Hi, gamers! Welcome to this brand new Hungering Souls Warlock build guide for Last Epoch 1.0. It capitalizes on elevated ignite probabilities and bonuses derived from multiple Hungering Souls projectiles and the Chthonic Fissure, ensuring a thrilling and dynamic gaming experience.
You can strike a lot of enemies around you with Hungering Souls and pretty much use additional abilities to stock ignites around yourself. It can also survive well thanks to low-life mechanics and Profane Veil by itself. Let’s go forward and see what exactly is needed for the build to work and what we need to aim for.
Build Overview
When discussing how the build operates, our primary focus lies in leveraging Hungering Souls as our major method of igniting adversaries. To enhance this approach, we employ Soulfire, a distinct Relic that grants an extra opportunity to ignite targets with fire and necrotic abilities. By altering Hungering Souls, it ignites enemies instead of poisoning them, resulting in a higher likelihood of igniting them and amplifying spell damage.
To survive better, we are using the low-life setup that contains Frostbite Shackles, Shackled Last Steps of the Living, and Exsanguinous. That way, we can get a lot of constant willpower which is so easy to regenerate, especially if they’re hiding in the Profane Veil.
Active Skills
Hungering Souls: This is our primary skill. We can acquire Soul Swarm to increase the number of projectiles, and Domain of On Death since we're not particularly concerned about the width of the cone. We cast our Hungering Souls in sequences. Enabling us to cast continuously without interruption, with only 3 mana costs.
We opt for the Descent into Madness because our focus is primarily on damage over time. Nodes such as Life Hunt significantly enhance our casting speed, while Lament provides additional willpower when casting Hungering Souls directly.
Infernal Shade: With this skill, we just need to take our basics. Hellfire will help us to share fire resistance. We can take Hellfire for additional maximum Shreds, and Blaze Shade can help too with dealing more damage to the enemies, especially when we’re just using a Profane Veil to stack Shreds itself.
We’re also taking Lingering Flames for Shreds to stay on the ground because it will rise their effectiveness overall. 5 Points into Duration will help a lot as well and is definitely recommended, together with Increased Area, because that way they can overlap and hit more enemies.
Chthonic Fissure: Torment curse is used mostly for every clearing since we don't really achieve that good with Hungering Souls. We use Mantle of Flames to boost our ignite chance, complemented by the supportive abilities of Pyrochasm and Ash Cloud. Fell Fire serves to facilitate the spread of our ignites, while Fragile Crust addresses mana concerns. This setup enables us to utilize Chthonic Fissure efficiently for swiftly clearing packs of enemies.
Transplant: The most important part is Violent Emergence because that way we’ll be able to kill our enemies with the kill threshold of 15%. That way, we can pretty much just finish all the bosses with the blink, and it works well. We’re also getting the Bone Armor because it’s a strong bonus together with Apostacy for Bone Armor duration. Acolyte’s Fervor will provide frenzy for 3 seconds and is definitely recommended too.
Profane Veil: This is a surviving skill. We’ll need Spirit Plate for protecting us against damage over time. 3 points on the Eternal Blasphemy to move faster around and we have higher duration. Unholy Reveal is also good because then we can cleanse all ailments. Penetrating Gaze is also a nice bonus, and we can get Infernal Deliverance because we are using Shreds. That way we can just stack our Shreds with Profane Veil and it works well in a combo.
Passive Trees
Next, let's talk about our passive tree that starts from Acolyte. We’re just taking Blood Aura and Blood Pact because that way we’ll lose our health more often. We’re also getting Forbidden Knowledge because stacking intelligence is the best way to get Willpower retention. The Manon of Mortality and Natural Preservation will stack our Willpower retention even higher.
Moving to the Warlock, 5 points into Spiteful Decay will help with base damage over time and health. Chaos Flame is very important just to get a ignite chance of fire skills. Occultist' Mind is completely amazing, so try to get it as fast as possible because that way you will get a lot of manas from Intelligence.
Infernal Lash is the most important skill in the tree because that way we are getting a lot of ignite chance and we can just use Scorched Reach for additional fire damage.
Then let’s turn to the Lich. Dance with Death will just boost our damage together with Mental Cacophony just to get more mana and Willpower retention. That way we can reach the maximum amount of damage through our passives and to get a lot of intelligence for high Willpower retention.
Gear Setup
When discussing our gear, the pivotal one is the Cuirass of Perseverance, emphasizing the importance of stacking elemental damage over time and the chance to ignite. These stats are paramount for our build's effectiveness. For our helmet, the Boneclamor Barbute stands out, particularly when augmented with additional levels of Hungering Souls for enhanced utility.
In our low-life setup, Exsanguinous, Last Steps of the Living and Frostbite Shackles form the cornerstone. Exsanguinous depletes our current health to convert it into missing health, subsequently converted into Willpower. This synergizes with Last Steps of the Living and Frostbite Shackles, granting a continuous buff of 15% of missing health gained as Willpower per second.
Soulfire relic is essential and should be equipped in the belt slot to ensure our Hungering Souls ignite rather than poison. It grants an extra chance to ignite with fire and necrotic skills, aligning perfectly with our build. For the belt, we use the Praetorian Belt to prioritize elemental damage over time, health, and potentially cleanse attributes.
Ashes of Mortality serves as a valuable ring, offering cast speed, Willpower retention, and fire damage. It can also aid in Willpower mitigation, particularly when augmented with increased damage over time.
The secondary ring we choose the Abyssal Ivory Ring of Hope, which focus on providing Void Resistance and critical strike avoidance, while also emphasizing increased elemental damage over time and a chance to ignite for additional DPS amplification. You have the flexibility to decide which items best suit your needs base on the amount of Last Epoch Gold.
Idols & Blessings
Talking about idols, we will need Vigorous Large Immortal Idols with elemental resistance and health, so that will help us to cap our Elementals. Throne of Ambition is a nice boost to our whole DPS kit because they’re doing a lot of fire damage and they are hitting enemies very often. That’s why it’s so easy to just maintain the maximum amount of stacks when they are fighting the boss or the rare enemy.
For the remaining small idols, we can choose for Blighted Small Eterran Idols to bolster our physical resistance and damage over time, along with Void Resistance and damage over time. This diversification helps us shore up our resistances effectively.
Last, for blessings, these choices are my recommendation:
- Grand Flames of the Black Sun
- Grand Survival of Might
- Grand Bulwark of the Tundra
- Body of Obsidian
- Grand Light of the Moon
Conclusion
That’s for today’s Hungering Souls Warlock build. It is very fun to play it and I think it is potential, depending on the situation and on corruption that you’re able to push. Ignite now is not the best damage over time, but it still can deal with most of the enemies.
