Want to know what the best 0.9 Rogue build is for Last Epoch? The game's new patch is here and it brings a ton of features including multiplayer. If you're a rogue enjoyer, then you'll definitely want to know what the best build is going to be for multiplayer and solo play. Well read on and we'll tell you.
What's nice about Last Epoch is that there's a lot of ways to play the game. A lot of the skills are viable, and it's pretty easy to make a build based around a skill. But that doesn't mean that there all builds are equal, some definitely are better than others.
While you're here, why not check out our guide to the 0.9 patch, as there's a lot of information about the update, including multiplayer and a bunch of changes that are coming to the systems of the game as well.
Last Epoch Best 0.9 Rogue Build - Icicle Bow Mage
The build that we're going to be showcasing is the Icicle bow mage. That sounds a bit confusing so let's break it down. We're going to be picking a Rogue to start the game, and we're going to pick the Marksman class when we get to it.
This build is something that you're going to switch over to once you've hit Monoliths. There are a couple build defining unique items that we'll need in order for this build to function. Luckily they're pretty easy to get, so this is a fairly easy build to get going.
If you want to take a look at the full build planner for this build, then head here. Additionally, be sure to check out Dr3adful on YouTube, who put the planner together and has a helpful video on this build.
First, let's talk about those unique items that make the build tick.
Icicle Bow Mage unique items
The first item that we are going to want to get is the unique bow Reign of Winter. This bow is the center piece of our build. It has a ton of cold damage, and most importantly, has a chance cast the Icicle spell on bow hit. So, our goal is to maximize the number of times that we hit with a bow skill, and scaling our cold damage as much as possible to boost the damage of Icicle.
This bow can be farmed quite easily as it drops from Heorot, the boss of The Age of Winter timeline with a 50% drop chance.
The second unique item that we need is the Mourningfrost boost. The important line of text here is that we get +1 cold damage to attacks and spells per point of Dexterity. So we're going to be stacking a fair bit of Dexterity on our character to push that damage as much as we can. We do have to keep in mind that we'll be losing physical and cold resistances per point of Dexterity that we have, but we can make up for that on the rest of our gear.
Now I mentioned that we needed two pieces of unique gear for this build. There's one unique item that we definitely want to get eventually, but is not a mandatory item. The Throne of Ambition idol is incredibly powerful, as it gives us a massive more damage multiplier to our cold damage. When we're clearing high level monoliths, we'll be hitting rares quite a lot, and when we're bossing, well we're hitting the boss all the time. This is definitely an end game item that will be important for bossing, but the build can do monoliths without this item.
Icicle Bow Mage rare and exalted items
For the remainder of our gear, we're going to use rare and exalted gear. We're going to want Dexterity on nearly all of our gear, as that helps scale our damage with Mourningfrost. Then we'll also want to go for "Increased Damage while wielding a Bow" on both our helm and chest piece.
Defensively, we're going to need to make sure that we get our resists in order as much as we can. Since we have reduced overall physical and cold resists from Mourning Frost, we're going to want to have large amounts of that where possible. This will be on our chest and quiver.
We can also get smaller amounts of cold resist by getting an all elemental resist mod on our rings and helm, as well as an idol. Physical resist will come primarily from our amulet. We're going to want to go with a Bone Amulet ideally, as that also provides a good amount of Necrotic resist. You most likely won't be capped through gear, but we'll be able to supplement that with a few other means
Icicle Bow Mage blessings
For our blessings, we'll ideally want to snag any resistance focused ones, such as void resistance The Black Sun, or lightning resist from Ending the Storm. One Blessing we're going to definitely want to farm for is going to be Grand Rage of Winter from the Age of Winter timeline. This gives us a chance to shred cold resistance on hit, further buffing our Icicle damage.
Icicle Bow Mage passives
Next up are our passives. We're going to start putting points into Rogue as that's our base class.
Then after we unlock Marksman, we'll want to put points there.
Lastly, we'll take a few points in Bladedancer. Most of our points are going to be going into Marksman.
Icicle Bow Mage skills
Now, let's talk skills. Icicle luckily doesn't take up a spot on our bar, as it's cast when we hit with a bow skill. Here's the list of the skills we're going to want to use.
- Puncture
- Smoke Bomb
- Shift
- Shurikens
- Multishot
The first skill we'll talk about is Multishot. This is going to be our primary source of proccing Icicle. Here is the skill tree for Multishot.
A couple very important things to note with Multishot are that we're going want to get Efficient Draw right away, as this reduces the mana cost of Multishot. The other node that's very important here is Giant Slayer. This reduces the damage our Multishot actually does, but allows us to shotgun the arrows. This means that one attack's worth of arrows can hit the same target. This is for majors and bosses.
Next, let's look at Puncture.
Puncture is going to do a couple of things for us. First off, it's going to apply bleeds on the target, which is just more overall damage. But more so what it'll be doing for us is helping us to refund mana. By taking Mind Piercer, when we hit with Puncture, it will refund mana. Puncture is free, so it's very helpful after we spam a bunch of Multishots or use our other abilities. Puncture also will give us Frenzy, which increases our attack speed, and lastly it'll help sustain our life. The Mutilate node will consume the bleed stacks on the target and heal us.
Next up we have Smoke Bomb, which is an entirely defensive skill. As the name implies, it drops a Smoke Bomb at our location to give us a ton of defenses. It will give us the Dusk Shroud buff while we're in the smoke which gives us dodge. It will also remove any ailments that are on us, and will apply Frailty to any enemies hit by the initial burst, which reduces their damage.
Shift is our mobility skill that also gives us some defenses as well. Shift will heal us, refund mana, give us dodge chance and invulnerability while we shift. It also will throw any shurikens if we shift near an enemy. Luckily, since we're also taking Shurikens as our last skill, this is a little bit of extra damage.
Speaking of Shurikens, here's our talent tree for that. Primarily, the shurikens are going to be an automatically thrown skill when we shift. When we aren't shifting, our shuriken will be orbiting our character thanks to the Blade Shield node. Additionally, we're going to be gaining armor per shuriken that's spinning around us, thanks to Bladed Armor. We will want to refresh this though when we lose them, so definitely don't sleep on pressing this skill.
Now, the keen eyed among you will notice that on the build planner, Decoy is listed on the skill bar. Well, that's because we're going to choose to specialize in Shurikens and have that active, but have Decoy on our bars as a way to taunt enemies away and group them up.
And that's the build for Icicle Bow Mage for Last Epoch patch 0.9. This build is incredibly fun to play, easy to gear, and will absolutely thrive in nearly all situations. Big thanks again to Dr3ad for throwing this build together!