Last Epoch Falconer Build Guide - Bow Bleed Ballista
May. 29, 2024Last Epoch Falconer Build Guide – Bow Bleed Ballista
In thisLast Epoch Falconer Build Guide, we’re going to be covering aFalconer Buildthat focuses on casting multiple skills to apply Bleed. It’s a minion build that scales with both minion damage and player damage. It also utilizes Ailment stats from player and minions, as the Falcon companion benefits from both. I’ll explain how to get the most from this Build both as a beginner, and what works great for endgame. If you’ve been looking for aFalconer Build, which require absolutely no specific gear, then this Last Epoch Falconer Build Guide is for you.
Ballista is a minion skill that stays stationary and shoot arrows at enemies. It works well with Falconer skills, especially with the way it gets buffed byAerial Assault. It helps build stacks of bleed on enemies, alongside other Falcon skills. With Dive Bomb, you can consume all Bleed Stacks and cause them to deal all their damage at once. This causes a huge damage spike that go into the millions.
Falconer skills have a cooldown, but allocating the correct nodes enable players to reduce their cooldown. You’ll have high uptime with these skills. You can fill the small gaps by casting Ballista and Puncture. It needs some mana regeneration to keep up with the high mana cost skills, so keep that in mind.
The build functions very well without any Unique or Set items, so it’s perfectly fine for a starter build. On my testing, Falconer is the fastest build to both clear enemies and move between enemy packs. This means that it starts out strong, and only grow stronger. You won’t have to respec any skills between early game and endgame.
This build plays within a rotation, instead of spamming one single skill all the time. This makes the build more engaging, and for some players, more fun to play. It requires you to consider the positioning of character and Ballista to get the most out of this build.
The simplest rotation is casting yourBallistatwice ahead of you, travel to them withAerial Assault. Landing near the ballistas will give them a massive 75% attack speed bonus, plus Frenzy buff for an extra 20%. There’s also a small damage bonus scaling with Intelligence, which we don’t focus.
If the enemies are squishy, we’ll castDive Bombright after to reduce the cooldown ofAerial Assault, then repeat. If a large group of enemies are tanky, we’ll castFalcon Strikesfirst. This adds a lot more bleed stacks within a short time, and then use Dive Bomb to deal much greater damage.
Note that these three skills:Dive Bomb,Aerial Assault, andFalcon Strikes– can’t overlap. They rely on the Falcon performing each skill, so you have to wait for each skill to finish animation before casting the next one. If you cast too early, you cancel the previous skill, and waste both time and mana.
In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills should be on your Skill bar to make this build work. I consider all five skills in this build to be mandatory, because they complement each other very well. You may change your spammable skill, but all the other alternative skills change the playstyle. I prefer sticking with the recommended skills. We will pick skills from the Rogue base class and the Falconer master class.
This is a skill from the Rogue base class, which unlocks at character level five. Early on in the game, we use this as our main damage source, which is ideal for leveling any rogue build. Later on, we adjust the skill to play as a support role to complement our Falconer skills.
Puncture is a spammable skill with no cooldown, and it can be used with either melee weapons or a bow. It pierces all enemies in a line, and with some adjustment, we may modify a third of its hits to deal damage in a wider AoE. It can also debuff enemies to take more damage over time (from all sources) and buff the player’s Bleed chance. This works as a buffer, debuffer, and a DPS skill at same time for leveling in early game.
As a skill that costs zero mana, we also use this to gain mana and health on hit. This comes from the passive nodeSapping Strikeson the Rogue tree. On top of that, Puncture has a node that consumes all bleed stacks on the enemy, dealing bleed damage instantly while healing the player for 15 health per bleed stack consumed. These are the main sources of sustain in early game.
First thing to do is to rush towardsMutilate, so we start with 2/5Perforate, 1/2Press the Attack, 1/1Cadence of Death, and 3/3Mutilate. These make every third hit of Puncture deal more damage, cover more AoE, bleed dealing damage instantly, and heals the character. It enables a super aggressive playstyle that a lot of leveling builds lack, so you not only gain experience fast, but also move fast.
Next is debuffing enemies withEfficacious Toxin, so allocate 1/3Toxic Delivery, 1/1Sanguine Obsession, and 2/5Efficacious Toxin. These convert poison chance into bleed chance – so it scales with your physical damage, as well as causing enemies to take 10% increased damage from all DoTs. We don’t need too many points here because we spam Puncture all the time.
To maximize damage, we put the rest of the points into Bleed chance. So 5/5Perforate, for Puncture bleed chance, 3/3Bloodthirstfor global bleed chance, and 3/3Hungerfor more stacks of global bleed chance. These are the main damage source in our build until we get all the Falconer skills specialized.
With all Falconer skills allocated, our hands get busy alternating betweenDive Bomb,Aerial Assault, andFalcon Strikes. This doesn’t give a big chance to spam Puncture, so we change the tree to have a different behavior. We make the first three hits of Puncture have rapid attack speed on a cooldown. Every four seconds, we shoot a burst of three arrows that takes almost no time within our rotation.
Stacking Bloodthirst is not possible anymore, and player damage pales in comparison to Falcon damage. We’ll refund points from bothHungerandBloodthirst. We’ll also remove three points fromPerforate and remove the point inSanguine Obsession. That’s a total of 10 points if you have no additional levels to Puncture from gear. We use these points to allocate different nodes.
Put 1/4 inTiming, and 3/3 inRapid Strikesfor a massive 150% attack speed on the first three Puncture attacks, then put 4/4 inMind Piercerfor mana regain on hit. Finally, pushEfficacious Toxinto 5/5 so you have a higher chance to apply the debuff in a small number of hits. You may opt to allocate some points inSplinterinstead for physical resistance shred. However, physical resistance shred can only stack 10 times, and we might hit the cap from other sources, so I opted to skip Splinter.
Ballistais the second skill in our arsenal from the Rogue base class, which unlocks after spending 15 points in the Rogue tree. You would have an open skill slot before getting Ballista, so specialize inShiftfirst. You should get Ballista on your third slot at character level 20.
Ballistadamage by itself is not massive, even with three ballistas and a ton of attack speed and DoT damage. That’s why some builds prefer turning Ballista into explosive Ballista to gain a massive damage multiplier. However, normal Ballista is a perfectly fine choice for our build, as it builds up a lot of bleed stacks. These Bleed Stacks can do damage instantly with Puncture’s third hit, or with Dive Bomb, which is better.
We build our Ballista to inherit damage modifiers and DoT modifier from the player. This enables your character’s chance to Bleed to double dip on yourself, the falcon, and Ballista. Everything else is put into Ballista attack speed, extra projectiles, and pierce.
We’ll start with 1/1Agile Engineering. This gives a massive boost to placement speed and attack speed depending on how much Dex stat you have. Next is 2/2Efficient Constructionfor reducing mana cost, at a cost of reducing duration. This option favors clear speed over single target damage. While clearing, you move fast, so you want to constantly place new ballistae near new enemies. Reduced duration is not a problem at all, since enemies die pretty quickly. In single-target combat, you feel Ballista is expiring too fast and placing new ones is a bit of a hassle. However, we spend most of our time clearing mobs, and only face bosses far and in between.
Next is 3/3Shared Enchantment, for Ballista to inherit 75% of player damage. This is very nice early on, so you don’t have to build any minion stats until you get all your falcon skills. Later on, it’s still decent for a support skill. Grab 1/3Heavy Boltsto reachBodkin Bolts, which enables Ballista’s hit to pierce. How much points here relies on how massive enemy packs you face is. Usually, 2/5 here is enough until late endgame (+200 Corruption Monolith)
Move to 2/4Rapid Firefor attack speed and unlocking path for nodes behind. 3/3Contaminating Shotsget Ballista to inherit Ailment chance from the player at 75% value. This is a great source of building Bleed Stacks, since Falcon also inherits bleed chance. Both Ballista and the falcon inflict a lot of bleeds per hit. 1/1Siege Commandercomplements this by giving Frenzy to Ballista when the player standing near them. This is a 20% attack speed buff, added to stacking 2% speed per hit from 1/1Quickload, which builds up rapidly with no cap. Finally, 2/5Flaming Shotsand 3/3Bolt Rainfor multiple arrows.
Aerial Assaultis the movement skill of our build. It unlocks after spending 30 points in Falconer, so we keep usingShiftbefore that point.
Aerial Assaultis a cool skill that has the Falcon carry the player, move them forward, then shoot down Wing Burst.Wing Bursthits enemies inside the area of landing, and this scales with minion damage. We modify the skill tree to also throw Caltrops, slow enemies, and give the Falcon extra bleed chance. On the other hand, we will give an attack speed buff to Ballista upon using Aerial Assault. This enables the Falcon to build up stacks ofAerial Prowess, which regain health and increase damage on the next use of Aerial Assault.
Overall, the skill is used as a source of buff and damage, as well as movement.
Go right in the tree, and start with 2/3 inCovering Fire, to apply stacks of frailty debuff on hit with Aerial Assault. Frailty reduces the damage an enemy does to your character, increasing survivability. Then allocate 1/1 inTacticianto buff your Ballista with 75% attack speed, and 2% damage multiplier per point of Intelligence. We don’t build Int intentionally, but some Unique/Legendary items that buff our build might come with Int stat. Such asBlood of the ExileBoots, that gives 8~12 Int, and translates to 16~24% more damage multiplier for Ballista.
Next branch gets us to southwest part of the tree so that we can buff our Falcon’s Bleed chance. 1/1Skyward Swoopis a key to reducing the cooldown of Aerial Assault every time the falcon hits an enemy. Then, 1/1Treasures Pursuit, 4/4Rending Barbs, and 1/1Spikefieldto add aThrow Caltropsskill to your Aerial Assault. You will then throw two Caltrops with these modifiers, one at Aerial Assault destination, and one midway. Caltrops is thrown by you, not your falcon, so it scales with player throw damage stats, which results in bad damage. However, when an enemy walks over Caltrops (From all sources), your Falcon gains a chance to Bleed based on your Dexterity stat.
If you manage to get 90 Dexterity, each enemy that walks over your Caltrops will buff your Falcon’s Bleed chance by 90%. This buff lasts for 5 seconds, and stacks for unlimited times. With strategic use of Aerial Assault, you may plan to land Caltrops on as many enemies as possible to get a massive damage boost from Falcon’s Bleeds.
The previous branches in the tree took 10 points, leaving us 10 more points to spend where we see fit. It’s optimal going forAerial Prowessfor situational damage boost, speed buffs, and health gain.
Go southeast on the tree, starting with 2/4Healing Gustto get a heal on Aerial Assault use. Then 2/3Aerial Prowessto enable building up Aerial Prowess stacks on crit hits and kills. Followed by 1/1Torrent of Talonsto build stacks with non-crit hits. Then, 2/2Falcon’s Havocto gain both Frenzy and Haste buffs when you consume Aerial Prowess.
So far, you have 8 seconds after using Aerial Assault to gain Aerial Prowess stacks which you’ll consume at the next Aerial Assault use. This is a good time to gain stacks, and sometimes, you can max out Aerial Prowess. This grants us almost permanent Haste (30% Movement Speed), and Frenzy (20% Attack and Cast Speed).
With the last three points, get 2/3Refreshing Resolvefor mana recovery on every Aerial Assault use. Then 1/1Coordinated Assaultto reduce cooldown of Dive Bomb and Falcon Strikes.
If you get more points from + skill level stat on gear, you may use the extra points to increase healing fromHealing Gust. Or you may opt for more dodge chance while using Aerial Assault viaWind Rider. You can also apply slow on Caltrops hit withVengeful Nails. It’s up to you to choose depending on what you currently need.
We unlockDive Bombby spending 35 points in the Falconer master tree. In our build, we’ll specialize in Dive Bomb at the fourth slot, which will easily become one of our sources of huge damage. It enables us to transition from player damage-oriented build, into a more minion-focused build. It scales with minion stats while inheriting some player stats from certain nodes in the Falconry skill tree (not from Dive Bomb tree itself).
On a cooldown,Dive Bombgets the falcon to ascend high, then strikes down enemies in an AoE after a delay. This hit has an insanely high damage multiplier of 850%, and it gets even more multipliers for each bleed stack the enemy has. It’s a huge nuke every couple of seconds, that help mowing down bosses’ health and instantly kills packs of smaller enemies.
We modify Dive Bomb to consume all bleed stacks, causing them to deal damage immediately. On top of that, it inflicts new bleed stacks, and a physical resistance shred debuff. We get Dive bomb to cost zero mana, regain mana on hit, reduce cooldown of movement skill, and grants us Crimson Shroud stacks.
Start with 1/3Hindering Peak Striketo apply slow on hit. If you have other sources of physical resistance shred, take only 2/5 in Flesh Tearing Talons to move to the next node. If you lack physical resistance shred, take it to 5/5. Move to 1/1Redwingsfor three Crimson Shroud stacks (50% Bleed chance and 5% less DoT damage taken per stack). We’ll then finish with 1/1Exsanguinating Strikewhich consumes all bleed stacks to deal damage instantly. It also gives Dive Bomb a damage multiplier based on the number of these stacks.
Now, go to the right side of the tree through 1/4Rush of the Huntto reduce cooldown. Follow it up with 3/4Focused Hunterto get Dive Bomb to cost zero mana. Then, go with 3/3Rapid Pursuitfor mana regain on hit against bosses or rare enemies, and reducing the cooldown of Aerial Assault. This node creates a simple loop between Dive Bomb and Aerial Assault, where you use one skill to reduce cooldown of the other, and vice versa.
Finally, put 5/5 inRending Impactto apply five bleed stacks on hit with Dive Bomb. If you get extra points, put them all inRushing Wingsto reduce the delay of Dive Bomb. This not only makes the skill smoother, but it also reduces the downtime of your falcon, and the time your Dive Bomb being vulnerable to cancel by other skills cast.
Falconry is the signature skill of Falconer class, and a core skill of our build. It summons an invulnerable Falcon companion on first cast, and the falcon remains summoned forever. It has no health, and it can’t be targeted by enemies nor ground effects, making it immortal. After summoning, the Falconry skill transform into the Falcon Strikes skill. It has a cooldown, and on use, causes the falcon to do a flurry of hits to enemies in an AoE.
Falcon Strikes’ multiple hits is a huge source of applying several bleed stacks and deals a lot of damage. However, it has a long cooldown and a huge mana cost, which is why we use other skills to reduce its cooldown and regain mana.
On the controller, beware of your direction while casting Falcon Strikes. Unlike most skills in Last Epoch, Falcon Strikes doesn’t hard-lock on to targets. This may cause it to cast on an empty space if the player doesn’t pay attention.
The skill tree has many ways to modify the overall stats of your falcon, which affects other skills alongside Falcon Strike. Every point here is worth a lot, and I recommend getting a lot of extra levels from gear to gain more points.
First, we aim to make our Falcon applyFalcon’s Mark, and get extra buffs from it. So, allocate 1/3Falconer’s Mark, 2/2Marking Strikes, 3/3Avian Arsenal, and 2/5 or 3/5 inWake of Wings. This allows your Falcon’s Strike and other hits from your falcon to apply the mark. When your character hits the marked target, you consume the mark, applying buffs.
We get theFalcon’s Wakebuff, which increases the player’s movement speed, attack speed, and cast speed by 15%, and stacks with both Frenzy and Haste we get from Aerial Assault. Your Falcon, on other hand, gets a melee damage bonus based on character stats, and the type of hit used to consume the mark. If you use your Puncture and it consume Falcon’s mark, it will base the damage bonus on your bow damage. If you hit the marked enemy with Caltrops instead, it will base the buff on your throw damage.
Next is 1/1Falconer’s Journey, for a falcon damage multiplier per level, and another damage multiplier per Dex stat. 1/3Is it a bird?gives another damage multiplier and it opens up the path for next nodes. 2/2Agile Preyis yet another damage multiplier that triple against moving targets.
Then, 4/4Rending Talonsis the key to unlocking Falcon’s true power, giving your Falcon a chance to apply ailments. equal to double character’s chance to apply them. This includes DoTs such as Bleed and simple debuffs such as Slow, or Resistance Shred. Every investment you have on your character’s chance to Bleed translates into a massive damage boost for the Falcon.
1/1Feather Knivesadds a ranged throwing skill to your falcon, with a 10-second cooldown. It also procs when you consume Falconer’s Mark. Then, 1/1Trained to Huntfor adding a portion of character’s damage to the falcon. This node checks whichever damage type is higher (Bow, Throw, or Melee), and adds 75% of it to the falcon. This makes Bow damage increase, and global damage increase double dip as the falcon’s damage.
I highly recommend getting more levels for Falconry skill, due to massive damage modifiers and multipliers here. You may get these levels from theBlood RoostUnique Gloves,Talons of ValorUnique Bow, or as a Prefix on a rare or exalted Helmet.
You may allocate points inIs It a Bird?node, getting it to 3/3 for pure damage multiplier. But, if you manage to get Falconry to level 23 or 24, you better get 2/4Avian Stamina, and 1/2 or 2/2Bird of Prey. This makes Falcon Strike instantly kill any enemy that gets their health down to 8% or 16%. You effectively skip 1/6 of fights, which is a huge boost against rare enemies and bosses.
At skill level 26, you may get all of the above nodes, so it’s a good goal to aim at.
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.
The Rogue Base Tree is where you start by default, and you will need to spend 20 points to unlock the specialization trees later. So, put 8/8 inSteady Handsfor Dexterity to scale the damage of all abilities. It also gives the Falcon a damage multiplier, and attack speed to Ballista. Then, 1/8Guileto unlock the bottom branch of the tree, followed by 5/5Evasion, and 5/5Agility. These grant the character dodge rating, Haste chance, less damage taken while moving, and increase damage based on movement speed.
The damage on movement speed is huge, since we have so many sources of increase movement speed. Haste is 30%, Falcon’s Wake is 15%, and Tailwind is 12%. If you craft a proper legendary Boots, you may get 45~50% move speed from the boots alone. This takes your move speed over 100%, resulting in 100% global damage increase. This generic damage increase shall double dip for your Falcon damage. It’s such a huge modifier, so don’t sleep on it.
To complete the 20 points, you only need 1/4 inSapping Striketo gain mana and health on hit with Puncture. Early on in the game, you might prefer to allocate more than one point here for your mana sustain. You shall respec these points at endgame, and place 5/5Dodge and Parryfor Glancing Blows and Dodge Rating.
In this build, we aim to allocate over 70 points in the Falconer Tree. This goal doesn’t take every single point we get, and you would max it by level 75~80, so it’s fairly early on in the Empowered Monolith.
Start with 8/8 inHandlerfor minion damage and crit chance, which affects both your Falcon and Ballista. Then. get 5/5Crimson Skiesto get three stacks of Crimson Shroud. These stacks get you 150% Chance to Bleed on Hit, and 15% less Damage Over Time Taken. The bleed chance applies to your Ballista at 75% rate. But for Falcon, you get at least 2.5x that chance, and with optimization, you get 5x this chance.
Put 6/7Ranger’s Markfor Increased bow damage and chance to buff Falcon when you hit with Puncture. Then, 6/6Tacticianfor massive boost to Falcon and Ballista damage. Skip the next column, and get straight to 6/6Evasion Tacticsfor Dex, Armour, and Evasion. 5/5Deflect and Weavefor Glancing Blows and health gain on Glancing Blow. Then 1/5Coordinated Fate, which gives 3 stacks of the Silver Shroud buff.Silver Shroudguarantees the player to dodge the next hit and regain 100 Ward per stack. So, you get 300 Ward from this node on a 10-second cooldown. More importantly, you dodge more times on average.
5/5Relentless Talonsis a hybrid character global damage and minion damage node, so it double dips for falconer. The three-point bonus gives the falcon ability to regain health for the player, which is based on Dex. It’s a very nice sustain against large groups of enemies, wherein falcon hits multiple enemies at once. Then, get 1/1Intuitive Connectionto make the falcon skills instant attack, so you can use it while moving without stopping. 6/6Final Souveniris a nice dodge, health, and chance to throw Caltrops on dodge. Caltrops have some nice bonuses from the Aerial Assault tree, which applies here as well.
Sky Assassinshave a nice 5-point bonus which grants 50% of your Bleed and Poison to your Falcon. So, we put 5/7 points here. It also gives an increase in DoT damage, which counts for Falcon’s DoT damage.
5/5Poiseis next for Glancing Blows and doubles the chance to get Glancing Blows if you have not been hit recently. This takes Glancing Blows to almost 100% on first hit, which is good for the first hit taken before you build up Dusk shroud stacks. Then, 6/6Symphalian Feathersfor Armour per Dex, and increased armour per falcon hit in the last 4 seconds.
Finally, 6/6Tailwindfor reducing damage taken while moving, increased movement speed, and dodge rate. All these effects are doubled all the time because we have our falcon constantly hitting enemies.
We get great defensive utility for our build from the Bladedancer tree. This is done through theDusk Shroudbuff, which stacks indefinitely while adding dodge rate and Glancing Blow chance. We allocate these points last, so from level 83 onward.
Get 8/8Cloak of Shadowsfor Dex and Glancing blows chance. Follow that with 2/5Flowwhich has a unique mechanic to buff damage. You have to use four different skills, and the fourth skill gets a massive damage bonus. It’s a decent boost in damage if you manage to time the fourth skill as Dive Bomb, but it’s a lot of hassle. Usually, building rotation around the Flow buff is less efficient than playing normally. So, we allocate two points only to unlock next column.
We finish with 7/8 or 8/8 inShroud of Duskfor Dusk Shroud stacks when hit. Now, the more hits you take, the less likely you’re going to be hit next time as your dodge rate will keep growing. This is an easy way to not die from small hits that come in great number in massive waves of enemies. It reduces the chance to get one-shot by massive boss hits as well, but it doesn’t eliminate that possibility entirely. So, this Falconer build is recommended to play in softcore, not in hardcore league.
In this section, we’ll be covering the type of equipment that you want to aim for, and what stats you need on them.
The first thing you’ll want is a good bow that ideally gives nice sub stats. The best stat on Bow for this build isPhysical Penetration & Minion Physical Penetrationsuffix. It boosts all damage from you, your falcon, and your Ballista in an uncontested manner. Aim to get T7 or T6 in this stat, alongside three more stats of the following five (Two prefixes and one suffix):
The three prefixes provide almost equal value, while the suffixes change depending on other gear. Without theBlood RoostUnique Gloves,Minion Melee and Bow damageis more valuable. With it,Chance to Bleedis much better.
The ideal base is aNorthern Bowfor the chance to Bleed. However, any bow would suffice if it has better sub stats mentioned above. For Unique Bows,Talon of Valoris the only competitive choice. It has + levels to three skills we use:Falconry,Dive Bomb, andAerial Assault. The value can go as high as 4 levels. This can compensate for the damage loss from Rare or Exalted sub stats, but it won’t be immediately better.
It gets better with Legendary Potential (LP) though, especially at two and higher LP. If you manage to slam two or more of the sub stats of an Exalted bow intoTalon of Valor, it become best-in-slot. So, if you play this build long enough, aim to farm Unique Bows fromThe Fall of OutcastMonolith.
For our off-hand slot, we naturally use a quiver. Quivers can roll very important stats such asMinion Damage,Physical Damage,Damage Over Time,Bow Damage, andDexterityon Prefixes. So, pick two of these and get the following two suffixes:Chance to Bleed,Chance to Shred Armour.
If you don’t manage to get the two exact suffixes, you may suffice with Resistances of your choice to reach the cap.
You have a choice in eitherNomad QuiverorNagasa Quiver. The former gives high chance to bleed, while the latter gives poison chance and increase damage over time. Pick either of them with good sub stats, or pick another one entirely, if it has perfect sub stats.
None of the Unique Quivers fit our build, so don’t consider them below LP4. At LP4, you may slam the entire sub stats of an Exalted Quiver, so you can use whatever Unique Quiver that have any moderately useful stats. Though if you have trade available, just sell that LP4 quiver and buy a better Exalted with a sealed affix.
For Armour stats, we have these priorities by endgame:
For Uniques, the build functions perfectly fine without them. So, this build work as a starter or solo self found without any problem. There are a couple of unique items that elevate the damage and survivability of the Falconer. That’s especially true if you manage to get items with Legendary Potential, and slam good stats on them.
The first of these Unique items is theBlood RoostGloves, which is designed for a Bleed Falconer build. It increases Bleed penetration for minions, gives more of your bleed chance to the falcon, and allow the falcon to regain health to you per hit (Scaling with Dex). On top of that, it gives more levels to Falconry skill, movement speed for your minions, and high Dex value. It’s a nice overall boost to all necessary stats, so try to farm fromEnding the StormMonolith.
The other nice Unique item is a Body Armour that have massive offensive boost, which isDoublet of Onos Tull. This armour comes with massive 100%~140% increase in bleed duration for minions, in addition to 40% chance to bleed. Since both Puncture and Dive Bomb force all bleed stacks to deal damage instantly, 100% extra duration simply doubles the damage. It’s rare to find a single item that gives this much damage, so it’s worth using over rare or exalted Body Armour. Try to get a high LP and slam some skill levels stats, because these are very important.
Finally, theBlood of the ExileUnique Boots is a decent alternative to exalted Boots if you have high LP. The reason for that is it has a massive 39% Movement speed and can get more speed from slamming legendary affixes on top of giving high Dex, Int, and Str stats, and bleed duration, and bleed damage.
Now for non-Unique armour and accessories, there are advantages in getting good item bases. Some of the bases provide strong stats and other affixes that aren’t found anywhere else.
For Helmet slot, get eitherFalconry Helmfor flat damage to your Falcon, orBlood Visagefor DoT increase. Usually, the flat damage is slightly better, especially with the Dex bonus that comes on top of it.
For the boots,Vanguard Bootsis typically best-in-slot, because it increases Haste effect. Our Falconer build gets haste easily, and this item boosts it up to 50% effect, giving 15% extra movement speed. This double dips into damage as well. Second best isMercantile Bootsfor the same stat, but smaller value.
GetRuby Diceif you can on Relic slot, for bleed chance. However, if you have another base with better sub stats, it could be overall better choice. Most other bases have some value, whether it’s resistances, or dodge rate.
On gloves, if you don’t haveBlood RoostUnique, use any base with mana generation or Cooldown recovery. These areArcane Bracers,Celestial Gloves, orAscetic Glovesrespectfully.
For Rings, you may either useOpal Ringfor all stats and cooldown, orTurquoise Ringfor minion damage. And for Amulet, I prefer theOracle Amuletfor less DoT damage taken. Even though, you may chooseTurquoise Amuletfor minion damage, or rather choose and Amulet base with resistances.
Belt is flexible, as you may get high extra potions, movement speed, or high armor.
There are potent mods that can only be gained from Idols. For example, we need to grant our Falcon a portion of our bleed chance, which comes from the Adorned Idol, as well as generic damage while wielding bow, which comes from Large Idols. So, there are several good combinations of idols that involve using either one, two, or three Adorned Idols:
Setup A:
I recommend this Idol setup if you have the proper stats. Try other setups only if you lack the stats to make it work.
Setup B:
Setup C:
You can get these unique stats from idols, so pick idols that have one prefix and one suffix from the list:
The Falconer build is an ideal cycle starter, SSF character, and a solid Monolith farmer. It has huge survivability because you simply can’t getting hit in most tight situations, as you leave your falcon to do your work. It’s also a very fast build with frequent usage of movement skills, instant skills, and very large movement speed.
Even in tight situations, the build stacks Glancing Blows, health gain on Glancing Blows, dodge rate, Dusk Shroud, Silver Shroud, and health gain on falcon hit. The combination of these defensive mechanics makes a tanky character, even though we still rely on some RNG. This makes it a very stable softcore character to level to 100, but a bit harder to play as a hardcore character in case you get one-shot.
It doesn’t rely on unique items, so it’s easy to start. It has potential with powerful items that scale both damage and defenses in the late endgame, achieving the ideal balance between a simple beginner build and a complex endgame carry.
For more Last Epoch Builds be sure to check out nextLast Epoch Necromancer Build Guide: Flame WraithandLast Epoch Runemaster Build Guide: Fire Claw
elnawawi
