Druid Lightning Swarmblade Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.0)

Our base class is the Primalist, which acts as a generic caster, brawler, or companion summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from. For the Primalist, we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Beastmaster, Shaman and Druid. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Primalist Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the other Mastery Trees.

For this build, we will be picking Druid as our advanced class. We will utilize the majority of our Passive Points in the Druid Passive Tree. Our Passive Points will be targeting nodes to increase damage while transformed into Swarmblade and boost our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Natural Attunement: Large gains to Attunement, as well as some Resistances.
• 5 points into Hunter's Restoration: Increased Health by 10% and heal for 40 Health every 3 seconds we hit.
• 1 point into Harmony of Blades: Allows dual wielding.
• 6 points into Wisdom of the Wild: Increases our Spell Damage.

Our base class is the Primalist, which acts as a generic caster, brawler, or companion summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from. For the Primalist, we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Beastmaster, Shaman and Druid. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Primalist Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the other Mastery Trees.

For this build, we will be picking Druid as our advanced class. We will utilize the majority of our Passive Points in the Druid Passive Tree. Our Passive Points will be targeting nodes to increase damage while transformed into Swarmblade and boost our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 7 points into Chitinous Plating: Massive gain to Endurance and base Armor.
• 5 points into Primordial Resonance: An increase in damage, and Lightning Penetration when we are transformed.
• 7 points into Druidic Prowess: Gains to all attributes, but mostly in Strength and Attunement.
• 3 points into Focused Wrath: Traversal Point.
• 5 points into Wind in the Leaves: Large increases to our attack speed.
• 5 points into Bush Stalker: 50% increased chance to critical strike, but leech on crit is a big pickup for us here.
• 1 point into Rancour: When out of combat, smelling the roses, our Rage does not decay.
• 9 points into Harmonious Wisdom: Large increases to our Attunment, boosting our Mana. We also gain 3% Crit Avoid per 5 Attunement.
• 8 points into Rageborn: Gain large amounts of Critical Strike Chance, and gain 3 Rage when we Crit.
• 10 points into Hideskin: Massive boost to our base Health, and gain 10% of our Maximum HP as Endurace Threshold.
• 3 points into Impervious: We have a 20% chance to gain a stack of Impervious, which reduces all damage by 4% per stack. (up to 12% reduction)

Our base class is the Primalist, which acts as a generic caster, brawler, or companion summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from. For the Primalist, we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Beastmaster, Shaman and Druid. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Primalist Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the other Mastery Trees.

For this build, we will be picking Druid as our advanced class. We will utilize the majority of our Passive Points in the Druid Passive Tree. Our Passive Points will be targeting nodes to increase damage while transformed into Swarmblade and boost our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Ursine Strength: Adds base Strength, and gives us 16% flat Damage reduction from nearby (melee) enemies.
• 1 point into Savagery: Pathing Node.
• 1 point into Ambush: Pathing Node.
• 5 points into Boar Heart: Gives us an addition 15% damage reduction from all sources when hit by a melee attack.
• 5 points into Porcine Constitution: Gives an additional 15% Damage Reduction to Boar Heart.
• 5 points into Boar Heart: This allows us to get the benefits from Boar Heart when we land a melee attack. (This was removed in patch 1.1. The points will be reallocated when the build is updated for launch.)

Our base class is the Primalist, which acts as a generic caster, brawler, or companion summoner. Our character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery once we have completed the first act of the campaign. Each base class has three possible masteries to choose from. For the Primalist, we have access to the Mastery Tree Passives for Beastmaster, Shaman and Druid. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Primalist Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the other Mastery Trees.

For this build, we will be picking Druid as our advanced class. We will utilize the majority of our Passive Points in the Druid Passive Tree. Our Passive Points will be targeting nodes to increase damage while transformed into Swarmblade and boost our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

CRITICAL NOTE:These 5 points should be allocated somewhere between Druid and Beastmaster Passives (around level 40), as the  Tornado is your damage mechanic.

• 5 points into Shamanic Infusion: This adds Attunment and Lightning Penetration for us. More importantly, it gives us the ability to scale  Tornado.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine 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.

 Gathering Storm is one of the news and most welcomed additions to our repertoire of skills for the Primalist. We scale this skill specifically in order to amplify the damage output from our  Storm Bolt. It is important to note, since we wont be directly using  Gathering Storm, we wont ever gain or expend Storm Stacks, a subskill of Gathering Storm. So we only target the nodes we can use for Storm Bolt passively.

• 1 point into Windfury Blows: Pathing Node.
• 4 points into Thunderous Strikes: Gives Storm Bolt Lightning Penetration.
• 1 point into Excited Bolts: This will add 3% more base damage to  Storm Bolt PER 10 current Mana. This is the main reason we try to stack so much base mana into our build.
• 1 point into Looming Clouds: Pathing Node.
• 4 points into Concentrated Storm: Storm Bolts deal 32% more damage.
• 2 points into In the Eye of the Storm: Pathing Node.
• 1 point into Rending Vortex:  Storm Bolt has 1% Base Critical Chance per stack of  Maelstrom you have.
• 3 points into Jolting Strikes: Storm Bolts have a chance to Shock enemies, reducing their Lightning Resistance, and increasing their chance to be stunned.
• 2 points into Tempest Weapon: Our unique  Tempest Maw, will now give us +18 to our base spell damage for  Storm Bolt.
• 1 point into Lightning Strikes Twice: Our Storm Bolts have a 20% chance to be repeated when they hit a Boss or Rare.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine 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.

 Tornado is our main damage driver, because of this we are sure to scale everything we can towards it. Lacking in lightning critical strike chance, or Critical Multipliers will hurt us. We take large base damage increases to the subskill  Storm Bolt via  Gathering Storm. Tornado should almost always be immidiately activated once we start attacking with  Armblade Slash, and will begin to tear apart enemies in the vacinity. This, like the others, is passively activated, and will only require us to be in form.

• 1 point into Charged Storm: Causes Tornado, to cast  Storm Bolt.
• 3 points into Lasting Storm: Tornadoes last longer.
• 4 points into Debris: Causes Tornadoes to do 88% more damage.
• 4 points into Hurricane: Pathing Node.
• 1 point into Eye of the Storm: Can now only cast 1 Tornado that attaches to you, but its does 100% more damage.
• 1 point into Aspect of the Storm: This gives you 10% increased movespeed, when Tornado is active.
• 4 points into Frequent Lightning: This will cause the Tornado to cast more than double the amount of  Storm Bolts.
• 3 points into Storm Dervish: Aspect of the Storm now gives 21% increase to your attack speed as well.
• 1 point into Snap Gale: Gives the Tornado 10% more damage.
• 1 point into Churning Orbs: Does not directly buff damage, but casts a "hit" spell, that will proc our items and skills for armor shred and health/Rage on Critical Hit.
• 1 point into Overcast Skies: Increased the Area of Effect for our Tornado's  Storm Bolt, hitting targets further away.

4 additional points are allocated from our gear. Without this gear we would need to remove points. Removing the point from Churning Orbs, Overcast Skies, and 2 points from Storm Dervish. This will cause the most minimal disruption in damage output.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine 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.

 Swarmblade Form is the beginning and the end of our build. Without this skill, almost all of our other skills are useless. When we are out of form we will lose significant defesive modifiers and have a difficult time doing damage. All of our skills revolve around this form, thus, staying in form is imperative.

• 1 point into Viper's Call: This node allows you to use the passives from the  Serpent Strike tree with  Armblade Slash.
• 2 points into Endless Pressure: You gain Health and Rage on kill, or per hit on a boss or rare enemy.
• 1 point into Windfury Strikes: Getting 6 stacks of Howling Cascade, a sub-skill of this node, will cast  Tornado.
• 2 points into Army of the Tempest: This node cuts the required 6 stacks to 4 to produce a  Tornado. This also almost doubles the damage of Tornados when produced this way.
• 1 point into Earth Stinger: Pathing Node.
• 5 points into Needle-Like Sting: This increases your base critical strike damage of everything you do.
• 2 points into Grasshopper's Frenzy: You gain Rage when you or your  Summon Locust critically strike an enemy.
• 2 points into Locust Agility: Give you base Armor and Dodge Rating when in  Swarmblade Form.
• 4 points into Water Strider: Whenever you  Dive, you gain 4 stacks of  Maelstrom.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine 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.

 Maelstrom is one of our most key skills, which is also enabled passively through automation while in form. At 6 or more stacks, it will keep us hasted, helping our movement speeds issues, and keep us frenzied, which will add even more attack speed keeping our  Tornado's spinning, and casting  Storm Bolt. It will also passively cast its own Storm Bolt, and the more stacks of Maelstrom we have, will give all of our hits a massive chance to stun.

• 4 points into Whirlpool: This node increased the stack duration of Maelstrom.
• 1 points into Turbulence: Pathing Node.
• 2 points into Calm: Reduces Mana (Rage) cost of Maelstrom.
• 1 point into Windswept: While at 6 or more stacks, you have Haste.
• 1 point into Windfury: While at 6 or more stacks, you gain Frenzy.
• 3 points into Sleet-Footed: Gain 36 to your base dodge rating, per stack of Maelstrom.
• 1 point into Power of the Storm: While at 6 or more stacks, you cast  Storm Bolt every second.
• 2 points into Energized: You hit two additional targets with  Storm Bolt from the node above.
• 1 point into Cyclone: Pathing Node.
• 4 points into Essence of Debris: Each stack of Maelstrom increases you Stun chance by 60%.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine 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.

 Serpent Strike is one of our key enabling skills. Like the rest of our skills, it acts passively for us, and in human form will not function. The skill allows us to gain massive amounts of defensive dodge, it will also allow us to instantly kill enemies with 18% of their HP.

• 3 points into Slither: Whenever you use  Armblade Slash (not hit), you gain 12%. This effect stacks in the last 4 seconds.
• 2 points into Gouging Spear: Pathing Node.
• 1 point into Frostwyrm's Fury: Pathing Node.
• 3 points into Coldfang: Pathing Node.
• 1 point into Shroud of Winter: For every 10% of your Cold Resistance, you gain a buff than increases base dodge rating per use of  Armblade Slash.
• 3 points into Culling Point: You instantly kill enemies at or below 18% Health.
• 3 points into Hydra Strikes: Gain Attack Speed.
• 4 points into Corrosive Venom: 80% chance to Shred Armor on enemies hit by  Armblade Slash.