The Beastmaster in Last Epoch is a powerful choice for players who relish commanding ferocious animal companions while also dealing substantial damage themselves. This guide will provide an in-depth exploration of how to optimize your Beastmaster build for a seamless leveling experience up to level 60. Through strategic skill selection, passive choices, and precise equipment recommendations, this guide ensures you can unleash the full potential of the Beastmaster class.
Skill Mastery: Building the Ultimate Beastmaster
Summon Wolf: Your Loyal Pack of Predators
Summon Wolf is the cornerstone of the Beastmaster build. These companions are not just for show—they will be your primary source of damage output and defense. Proper investment in this skill ensures your wolves are a formidable force on the battlefield.
- On the Hunt: This passive increases the attack speed of your wolves, allowing them to deliver rapid and relentless attacks on enemies.
- Howl of Might: Boost your wolves’ damage and survivability, making them more resilient in prolonged battles.
- Safety in Numbers: With this passive, you can summon up to five wolves, turning your Beastmaster into a one-person wolf pack.
- Savage Hunters: Amplify the damage output of your wolves, making them deadly adversaries for your foes.
- Legendary Bite: This passive enhances the critical hit potential of your wolves, ensuring they deal devastating blows.
Swipe: The Beastmaster’s Primary Attack
Swipe serves as your main attack skill, perfectly complementing your summoned wolves. When fully optimized, it turns your Beastmaster into a melee powerhouse, capable of dealing with enemies directly while your wolves tear them apart.
- Way of the Hunt: Boosts physical damage, making each Swipe more powerful.
- Wengarian Reach: Extends your attack range and damage, allowing you to hit multiple enemies at once.
- Aspect of the Panther: Increases attack speed and damage, ensuring your strikes are both swift and powerful.
- Wild Calling: Grants a chance to summon Spirit Wolves with each attack, adding another layer to your damage output.
- Culling: Provides a significant damage boost, especially against weakened enemies.
Fury Leap: Mobility and Damage Combined
Fury Leap adds a dynamic element to your gameplay, enabling rapid movement across the battlefield while delivering high-impact damage. This skill is essential for both offense and defense.
- Warrior’s Entrance: Enhances damage upon landing, making your leap more impactful.
- Frenzied Onslaught: Further boosts damage and attack speed post-leap, allowing you to chain attacks seamlessly.
- Panther Strike: Increases the effectiveness of your leap, ensuring maximum damage.
- Regain Stamina: Reduces the cooldown, enabling more frequent use of Fury Leap.
- Windhammer: Adds area-of-effect damage, making Fury Leap a devastating attack in crowded situations.
Warcry: The Beastmaster’s Battle Shout
Warcry is your go-to skill for both offensive and defensive situations. It offers substantial buffs and debuffs, making it indispensable for survival and dominance in battle.
- Berserker: Stacks damage buffs, increasing your overall combat effectiveness.
- Brutality: Extends the duration of Berserker stacks, keeping you in peak fighting condition longer.
- Deep Roar: Enhances critical damage, allowing for more powerful attacks.
- Battle Cry: Reduces enemy damage, providing crucial protection in tight spots.
- Juggernaut: Prevents damage while using Warcry, essential for maintaining health in the midst of battle.
Frenzy Totem: Amplify Your Pack’s Power
Frenzy Totem is crucial for maximizing your wolves’ damage output, turning them into even more formidable predators.
- Rabidity: Increases attack speed, allowing your wolves to strike faster.
- Bestial Frenzy: Boosts overall damage, ensuring your wolves hit harder.
- Furious Cry: Refreshes the cooldowns of your wolves’ abilities, keeping them in the fight longer.
- Lead the Pack: Provides buffs to all summoned creatures, not just wolves, enhancing your entire army.
- Totemic Reach: Extends the range of Frenzy Totem’s effects, covering more of the battlefield.
Optimizing Passive Skills for Maximum Efficiency
Primalist Passives: Building a Strong Foundation
- Primal Strength: Enhances your strength and overall damage, making you a more effective combatant.
- Survival of the Pack: Provides health leech and damage boosts, essential for both you and your wolves.
- Hunter’s Restoration: Further improves damage and health regeneration, keeping you and your pack in peak condition.
- Primal Medicine: Adds healing for both you and your minions, ensuring survival in prolonged encounters.
Beastmaster Passives: Elevating Your Mastery
- Ursine Strength: Bolsters your strength stat, directly influencing your damage output.
- Savagery: Increases damage for both you and your minions, making each attack more lethal.
- Lamprey Teeth: Provides health leech, ensuring you stay healthy during combat.
- The Chase: Boosts minion speed and attack speed, making your wolves faster and deadlier.
- Ambush: Unlocks Aspect of the Shark, adding a significant damage buff to your arsenal.
- Boar Heart: Enhances strength and attack damage, further boosting your offensive capabilities.
- Rending Maw: Adds armor shred, weakening enemies for both you and your minions.
- The Circle of Life: Provides additional health and damage boosts, essential for staying power in tough battles.
- Ocean Maw: Enhances the Aspect of the Shark buff, maximizing its effectiveness.
- Ancient Might: Continues to increase your damage output as you progress, ensuring your attacks remain powerful.
Equipment and Affixes: Building the Perfect Loadout
Essential Affixes: The Core of Your Gear
- Strength: Critical for increasing overall damage, making it a top priority on all gear.
- Melee Physical Damage: Directly boosts your base damage, making your attacks more effective.
- Physical Damage: Enhances all physical attacks, ensuring you deal consistent damage.
- Minion Physical Damage: Increases the damage output of your wolves, making them even more lethal.
- Movement Speed: Vital for maintaining mobility and avoiding damage.
- All Resistances: Essential for survivability, reducing incoming damage from various sources.
- Armor: Provides additional protection, reducing physical damage taken.
- Health and Health Regen: Crucial for sustaining in prolonged battles, ensuring you remain in the fight.
Recommended Gear: Crafting Your Ideal Loadout
Basic Items:
- Wolf Pelt: Offers early game strength and armor, perfect for initial leveling.
- Darkwolf Pelt: Enhances both physical and minion damage, ideal for mid-game.
- Shamanic Garb: Boosts minion damage and provides high armor, excellent for a durable build.
- Bearded Axe: Increases minion damage, making it a solid choice for a primary weapon.
- Orbit Cleaver: Delivers high damage output in the late game, a must-have for maximizing damage.
- Sage Antler: Improves physical damage, further enhancing your offensive capabilities.
Unique and Named Items:
- Artor’s Legacy: Adds an extra wolf and boosts minion skills, invaluable for increasing your pack’s power.
- Howl of the West Wind: Great for early game, particularly with lightning-based attacks.
- Urzil’s Pride: Provides strength, armor, and mana boosts, making it a versatile choice.
- Keeper’s Gloves: Enhances the power of your summoned bees, offering an interesting alternative to wolves.
- Stormhide Paws: Adds lightning damage and improves overall attributes, perfect for an elemental twist on your build.
- Swaddling of the Erased: Increases melee damage and all attributes, a strong choice for a balanced build.
- Thorn Slinger: Offers movement speed and skill bonuses, ideal for a nimble Beastmaster.
- Beast King: A late-game one-handed axe with excellent minion modifiers, perfect for maximizing your wolves’ damage.
- Harthenon’s Vow: Great early-game two-handed axe, offering solid damage and utility.
- Dedication of an Erased Primalist: Adds skill points and is often better than most rares, making it a strong early game option.
- Arboreal Circuit: Boosts minion armor and player movement speed, essential for maintaining momentum.
- Singularity: Constantly increases damage, perfect for sustained battles.
Idol Affixes: Enhancing Your Abilities
- All Resistances: Ensures survivability, reducing the risk of fatal damage.
- Health and Health Regen: Improves sustain, allowing you to outlast opponents.
- Physical Damage: Directly increases your overall damage output.
- Increased Minion Cooldown Recovery Speed: Enhances the effectiveness of your minions by reducing their ability cooldowns.
- Shared Physical Damage: Boosts damage for both you and your minions, making it a crucial affix.
- Increased Aspect of the Shark Effect: Maximizes the benefits of this critical buff, ensuring peak performance.
Gameplay Strategy
Playing the Beastmaster involves a balance between commanding your minions and actively participating in combat. Here’s a step-by-step approach:
- Summon Wolves: Start by summoning your wolves to have a full pack ready.
- Engage with Swipe: Use Swipe to deal with most enemies and summon Spirit Wolves.
- Utilize Fury Leap: Leap into or out of combat as needed to maintain mobility and deal damage.
- Deploy Frenzy Totem: Use Frenzy Totem before engaging tougher enemies or bosses to boost your wolves’ damage.
- Activate Warcry: Use Warcry to stun enemies and stack Berserker buffs for increased damage.
- Maintain Buffs: Keep an eye on your buffs and refresh them as needed, especially Aspect of the Shark.
Additional Tips
- Health Management: Use your wolves’ Howl ability to regain health and provide attack bonuses.
- Map Traversal: Utilize Fury Leap to navigate maps quickly and efficiently.
- Customization: Feel free to replace wolves with other animal companions like bears or raptors if preferred, adjusting your passives accordingly.
Conclusion
The Beastmaster class in Last Epoch offers a unique blend of minion management and direct combat, making it a versatile and engaging choice for players. By following this guide, you can maximize your efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring a smooth and powerful leveling experience up to level 60. Happy hunting!