Occupying a space between Diablo and Grim Dawn, Last Epoch is quite a lot of fun if you’re the type to enjoy theory-crafting character builds and/or collecting randomized loot.
Class-wise you can choose between five different base characters (like the former game’s), each with three potential specializations (like the latter’s leveling):
Sentinel is a mix of Soldier, Paladin, and Oathkeeper.
Rogue takes elements from Assassin/Nightblade and Amazon.
Mage combines Sorceress and Arcanist.
Primalist mixes Barbarian and Shaman.
Acolyte is basically Necromancer with some Cabalist attributes.
Itemization is where things really stand out though, as not only is there a robust Loot Filter system in place, but there’s also a forging system which lets you directly upgrade or add/remove attributes from items. In a sense an upgraded version of Diablo‘s socket system or GD‘s runes/components. Another change is that legendary items act as personalized uniques instead of being their own drop class, which is an interesting choice to make and was presumably done to further incentivize said forging system.
When I first started (which was quite recently, but still) I wasn’t really interested in pouring over the ability nodes and so just looked at Icy Veins‘ endgame build list to see if anything stood out. A few did indeed look fun and I promptly ended up doing some minor modifications to the build plans.
First up was the Chaos Warlock. Only real change here is using Blood Pact (since the minion damage from Blood Aura is kind of wasted without dedicated minions) and taking a Dance of Blood point in Transplant for even more healing. Not sure those will work out…. but I can always revert them if they don’t.
Next was the Void Knight. Can’t recall if I changed anything significant here, but it’s worth noting that early game you’ll want to focus on void-shifted Warpath and Lunge until you finally unlock your main skills.
For Rogue, the Bleed Bomb archetype looked fun enough and I ended up waffling around with the build planner for it quite a bit. Don’t think anything too significant changed, but like with the Void Knight above in the early game you’re going to be stranded without your core skills for a while… so don’t sleep on Acid Flask or Decoy.
The Spark Charge Spellblade was an easy choice for me when deciding which Mage build to go with, and by this point I was really getting into adding/removing points all over the place. The unleveled use of Flame Ward really stands out here as just a ridiculously useful spell for the build and gave me ~ideas~ for later.
Finally we come to the Primalist and… I didn’t really like any of the builds they had. So this build ended up the first I created from scratch. It is, of course, not without issue. Namely that the base damage of the wolves does not mesh at all with the magic boosting nature of the spriggan. I thought that would be mitigated by the Storm Bolt triggers, but at this point it’s too early to tell. Storm Crows are the obvious solution, and I may end up going that direction (swapping out Shark Aspect for Lynx).
Strongly gripped by the theory-crafting bug now, I quickly identified that I didn’t have any builds dealing with poison or retaliation damage. Not wanting to double-up on the classes I decided to make the next five builds Hardcore only, with the first being a Retaliation Sentinel (inspired by the Flame Ward usage in that earlier Spellblade build). While my original idea used Ring of Shields, I quickly realized that its presence would only detract from the goal of massive Rebuke and Thornshell damage. Healing Hands looks like it will work far better for automated healing.
Which just left poison, something a Primalist-Druid seemed best to exploit (that it was my second choice for a retaliation build also played a part). The idea for general play here is to scout with Thorn Totems, then spam Entangling Roots everywhere while using Leap if anything gets too close. When encountering a boss or something else that requires more caution however Spriggan Form comes out to spam vines and Spirit Thorns from a safe distance while doubling up on spriggans for extra healing.
Rounding out the Hardcore builds will probably be a channeling setup for the Mage, a bow-based Rogue, and some sort of Acolyte yet to be determined. I should be pretty busy leveling and tweaking these seven builds as it is though.
