Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build Guide - Lich
Mar. 4, 2024Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build Guide – Lich
In this Last Epoch Acolyte Build Guide we’re going to be covering a an Acolyte Build that focuses on leveling from 1-50 as a Damage over Time (DoT) character. As a starter Acolyte Build, it relies mostly on basic abilities, and no Unique items so it’s designed to work on a new account, Solo Self Found, or a first character uponlaunch. The Mastery of choice for leveling Acolyte is Lich. To have a second health bar, and get huge bonus to damage, leech, and more bonuses on low life.
Last Epochhas very deep customization options for passive trees, and Skill perks, that can be difficult to navigate. In this Last Epoch Acolyte Build Guide I’ll explain how to get the most from this Build, which works great for a very quick start. So if you’ve been looking for a DoT Acolyte build, then this Guide is for you.
The Acolyte is highly specialized class in Last Epoch, with each sub class having a unique identity. While Necromancer is a pure minions class, Lich transforms player into reaper form. This Reaper gets an extra layer of life degrading each second. It also synergies well with several DoT types, such as Necrotic, poison, physical bleed. However, we focus on Ignite, a Fire DoT that stacks infinitely and has huge fire penetration support from its skill trees.
Our Acolyte leveling build can kill enemies even after it moves away from them. This helps with clear speed, as you keep moving after a couple of casts. It can also stand its ground in the face of bosses and leech a very high amount of health per second. It can survive any damage that doesn’t one-shot the small health it has. However, staying at low life means we get the full 60% damage reduction from Endurance. On top of that, we may build a good amount of Armour to mitigate more damage.
On top of all of this, if a hit brings down your entire health in Reaper Form, your character doesn’t die. Instead, it reverts back to the standard health bar, so it works like a second life.
This Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build revolves around smart movement, positioning, and quick decisions to switch between low life and full life. Also knowing when to let Reaper Form end, and when to press on and keep going. It rewards player skill, and feels more engaging and intense then many other Last Epoch Builds.
The idea is to transform into Reaper Form, apply and spread Infernal Shade, and spam your Hungering Souls. You can cast Hungering Souls in a staggered manner, so you move slightly and cast, and repeat, move and cast. This behavior allow you to avoid a lot of enemy hits, as well as shorten clear time.
Your Reaper Form skill will turn into a Reap Skill after transforming, which is a melee movement skill. Reap doesn’t need a target to use, so you may use it each time it’s off cooldown to move a lot. It can go through enemies, and isn’t stopped by them. This way, you can cast your DoTs, and move through enemies to the next wave, resulting in a fast clear time in Monolith of Fate.
You may use Summon Bone Golem as a tanky minion that deals good damage. However, it starts to fall off at mid to late endgame. But that’s beyond the scale of our leveling build, so I’ll keep it here for now.
There’s a fifth skill you can use, that divides this Acolyte Build into two versions. One version has Summon Volatile Zombie, and the other has Death Seal. I prefer using the Summon Volatile Zombie version at low levels while our health is too small to play at low life, and then switching to Death Seal once we build our leech and health a bit.
Volatile Zombies also helps the clear speed before you fully invest points in Infernal Shade. The reason is, Infernal Shade consumes a lot of mana to double cast, whether you cast it twice or make it automatic. This mana sustain is tough early game, so the build suffers from weak AOE at early levels, and Volatile Zombies makes up for that.
Later when our Infernal Shade and Hungering Souls have enough AOE, and both our Mana and Health can take a hit, we switch to Death Seal, and play a low life version of this Build.
And at very endgame, we may de-specialize Bone Golem, and use both Volatile Zombies and Death Seal. But that require huge optimization beyond the scope of a starter build.
In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills should be on your Skill bar to make this Last Epoch Acolyte Build work. All five skills in this build are mandatory, so focus on getting them as quickly as you can. We start by using four skills from the base Acolyte, and one skill from the Lich sub-class.
We unlock Hungering Souls after spending five points into the Acolyte tree, which is around character level 5. So specialize in Summon Skeletons first, and de-specialize in it in favor of Hungering Souls at level five.
Hungering Souls’ standard behavior is releasing five projectiles that seeks enemies. Each enemy can be hit by only one projectile per cast. The projectiles apply a Necrotic DoT that doesn’t stack, and lasts 1.5 seconds. We change the skill to apply Ignite instead, which is a fire DoT that has longer duration (2.5 seconds), and stacks infinitely. The skill tree also gives 100% increase ignite duration, so the standard duration reachs 5 seconds. You’re able to stack a huge number of stacks on bosses within these five seconds, before the first stack falls off.
There are two ways to convert Hungering Souls into fire type, the skill tree, or the Soulfire Unique Relic. The skill tree has a perquisite node that limits Souls to only one, turning Hungering Souls into single target skill. While the Unique Relic lacks the the increase in fire penetration and Ignite duration, but keeps it an AOE skill.
You might use both the Relic and skill tree, for maximum single target damage. That’s especially true with the fact that Soulfire gives huge chance to ignite per hit, which is a lot of damage potential. But for an Acolyte leveling build, we assume we don’t have access to the Unique Relic, and stick to the change from skill tree. But beware this setup is not the sole method to play ignite Hungering Souls at endgame.
We aim to get Fire conversion first, so start with 1/1Forbidden Pact, and 1/1Isolation. These limits the projectiles to a single one, and make it bigger, and deal more per hit damage. Follow with 1/4Great Soul, and 1/1Fire Skull, which converts spell damage to fire type, and possess ignite chance. On the same Branch, you may get up to 5/5 Eternal Pyre for ignite duration and fire penetration with ignite. We may allocate these points later, after we get other quality of life improvement on Hungering Souls first.
Get 1/5Inspired Hunger, and 1/2Risen Cemeteryto open the path to 4/4Dominion of Undeath. This cuts the mana cost of Hungering Souls, and allows players to spam it without worrying about mana. You may refund three points of it later and get back to 1/4, once you have huge mana sustain at endgame, and use points elsewhere.
Now you may allocate points into 4/4Life Hunt, or 5/5Descent into Madness, or mix between them.Life Huntgives more cast speed, and enables Hungering Souls’ projectiles to go longer distances. While Descent into Madness is a pure 100% damage modifier. We are able to allocate both together when we refundDominion of Undeathback into 1/4 later on.
This is the second skill we gain access to in this Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build, after spending 10 points in the Acolyte tree. We may use Summon Bone Golem without specializing in its tree, as the Golem is very tanky, has movement abilities, and deals decent damage in the early game. It will also keep enemies away from you, allowing you to comfortably cast spells far from harm’s way. I recommend specializing into Bone Golem in the last skill slot, at level 50.
Note that Summon Bone Golem will not survive far into endgame. So by the time you start doing Empowered Monolith, or reaching level 75-80, you should consider de-specializing and use another skill instead. But that’s far ahead of our build goal, so I’ll not focus on it right now.
When we spec into Bone Golem, we want to switch him into fire type as soon as possible. So start with 1/5Amalgam of Rogues, 5/5Burning Bones, 1/1Pyre Golem, and 5/5World Pyre. This switches your Golem into fire, with damage over time. The damage is not huge by midgame standards, let alone endgame. However, the tankiness will stay relevant for a good amount of time.
Talking about tankiness, that’s our next goal in the skill tree. Get 1/5Amalgam of Sentinels, 1/4Tower of Bones, and 1/1Fragments of the Fallen. These nodes grants Golem health and armor, as well as size and threat generation. You may invest more points than one here to increase defensive capabilities, and enable Golem to take more hits. So 5/5Amalgam of Sentinels, and 3/4Tower of Bonesfor example.
Or you may spec Golem to grant itself and your character health per melee attack it does, through 1/4Unnatural Speed, and 5/5Hunger. Hunger is naturally much better if you have a decent amount of Vitality on your build, because it restores more health with each point.
Volatile Zombies unlocks at character level 16, so right before you are able to pick the Lich sub-class and get Reaper Form. You have only two skill slots before level 20, and three at level 20, so I recommend specializing in Infernal Shade and Reaper Form in the second and third slots, and delay specializing in Summon Volatile Zombie for the fourth slot, at level 35.
You may summon up to 6 zombies by default, and each Zombie runs towards an enemy and explodes. The explosion deals AOE Fire and Physical minion damage, which counts as direct hit. For our Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build, we want Zombies to Inflict more ignite stacks, as well as auto cast Infernal Shade.
First, we reduce the mana cost of Volatile Zombies by allocating anywhere from 3/5 to 5/5 inForceful Commander.It also reduces summoning speed, so summoning doesn’t take as much time. Then we go 1/5Path of Destructionto reach the nodes behind. 1/2Necromantic Fervorgives a small heal, and 4/4Effigy of Combustionguarantees castingInfernal Shade. The Infernal Shade cast this way costs 50% less mana, and inflicts on one enemy, using the infernal shade tree.
To add ignite chance to Zombies, we take 5/5Army of Rotfor 100% poison chance, then take 1/1Flammable Vitaeto convert minion poison chance from all sources to ignite chance. The node also converts base physical damage of zombies to fire. It make zombies deal decent damage, but it has limited potential at endgame, as minion damage is not a high priority of this build.
If you keep using Volatile Zombies at endgame, take 1/1Repulsive Vomit, to add the Vomit skill to zombies. Then 2/4Wretched Innards, and anywhere from 2/4 to 4/4Putridity, depending on how many added levels you have in Summon Volatile Zombies. These nodes enables zombies to do fire and poison damage over time, inflicting more ignite stacks before they explode.
It takes 20 points into the Acolyte tree to unlock Infernal Shade, and from this point on we use as a core skill. Infernal Shade places a damage over time (DoT) debuff on one enemy, that deals AOE fire damage. The maximum shades you can place is 4, and if placed on enemies gathered tightly together, it can shotgun enemies. So a high density pack have potential to take damage from 4 shades.
In Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build, we have the ability to modify shade behavior from its skill tree. We can turn it into a ground effect, or enable it to jump onto new enemies after the initial target dies. I prefer the latter, for faster clearing in Monolith of Fate. We may also enable shades to inflict ignite on all nearby enemies, with high fire penetration bonus. And finally, you can double cast Infernal Shade on two enemies with one cast, for a huge increase in mana cost.
As with most spells in our Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build, we aim to reduce mana cost to a manageable degree. I prefer starting with 2/5Ignition, and increasing it to 4/5 or 5/5 when you get extra levels to Infernal Shade from gear. Then get 1/1Blaze Shade, which gives a fixed 20% chance to summon a bigger shade, with higher damage, and double the area.
Next, we get Infernal Shade to re-attach on enemy death, so allocate 3/5Cackling Flamesfor longer duration, and 4/4Shifting Doomfor 100% chance to re-attach.
The final path is ignite chance and ignite penetration, from 5/5Torment Beacon, and 2/2Baneful. And if you would only cast Infernal Shade directly – as opposed to casting it through Zombies – you may allocate 1/2Legionto summon two shades in one cast.
Reaper Form is the signature skill of Lich, and the only reason we pick this mastery. It transforms the character into a reaper, enabling you to gain different bonuses from your skill tree, passive tree, gear, and idols. The Reaper gains a second health bar atop the standard health, but drains constantly. It also disables life regeneration, and the drain effect increases over time, so you can’t stay infinitely in Reaper Form.
The strategy with Reaper Form is to have high life leech that counters the drain effect of Lich, so you stay transformed as long as possible, gaining all bonuses. When Reaper Form expires, you slow down your aggressive playstyle, because enemies can kill you easily in human form.
We also use Reaper Form as a traversal skill, since the Reaper Form skill on the bar changes into “Reap” after you transform. Reap is a rush forward skill that hits all enemies in the way with melee damage, so it can apply on hits effects, but we mainly use for movement.
There are some bonuses we passively gain from the Reaper Form skill tree such as better leech, health gain on kills, and increased DoT. But the biggest damage bonus comes from the chance to curse with “Mark for Death” on hit, and the instant kill on 18% HP with Reap, if you don’t get instant kill from other sources.
4/4Mistress of Decayis a must-have for any Lich Build in Last Epoch to reduce the health decay of Reaper Form. In our Acolyte Leveling Build, we also benefit from the DoT increase on the node. Next is 4/4Harbinger of Bloodfor a huge increase in leech from all sources, and an increase in healing effectiveness. It also enables Reap to grants you health on hit.
The other path involves getting universal chance to apply Mark of Death on hit, which make enemies take more damage from all sources. So allocate 1/4Deathtouch Scythe, and 3/3Haunting, for a 15% chance to apply mark on hit. This chance increases to 30% on Reap. Then allocate 2/2Sweeping Scythesfor longer travel distance on Reap.
Finally, for endgame, get more defensive bonuses such as Armor, Poison Resistance, and Necrotic Resistance. So we allocate 4/4Soul Shroud, and 1/1Vile Shroud,. All of these bonuses scale with your Intelligence stat, so we gain huge numbers if we focus on building Intelligence. There’s also 1/1Elixir of Deathto heal double the health from potions while in reaper form.
We don’t use Death Seal in this Acolyte Leveling Build, but we may switch to it in an endgame version of the build, so I’ll go through it quickly to give the reader an idea of what to expect from the skill, and how to use it.
Death Seal locks a character’s maximum health at a certain threshold. By default this threshold is whatever your current health is. But with 1/1Deadlocknode, we lock the health at 33% of the max health, so you count as low health.
Being at low health gives some powerful modifiers on gear, and gains more bonuses from Death Seal skill tree. This enable 5/5Corrupted Consciousnessto give 111% increased damage at minimum, and increases if your health drops more. 3/3Desperate Shroudgives 6 Armor per 10 missing health. So at 1000 health, you miss 670 health, and get +400 Armor, and at 2000 health, this amount is doubled, and at 3000 health, it gets tripled.
The next major perk of Death Seal is preventing all drain effects from affecting your character while Death Seal is active. You get this from 1/1Soul Stability, and it counters all drain effects from the passive tree, but calculating how much drain you can handle without using Death Seal is very important, and you need advanced knowledge of game mechanics.
You may auto cast Hungering Souls while Death Seal is active, to double ignite stacks you inflict. This comes with 3/3Moratoriumfor longer duration of Death Seal, 1/1Devouring Release, and 4/4Insatiable Soul.
Figuring out how to spend your points in the passive tree is one of the most important parts of making a Build in Last Epoch. Generally, it takes a respec or two before getting it right. In this section, I want to show you how I’ve set this up for maximum performance from the get-go.
Note this is not the final tree for an endgame Lich Build in Last Epoch, with players having very limited access to items early on. This results in relying on passive nodes for everything, and even picking passives that could be respecced later for optimal damage output. But it’s a very good starting point overall, with the 66 points we get from leveling from 1-50.
You start with the Acolyte tree, and need to allocate a minimum 20 points to unlock mastery specialization, so open up with 8/8Forbidden Knowledgefor the Intelligence stat and overall damage increase on all skills. Then 5/5Dark Ritualswhich buffs your minions cast speed, but also apply to you if you use a minion skill every ten seconds. You can achieve this by using Volatile Zombies, or Bone Golem.
Put 2/8 points in the StolenVitality Nodefor some health, and unlocking the next part. Then finish with 5/5Crimson Gluttony, which reduces health drain by a lot, as well as giving health generation to yourself and your minions. Health generation is disabled in Reaper form anyway, so it’s not a core part of the build, but reducing health drain is essential to allocate some of the stronger nodes on the Lich tree later.
After reaching the End of Time, and unlocking mastery specialization, you should choose Lich. The reason is, Lich has access to some strong passives while leveling, that doesn’t take a lot of effort.
Start with 10/10Apocryphafor more INT and mana generation. Followed by 2/2harvested Legion, which summon up to three Skeleton Vanguards to fight alongside you. They help distract enemies, and sometimes tank while you kite away. You should have spent 12 points now, and need an extra three points to unlock the next major node. You may split these three points betweenSurvival of the CruelandDesolation. The former for small health and leech bonus, and the latter for DoT damage.
Whatever you chose in previous node, the next should be 8/8Bed of Souls. It gives the Vitality stat, health and Poison and Necrotic resistance, as well as giving health generation and minions health regeneration. You then follow up by 8/8Crippling Insight, which add massive Intelligence to your build at the cost of reducing health regeneration. We already offset this negative bonus by previous nodes, so we shouldn’t worry. And most of the time we are in Reaper form anyway, which has no health generation.
Next is 1/5Three Plagues, and 5/5Contagion Enginefor a high increase in damage over time. Then get more DoT damage from 5/5Symbol of Decay, which requires using a one handed weapon, and catalyst. We naturally prefer using Catalysts for our Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build for the good stats they give anyway, so this is easy.
Finally, 5/5Soul Mawis where we put the last points on our way to level 50. It gives life leech on all damage types, and increase the effect of damage leech. That’s one of the main sources of survivability in our build.
As a leveling build, it’s hard to precisely measure every single stat and compare them to each other. So producing a priority list is a bit tough, especially with players relying on very random drops early on. There’s no proper way to farm equipment, and you shouldn’t waste a lot of time comparing items at this stage. If you know what you are doing, the whole leveling to 50 process might take around five to seven hours.
You may use any Wand with high spell damage, and some form of damage over time.Ritual Stakeis a good base at level +14 to start with, as it gives a damage over time bonus. But keep upgrading your weapon as you go, and focus on proper sub stats more than the bonus from base weapon.
Or you may resort to usingMad Alchemist’s LadleUnique Wand if you have it in your stash. It’s a decent leveling item that fits our style.
For sub-stats on weapons, you should seek Elemental Damage, Fire Damage, Damage over Time, and Elemental Damage Over Time. Elemental Damage over time has the highest value among these three, so focus on it if applicable.
Cast Speed is nice, but not the first thing we look for. The reason is, some of our damage sources don’t scale with cast speed, such as the number of ignites applied by Infernal Shade.
The most Impactful suffix on your weapon is chance to ignite, which is a fairly easy stat to get. Always craft it if you have an open suffix, or try your luck using Glyph of Chaos if you don’t.
For good armor gear in our Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build, there are few things we need to consider. As a starter build, we don’t have access to a whole lot of unique or set items, and exalted items are not very common this early on. So we should keep switching gear from among the rare items we get.
We focus on sub stats more than main stats and item bases. Mostly, because the strongest armor bases can be found late game, while sub stats can reach their peak much earlier.
For normal Prefixes, always aim to get these stats, and setup your loot filter in a way to highlight items with them:
There are more powerful stats that’s class-specific, and these are tied to only three slots (Helmet, Body Armor, and Relic). They are rare or very rare, and they are competing with a whole lot of other stats that’s tied to Acolyte class, so make sure to highlight them more prominently in your loot filter. Even they drop on a bad item, make sure to break them with a Rune of Shattering to build a stockpile of their shards.
Simply get Endurance to 60%, then Health, and Resistances on all your suffixes, there’s nothing more important there.
You barely get any idols early on in Last Epoch, that’s why we don’t rely on them a whole lot. At the start you are restricted to Idols with two slots, then three slots, and the third and fourth slots come much later.
That means we should only use generic, none-class Idols up to a point, such as Humble Idol, and Stout Idol. On these Idols, pick resistances, Chance to Ignite on Hit, Health, or anything useful.
Later on when you unlock Ornate Idols, get “Damage While Transformed” on Ornate Idols, and “Player and Minions Fire damage” on Huge and Large Idols. Also “Less damage over time taken while transformed” on Large Idol, and “Damage Over Time while at Low Health” on Adorned Idol. The latter only works with Death Seal setup.
This Last Epoch Acolyte Leveling Build is a suitable pick if you prefer a Damage over Time style of play. It enables hit and run tactics, as DoT damage will persist after you move away from enemies. You leech a huge amount of health per second, and if you play the low life version with Death Seal, you enjoy high endurance bonuses. The Second life bar is like a second chance to survive, and saves your character many times.
It’s a relatively fast build to level, but not the fastest, due to less mobility with only Reap as a movement skill. But the way Infernal Shade hops between enemies make it very fun to play, and I highly recommend it to new players.
For more Last Epoch leveling Builds be sure to check out nextLast Epoch Primalist Leveling Build Guide – Shaman, andLast Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build Guide – Void Knight. And for endgame builds, don’t miss ourLast Epoch Runemaster Build Guide: Fire Claw
elnawawi
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I can’t post comments?
Didn’t read through it all but seems ok.
I can’t emphasize enough the don’t use death seal until you’ve unlocked bazaar and can buy gear for it. The deadlock node will kill you a lot and it’s not worth a slot without deadlock.
Volatile zombies can probably breeze through the game.Drain life is also good once you get enough points into skeletons to be able to summon them quickly and drain them for mana and can turn drain life into a cast instead of channel.
I’d go down the vomit path myself for volatile. Volatile zombies is insane when you have no scaling early game lol.
