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.

Endurance is a defense mechanic in Last Epoch. Since many players don’t know much about it yet, in this guide, we will focus on discussing how this Endurance mechanism works.

Before jumping in, I want to remind you that this guide is only for the first cycle after the release of Last Epoch 1.0, so some information will change as the game mechanics change later.

Endurance Mechanic Explained

Endurance is a layer of defense inherent to all Last Epoch characters that reduces damage done to health below a certain threshold by a certain percentage. By default, a character below 20% of their maximum health takes 20% less damage. The cutoff below this damage reduction is called Endurance Threshold.

Endurance mitigates many damages and works on hits and damage over time. You can view Endurance Threshold in-game by hovering your mouse over the health bar.

A common misconception is that when you are hit, your Endurance must be below your Endurance Threshold in order for Endurance to reduce the damage to the hit. But that’s not true.

If you are above Endurance Threshold and an incoming hit puts you below Endurance Threshold, endurance will only mitigate the portion of the damage below Endurance Threshold.

For example, let’s say my health is 300 and my Endurance Threshold is 200. If I take 150 points of damage, stamina does not affect the first 100 points of damage. The last 50 points of damage are reduced by 20% to 40 points, for a total of 140 points of damage taken.

Another thing to note is that Endurance doesn’t work well with Ward. Endurance only reduces damage done to health, which means you can’t play a low-health Ward build and constantly benefit from being below your Endurance Threshold. Regardless of your current health, damage done to your Ward is not mitigated by endurance.

How To Enhance Endurance Defense Layer?

However, if you don’t choose to invest in Last Epoch Gold to improve your endurance, it’s not a very useful layer of defense.

If you have 1000 health, the damage to the bottom 200 health is reduced by 20%, meaning it takes 250 raw damage to kill you from your Endurance Threshold.

All in all, your effective health is 800 plus 250, or 1050. Therefore, for a purely health-based build, endurance will only give you 5% effective HP by default.

There are two ways to make endurance a stronger layer of defense: increasing Endurance and increasing Endurance Threshold.

Increasing endurance means increasing the percentage by which endurance reduces damage taken. For example, giving the “+15% Endurance” affix will reduce the damage you take from 20% to 35%. Endurance is capped at 60% and cannot be increased.

Increasing your Endurance Threshold is primarily accomplished through modifiers, which increase it by a fixed amount. So if you have 1000 health, then +70 Endurance Threshold will increase your Endurance Threshold from 200 to 270. Fortunately, Endurance Threshold has no cap, although there’s no point in raising it above your maximum health.

Why Increase Endurance To 60%?

So, is it worth investing in endurance? If you’re a Ward-based build, there’s no reason to invest anything in durability.

If you are a health-based build, my opinion is that you should at least invest in increasing endurance to 60%, even if you choose not to increase Endurance Threshold above its base value.

Why should you get 60% Endurance? Let’s do the math. If you have 60% Endurance, and your additional Endurance Threshold is zero, then the bottom 20% of your health gets 60% damage reduction.

When you have 1000 HP, the bottom 200 becomes 500 effective HP, for a total of 1300. At 20% Endurance, it only has 1050 effective HP. Therefore, increasing from 20% Endurance to 60%, effective HP increases by approximately 24%.

Given that doing so only requires three Non-Exalted suffixes on gear, or a suffix and an Empowered Monolith Blessing, it’s almost certainly worth it. In my opinion, until your Endurance reaches 60%, you could prioritize the endurance percentage suffix over the health suffix.

Endurance Threshold Suffix vs Flat Health Suffix

So how do we judge whether Endurance Threshold is appropriate?

For example, T5 Endurance Threshold suffix on the glove provides an Endurance Threshold of 56-75. For comparison, T5 flat health suffix on gloves also provides 56-75 health. Which one of them is better?

Let’s start with some basic math. 60% damage reduction is 2.5 times effective HP. When endurance is 60%, each point of health protected by endurance is actually worth 2.5 health points.

So, +1 Endurance Threshold essentially replaces 1 health with 2.5 health, for a net value of 1.5 health. Ignoring all other context, you can think of +100 Endurance Threshold as equivalent to 150 extra health.

Also, +100 Endurance Threshold is actually even better than having 150 extra health, since reducing damage is preferable to just having more health, even though both have the same effective HP. This is because it’s easier to restore 1000 health than 2000 health.

By this logic, Endurance Threshold is better than health point by point because it has better synergy with healing, regen, and leech. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Health itself has several advantages. The most obvious benefit is that health actually has a multiplier. There are many places where you can gain “increased health” through equipment and passives.

On the other hand, there is no “increase Endurance Threshold” modifier in the game. If you have 50% more health, then +1 health is actually +1.5 health, which in itself is enough to close the gap in effective HP with Endurance Threshold.

But since your base Endurance Threshold is 20% of health, every 1 health is an additional 0.2 Endurance Threshold. If you have 60% Endurance, then an Endurance Threshold of 0.2 is actually 0.3 Health.

All in all, health is increased by 50%, endurance is increased by 60%, and the +100 health modifier is fixed at +195 effective HP.

On top of that, health has the advantage of avoiding stuns. In Last Epoch, the chance of being stunned is based on damage taken plus the sum of your max health and current Ward, so having more health makes you less likely to be stunned.

However, many incoming attacks will occur when you are close to your maximum health, rather than when you are near or below Endurance Threshold. When you are near maximum health, increasing your Endurance Threshold may not prevent stun unless your Endurance Threshold is very high.

Therefore, Max Health modifier provides more reliable protection against stuns than Endurance Threshold modifier.

So, would you rather have a T5 Endurance Threshold suffix on your glove or a T5 flat health suffix?

Endurance Threshold provides less life because of the lack of multipliers. However, Endurance Threshold may be more useful when considering its synergy with health regeneration.

Personally, I prefer Endurance Threshold modifier over the flat health modifier. Because I usually have enough layers of defense to slow down incoming damage, allowing me to reliably recover if I take significant damage.

Another thing to note is that T6 and T7 Endurance Threshold modifiers are significantly stronger than T6 and T7 flat health modifiers.

Generally speaking, T6 modifier is about 50% stronger than T5, and T7 modifier is about 100% stronger than T5. Health seems to follow this pattern, but Endurance Threshold does not.

T6 Endurance Threshold is about 80% stronger than T5, and T7 is about 150% stronger than T5. Why this happens, I don’t know. The upshot of this is that Exalted Endurance Threshold is actually a valuable stat, especially on slots that can’t roll percentages or mix health, such as Rings and Relics.

That’s all I want to cover about Endurance mechanic in this guide. Hope this helps. Looking forward to seeing you in the game.

Today, I’m excited to share with you some Unique items that I’ve found incredibly useful in Last Epoch 1.0. If you’re curious to discover what they are, follow along with me to uncover these valuable treasures!

Cleaver Solution

Let’s first talk about the Cleaver Solution, a potentially game-changing item for your build. Many players praising its remarkable power. As a common drop, the Cleaver Solution offers strength-based builds the unique ability to scale intelligence.

The Cleaver Solution enables strength-based characters to explore low-life play styles, adding an exciting layer of versatility. Whether you’re seeking to maximize your offensive capabilities or enhance your survivability, this Unique item offers flexible solutions.

Exsanguinous

Exsanguinous takes center stage as a more endgame-focused item, characterized by its rarity and undeniable power. This unique item plays a pivotal role in enabling the lowlife archetype - a strategy that involves intentionally reducing your life pool through specific gear while simultaneously gaining substantial Ward based on your missing life.

By leveraging items like Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living, you can maintain a consistently low life while reaping the benefits of heightened Ward generation.

Avarus

Let’s then talk about Avarus. These gloves are acquired early in the game through a quest, guaranteeing a 100% drop rate. However, they are also among the rarest items on this list because they are only obtainable once per character. If you make the wrong choice and fall victim to the Gambler’s Fallacy, you’ll need to create a new character to obtain them again.

While there is an endgame version available from Soulfire Bastion, Avarus is primarily suited for early game used to acquire leech. They excel at this role, making them a staple on nearly all of my characters while leveling. If you encounter difficulties in these boss fights, having some Last Epoch Gold might be beneficial.

Bleeding Heart

Another notable item for early game use and versatile enough for endgame viability is the Bleeding Heart amulet. Offering generic leech, this amulet frequently drops with Legendary Potential at Level 40. Its versatility allows it to be used with damage over time builds, making it a valuable asset in a variety of character types.

Whether your character focuses on damage over time or not, the Bleeding Heart amulet remains an excellent choice because of its accessibility and the flexibility it provides in optimizing prefixes and suffixes.

Mad Alchemist's Ladle

Next up, we have the Mad Alchemist Ladle, a wonderful weapon. It’s not only good as a generic item to include, but if you have a lot of increases from other sources, then this is an incredibly powerful way to add a multiplier.

The Mad Alchemist's Ladle applies pretty much more ailments than anything else in the game, and it gives you more spell damage per ailment on the enemy. So if you have enough increased damage, time to add in that multiplier, get about 1.5 times the damage that you had before.

It was recently nerfed, so it’s not quite as best in slot as before, but it is still very good. You farm this by confronting Exiled Mages.

Morning Frost

Next is the Morning Frost, the fourth item on our list, and arguably one of the most impactful. These gloves are nothing short of game-changing, offering an unparalleled boost to damage output. By stacking dexterity, you unlock substantial flat damage bonuses to both spells and attacks. This mechanic opens the door to incredibly potent builds, particularly those centered on Cast on Crit setups.

While Morning Frost offers immense power, it’s essential to remain mindful of its drawbacks. The significant tax it imposes on cold and physical resistances demands careful consideration. With proper attention to resistances, Morning Frost can elevate your build to new heights, making it a must-have for any aspiring adventurer.

Talons Of Valor

Let’s discuss the Talons of Valor, an essential item for Falconer enthusiasts. These gloves significantly enhance the effectiveness of your Falcon by granting up to a remarkable plus four level boost to all Falcon skills. Additionally, they provide a bonus to base critical strike chance with bows. Despite not boasting exceptional overall stat rolls, their accessibility at Level 17 makes it relatively easy to attain Legendary Potential status.

This shows that achieving these coveted gloves is indeed a feasible objective, especially for those utilizing the Circle of Fortune modifier. The Talons of Valor stand out as an invaluable asset, offering unparalleled utility and versatility across various builds, although they may eventually be surpassed by more specialized options.

Grimoire Of Necrotic Elixir

Last but not least, we have the Grimoire of Necrotic Elixir, which a lot of people don’t use for its intended purpose as an offensive item for Necrotic skills. Instead, they use it as a defensive item because it is a great way to add damage reduction, and the Health Drain isn’t all that bad, at least if you have a source of leech or regen.

Definitely use this one with a little caution, but because it’s incredibly common. It’s a good thing to use as a stat stick in your Relic slot if you don’t need specific stats and kind of just treat it as an exalted Relic plus, since you get a really nice damage reduction whenever you hit your potion.

Hi, builders! In this brief Last Epoch 1.0 build guide, I am going to unleash the power of the Explosive Ballista, reveal the intricacies of this insane prowess, offering a detailed explanation of its inner workings and construction.

Gear Setup

When it comes to the gear of this build, the Peak of the Mountain becomes a key part of this build. You might want to have a smooth transition into it. Ideally, I recommend using Apogee of Frozen Light with Cradle of the Erased. So a sword and shield setup to be more tanky and still get quite a bit of damage from the sword. It has +3 to cold skills, and it also has a more multiplier, which can cause more cold damage to chill enemies easily.

If you spec into the Frigid Barrage because your Ignite is transferred to the Chill Chance for your Ballista. And so you get a ignite chance from Flaming Shots. So if you do so with the sword, you get 3 extra points. That means that you get 2 free points that you can invest even more into its tree to get even more damage out of it. Besides, you may need to get some Last Epoch Gold to improve your gear.

Skills & Specializations

Next, let's discuss the skills in this Last Epoch 1.0 Explosive Ballista Falconer build:

Ballista

The Ballista serves as our primary source of damage. For the Ballista skill, there has a node in it - Armed Construction, that gives it more damage per dexterity and an increased area per dexterity. So we’re trying to stack dexterity as much as possible. You can get this on your rings, on your gloves, you can get this on your helmet, on your boots.

Dive Bomb

We are using Dive Bomb as extra damage, basically extra DPS, and burst damage against priority targets and especially bosses. The Dive Bomb now is extremely powerful. We're working on more damage nodes, doing some cooldowns, and restoring some mana and bringing it down to zero mana cost. If you get your mana cost down to zero, it will be easier for you to spend your mana. The Dive Bomb scales off of your Falcon, so you can give it some of your stats as well.

Falconry

So with the nodes and then your Ballista do as well, giving you’re giving 75% of your damage stats your Ballista and 100% of your crit. They both scale with more Falcon damage per dexterity. They both scale all in the same way, making for a good synergy. You get a kill threshold on the Falcon, which is really nice against bosses, especially the dynamic boss DR, which really helps.

In our setup, we utilize Shift as a versatile movement tool, granting temporary invulnerability and a significant boost to Dodge after each use. This allows us to effectively mitigate damage, especially when coupled with cleansing abilities and accelerated cooldowns.

Explosive Trap

A crucial aspect of maximizing the effectiveness of our Explosive Trap is to invest in the Sky Signal and Free Lofting Bird nodes. This not only reduces the cooldown of the trap but also capitalizes on its zero mana cost, effectively turning it into a mana generator. As we spam traps, we gain elemental and physical penetration with each stack of Sky Signal, amplifying our damage output considerably.

By accumulating stacks of Dust Shroud, we augment our Dodge and Glancing Glow chances, bolstering our survivability even further. With over 50% Dodge and a guaranteed Glancing Glow chance exceeding 100%, we significantly reduce incoming damage, ensuring our resilience in combat.

Idols & Blessings

It's worth noting a few key points. Certain gear components such as idols and blessings are absent due to prioritizing reaching Level 100 quickly. Despite its screen-wide area of effect prowess, the build's speed in clearing echoes may not be the fastest, although updates have been made to enhance its efficiency.

Conclusion

Transitioning to single-target encounters, the build demonstrates its prowess against bosses, even those of significant corruption levels. Utilizing Dive Bomb and Falconry for additional damage, coupled with Explosive Trap, the build effectively manages boss encounters. Defensive mechanisms such as Coordinated Fade, in conjunction with a shield, provide a robust defense, with the option to switch to a sword and shield setup for enhanced tankiness.

Regarding gear choices, the flight of the first bow is utilized primarily due to crit avoidance considerations, despite potential benefits from a sword and shield setup. While lacking in some aspects such as Legendary items. The build still performs admirably in both clearing and single-target damage scenarios, albeit with a slight deficiency in mobility that can be addressed with further upgrades.