Druid Bleed Swarmblade Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.1)

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 boosting our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 5 points into Gift of the Wilderness: Increases our Health and Minion Health.
• 3 points into Natural Attunement: Attunement and Lightning/Cold Resistance. You can trim, or add, points here if you need to cap these resistances based on your gear.
• 4 points into Hunter's Restoration: Increased Health and Health restored on hit every 3 seconds.
• 1 point into Primal Medicine: Increased Minion Damage and a portion of healing potions applied to minions.
• 1 point into Primal Strength: Strength and Health Regeneration, but we mainly take this to unlock the next node.
• 3 points into Survival of the Pack: Increased Melee Damage and Melee Life Leech for us and our minions.
• 5 points into Ancient Call: Added Health, Companion Health and faster Revival Speed.

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 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 boosting our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Ursine Strength: Gain Strength and Damage Reduction.
• 2 points into Feline Bond: Added Dodge Rating for us and our Minions, as well as increased Companion Revive Range
• 5 points into Boar Heart: Grants us Aspect of the Boar when hit by a melee attack.
• 8 points into The Chase: Increases Minion Attack and Cast Speed, Minion Movespeed and increased Companion Revive Speed.

Our base class is the Primalist, which acts as 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 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 boosting our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 7 points into Chitinous Plating: Increases our Endurance and Armor.
• 5 points into Spirit Warden: Added flat Health and Mana.
• 5 points into Druidic Prowess: Added Strength and Attunement, as well as +1 to all our stats.
• 6 points into Claws of the Forest: Increased Physical/Poison damage for us and our minions.
• 5 points into Thicket of Thorns: Chance to cast  Thorn Shield when we are hit, as well as increased Armor.
• 5 points into Focused Wrath: Increased Damage while transformed and, more importantly, reduced Rage Decay.
• 5 points into Wind in the Leaves: Increases our Attack and Cast Speed, as well as our minion's.
• 1 point into Rancour: No Rage Decay when out of combat. Take note, using any abilities counts as combat.
• 8 points into Force of Nature: Adds Physical Damage for melee and spell damage for us and our minions.
• 10 points into Hideskin: Adds Flat Health and gives additional Endurance Threshold based on our Maximum Health.
• 5 points into Impervious: Increases our Damage Reduction.

Our base class is the Primalist, which acts as 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 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 boosting our survivability. Each of the Passive Trees and their points are broken down below.

• 6 points into Shamanic Infusion: Flat Attunement and Physical, Cold and Lightning Penetration.

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 only permanent minions, which we double and transform into Squirrels thanks to the Unique Helmet,  Herald of the Scurry. We focus our points on helping keep them alive, maximizing how many of them we get, and increasing how many Bleed stacks they can apply to enemies. Between some Minion Health mods on gear, leech effects from gear and passives, and increased Revive Range and Speed, the Squirrels end up being surprisingly easy to keep alive outside of boss fights. In boss fights, they will likely die a few times, unless you are very good at controlling them with the attack command (defaults to 'A' unless you have rebound it), but they also revive quite quickly.

• 1 point into Canine Agility: Added Dodge Rating for our Squirrels and us.
• 4 points into Serrated Claws: Increased Melee Bleed Chance for our Squirrels.
• 1 points into Crippling Wounds: Increased Bleed Duration for our Squirrels and Chance to Slow on hit or when hit.
• 1 point into Safety In Numbers: Allows you to summon Wolves up to your Companion Limit.
• 2 point into Lupine Endurance: Increased Health for the Squirrels.
• 2 points into Wolfen Recovery: Flat and Increased Health Regen for your Squirrels.
• 3 points into Earthborn: Flat armor and Physical Damage Leech for your Squirrels.
• 1 point into Pack Hunters: Adds an extra wolf, which becomes two bonus Squirrels.
• 5 points into On the Hunt: Adds Attack Speed and Movement Speed for our Squirrels.
• 3 points into Patient Hunters: Wolves deal more Damage over Time and Bleeds they inflict have additional Physical Penetration.

If you don't have the 3 extra levels for the skill yet, you can skip the last 3 points.

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.

We want to spend as much time as possible in  Swarmblade Form. When we are in this form, we command our horde of Locusts and Squirrels (and sometimes a Snake!) to soften the enemy, applying a ton of Bleed stacks that we consume to create a high damage Locust Swarm to annihilate enemies.

Due to the passive Bloodlust Swarm, we will get a large amount of increased damage from consuming all Bleed stacks. This node used to be the keystone of the entire build, but since it's nerf, we are focusing on increasing our minion damage a bit more. We can still reach upwards of 5,000% increased damage on bosses, when you consume a full 999 stacks. Therefore, any other Increased Damage modifiers are very low priority, as they stack additively with this bonus and are relatively low impact. Mods that increase our minion damage or penetration are a bit higher priority. We instead focus on survivability for us and our minions, as well as stacking as much Bleed as we can, as fast as possible.

• 1 point into Wasp Flight: Increases our Attack and Cast Speed.
• 5 points into Death by a Thousand Wings: Increases Bleed chance from Armblade and Dive as well as the Locusts' Bleed Chance.
• 1 points into Bloodlust Swarm: Despite it's nerf, this is still a very strong node, giving a large amount of increased damage to our Locust Swarm.
• 2 points into Slashing Spiral: Increased area for Swarm Strike, Locust Swarm and our Locust's Melee attacks.
• 3 point into Neverending Drove: Increased Locust Swarm Duration and hit damage for Swarm Strike.
• 2 points into Locust Agility: Added flat Dodge Rating and Armor for us and our Locusts while we are in Swarmblade form.
• 3 points into Grand Colony: Increases the maximum amount of Locusts we can have, and how many Locusts each Hive can spawn.
• 3 points into Bountiful Hibernacula: Gives us health and rage when a Locust is released from a hive. This allows us to potentially stay in Swarmblade form indefinitely, if you are constantly consuming locusts and placing new hives.
• 1 point into Viper's Call: This makes our Armblade Slashes adopt the nodes from the  Serpent Strike skill tree.
• 3 points into Plague of Locusts: Adds more damage for Locust Swarm for each Locust consumed.

If you do not have the extra levels to  Swarmblade Form yet, you can skip the last 3 points. If you have extra points, or feel a bit squishy, you could trim a point from Neverending Drove and Plague of Locusts for points in Vampiric Mandibles for more leech. Also, in testing, the duration of Locust Swarm seemed to be lasting a very long time, sometimes forever. It may be a temporary bug, but if you are encountering this, you could trim all but 1 point from Neverending Drove and fill out any of the nodes that you wish.

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.

This skill, as well as  Maelstrom are not super important to the build. However, since the Armblade slash in  Swarmblade Form can benefit from the  Serpent Strike tree, we gain a few small, but noticeable, bonuses from speccing into the tree as well. We gain a Kill Threshold, Armor Shred, and we can pump a bit of extra Bleed stacks from our own attacks. However, the vast majority of Bleed stacks will be generated by our minions.

• 3 points into Slither: Added Dodge Rating whenever we use  Serpent Strike.
• 5 points into Gouging Spear: Increased Bleed Chance.
• 1 point into Swirling Carnage: Added Bleed Chance for each stack of  Maelstrom.
• 3 points into Hydra Strikes: Increased Attack Speed.
• 3 points into Culling Point: Adds an 18% Kill Threshold.
• 2 points into Devour Prey: Health gained on kill or crit.
• 5 points into Corrosive Venom: Armor Shred chance.
• 1 point into Primal Serpent: Adds a chance to summon a temporary minion when we kill an enemy or hit a rare or boss.
• 1 point into Guardian Spear: Heals the current Serpent and buffs it's damage when you would summon a new one.
• 1 point into Vicious Strikes: Gives the Serpent more Attack Speed and a Health on Hit effect.

If you don't have the extra levels from gear yet, you can skip the last points in the list. They are listed roughly in order of importance. If you have 2 more points, from a max rolled  Plague Dragon's Tongue, you can put them into Vicious Strikes, but this is pretty low impact.

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.

As stated previously, this skill is not a high damage part of the build. We run it simply for some of the passive bonuses we gain, such as haste, as well as the passive heal and dodge it adds. You will not directly cast this ability, as the idols and chance to cast on kill or hitting a rare/boss will trigger the stacks for you.

• 4 points into Whirlpool: Increased Stack Duration.
• 4 points into Turbulence: More damage for  Maelstrom.
• 2 points into Growing Storm: Chance to cast  Maelstrom on kill or hitting a rare/boss enemy.
• 3 points into Calm: Reduced Mana cost.
• 1 point into Windswept: Grants Haste whenever you have 6 or more stacks.
• 1 point into Windfury: Grants Frenzy when you have 6 or more stacks.
• 2 points into Sleet-Footed: Added Dodge Rating per  Maelstrom stack.
• 1 point into Cyclone: Converts  Maelstrom to physical damage, which is the main thing we are scaling in the build. Also changes it's chill chance to slow chance, which has some added benefits elsewhere in the build, as well as being a more reliable defensive ailment.
• 2 points into Arctic Chill: Adds a Chill chance per second (converted to slow chance due to previous node).
• 2 points into Healing Winds: Adds Healing per Second to yourself and allies inside it's area.

As with other skills, if you do not have all the extra points from gear yet, you can skip the last few passives listed.

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.

This should be the last skill you specialize into, as we need to obtain an idol with the 'Chance to cast Thorn Totem on hit' before we can utilize the skill. We cannot manually cast it while in Swarmblade form, so the idol is the main way we get the totems out. Once you have obtained an idol with that mod, it will trigger fairly consistently, and summon the max totems in the process.

• 4 points into Forested Expanse: Adds 4 more totems, but also increases the mana cost.
• 4 points into Eternal Forest: Increased Duration and Health for the totems.
• 1 point into Grove Mind: Summons your max number of totems in a ring, but reduces the max number of totems by 1 and adds additional mana cost.
• 3 points into Torrent of Thorns: Chance to fire double projectiles.
• 4 points into Lethal Thicket: Increased Critical Chance and 20% more damage for your Thorn Totems.
• 1 point into Titan's Bane: Thorn totems only fire one projectile, but they have increased cast speed, accuracy and more damage against Rare/Boss enemies.
• 2 points into Spriggans' Wrath: Thorn Totems can pierce 2 additional enemies.