks and then spam harvest instead?

[rich stag]

Oh right, my bad. I misunderstood what you said.

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/harvest-lich-guide

Looks like you use flay to keep up stacks and harvest to actually kill stuff

[river lagoon]

yea thats what i figured

why doesnt the build stack crit multiplier though?

[pearl snow]

Crit Multiplier is definitely fine on that build, but stacking it would take away from other important modifiers that either make the build work properly/ smoother or vastly reduced defensives and health pool

Its also not necessarily needed. But you do stack lots of mods for flat dmg etc I believe

You dont do dmg because you crit. You do dmg because you stack a lot of flat dmg and can crit

If that makes sense

[river lagoon]

the items seem to focus on stacking attack speed, not sure why

[tender oxide]

Faster you hit the more damage you do. With weapons and glove, even the defensive one, you have like non-stop damage numbers

[river lagoon]

i know, but i wonder why they arent stacking crit multiplier as well

[pearl snow]

There is too much to invest in

Its either attack speed and flat dmg. Or attack speed and crit

And crit isnt gunna be as good with attack speed or flat dmg

Its just a tradeoff

You can stack multi if you want

Youll just attack slower or have less base dmg

[tender oxide]

lol, after about 150 towers still trying to get a double T7 base for dagger… got triple T7 shield and scepter ; maybe I should switch to reflect but the lich Teleporting around is so much fun

[ripe cipher]

Ok so I might once again be on some stupid pills but hear me out cuz I might just be onto something https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/om6q6VV4

[stuck owl]

Warlock, Level 100

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (20) / Lich (31) / Warlock (62)

General:

▸ Health: 5,597, Regen: 34/s
▸ Mana: 201.51, Regen: 10.16/s
▸ Ward Retention: 98%, Regen: 16/s
▸ Attributes: 15 Str / 15 Dex / 49 Int / 15 Att / 58 Vit
▸ Resistances: 138% / 94% / 94% / 77% / 81% / 149% / 106%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 30%, Threshold: 1,119
▸ Dodge Chance: 2% (60)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 61% (4,534)
▸ Block Chance: 41%, Mitigation: 40% (1,301)

Used skills:

Hungering Souls / Infernal Shade / Chthonic Fissure / Profane Veil / Transplant

[river lagoon]

what is the benefit of DOT bypassing your ward?

[pearl snow]

Splits your health pool. With a large enough hp and ward pool you end up taking less dmg to your ward overall and not taking DoT allows you to consistently have your maximum ward pool

You need health leech of course for when you do take DoT but thats easy

[river lagoon]

thanks

[river lagoon]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/harvest-lich-guide#skills-header why does this build convert damage to cold? is it becasue throne of ambition is that good?

[vapid kindle]

and exposed flesh, and snowblind probably

[pearl snow]

Yeah basically. The cold damage has more useful tools than keeping it necrotic

Remember both Throne and Snowblind are MORE multipliers

Unlike Increased which is just additive

[wintry flame]

I wonder if any of the Lich builds would just be better on Necro😂

[muted mist]

just to add to @pearl snow 's response: since you can accumulate ward, ward is good for big hits. since leech gives great health sustain, health is good for sustained damage, like dots. without the node, you take the sustained damage from DoTs on your ward, wearing it down; with it, you pass the damage to your health and leech through it. Especially good in situations where there aren't lots of small hits wearing you down (e.g. ranged builds that stay away from swarmers, boss fights with a mix of ground DoTs and slams). It also lets your health regen or leech deal with the self-inflicted ailments from Aura of Decay; that would be worth 700 resting ward on my necro if I could get it.

[river lagoon]

thanks

[muted mist]

is farming Harbinger Eyes still a big pain? There's no tricks for it, right, the woven echo versions of harbingers don't drop them so you just have to farm stability and temporal keystones on high corruption?

[old hull]

Right, so basically just use whatever ups your stability. The woven echo harbs do have an increased drop rate for time stones, so they do help a bit that way. Green loot lizards drop them also.

[muted mist]

i knew about the green lizards but not about the time stone, nice. and boss echoes tend to give a lot of stability for how long they take to clear, especially if you have good single target which I do on this character

first attempt, while trying to dodge the triple slam, i dodged so i ate the first and second slams. at least now i know i can facetank it.

the smart thing to do would be to learn the fight on a different character, one that doesn't have 20-30 blood specters flailing at the boss and doesn't need to be in Aura of Decay range. but i'd rather be stubborn about it

[river lagoon]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/harvest-lich-guide#skills-header i wonder if im wasting my time with this build, its great for farming...but even at 300 corruption, i cannot one shot rare enemies and it is taking a while to kill champions and above.

my gear is very similar to what is in the endgame gear list (lp3 traitor's tongue, lp2 army of skin, lp2 evolution's end, etc)

so i dont think its possible to scale my dps much more than this

for comparison my rive sentinel clears slower because void cleave has a cooldown + but is slower, but shreds bosses in half the time and can kill Julra before she can do the big nuke at the start of the fight

my lich can only get Julra down to about 50% hp before she uses the big nuke

should i transition to the mana flay lich build instead? https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/flay-mana-lich-guide

[lost gale]

mana flay does much more damage but it's harder to gear up

[river lagoon]

well i can get everything except the primordial dagger easily, and this is a legacy character with shared stash

whats the best way to farm for a primordial dagger?

[muted mist]

Imprint Rampant Coast 2x, I would assume. Max all rift beast related weaver nodes except the crystal heart one (rampant coast guarantees the heart). Then just blast echoes, doing every Rampant Coast that appears, on whatever corruption you can handle. You also want the node for Zerrick for more gold and the blessing for more gold, for more bones to convert mats or buy bags of mats. If you can't handle Rampant Coast, then imprint Nesting Grove (possibly not 2x, maybe beacons for the other) and clear all the regular echoes once the Grove seeds them with rifts. Both of those are so common when imprinted that there's little point in buying them. If you have serious memory amber to burn and wanted to go as fast as possible, you could lay down a bunch of Rampant Coasts, or Nesting Groves alternated with, I dunno, a boss echo or Lostwood Follies.

[river lagoon]

actually i just looked at the rune of evolution and it looks like you can use it to craft a primordial item?

you just need an exalted item

[muted mist]

yep in theory you can convert T7 exalted into sealed primordial T8, then craft a new affix up to T5 in the opened slot. And it could have a regular sealed affix as well. The primordial dex dagger is a simpler craft by a large margin, but a primordial exalted has a pretty crazy ceiling for how high the raw stats can go

but you're already well past doing 1LP slams

[tacit plinth]

You can use traitor tongue as well its quite strong as well

[river lagoon]

i think the mana build uses a primordial dagger to stack as much mana as possible? have to check again

so should i transition from the harvest flay build to the mana flay build for more dps?

[tacit plinth]

Mana build also uses traitor tongue its a matter of preference

Mana flay has higher ceiling of damage

[river lagoon]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/flay-mana-lich-guide this one uses this dagger instead of traitor's tongue

[lost gale]

yes, a good T8 dagger is considerably stronger than TT but it's also like 10x harder to get something like that than a LP3 TT

[vapid kindle]

also capping crit without giving up a ton of stuff is super difficult to do and realistically you want 2lp SW xd

[tacit plinth]

You also give up relic primordial which is busted for mana stacking your hp also goes up quite a bit

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QWXE9Y9D I got cold melee on dagger yesterday finally

[stuck owl]

Lich, Level 100

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (20) / Lich (83) / Warlock (10)

General:

▸ Health: 6,073, Regen: 0/s
▸ Mana: 2,040.36, Regen: 27.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 232%, Regen: 0/s
▸ Attributes: 22 Str / 15 Dex / 116 Int / 15 Att / 26 Vit
▸ Resistances: 79% / 79% / 91% / 78% / 78% / 144% / 104%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 55%, Threshold: 2,406
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (82)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 44% (2,574)

Used skills:

Flay / Reaper Form / Harvest / Marrow Shards / Chaos Bolts

[river lagoon]

hmm, so are you saying the primordial relic is better?

[tacit plinth]

You are losing like 300 mana probably which is like 3 extra chaos orbs plus minmaxers did math traitor plus primordial relic is likr slightly less damage while being comfy and higher mana pool

[river lagoon]

which relic are you talking about? reliquary nest?

the one that adds +60% effect of non unique idols?

[tacit plinth]

Yes that one ,i am farming at around 2.5 corr damage is not a problem

[river lagoon]

according to the planner, a perfect idol setup gives +312 mana. so the reliquary nest would add +187 mana assuming max rolls.

what off hand weapon did you use instead of the primordial one?

[river lagoon]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/flay-mana-lich-guide#gear,-idols-blessings-header can someone explain why the mana flay lich build has an idol with +20% chance to ignite on hit?

oh, the exult in misery node for chaos bolts

hmm, does the build have any way to apply damned, frostbitten or bleeding

lets see...the chaos bolt tree converts to cold and changes ignite to frostbite and also had a damned proc

and then marrow shards applies bleed

[river lagoon]

hmm, whats the point of taking the node that causes chaos bolt to fear enemies?

[vapid kindle]

just basically gives you a one time guaranteed stun at the start of bossfights etc, not mandatory but nice to have for sure

[river lagoon]

fear affects bosses?

[old hull]

once, yeah

(same as for all enemies)

[tight sapphire]

if you watch his video, he explains everything and has a sample Uber kill

[tacit plinth]

Yes but you have increase mana stat so the actual mana you get is a lot higher

Survivability with nest is very good your endurance threshold goes very high the more life you get relic boost quite a bit that stat.

[tight sapphire]

jella's setup is very tanky

[tacit plinth]

One potion with bremaster belt surpass my health pool by quite a bit so endurance kicks all the time

[ornate gyro]

Hi is there any bone golem build that work decently ? Solo golem or all spell or melee?

[lost gale]

Ive heard you can get pyre golem to do like 10-15m dps but it's clunky

And i don't have a planner

[wintry flame]

Go Pyre Golem, get as much flat as possible and it will be decent. If you wanted the 15m dos you’d have to snapshot a lot. Also golems have the issue of like teleporting all around visually, which honestly just looks jarring and annoying

[river lagoon]

do you have a planner link to your build?

[tacit plinth]

https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oy4wJPJ1 this

[stuck owl]

Lich, Level 100

:white_check_mark: This character build is verified

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (20) / Lich (83) / Warlock (10)

General:

▸ Health: 6,073, Regen: 0/s
▸ Mana: 2,040.36, Regen: 27.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 232%, Regen: 0/s
▸ Attributes: 22 Str / 15 Dex / 116 Int / 15 Att / 26 Vit
▸ Resistances: 79% / 79% / 91% / 78% / 78% / 144% / 104%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 55%, Threshold: 2,406
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (82)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 44% (2,574)

Used skills:

Flay / Reaper Form / Harvest / Marrow Shards / Chaos Bolts

[river lagoon]

thanks

[river lagoon]

the mana flay lich build is kind of annoying when mapping because you can run out of mana, and its awkward to manually use great harvest to restore mana on trash mobs

[river lagoon]

so this build doesnt have much ward right? i mean, it cant regenerate ward on hit

[tacit plinth]

Harvest does generate a bit but most of your ward comes from corrupted form and health stacking

[river lagoon]

this build doesnt spam harvest to generate ward though, mind over body only gives you 5% of your missing health as ward per second which isnt enough

hmm, does this build not have any sources of stun avoidance?

[tacit plinth]

I dont need stun avoidance neither crit avoidance cap i am very tanky,the ward is there to tank some damage what really makes you tanky is the leech and all the dr we have

[river lagoon]

oh, you have 6k health

[river lagoon]

can you tank uber abberoth?

[peak flare]

If you watch Captain Noobzor videos on Youtube, he has many variations of Mana Flay Lich beating Uberroth. One of those variations can facetank him.

[peak flare]

Here the video i mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfGDczFPQDo

[river lagoon]

thanks, i currently only have about 2.9k max health...taking a long time to farm the minor idols with the exact affix rolls i need

[tacit plinth]

You can definitely tank uber only hard part is when he refills his hp bar at the end you learn how to move in that little space you are golden

[tacit plinth]

Prophecies if you are cof spam full of minor idols do 2 times should get you enough to kick build going

[lost gale]

the weaver's will ring has very good synergy with the build, but idk if most builds use it or not

with corrupted form you're always missing the right amount of hp to get max ward, mana flay does shitloads of hits with chaos bolts & has missing mana

[ornate gyro]

ty

[ripe cipher]

is there a good acolyte late game build that can farm ubberoth/ high corruption say about 1000? one that does not rely on snap shots or other exploits? I've seen some that claim that but when I look at them I kinda question how they heck they do it

[obtuse quest]

Mana flay

[ripe cipher]

thanks muchly I'll look that up

[ripe cipher]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/flay-mana-lich-guide this one?

[obtuse quest]

Yup

[ripe cipher]

ty

[rich stag]

Harvest Flay, Mana Flay which is just a better version of the first build but better, Abomination, Skeleton Mage Oblation and probably some more I can’t think off of the top of my head

Personally I have taken Skeleton Mage build into 1000+ corruption in HC this league

Abom is just broken

Chaos Bolt Warlock can probably do it too but I don’t know for sure

Overall Acolyte has a lot of options available

[ripe cipher]

skeleton mage oblation that does sound interesting

[rich stag]

It’s very fun and it’s very tanky

[ripe cipher]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/skeletal-roid-mage-necromancer-guide this one?

[rich stag]

Does a lot of damage with no gear too

I don’t know that guide but maxroll builds are usually solid from what I understand

I don’t really use guides myself.

[ripe cipher]

ahhh ok

thats cool

[rich stag]

Looks similar enough expect they opted for Archmage which I didn’t

A single mage would have more health and was needed last patch but this patch I prefer more mages

[ripe cipher]

so what is oblation? that is the first I have heard of it and I am not seeing it on the skills

[rich stag]

More mages = more dps

It’s basically detonate dead

They blow up your skeletons

[ripe cipher]

huh

is that a node on a skill tree?

oooooh the Underlings skill tree node

ok found it

[rich stag]

Yeah

In the mage skill tree

And you generate a tonne of ward from minions dying

The max roll guide should explain most of the mechanics, I can’t really rn as I am meant to be working 😂

Biggest difference is like that they took archmage and I did not

[ripe cipher]

oh shoot yeah don't let me keep you man

ty for the info

[ripe cipher]

shame that you have to sac the skeles to make it work

I had always hoped to make a big "nothing but minions build work" like a big fat necromancy army build work. but I could barely get mine to kill abberoth and seems to only survive 500 corruption max

[obtuse quest]

The moment you said army build is the moment you lost, basically.

[rich stag]

You can make it work kind of but it wont be pushing 1000+c or killing Uberoth

Frogs is the closest thing to that that can do that

But that is a Beastmaster build not Necro

Necro kind of sucks for minion builds outside single big minions

And Abom is just busted anyway

[ripe cipher]

sad but true

[ripe cipher]

which is sad cuz that is the ENTIRE reason I play necro

[rich stag]

Same

Necromancers and minion builds are my go to in every game I can

Sadly Necro kind of sucks outside of some already pretty OP options being Abom and Wraithlord which is just a worse Abom anyway 😂

[ripe cipher]

right?

[rich stag]

Wraiths kind of work well but pale in comparison

Minion Army builds though don’t perform well

That’s why I quite like Oblation, it sort of has the same feel as a minion army build

You’re constantly surrounded by skeletons and zombies

And you also have a lot more control over where your damage is dealt

[ripe cipher]

fair point

[obtuse quest]

Oblation and skele rogues are like the only working army-like builds ye

[rich stag]

Skeleton Rogues is decent too yeah

[river lagoon]

what makes minion army builds bad

[muted mist]

I used to think it was that having a bunch of permanent minions wasn't complicated, wasn't non-obvious, and wasn't high APM, and those are the things EHG used to reward with high damage. But now it's just that Abom is just crazy strong and everything else is more work for less power.

[ripe cipher]

most of my lower health minions like the skele archers that I'd really like to use die fast to the damage scaling of higher levels of corruption and ubberoth.

[muted mist]

That especially is so dumb to me because it should not be that hard to notice that player defenses scale faster than linearly with gear nd minion defenses don't.

Just make minion defensive stats all hybrid affixes! It's not rocket surgery

Or maybe notice that many small minions have the player's total DPS split among many minions, and this leech is less effective at keeping them alive

That wouldn't totally fix it but it would help

But clearly they do not have anyone with the bandwidth to do those kind of sweeping balance reworks at this point.

Or they don't have the QA to test them

Not that I should talk I keep abandoning alts at 300C

[river lagoon]

just make minions scale with corruption, easy

[tacit plinth]

I am pretty sure they nuked their QA teams a long time ago , idk if it was because some stuff got leaked or YouTubers posting stuff before comes out new patch but that was a bad decision either way

With the amount of bugs we have i dont understand they cant have 1 guy keep fixing bugs if it takes 8 months for a new season to kick in

[obtuse quest]

If it helps, as long as dread shade and infernal shade exist in their current form, low count minion builds will always outdamage army setups

Simply because they can be buffed much much better via the two shades

[tender ridge]

It's sadly like the only minion build I really want from necro too. I can get the single roided out minion on BM. Gimme my skellymen and spooky ghosts tyvm

Dread shade really isn't all that hard to buff a full squad of archers+mages. They just don't scale well otherwise

Poison rogues was pretty fun but that's a low count build too and doesn't really provide a counter point lol

[obtuse quest]

Some nodes only affect the targeted minion, like the crit chance one.
Army also means you need to buff each minion individually with infernal, which you can’t realistically do

[tender ridge]

Right you can't take advantage of all the scaling axes of dread shade with a horde. That's a big part of why they don't scale well. But actually getting them all in the area isn't hard

Totally right about infernal shade though. It's cool that it can buff minions, but it sucks that it's required on all of them if you want to actually scale

[river lagoon]

https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/flay-mana-lich-guide#build-scaling-header so im a bit confused about the mana flay build here. it puts 5 points into exorciating insight to get +8% elemental penetration. but the build does mostly necrotic damage right?

[tender ridge]

It's also just an efficient source of int per passive point

The resist downside is pretty negligible with how easy it is to get resists on gear/idols. 2 int per point is great

[river lagoon]

also im confused how this build is hitting 100% crit chance

[tender ridge]

It has +16% from gear alone. That's 21% base crit. 100% inc from reaper, 50% from passive tree, 100% from harvest all puts you at 73.5%

I might have missed some spots since it's pretty late, but that's close enough to 100% that it might as well be

Flay itself also has +4% crit, but it's not much of your actual damage

[river lagoon]

Font of the Erased is an option over
Phantom Grip, if you manage to get one with the correct Affixes. To cap Crit Chance with
Font of the Erased, you need to seal Increased Critical Strike Chance For You And Your Minions on
Revenant Plate.``` that seems to imply the endgame gear set caps crit but i dont see how thats possible

[rich stag]

I’m not exactly sure but I would imagine it has a lot to do with the buffs you’re giving up in order to slot more minions.

You’re much better off having a single giga juiced up minion than you are lots of meh minions.

Also Abomination is just hilariously OP anyway

[rich stag]

Are you accounting for Dreadshade?

That skill can offer a lot of base crit too

[obtuse quest]

It's a lich build, you can't slap dread shade

[rich stag]

A Lich minion build?

That’s new

[river lagoon]

we are talking about the lich mana flay build

[rich stag]

Oh, I assumed it was a minion build because of the shared crit but that makes more sense 😂

Mb

[obtuse quest]

There was a complaint about minions slapped in there, not surprised you got confused

[tacit plinth]

You have options to cap crit you can get crit chance on helmet if you decide to not get double mana affix on seed,get crit chance t7 on rings or get the blessing for critchance instead of crit multi

[river lagoon]

yea but in that build, it seems to imply the endgame setup is sufficient to crit cap

[tacit plinth]

Well at the moment they made that build marrow shards was incredibly bugged so the damage of the build was a lot higher,you can easily crit cap if you get shattered worlds but gotta beat uber for that,maxroll builds have a flaw so move on and make it better🫡 .

[river lagoon]

wait, so that build is outdated?

is it still worth using marrow shards then?

[tacit plinth]

Of course they play the build for one week is definitely outdated doesn't mean it isn't one of the best builds

[tacit plinth]

Marrow shards is still recommended for some extra damage and we dont have any other choices really plus they fixed one bug there is still one i think involving the boots that still exist i think

Death seal unspecced does the job

This build has allowed me to get t7 3 affix items by going up in corruption quite a bit so its a badass build 🔥

[lost gale]

Can't leech on overkill damage (without a specific overkill leech affix) either so minions having more hp and worse damage mitigation than players means that even if they have the DPS to leech in theory it may not keep up.

Abom has had issues with this because it has so much hp that the 5% health drain cooldown node was removing more than it could leech from most enemies.

[tender ridge]

You know it's not entirely unreasonable for a lich or warlock minion build to exist. Zombies, Golems, Skeletons, and Mages are all mastery agnostic

It would need a unique that lets your personal stats apply to your minions in some capacity since the right side of either tree is pretty lacking in minion nodes

Plus you wouldn't have dread shade

Warlock has a couple ways of making zombies

Makes me want to try it. It'll be awful

[wintry flame]

Why do we think minion army is bad, there are good versions
55 sec dummy kill, this guy also did 1k+ corruption. It has the potential to do Uber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYnQl83N2ww
Here is my 33 sec dummy kill on a snapshot version

[tender ridge]

It's more of a bad-by-comparison

[wintry flame]

I mean it's second behind abom

in terms of dps

[tender ridge]

Takes way more effort and gear for army setups to work

And a dummy isn't a great showing for practicality. The horde is very squishy

[wintry flame]

yeah, but like that's just abom, every other solo minion is still bad

[wintry flame]

no it's not

[tender ridge]

Isn't Roid Mage still good?

[wintry flame]

roid mage is garbage compared to any army builds

minion army is probably the best at leveling and easiest to take through the whole game now. here is the guy playing in 1k corruption, abby, and such https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLfZQVkWQ4

[tender ridge]

Leveling I can agree with

But bruh that gear is not realistic for an average player. The video itself says it's offline generated gear to showcase it

[wintry flame]

huh?

[tender ridge]

It's in the description

[wintry flame]

yeah but the planner is very much attainable

single T7 gear with sealed T1s?

[tender ridge]

Where's the planner?

[wintry flame]

in comments

[tender ridge]

Found it

[wintry flame]

and my dummy showcase is single T7, with LP2 on <100 LPL items

which might be unobtainable for most, but the dps on top end isn't needed, it's just to show the upper limit.

[tender ridge]

I slowed the video down where he's mousing over gear. I saw multiple T7s initially, but it's not too bad. You're right. Annoying as shit to craft SSF, but that's the nature of it

I'll concede that. I should have been paying more attention to the tech people found this league

I was gonna join Perry's contest but got bored when it was just another set affix theme. We did that the previous season

[wintry flame]

yeah, I did a little minion exploration on Acolyte and BM recently, so I've re-evaluated a lot my findings for builds. Found multiple 15m+ dps builds to try out if they survive or get buffed next season

[tender ridge]

Sinathia mace is pretty huge for survivability. Being able to get that all res and the set bonus while using lichs scorn is hot

[wintry flame]

yeah I opt for just snapshotting the catalyst and swapping to bastion lmao since I str stack on mine

[tender ridge]

I'm way too lazy to snapshot. I don't wanna have to redo it if something goes wrong, even if it doesn't take long

[wintry flame]

you only have to do it once per session for dread shade

welll or if the minion dies but that's not likely unless you are bossing

even still probs not likely

[tender ridge]

Or if you yourself die while bossing

[wintry flame]

Idk if you’ll die cap block, cap armour, and 6k+ ward lmao

[tender ridge]

I guess if you're strength stacking with bastion maybe. I don't really like relying on bastion considering it doesn't work from a distance

[wintry flame]

Can always opt for a bit less dmg and do endurance and still cap block

[tender ridge]

How are you capping block on a necro

[wintry flame]

Mountain shield

[tender ridge]

That is a lot of extra endurance

[wintry flame]

Yeah you endurance stack instead of strength. You get % more dmg and hp for minions instead of flat

Trex relic, brew belt, and mountain boots then you need t5 block, and a couple endurance slams

The setup is on Maxrolls Abom, similar to that

[tender ridge]

Now I just wanna explore warlock zombies with fissure and pf

I didn't know the pf node that makes zombies gives them more damage per int

Veil not form

I always think Propane Form

[wintry flame]

I wouldn’t know anything about Warlock at the moment haha

[tender ridge]

It has 0 minion scaling in the right half. This is gonna be a beautiful trainwreck of a build

There's increased fire/necrotic damage on the first tier. Also gives ignite/damned chance

[muted mist]

I assume the plan is to pop the zombies with Chaos Bolt, then reset the PV cooldown by spamming a curse?

[tender ridge]

You kinda have to I think

Zombie has very little scaling on its own tree, so it needs outside help

PV needs fuel to make zombies with as well. It has a kill threshold node if you're wielding an axe and I think it can still eat Bone Prison

Don't think you can realistically use giant zombies either. The 10% indirect summon chance kinda kills it

[wintry flame]

Yeah gonna be tough idk zombies is kind hard to figure out without anything like the belt affix that used to exist

[tender ridge]

I don't expect it to kill Uber

But I think there's some potential for something that at least functions

[muted mist]

How the heck does he get his Dread Shade radius that big in that Perry submission? I assume the minion area affixes don't apply, is he putting on a bunch of increased area affix gear?

[tender ridge]

it's just spectral presence and grim fate on the dreadshade tree

it gets +200% area through that

[muted mist]

Okay cool i have Grim Fate and 2/4 spectral presence on my specter necro and it... doesn't LOOK that big but I have a hard time snapshotting it at the capped Grim Fate boost

[tender ridge]

so mana and int are both decent scaling factors here. you can get flat damage for your zombies through chaos bolt on top of the multiplier for popping them with it

and zombies have a 600% ADE

[tender ridge]

dunno if you can stack enough mana for it to matter. only 1 damage per 20 mana. might be better off just getting more int

[muted mist]

get INT -> Mana passive in warlock, and then 100 int -> 100 mana -> 5 whole flat damage!

[tender ridge]

yeah but at least you're getting 5% more damage per int on your zombies with PV

[muted mist]

aura of decay for resist shred? zombies are what, physical normally? should work

and then you can what, quadruple dip?

[tender ridge]

they're phys/fire hybrid

aura of decay is armor shred if you convert to phys iirc

[muted mist]

unfortunately I don't think the T-rex roar buff works here

[tender ridge]

nah it wouldn't be up when they're around

not consistently at least

since it buffs your minions, doesn't apply an aura to the rex

[muted mist]

Aura of Decay's Fume Weaver node should convert to phys resist reduction

[tender ridge]

oh yeah it does

you're only boosting half of your zombies that way

[muted mist]

Though you might keep it as poison since you get poison stacks from the chaos bolt pop

[tender ridge]

could possibly do poison, yeah. seems worse than scaling crit

[muted mist]

zombies have no added crit, you will need acid skin to realistically crit cap them

i think the only damage multiplier that isn't generic is the +flat spell from chaos bolts so you may actually want to go ailments

[tender ridge]

where are you getting poison chance outside of the chaos bolt pop? zombie has a small amount, vomit won't last long enough to matter and won't benefit from the bonus explosion damage

plague bearers on AoD could work

[muted mist]

also passive tree

oh

that's necro-specific and you aren't

but the acolyte node would work

Other than AoD the damage modifiers are all generic or DoT so you can also get any other sources of minion ailments

e.g. chaos bolt's The Gate

or you can go bleeds (doublet of onos tull) and phys AoD, that might be better

[tender ridge]

AoD fire conversion when

zombie can convert all poison chance to ignite

I wonder if zombies inherit the ailment bonuses when hit by chaos bolt if they instantly explode

[muted mist]

I think so but I don't think I got far enough on that necro to get to the arena to easily verify against dummies

I found chaos bolt zombie pop to be a very solid necro leveling build

[tender ridge]

I guess you could test it with exactly 100% chance for an ailment, none on your minions, use the single bolt mode of CB. you're gonna hit the target and the zombie, so if it gets 2 stacks then it works

ailment chance from chaos bolts is specifically from the tree. no poison there

[muted mist]

You don't need to be that complicated. Just spec for cold chaos bolt and pop a zombie that's summoned sufficiently far away that only the zombie explosion hits the dummy. It's, uh, it's a big explosion. Very satisfying.

I expect with the new Centurion affixes, if you get T7 of that on both slots, it will clear the entire screen if you also get the PV INT stacking

I did not have that and it was still most of the screen

[tender ridge]

right on

regardless, it's only the ailment chance from the tree itself. so at most a single stack

[muted mist]

you don't need that much ailment chance if you have enough more damage multipliers, so far as I can tell

flat damage won't be worthless by any means, to be clear

[tender ridge]

yeah it'll still make the actual explosion hit harder

[muted mist]

and you can go crit zombies, IIRC you could get to like 80% crit before they added phantom grips

and that owuld be enough if you use Acid Skin

hrm

bone curse gives +50% phys

if you can turn it into an aura and use the Pearls to make it also inflict acid skin

[tender ridge]

crit also lets you use the 60% more hit damage node on zombies

feels bad only trying to scale the phys half of the explosion

it's fire/phys split

unless you convert to full necrotic or full fire

[muted mist]

There's not quite as many element-specific minion damage mods as there are for player damage, so it's... less bad IMO. AoD is a big one with the huge shred

fire and necrotic... don't have tons of minion damage mults, i dont' think

apogee is all that's coming to mind

[tender ridge]

yeah dragonfire edict isn't more minion fire like I thought. just increased + ignite chance

[muted mist]

i mean that is in fact what you would want here, i suspect

the big downside there is you can't slam Of Sorrow onto it since it's a staff, IIRC

[tender ridge]

that the minion DoT mod?

[muted mist]

yep

[tender ridge]

yeah that's 2H axes and spears. maybe more, but none that are super relevant

I think 1H swords?

DoT on Naal's Tooth or Apogee for raptors+squirrels respectively

[muted mist]

yep swords, axes, and spears

[tender ridge]

you can at least put minion fire pen

an ignite build could use the decrepify pearls. another 15% multiplier

[peak flare]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7elj8FF_DQ

[tender ridge]

Lol i'm glad someone else saw the same thing. I knew the numbers on apocalypse seemed nuts

[rich stag]

Unreasonable no but suboptimal almost certainly and people in ARPGs overwhelming I would say follow build guides and most build guides aim to be fairly meta.

So it’s highly unlikely to see something make a Warlock or Lich minion build.

[river lagoon]

is this important for the mana flay lich build? its already got plenty of leech elsewhere and you do so much damage that you should be leeching to full from anything that doesnt one shot you right?

[vapid kindle]

if you take corrupted form then leech ending at 66% doesn’t affect you anyways, as your health is capped at 50%. the increased leech rate may be a downside in some circumstances though

[river lagoon]

but i dont see why you need increased leech rate, dont you pretty much heal to full instantly since you deal insane damage per hit?

the only problem is being able to survive one shots

[vapid kindle]

as i said the leech rate may be a downside but 6% leech and 66% inc leech is no joke, plus with corrupted form you have overleech

[tacit plinth]

I dont use that

It would be cool if corrupted form did what it said and we count like low life damage would be higher lol

[river lagoon]

how does corrupted form give you over leech?

you dont count as low life?

[tacit plinth]

Nope bugged

[river lagoon]

huh, then isnt dance with death pointless since you wont count as low life?

[tacit plinth]

And won't be fixed🤦

[river lagoon]

why wont it be fixed?

[tacit plinth]

Cause this devs fixed bugs for 2 months then you need to wait for next season and hope they fix that

[tacit plinth]

When you go down to low life then it procs but with corrupted form you are supposed to always count as low life which is a lie because its bugged

Welcome to last epoch

[river lagoon]

yea, but the massive leech means you are usually at the 50% health threshold right?

so you wont count as low life when at the 50% health threshold

[lost gale]

it means your leech doesn't stop at 50% health

and no you don't count as low-life unfortunately

for all other builds when you reach 100% hp all your leech ends so you don't start regaining health until you deal damage again after you take damage

which means your health yoyos up and down more even if you have a lot of leech and high damage

whereas corrupted form lich just keeps its leech running even when it reaches its own health cap

[river lagoon]

OK, but lets say you are at the 50% health threshold and every hit is giving you like, 100k+ leech or whatever, you dont really need more leech rate right

[lost gale]

so the frame you take damage you're already recovering life really fast

[lost gale]

yeah as long as you have leech from somewhere else I wouldn't use that

it makes your leech last much less time than the usual 3 seconds

without it you're almost immortal for 3s after dealing damage

[ornate gyro]

hi does skeleton kill after the abo summoning count toward his health and dommage buff and if not how do you consistentlty perform a 17 skleton 1 golem 1 wrath 1 mage abo ?

[rich stag]

As long as it’s from the same channel it counts

If you use the skill a second time you get a new Abom

You can benefit from up to 20 skeletons I believe

You Abom eating doesn’t count towards that to answer your question more accurately though

[ornate gyro]

so i hold the button until the desired number ? it seems (not sure tho) that the abo channel stop if there is no target available keeping me away from 20 kill abo

[rich stag]

It does stop after no targets are available yeah

That’s why you spec into skeletons resummon chance

There is also a set that can give you more chance to resummon

[ornate gyro]

even with it iam not suree i summon the "perfct" abo . how do i know the total skeleton absorbed ?

[rich stag]

Other than by manually counting you don’t that I know of

It’s probably fine though, Abom is busted

[ornate gyro]

for 99/100of contnt yah

but for ubr kill i prefer all th dpss i can gt

[muted mist]

@ornate gyro I believe it eats the targets closest to where you target the channel first. The best thing I found was to summon all your skeletons on one side, then put one wraith in with the skeletons or on the far side of them, and all of the other minions on the other side of you. So:

minions - you - skeletons - 1 wraith

Then target the one wraith. It should eat the wraith immediately (which ensures you get the bonus even if all the other wraiths degen to 0 before the channel eats them), then all the skeletons, and then it'll start on the other minions. As the skeletons respawn, they'll be closer to the target location, so they'll get eaten immediately.

I don't think there's any good way to tell how many skeletons actually got eaten. If you are really concerned (e.g. for uber kills), summon all your mages and all 6 wraiths before starting. Possibly you can add the Sinathia shield for 100% skelly respawn as well.

Question for the hivemind, is it a reasonable goal as Necro to be able to survive Rampant Coast beast charges and other annoying-to-dodge abilities? Planner for reference: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oP643Ew3 (it's a blood specter sacrifice build). I'm pretty sure the answer is either "no" or "not with that build", but wanted to check. I'm fine doing them at 300 corruption if that's what it takes to not get insta-popped every single time they charge me from offscreen.

[wintry flame]

I mean you just need better gear

Your ehp is low

Could also redo your dread shade tree to give you armor since you’re gonna be vit stacking anyway

[muted mist]

Oh nice, hadn't thought of that. I am hoping to get a+2 skills amulet and that would let me take that without giving up any nodes I care about.

I get a lot of extra EHP from the ward per minion per second passive and from sacrificing skeletons, but those take a bit to come online which is especially rough for rampant coast.

I have been trading EHP for damage quite a bit to get decent clear. I think I have all the offensive uniques now that I want, it's just a matter of fitting EHP into the remaining shots slots. Or gear swapping just for rampant coast.

Not sure how reliably I am in the dread shade radius, though. Build is very mobile due to the transplant and sacrifice interactions.

[wintry flame]

I'd say screw a +2 ammy tbh

you probably get more out of the phys pearls ammy

it's another more multi (use bone curse on tranpsant) for all your wraiths and give vit + resists. the + 2 would be nice but honestly just

[wintry flame]

here's like an endgame aspirational planner you can use as a blueprint. I just made it so not sure what might be better or need improvement. I think regen and vit stacking pair well especially when using AoD and having the missing hp heal https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/B4X4eXpl

[stuck owl]

Necromancer, Level 97

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (22) / Necromancer (69) / Lich (20)

General:

▸ Health: 4,542, Regen: 727.05/s
▸ Mana: 136.99, Regen: 8.8/s
▸ Ward Retention: 189%, Regen: 8/s
▸ Attributes: 28 Str / 19 Dex / 91 Int / 19 Att / 119 Vit
▸ Resistances: 76% / 70% / 70% / 137% / 96% / 216% / 158%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 70%, Threshold: 908
▸ Dodge Chance: 3% (76)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 60% (4,260)

Used skills:

Sacrifice / Dread Shade / Summon Skeleton / Transplant / Aura Of Decay

[muted mist]

Okay that is a lot more health, yep. With my ward that probably would tank a hit. Here is my next steps planner (I didn't fix idols or update passives to get +1 skeletons, but I added my intended slams): https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/ApbP1rzx

The +2 skills amulet lets me shift over from 2 casts of skeletons with a 6 target sacrifice to 3 casts of skeletons with an 8 target sacrifice. With enough mana regen, the limitation on the build is the delay on the second and third skeletons when you summon 3 at a time. I could get there with just the +minion skills from the tyrant skull, but I'd lose the 25% leech from the sacrifice tree, (or a point from the damage node which I'm not sure is working). Not sure if 4% from the ribbon would be as good, the longer they hold out through the health degen the bigger my army gets.

Giving up Elixir of Hunger is a tough sell, guarantees a full heal and that minion was gonna die soon anyway. But the buckle does have bonkers stats, if I found enough 2LP versions to get a double-suffix slam. But I'd probably want to keep the CDR so I can transplant more often to trigger sacrifice, I'd have to see how the timing played out on the triple cast.

Not sure if I can trigger Bone curse off transplant efficiently; Transplant triggers Sacrifice. If I transplant onto the boss I just sacrified 6 blood specters. For the same reason, teleporting minions with me is a bad option.

And I think I get better minion frenzy and haste uptime off the weaver boots (3s every time I transplant, which is often) than with Hunger, but boy those boots could provide a lot of tankiness. The mana cost reduction might be worth switching to those.

[stuck owl]

Necromancer, Level 97

Game Cycle / Version:

Beneath Ancient Skies / 1.3.5

Class:

Acolyte (31) / Necromancer (64) / Lich (15)

General:

▸ Health: 2,900, Regen: 128.91/s
▸ Mana: 146.99, Regen: 15.76/s
▸ Ward Retention: 215%, Regen: 16/s
▸ Attributes: 10 Str / 12 Dex / 82 Int / 10 Att / 49 Vit
▸ Resistances: 71% / 101% / 71% / 120% / 80% / 129% / 184%

Defenses:

▸ Endurance: 67%, Threshold: 592
▸ Dodge Chance: 2% (48)
▸ Armor Mitigation: 30% (1,401)

Used skills:

Sacrifice / Dread Shade / Summon Skeleton / Transplant / Aura Of Decay

[wintry flame]

ribbon was just for crit avoidance so they don't get 1 tapped, especially in bossing situations. it wasn't for the leech. I picked up the leech in the passive tree to compensate. And it has % health which is nice with the amount of flat hp you get. With regen and the missing health passive in AoD you will hardly need to potion, you should also have a pretty nice ward pool on top tbh, so the node is a bit meh imo. The issue with decaying minions is things like leech will have little effect on longevity especially in a DoT setup as decay is accelerating (it's a flat number per second per second). you'd better off in investing in total HP vs building sustain outside of what's necessary to sustain the initial decay. Other option would be seeing if the infernal shade invuln is ideal from the axe. yeah idk the way the build functions fully was just giving a better amulet choice imo. if it doesn't work then it doesn't work. Frenzy uptime is good but you gain it still and you get way more benefit out of the other boots.

[muted mist]

Ah, the crit immunity makes sense. I haven't worried much about their survivability since 1.3 hit. I haven't noticed needeinf to command them out of boss AOEs since 1.3 hit at all, and I definitely needed to do that before. And if one of them gets crit, well, I've got twenty more, that probably happens and I just don't notice.

I definitely need the minion potion node a LOT more before 1.3. It's still nice for just instantly not being dangerously low any more.

Wait, the specter degen is flat? Not percentage, like Dread Shade? Well. That does shift the equation quite a bit. Back to the drawing board to see where I can get more minion health.

Very much appreciate the perspective, thanks for putting the planner together! Definitely going to try some of these variations.

[river lagoon]

how many projectiles does chaos bolt shoot without any modifiers, and does each projectile count as a seperate "hit"?

[pearl snow]

All are a separate hit

If I remember correctly, it should be three or four projectiles without any modifiers or skill tree increases

LET or tunklab should also have that information somewhere if you look up the skill

[river lagoon]

https://lastepoch.tunklab.com/ability/Warlock01ChaosBolts i dont see any mention of how many projectiles it has

[vapid kindle]

default is 4 on a direct cast

[river lagoon]

thanks

then the chaos bolts indirectly casted by flay also has 4 projectiles?

[pearl snow]

no, the flay cast is a different thing

the flay skill node tooltip tells you how many projectiles it will fire

its based on your mana

[river lagoon]

it says it fires a "chaos bolt", i assumed that meant one cast of chaos bolt

it doesnt say "one projectile of chaos bolt"

does that mean this has no effect on chaos bolt indirectly casted by flay?

[night hemlock]

It doesn't specify you need to directly cast it so I don't see why not

[obtuse quest]

Fires a chaos bolt, not a cast of chaos bolt

Compare flay’s wording to fissure’s wording on casting chaos bolt

[obtuse quest]

No effect, because flay does not cast chaos bolt

[river lagoon]

thanks

[dense brook]

How goood is chaos bolt

Trying to decide between leveling a chaos bolter or wraith boi

[river lagoon]

the best chaos bolt build now is probably the mana flay lich one, funningly enough

[obtuse quest]

Very top performing skill, all things considered.

[dense brook]

Oh so it's like in "everyone plays it" status

[obtuse quest]

Either directly or indirectly.

It's just a skill with a ridiculous amount of uses.

[dense brook]

I see

[pearl snow]

Yep great skill

[river lagoon]

does this work even if you use CB indirectly via Flay?

[vapid kindle]

yes, although flay doesn’t seem like a particularly good vehicle for dots afaik

[river lagoon]

thanks, i was just trying to squeeze in a bit more damage, probably not much tbh

[tacit plinth]

That node is completely pointless unless you are a true dot build

[obtuse quest]

Yes

[obtuse quest]

It does mostly because you can indeed shoot out more chaos bolts than any other build.

20 per flay click is up to 21 hits.

[vapid kindle]

i mean yeah but you're giving up all your prefixes for mana which means you don't have many other scaling vectors outside of sheer volume, and on 1lps you're not gonna be able to stack a ton of health for the more multiplier in chaos bolts

[tacit plinth]

If the more damage would also apply to dots holy crap that would cook so hard its a shame flay only applies to spell damage

[vapid kindle]

you also lose all the upside of deadly plot and are forced to give up a weapon and a 2nd spec (harvest) in order to sustain mana

[obtuse quest]

You aren’t that spec slot starved, ngl

Spending one to have your mana stay up is a worthy trade off for a stupid amount of hits no other skill in lich’s arsernal can gain is decently worth it

Reaper, AoD(if applicable), bone curse.

Done, not much other skills can help dots for lich anyway

[vapid kindle]

the weapon is the more consequential part to give up

[merry cobalt]

I just hit level 64 been using the horn of the bone wisp for fissuure build and was curious if anyone could justify trying to trade it for something else +4 to all skills definitely seems good

[obtuse quest]

At the cost of low amounts of flat?

Although it does depend on what kind of fissure build you’re running

[merry cobalt]

fissure chaos bolts spirit plague and infernal shade the reccomended leveling build on maxroll

[obtuse quest]

That’s fair, tho since you’re dot it’s a good chunk of the time stat sticks anyway

[obtuse quest]

Oh, for leveling there’s only a few that might beat it, like firestarters

[merry cobalt]

ok thank you very much

[merry cobalt]

thoughts on if an upgrade or not still finding it hard to sacrifice +4 to skills

[obtuse quest]

For leveling? It's hard to argue against +4 skills espically since you aren't hitting skill level 20 yet

For an actual build +4 skill might not do much when you took everything you needed already.

[merry cobalt]

i see ok but once level 20 on all skills the +4 is not so needed got it

[marble parrot]

i might be kinda goated

[obtuse quest]

Shame that the unique itself is mid at best

2lp on it is pretty good tho

[marble parrot]

yeah

good to use till i can get something better

[marble parrot]

@pearl scarab

i want all 4 affixes

so it works for me

[pearl scarab]

Ye

[marble parrot]

3 t5 and 1 t4 which i can upgrade when im level 77

[pearl scarab]

[muted mist]

@gilded linden regarding your feedback on the Wraithlord, it isn't supposed to sacrifice other wraiths. I haven't tried that build this season but I definitely did not see that last season. Though I only tried it with the node for two permanent wraiths. Hopefully someone else in this channel knows how to stop the Wraithlord from perpetually summoning and then consuming wraiths so it properly uses its laser attack.

It is supposed to sacrifice all other minions but the wording misleadingly suggests it won't do that until you are at full wraiths. I agree that it would be a more interesting item if it didn't pigeonhole you into the solo Wraithlord build quite so hard (using it to fuel a Profane Oblation archmage ought to work, but doesn't, and using it with Aberrant Call supposedly works but it dies a lot). Reworking it to, like Abom, only eat minions from your skills would be great, it's not like the rift beast and T-Rex existed when they were balancing it. I do not think we will see any changes for quite a while, unfortunately, since we just had a Necro focused season.

Huh. Has anyone tried to use the new passive where dying minions heal other minions to make an Aberrant Call Wraithlord build less annoying? Seems like there ought to be a tech there.

[gilded linden]

I appreciate your added information. I'll include more details here so we can have a proper discussion, not limited by the feedback word count.

My build wants to create an infinite minion loop. I take the Volatile Zombies node that has up to a 30% chance of giving me a zombie when a minion dies and the node that gives Vanguards when a zombie dies.

As a result, I have temporary wraiths that become zombies, that explode and replace themselves with vanguards, which replace themselves with zombies and so on, in a loop.

I then pair this with Cycle of Putresence for more guaranteed zombie cycling and the execute node.

This leaves skills and nodes open, so my necro herself is casting Blood Rip with the node that also casts Marrow Shards. I use these to stack bleed and armor shred, and take these nodes in the wraiths tree to have my minions synergize with my primary damage output.

When I play this build, I see my wraith count go up to 8 (since I had room to take that node), then the count immediately drops below 8, then back up, then down and so on.

Based on this, I concluded that the wraiths were being sacrificed because I couldn't see exactly what was being sacrificed amid all the VFX clutter (since this only happens in combat anyways).

I think some of my points still stand, however.

My zombies and vanguards are spawning and running towards their attack target, as designated by Rip Blood's minion target node.

However, before they get there, the Wraithlord is sacrificing them - so they're doing nothing and my Wraithlord is also doing nothing since it's effectively stuck in this animation as it repeats this action over and over.

Meanwhile, the wraiths don't seem to be stacking bleed as they're not living very long, despite -decay rate nodes being active.

Since equipping the relevant unique, I cap at around 60 bleed stacks instead of the prior 130.

[muted mist]

I would guess the regular wraiths are dying of their accelerating health decay

[gilded linden]

That's good to know, though I'm still left with the problem of other minions being made obsolete as a result of the trigger happy sacrifice behavior.

[muted mist]

If you are bleed focused instead of crit, the leech in their tree won't help since it is only for crits, and leech is the usual way to keep them up. Though someone mentioned their health drain is flat, not a percentage of health, so increased minion health might actually make a big difference to their life span

There is a build which functions similarly to your vision that I am familiar with

[gilded linden]

I can certainly move some points around.

The bleed node requires you first go through a max health node, so I can easily do that.

That's a very helpful bit of feedback, which I do appreciate.

[muted mist]

My suggestion would be to build around the Underlings node in Skeletal Mage and ditch the Wraithlord

Underlings makes your mages detonate your skeletal warriors

Which will them create zombies next to enemies

The mages are smart enough to only detonate warriors when they get to melee range

Mages, skeletons, dread shade, zombies are the core skills

Fifth skill can be anything really, I've seen infernal shade to get an Archmage Skeletal Mage enough cast speed

I used wraiths specced for summoning six at once, crit, and flame wraiths

Golem would be very defensive

[gilded linden]

I'll look into this, thank you.

[muted mist]

The build obviously does not work with the Wraithlord helm so hopefully you have a backup 🙂

It sure generates a lot of explosions

I didn't bother with the skeletal warrior respawn stuff, but in theory you can fully automate it

Good luck!

[obtuse quest]

Wraithlord will always does it’s best to make sure there’s only wraiths in your minion pool.

It’s his piority.

I’m also not too sure why you’re trying to do player bleed in a minion build

[river lagoon]

is there any way for the mana flay lich build to hit max ignite stacks with immolator's oblation? the ignite stacks do not last long enough on me

[muted python]

Once I manage to finish the campaign on my first character I got to do an acolyte. Looks like fun. I gotta do the rest of the classes too

[lost gale]

@gilded linden I'm pretty sure the Wraithlord is just working as intended, you're just not meant to be able to play non-wraith minions with it unless you're specifically using it to kill your minions.

The Zombies it eats should explode though I think, maybe they're not in range of anything but IIRC Zombies have a triggered spell that does damage when they die and an active spell they use which just kills them so even when killed by other means they should still explode.

For the kind of build you seem to want to play the issue, I think, is that the abomination sacrifice node is still broken. That's meant to give us a way to control exactly which minions get auto-killed and which are left alone but it's broken and causes the Abom to sacrifice itself intermittently

What you could do is try Zombies + Sacrifice + Summon Skeletons.

You can have the Zombies cast chaining sacrifice on death, Skeletons giving you mana back and providing respawning sac fodder & Sacrifice spawning blood specters to stack a lot of bleed (unfortunately the damage nodes on blood specters are bugged and don't work, but they do still apply a lot of bleed) or scale the player's sacrifice damage because you're going to be getting shitloads of sacrifice casts like that.

Rip Blood targeting minions can get you flat spell damage, mana, health/ward too if you want that

[muted mist]

Zombies do work with Wraithlord, however they were trying to use cycle of putrescence which doesn't (as the zombies will not revive close enough to enemies).

And yeah blood specters is a solid (but very active) minion bleed build

[sonic drum]

hi guys, was thinking of jumping into LE again, any1 got tips or so about a lazy build with minions??

[wintry flame]

Use the Necromancer leveling guide https://maxroll.gg/last-epoch/build-guides/necromancer-leveling-guide then you can roll into Abom or keep doing minion army tbh

[sonic drum]

ok ty, ye army sounds more me then just abo 😄

[wintry flame]

I’d check out this version or try and imitate it but go low life, run str or endurance stacking, and use the TRex primordial . That’s if you wanted to explore and make your own thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKLfZQVkWQ4

[peak flare]

Inside Ghostflame tree, how does the node Arteries of Malice interact with the node Occult Embers? Or they don't interact at all? I want to know if Arteries of Malice only converts damned and ignite chance to bleed, or also converts duration due to Occult Embers.

[wintry flame]

Usually converts only convert the chance and not duration or other mods that affect the prior type/ailment

[peak flare]

That's what i thought, but i had hope for some interaction between the two nodes. Sad.

Converting both chance and duration means stacking int gives you both penetration (with Aura of Decay converted to physical) and duration with bleed. 200 int would give 200% penetration and 400% duration lol

[wintry flame]

It is unfortunate:(

[river lagoon]

i dont get abomination builds. looking at a guide, you need to summon a lot of other minions and feed them to the abom every time you enter a map, then swap the skills on your skill bar? doesnt that take forever?

[tender fractal]

bone curse with the upgrade that turns it into an aura makes it no longer "direct cast" for purposes of passives that require that, right?

it's kind of annoying that a bunch of skills that can inflict curses don't get the curse tag for whatever reason

[muted mist]

The abom only needs to be summoned once per session if you don't die.

[river lagoon]

huh, still, pretty annoying to do it each time

[muted mist]

Yes, but in exchange, it can slap Nemeses and Champions and Rift Beasts out of existence instantly at shockingly high corruption on mediocre gear (for a Necro build). And it's zero APM once you set up

'Dark ritual for ultimate power' is kind of the fantasy the skill is selling, so having a certain amount of setup just kinda goes with that. But the amount of skill bar swapping feels bad and I think the rework missed the mark a little bit in that regard. A node or item that automatically cast your shades on it at the end of the ritual would help. But you'd still be swapping Transplant in and out in that case and I don't see any clean solutions for that.

[obtuse quest]

You can't 'cast' an aura so yeah.

[marble parrot]

gamba w

[muted python]

Oooo this looks good

[marble parrot]

It's a big upgrade for my build

[muted python]

I been playing all classes to find one i like. Mage been the best for me but I wanna do the acolyte. Currently just got a weak necromancer. might have to restart lol

I got no clue what im actually doing either haha

[marble parrot]

I like the cthonic fissure DoT build

But I'm kinda just doing whatever, not following a guide

[muted python]

Thats basically what im doing.. I find guides are, of course, optimal. However I do like just doing my own thing

[marble parrot]

It's more fun that way

[muted python]

Indeed.

[marble parrot]

I do find that a lot of the game's tooltips don't do a great job for DoT builds

But that's fine

Everything dies

I've really been liking the combination of midnight + chariot

[muted python]

Interesting.

[obtuse quest]

Tooltip dps isn't even good for normal builds-=

[marble parrot]

Not just the DPS, but the explanations of ailments and such

I wish there was a way to see ailment damage

[obtuse quest]

Is it? The explanations are pretty standard to my knowledge.

[tender fractal]

Tbh needing to use external tools to actually understand and develop builds is just every modern arpg but yeah acolyte is particular bad with tons of unique debuffs

[obtuse quest]

If it's a standard ailment, there is a calculation (Excludes debuffs and buffs)

They just don't have numbers, but the base explanation for ailments is pretty okay.

[muted python]

Im loving this on my necromancer. Also got pebbles belt and relic

[marble parrot]

Right, I understand what the ailments do

I just want a calculation so I can see what the effect of different items are on my build

[obtuse quest]

Yeah good luck with that without something like LEtools.

They can't even do tooltip DPS for non-dot skills right-

[marble parrot]

Yep

[marble parrot]

Just because that's the standard doesn't mean that it's a good standard

I do appreciate LE for trying to help with tooltips, it's just not quite enough

[tender fractal]

Yeah I agree but its generally really complex stuff that’s hard to visualize with tooltips alone

[muted python]

Might be a dumb question but cN skeleton death nights (mage tree) use the undead mortar skill?

[obtuse quest]

Yes, but not often

[muted python]

I see, thank you.

[obtuse quest]

Sadly because of how it's calculated it might as well not exist, it's nowhere near accurate

[marble parrot]

Yes, but it would be nice to have a bit more insight

Because I can't see the damage on my DoTs I can't tell whether necrotic damage, curse damage, and dot damage are all multiplicative or additive

I can guess based off the tooltip DPS for my main skills

[obtuse quest]

The latter is a "learning how damage formula works"

Answer: Is it increased, added or more?

[marble parrot]

Without seeing the actual damage my dots do, I can't tell

[obtuse quest]

Well, you can tell if it's "Increased X damage", "added X damage", or "more x damage"

You don't even need to know your dot's base damage

[marble parrot]

Ok that's actually really helpful

Thanks

[obtuse quest]

If "Increased" it's all added together.

Then the rest multiply off each other.

[marble parrot]

Ok

[muted python]

Im coming up on level 30 necro. Looking for gloves, main weapon, and off hand. Specifically to boost minions

Any suggestions?

[tender fractal]

Have you played with the crafting system yet? Until you get into monos/the late campaign crafting items is how you get most of your good gear

The game drops you a hint to do so when you get to act… IV I think?

Imperial Era

[marble parrot]

and even in endgame you probably wanna craft off good base exalteds and then maybe use them to make legendaries

[tender fractal]

Depends on build but ya

Oh make sure you’re consistently looking for cool stuff in your nemesis pools

They let you get exalteds and legendaries way earlier than you normally can

[marble parrot]

with the caveat that there's much more gamba compared to eternity cache

idk, i really need to get a legendary pot varion's chariot

[tender fractal]

Yeah but in practice you’re not using eternity cache until you’re at least into monos if not empowered monos

[marble parrot]

you can get to the level 50 cache easily, and level 65 cache also pretty easily but you're gonna be in monos for that fs ¯_(ツ)_/¯

i finally started killing t3 jura

[tender fractal]

But yeah I don’t have first hand experience with skelemancer but most minion builds LOVE skill levels more than almost anything else offensively

[night hemlock]

I don't think it's a modern problem, we just have modern solutions

[tender fractal]

anyone know if the physical leeches in the marrow shard tree switch to cold if you take the element switch node?

[muted python]

I do not believe so but I dont know that too well

Im guessing your referring blood reverie and marrow hunger leech turning to cold on element switch?

[tender fractal]

yup

[muted python]

Yeah. Pretty sure that doesnt get converted to cold with the rest of the damage

[tender fractal]

rip

[obtuse quest]

No.

[coarse hinge]

Anyone have any experience using Stealth boots with acolyte minions. Does it help with diverting aggro?

[night hemlock]

That's literally what the boots say they do.

[obtuse quest]

Realistically, giving up on a boots slot for that is... most likely not worth it.

[coarse hinge]

Looking for boots for a sacrifice build. Stealth seemed nice in theory... but not really much effect it seems

Could be because the minions blow up all the time 🙂

[obtuse quest]

You think?

YOu'll probably just run exalteds or maybe a defensive one like last steps

[coarse hinge]

Been using citadel exalted so far. Looking into Etara boots also. For more speed. Could be useful for minions to reach taget before blowing up

[arctic grotto]

Stealth boots on near max dodge rating both flat and % with 'Reaper' passive that gives you +2 flat dodge rating per int then add some close to max dodge related blessings has given me around 55% to 60% dodge chance in corrupted monos, adds a lot of survivability for my squishy Necro. I was able to push to 1.3k but eventually had to switch to other boots to give me more hp to go to 2k corr.

[eternal heath]

can stygian beams be auto-target/auto-aim?

yah

[compact sorrel]

Any wraithlord players?:) no idea if its still powerful

[muted mist]

No longer S-tier, that's for sure

[pearl snow]

It was largely unchanged though I’m pretty sure so it should still be good

[rich stag]

I don’t think it got worse, Abom is just the same build but better.

[obtuse quest]

They auto-fire in a zone with the same size as drain life's zone

[slender turret]

person on chat saying they got 90k dps at 29 as a summoner necro
I find that...very hard to believe

[gritty cargo]

best acolyte build is ghostflame

[wintry flame]

idk minion army does like 500k dps by the time you hit monos

[eternal heath]

is there a way for "summon skeleton" ability to summon skeletal mages instead?

[rich stag]

Nay

[muted python]

Nope. Skeleton mage is a seperate skill.

You can make them death knights though

My personal favorite alteration to the skill

[obtuse quest]

No

[forest fog]

What are synergies for a necromancies

Boooooooo

[obtuse quest]

wat

[forest fog]

You heard me

[obtuse quest]

I don’t understand the question in the first place

What syngergies are you looking for? Cross-mastery ones?

[forest fog]

Ones for pure minion necromancy build

[obtuse quest]

Whatever minions you like then slap in dread shade

Maybe even bone curse

[forest fog]

What about armor gloves rings weapons amulets

[obtuse quest]

Depends on what skills you exactly pick.

Without knowing what you plan to pick, all I can give you are the generic defensive ones.

[forest fog]

What are the defensive / offensive ones

[obtuse quest]

Generic Defeinsives: Last Steps of the Living(Boots), Boneclamor Barbute(Helm), Exsanguinous(Body), Mantle of the Pale Ox(Body).
Generic Offensive: Julra's Obsession(Gloves)

[obtuse quest]

If you want more info you gotta say what minions you plan to use, since most of them are conditional

[pearl snow]

Also probably need to look into builds online instead of just asking for a “synergies” and just asking people to spit out every item and skill setup that works

[wintry flame]

Helm: Dominance of the Tundra
Body: Mantle (most of the time)
Belt: Brewmaster or Orian's
Boots: Foot of the Mountain or Last Steps of the Living
Relic: Vessel of Strife or Tyrant's
Gloves: Exalted Low Life or Julra's Obsession

Those will be in like most of the builds

[obtuse quest]

Tundra tech,surprisngly uncommon in acolyte

[wintry flame]

on necro it's perfect pairing with the shared reduced crit, you get 4 near T7 affixes and are at 90% reduced dmg from crits, frees up a lot of affixes

[rich stag]

Not exactly tech, just a stat stick and a good one at that

[forest fog]

what synergies should match well with my necromancer build?

[obtuse quest]

I don't see a build here

[forest fog]

i just posted it.

i believe my passives are for synergies right/

[tender fractal]

You’re way too early to be worrying about your build as such. If you want to play skeletons necromancer, just take stuff that says it improves your skeletons/minions until you start having trouble

[sly forge]

Just want to ask, which is better for mana flay lich in single target dps, rip blood or marrow shard?

[forest fog]

why is this game lagging so badly on each US server

[sly forge]

Rip blood seems can be converted to necrotic damage, while people seems to favor marrow shard. But the marrow shard node says that "release marrow shard towards amother nearby enemy", which means that it won't cast marrow shard on the same enemy right? In this case, isn't rip blood deal more damage since it can be casted on the same enemy?

[tender fractal]

It’s rip blood cause it has better item support

Theres a 1h axe and boots that make flay rapid fire rip blood

[sly forge]

huh I'm using army of skin and rune dagger

just want to ask: will lich cast marrow shard on the same target? If not, does that means marrow shard is useless for bossing?

[tender fractal]

Iirc it will shoot one spike at any given target when I played with it

So like, it will angle the shotgun blast weirdly

And not hit with the full force

[sly forge]

hmm, need to check it, since "release marrow shard towards amother nearby enemy"

ah, also, Is the damage by marrow shard negligible?

[tender fractal]

In a vacuum it does good damage but you need a surprising amount of leech to make up for the hp cost on procced marrow shards ime

Like lich can do it but it’s kind of annoying imo

And at least personally I was also running aura of decay so more self damage wasn’t something I wanted lol

[sly forge]

isn't aura of decay better for cold flay lich?

[tender fractal]

It’s pretty good for bleed flay too

[sly forge]

anything but mana flay

[sly forge]

Just tried it offline. It seems to hit the same target

[obtuse quest]

This early on, you are not getting any synergy. All I see is generic minion buffs.

Synergy only comes in once you get your mastery, and pick your 5 skills.

[forest fog]

I got the fire starter torch legendary for my necro just now and the claw ring and calamity gg

What I don’t like is the item level only lasts for so long

[wheat forge]

Is there any harvest flay lich early game leveling guide? I was following the acolyte leveling guide on maxroll but that transitions into warlock, so I'm kinda lost

Or are you supposed to go warlock then respec after leveling?

[tacit plinth]

Mana flay by a long shot uses marrow shards your damage goes up when using it,rip blood i would never use since it has very little more damage on its tree

[sly forge]

Yes, just tested it. It is indeed true

The reason I ask because of the wording of "release marrow shard towards amother nearby enemy" in the marrow shard node by flay

Which I thought that marrow shard would not hit the same target

[obtuse quest]

That is the fastest leveling method for acolyte, yes

[obtuse quest]

Can’t relate, still using firestarters for an endgame build

[pearl snow]

Yeah, I wouldn’t look at item level as directly correlated to power

[old hull]

It does specifically say they will hit the initial target in the alt text

[obtuse quest]

It does lmao, this has been a "Didn't check alt text"

[sly forge]

Wow, I forgot alt text exist

[hard eagle]

Hi how good is flay lich? Is it as op as warpath?

[sly forge]

much more OP for bossing

I think nothing can speed clear better than warpath

[arctic osprey]

Is a skeleton build viable? I love to see an army but it feels so weak

[obtuse quest]

What's your condition of "Viable"

[rich stag]

Army builds are in general very weak but depending on what viable is to you you can make it work.

Uberoth is out of the question I think but Aberoth should be achievable.

[arctic osprey]

Pretty new so havent a clue what aberoth is even 😅

Ive looked at some guides at looks like none is using most of what the first skeletons offer, are they that bad?