Ignite

Third Time More Burny

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Friends… sometimes I get something stuck in my head that I cannot seem to forcibly dislodge. I’ve also been sick the last few days so apologies for the lack of any semblance of a post yesterday. Anyways… a while back I wrote a post talking about my attempt at creating something that feels like Righteous Fire in Last Epoch and it was great… up until the point that it was not. The build sort of just fell apart when I entered the level 100 Empowered Monoliths because I was not dealing enough damage and did not have enough survival… so basically could not keep moving forward with it. I attempted to resurrect the build and got it to a point where it felt “aggressively fine” but also not exactly what I was going for in the first place.

I had this entirely different plan and created a Paladin that I was going to do some Healing Hands nonsense with… but before long found myself leveling again with a Firestarter’s Torch and Warpath. Which led me down the path of trying to figure out how Paladin was better suited to the burnination of my dreams. It turns out yes… yes it is. However, I held off on talking about the build until I reached empowered monoliths because I did not want to prematurely share my nonsense before I knew if the wheels were going to stay on the bus this time. Today despite my generally lousy “sickboy” status… I wanted to share what I had been up to. Apologies for the thrashed state of my voice in the above video where I talk about the build and show off some empowered monolith gameplay.

So the idea is not at all dissimilar from the previous build… where I went all in on making Warpath do the fire damage things. I’m trying to do a few new things, namely since I am throwing in Judgment occasionally for more damage which causes me to stop spinning… I’ve taken Giant Splitter which does a bit AOE attack each time I stop channeling. I will likely shift around these points a bit before I land on the final configuration of the build. However, the concept is straight forward… convert all bleed to ignite and convert Warpath to fire damage so that I can scale it and the ignite damage at the same time. Also, this is what makes the build feel thematically like Righteous Fire so it is a hill I am willing to die on.

The big thing that is making the build function a little better… and is the reason why I care about it being Paladin is Holy Aura. This is the unique ability for the Paladin mastery and is just sort of a build-your-own-buff aura system. I’ve found nowhere in the game that properly shows all of the buffs that the aura is granting me so I pasted the above list from the build planner. Largely I am throwing points in fire damage, attack speed, and an ability that will proc a fire explosion whenever I have hit something 6 times in a row. I am not entirely certain if that last bit is worth it because it currently costs me 7 points to get there… and I am wondering if I would not be better off just taking flat damage scaling instead. This also serves as a burn button because when I activate the ability it increases how much of these buffs it is providing.

The thing I dig about the Last Epoch Tools Build Planner is that it collates all of the stats and gives you nice numerical rollups that don’t really exist in the game. Based on the stats in the planner I just linked it shows that I am dealing 832% increased fire damage and have 204% chance to ignite on hit… not factoring in that I have other abilities that Judgement that also have their own baked-in 200% additional chance to ignite on hit with that ability. On top of that for survival purposes, I have 18% melee leech and 7% leech off the additional damage that I am dealing over time with ignite. If I can swap some of my gear around and get more void resistance, I can throw on a shield that will generate a good deal more fire damage over time and ignite chance.

All things considered, I am pretty happy with the state of the build currently. There are a number of levers that I could pull to keep tweaking the damage while leveling the rest of the way to 100. Am I happier with it than I am with my Void Knight? Honestly, I am not sure. However, I am very happy that I did not give up on this concept and was finally able to see it the rest of the way to something viable for empowered monoliths. Would I suggest playing this build? Sure if you like burning things and want to track down either the items I am using or something that gives a similar amount of ignite chance and fire damage scaling. It is a heck of a lot of fun and offers a fairly chill playstyle which is ultimately the aspect of Righteous Fire that I loved so much. Throw on a movie or like I have recently… an audio book… and just grind out some chill monoliths for tasty loot. That really is my happy place.

Ignite Warpath in Monoliths

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Morning Folks! I am sure you are all probably sick of me talking about this build, but I think more than anything I am shocked it is still functional. I thought for certain that the wheels would begin to fall off as soon as I got deeper into Monolith Echoes. At this point, I am working on the level 75 Monolith and things still seem to be strong. In fact, as of this morning, I equipped a few new pieces of gear and the damage output seems to be even stronger. The only negative is that I feel like at some point I am going to have some survival problems. I have pretty bad resistance and not a ton of health. We struggle with some of the same problems as POE when you are trying to create a build with a bunch of uniques… you somewhat lack room for survival unless said uniques are already covering that.

I recorded a fresh video this morning of me doing a level 75 Monolith Echo, showing off what the gameplay looks like. For the most part I am just lighting everything that gets near me on fire, and that fire damage over time is eventually killing things. That which I don’t kill outright, my Manifest Armor minion or the trail of flame behind me tends to finish off. For those curious, I found out how to dump my build to Last Epoch Tools this morning, so you can see the current state of the build and the gear that I have equipped here. I would not follow directly in my footsteps though, because nothing I am doing is clean enough to be considered a proper build guide. I still feel like I need to rework most of my passives for example which is something I will probably do in the coming days.

I am still leaning heavily upon Firestarter’s Torch and the chance to inflict spreading flames. This does a lot of the work in making sure that everything is catching on fire. This morning I added Rahyeh’s Light which is a shield intended for a Judgement build but has stats that we care about and a heck of a lot of block chance and block effectiveness. I hope to find a version of this with Legendary Potential so I can maybe throw on all resistances or health on block. Sunwreath continues to do a lot of work in giving us melee ignite chance and fire damage over time. Sadly the flame reave lines are useless for us, but everything else works and again my hope is to stack on some sort of survival. Fiery Dragon Shoes are another new addition that gives us a bunch of fire penetration, and reduced bonus damage taken on crit… but the trade-off is it makes it so we get crit slightly easier. However, when we are crit it leaves a fire trail which is pretty slick.

All told I am pretty freaking happy being a walking inferno, and I am curious if this continues to scale as I level into empowered monoliths. I know there are some issues to solve here… specifically resistances and packing on more health and general survival… but for the moment I am having a blast having a super chill mapping experience. Last night I put on an audiobook and just kept my head down grinding through echoes all night. Mostly my goal is to pack on some more levels and start getting into empowered monoliths where hopefully I can finally test the build and see how longterm viable it is. Bossing is not amazing, but also not the worst thing I have ever experienced. Having 16 potions makes up for a lot of mistakes.

It isn’t like I stopped playing my Void Knight either. I am still using it to farm prophecies pretty regularly and working towards trying to get a handful of items with legendary potential to take that build to the next level. I’ve tried making a few legendaries and so far I have mostly wound up with duds that did not hit any of the stats that I had hoped for. This means that I need to farm up more legendary potential items and more exalted items to make additional attempts. This is probably where playing in the trade side of the cycle makes a bit more sense because you can just keep buying more items to try and craft into legendaries or simply buy the finished legendary rather than farming random content and hoping. The amount of loot that you get from Circle of Fortune though is outrageous.

Still having a freaking blast with this Last Epoch Cycle. Are you playing? If so what build did you go with? Drop me a line below.

Almost Righteous Fire

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Hey Folks! I’ve been down a rabbit trail for the last few days in Last Epoch where I started a brand new character. Initially, it started out as a “I lapped my friends, so I should start something new so I can play with them” which led me to start a Forge Guard character. Forge Guard is in the same Sentinel class that Void Knight is but in theory, its tree is all about minions and catching things on fire instead of purple damage. I thought it might be fun to play around with some of the minion options there as something a bit different from the Necromancers and Beastmasters that I have played before. However, while I do have a large lad that follows me around… I wound up going down a slightly different path. I should note this build is a sort of “yolo” from start to finish and I didn’t really set out with a clear plan in mind.

Yesterday I recorded a video because I was afraid this nonsense that I had created would not stay viable for long. It all started when I made the fateful decision to use a level one equippable unique called the Firestarter’s Torch. This essentially is a relatively mediocre item save for the percent chance to apply spreading flames. For anyone who has played Last Epoch, this is essentially ignite proliferation, and very rapidly I noticed that this could catch the entire screen on fire. So I leaned into this nonsense and before long I was wearing Calamity, 2 Sunwreaths, and a bunch of other random uniques and just dealing all the fire and ignite damage that I could. The above video shows some of the gameplay around level 29ish of me just setting the world on fire in a very Righteous Fire feeling manner.

The real “star player” of the build revolves around leaning upon Warpath once again to do spinning nonsense. I picked up the mandatory nodes to make the ability no longer cost mana, and then immediately dove into the path that causes Warpath to bleed… and then converts all bleeding damage to ignite chance and the base damage type of Warpath over to Fire instead of Physical. From there I made it so that every second I am casting Smite, and specced into the fire path of that ability as well so that I am constantly lighting everything on fire. Making it even more nonsensical I equipped Vortex Pennant that makes it so that while I am channeling Warpath I am throwing axes in random directions… and the axe hits themselves also ignite. For bonus nonsense, at some point, I am going to try and get some of the Idols that make it so that thrown axes cause Smite on hit.

The end result is this rolling inferno that ignites everything I touch, as well as a lot of things just off-screen through either the interaction with spreading flames, or when one of my axes makes contact with something and ignites it and everything it passes through. I’ve been building more and more into fire penetration which is making everything go so much faster. Like even one point of fire penetration chance was a noticeable difference and the next few points in Warpath are going to go for another fire penetration node as I am wielding a sceptre.

At the moment I am still running the same no-LP Firestarter’s Torch, but now that I am starting Monoliths I am going to be trying to farm one with at least Legendary Potential on it. I dropped one Sunwreath for a well-rolled exalted ring with some survival on it in addition to fire damage over time and fire damage. I am trying to find some All Resist on Channeling relics to try and create a Legendary out of Vortex Pennant because I am going to really need that affix to fix some of my resistance problems. Right now honestly the biggest thing that I need are some more levels. I have a pair of Fiery Dragon Shoes and a Rahyeh’s Light Shield that I plan on throwing on once I can equip them. I’ve also got a Solarum plate Exalted that I am going to throw on for some survival, +2 Warpath, and the implicit fire damage mod.

I can’t say this is the best bosser in the world, but I certainly ripped through Lagon without any issues. At this point I am in the Black Sun Monolith and am still Deathless, so that is at least something. My clear speed still feels pretty solid given that I am never running out of resources and can just keep rolling forward over top of things. I am kinda in a weird place ability-wise because right now… the only things that truly matter are Warpath and Smite. For the moment I am running Ring of Shields, because I thought it might be a nice damage booster with some survival baked in. The big problem there is that it just does not last long enough, and costs way the hell too much mana to cast. Since I am not regenerating mana at all while channeling… and I am always channeling… nothing has great synergy with Warpath. The proc at the end of the Forge Guard tree is only a 3% chance on hit and that just never seems to be up. The node is still worth it because it gives my minion a ton of health though but I plan on speccing out of Ring of Shields entirely and picking up Sigils of Hope at some point.

That leads me to Manifest Armor, the only minion available to a Forge Guard that I am actually using. Right now he is essentially a giant walking flamethrower. I am tanking for him and that is mostly working out fairly well. I’ve put points into inheriting stats from my Helm, Body Armor, and Shield and everything else has gone into the fire line making him ignite everything. He does a non-zero amount of damage because when I forget to summon him it is a noticeable difference. However, I am mostly playing a Warpath build that happens to have a DPS pet, and not necessarily playing a true Minions build. His survival is good enough to keep him up through almost everything, and it doesn’t cost a ton to summon him in the middle of combat if he happens to fall down. It honestly reminds me of the way that Beastmaster felt in Rift, where you mostly just had a pet following you as added damage and not necessarily a tanking scenario.

All told though I am really freaking happy with the current state of the build and am interested to see how it evolves as I get through the normal monoliths and move into empowered. At the moment with a mix of health, armor, block, leech, and middling resistances I seem to have really solid survival. That all may change once the damage and health pools increase significantly. I think I am going to take it pretty slow though on getting through monoliths. I say that… and then this is a character that I created late Sunday night and is now in Monoliths as of Tuesday evening. I may or may not know what “take it slow” means.