Necromancer Golem Betrayal Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.0)

Our base class is the Acolyte, which acts as a generic spell caster and summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select a Mastery class once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from, for the Acolyte we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Necromancer, Lich and Warlock. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Acolyte Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

For this Golem Betrayal build, Necromancer is our chosen Mastery. We will be utilizing the majority of our Passive Points in the Necromancer Passive tree and a small portion into the Warlock tree. Our passive points will be targeting augments for our Minions and boosting their survivability and damage output. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Forbidden Knowledge: Increases our Intelligence and Necrotic Resistances.
• 4 points into Stolen Vitality: Increases Health pools for both the player and minions.
• 4 points into Dark Rituals: Increases our minion's Attack Speed.
• 1 point into Mania of Mortality: Traversal Point.
• 5 points into Unnatural Preservation: Gives us ward retention and resistances.
• 1 point into Soul Aegis: Grants our minions increased Armor per player level.

Our base class is the Acolyte, which acts as a generic spell caster and summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select a Mastery class once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from, for the Acolyte we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Necromancer, Lich and Warlock. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Acolyte Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

For this Golem Betrayal build, Necromancer is our chosen Mastery. We will be utilizing the majority of our Passive Points in the Necromancer Passive tree and a small portion into the Warlock tree. Our passive points will be targeting augments for our Minions and boosting their survivability and damage output. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Risen Army: Minion Damage and Attack Speed.
• 5 points into Grave Thorns: Increases our minions' Armor, Health and gives them the ability to reflect damage.
• 3 points into Cursed Blood: Increases our Minion Damage.
• 6 points into Aegisfall: This is massive portion of our damage scaling, which allows all minions to gain Armor Shred at 200%.
• 1 point into Blood Armour: Grants increased Health Regen and Regen for minions.
• 8 points into Mortal Tether: Increases our minion's Health pool.
• 1 point into Unbound Necromancy: Maximum number of Skeletons increased by 1.
• 5 points into Frantic Summons: Increases both our Attack and Cast Speed, as well as our Minions'.
• 8 points into Tyrant: Bonus Health for your character.
• 1 point into Tyrant's Legion: Increases our Maximum number of skeletons and grants them increased physical penetration.
• 3 points into River of Bones: Increases our Critical Strike Chance and our Minions, adding a Health leech for our Minions.
• 3 points into Heresy: Increases our Intelligence and Minion's Critical Strike Chance.
• 10 points into Blades of the Forlorn: Increases Minion Critical Strike Multiplier.
• 8 points into Cling To Life: Provides the player Vitality and gives 16% to all Resistances for minions.

Our base class is the Acolyte, which acts as a generic spell caster and summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select a Mastery class once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from, for the Acolyte we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Necromancer, Lich and Warlock. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Acolyte Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

For this Golem Betrayal build, Necromancer is our chosen Mastery. We will be utilizing the majority of our Passive Points in the Necromancer Passive tree and a small portion into the Warlock tree. Our passive points will be targeting augments for our Minions and boosting their survivability and damage output. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 5 points into Chaos Flames: Increases necrotic damage to you and your minions.
• 5 points into Occultist's Mind: Gives base Intelligence and grants mana per Intelligence.
• 5 points into Imperishable: Gives us base Vitality, and gives us a Ward Decay Threshold per 1% Necrotic Resistance.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill perform as best as possible in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Rip Blood is the most important skill we have. With this skill we betray our  Summon Bone Golem, and cause him to pour out immense amounts of damage. At the same time, we will be healing, generating ward, and collecting mana at an incredible rate. This is a click heavy skill.

NOTE: The node Arcane Fortress could be skipped if the player is noticing they cannot maintain near full HP. However the changes to  Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros in 1.0 should make this manageable.

• 5 points into Hemomancer: Increases the Cast Speed of Rip Blood.
• 5 points into Quenching: Grants you additional health from the Rip Blood Cast.
• 1 point into Marrow Drinker: This enables us to hit our  Summon Bone Golem, and doubles Health gain from Rip Blood.
• 1 point into Hematology: Allows you to restore more Health per point of Intelligence you have.
• 2 points into Arcane Absorption: This is a traversal point, we do not care about the damage.
• 1 point into Rip Spirit: This converts Rip Blood into a Necrotic spell, enabling the functionality of our  Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros.
• 1 point into Splatter: This gives us a 20% chance to have  Blood Splatter take effect around our  Summon Bone Golem.
• 2 points into Crimson Flood: Increases the area of effect of our  Blood Splatter.
• 1 point into Blood Infusion: This grants any minion hit with  Blood Splatter to deal 15% more damage.
• 1 point into Infused Frenzy: Gives the Golem increased attack speed, when under the effects of Blood Infusion.
• 1 point into Arcane Fortress: Causes rip blood to now give you ward, rather than health per rip blood.

The skill points go above the stadard 20 points because we have converted  Rip Blood to Necrotic damage. From the implicits on  Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, this gives the skill +1, becuase it is now considered a Necrotic spell after we spec into Rip Spirit.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill perform as best as possible in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Summon Bone Golem is going to be the sacraficial lamb in our build. This monster will be casting  Bone Shatter as fast as you can cast  Rip Blood. Thanks to the Betrayal node, this happens 120% of the time. Bone Shatter will also pierce, ensuring any enemy unfortunate to be in his vicity is pelted by the fractures of his unholy body. To add insult to injury, the Bone Golem has a 40% chance to retaliate with the same Bone Shatter when he is attacked. He has incredible survivability between passives and his base HP; he has somewhere in the vacinity of 10,000 HP. Hunger will heal both him and you for about 100 HP per hit, including the hits from Bone Shatter. This obviously outpaces the damage you are dealing to him with Rip Blood.

• 5 points into Amalgam of Mages: Gives  Bone Shatter 75% more damage.
• 5 points into Bone Hail: Adds an addition 25% chance to retaliate with  Bone Shatter and adds another 75% more damage.
• 1 point into Betrayal: This triples the chance to retaliate with  Bone Shatter when he is attacked by you.
• 1 point into Flight of the Femurs: Allows  Bone Shatter to pierce and increases the projectiles speed and range.
• 3 points into Amalgam of Sentinels: Massively increases the Golems Health and Armor.
• 1 point into Unnatural Speed: Increases the Golem's Movement Speed, and the other minions in his vicinity.
• 5 points into Hunger: Allows the Golem to heal you and itself, on every hit (spell or melee) it lands.
• 3 point into Tower of Bones: Increases the threat generation from the default 133% to 148%. This increases the likelyhood of an enemy focusing the Golem rather than the player.

Please note, you may not have as many skill points to use until you have the required suffix on the helmet. Split the difference if only a +2 can be found. With a +3, a player should prioritize Hunger over Amalgam of Sentinels. If the player has none at all, the player must remove 2 points from Amalgam of Sentinels and 2 from Hunger.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill perform as best as possible in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

Our  Summon Skeleton will be crucial to tearing off multiple stacks of Armor from an enemy thanks to our passive Aegisfall. They will be in the rear with you, and should not be openenly engaged in the front line with the  Summon Bone Golem. The AI for the Skeletons is better than the Golem, and you will have less issues keeping them by your side. They will also kill on their own accord, but are not our main source of dps, just a way to increase the DPS of our Bone Golem's damage through Shred Armor. It would not be uncommon for your Undead Bowmen to slay a non-rare pack on their own, amplifying clear speeds.

• 5 points into Unholy Rage: Increases the Attack and Movement Speed of your Skeletons.
• 1 point into Lone Guardian: Increasing their Critical Strike Chance.
• 1 point into Mightier than the Sword: This completely removes Melee Skeletons and gives us all Bowmen.
• 1 point into Marrow Walkers: Adds +1 to the number of Skeletons.
• 2 points into Unbound Necromancy: Reduces the Mana cost, and increases the Critical Strike Chance of the Skeleton.
• 1 point into Grave Walkers: Adds +1 to the number of Skeletons.
• 5 points into Necrotic Conviction: Gives our Skeletons 75% more damage.
• 1 point into Hollow Walkers: Adds +1 to the number of Skeletons.
• 3 points into Marrow Tap: Gives Skeletons the ability to leech their attack damage as health.

Alternate Scaling: As a player increases the corruption of an area, you may notice the  Summon Skeleton begin to die rather quickly when in combat. In order to counter this, we can reduce the total amount of Shred Armor stacks on a target by cutting the amount of Skeletons in half. However, they will do nearly double the damage and thus, nearly doubling their life leech. We do this by removing a singular point in Unholy Rage and putting it into Dread Phalanx. With a well-rolled  Sanguine Regalia, the passives Marrow Tap and River of Bones, all of our minions should be leeching up to 10% of damage as life at an amplified leech rate. A player should also try to keep the Skeletons out of generic AoE or poison damage, by using the "A" key.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill perform as best as possible in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Dread Shade is a massive increase to our  Summon Bone Golem damage output, but also his and our own health gain. The massive increase to his attack speed will keep you and him healthy from Hunger.

• 2 points into Spectral Presence: Increases the Area your Shade can buff minions.
• 1 point into Lone Watcher: Eliminates decay on the minions the Shade is near.
• 3 points into Dying Coven: Increases Attack and Cast Speed buff.
• 4 points into Grim Fate: Increases Shade's Damage buff and Area.
• 3 points into Lingering Doom: Increases Necrotic Damage buff.
• 1 point into All For One: Adds a massive damage boost, but now only effects the target minion of  Dread Shade which should always be the Golem.
• 1 point into Egoism: Causes the Golem to always crit; this includes  Bone Shatter that we are triggering through  Rip Blood.
• 3 points into Flesh Harvest: Increases Shade's buff based on minion's missing health.
• 1 point into Blind Fury: Increases the Attack Speed of the Golem, which increases his rate of heal through Hunger.
• 1 point into Wisdom of the Dead: Decreases the Mana cost of  Dread Shade.
• 1 point into Martyrdom: This gives the target minion of  Dread Shade 25 Armor per Vitality you have.

The skill points go above the stadard 20 points because we have  Dread Shade is a base Necrotic spell. From the implicits on  Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, this gives the skill +1, becuase it is Necrotic spell.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill perform as best as possible in the build. While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skill trees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

 Bone Curse is of the of the few way we can effectively kill enemies. Upon casting  Bone Curse we are empowered with the node Cursed Limbs for 3 seconds. Because  Blood Splatter has a hit component, it will count for applying Bone Curse. We also utilize Bone Curse to empower our minions. With both Merciless and Barbed Construct, our Golem will do double his physical damage when Cursed, lasting 4 seconds.

• 1 points into Crippling Anguish: This is a traversal node.
• 2 points into Cultist's Fervor: Increases the Cast Speed and decreases Mana cost of Bone Curse.
• 5 points into Merciless: Adds 50% more physical damage to minions hit with Bone Curse.
• 4 points into Spiked Bones: Gives effected minions the ability to reflect 45 damage to enemies when attacked.
• 1 point into Barbed Construct: Doubles the effect of the previous nodes for the Bone Golem exclusively.
• 3 points into Cursed Limbs: Allows the player, after casting Bone Curse manually, to gain Curse on hit for 3 seconds.
• 3 points into Brittle Bones: Instantly Kills any enemy with 12% health or less.
• 1 point into Conflation: Increased the area of the curse when casted by 30%.