Necromancer Golem Betrayal Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.1)

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 Golem Betrayal, 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.
• 7 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: Taking a point to move further into the tree.
• 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.
• 4 points into Cursed Blood: Increases our Minion Damage.
• 8 points into Aegisfall: This is massive portion of our damage scaling, which allows all minions to gain Armor Shred at 200%.
• 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.
• 5 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.
• 4 points into Empty The Graves: Increases your Health Regen and Armor based on how many minions you have.
• 1 point into Disciples of Necromancy: Adds an additional Skelletal Mage to our pool, making it a Total of 5.

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 Golem Betrayal, 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 Ward of Malevolence: Gain Ward Decay Threshold, and Ward on Kill.
• 3 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 and generating Ward. This is a click-heavy skill.

Note: The node Arcane Fortress could be skipped if the player is noticing they cannot maintain near full Health. However the changes to  Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros from 1.0 and into 1.1 should make this manageable. If the player is having Mana problems, release a single point from Splatter and place it into Mana Feast.

• 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 pathing 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.
• 2 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 Arcane Fortress: Causes Rip Blood to now give you Ward, rather than health. Only get when you have  Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros.

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, because 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 sacrificial lamb in our build. This monster will cast  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 enough to be in his vicity will be 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 Health, sporting somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 Health. Hunger will heal both him and you for about 100 Health 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.
• 4 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.

Please note, you may not have as many skill points to use until you have the required prefix on the helmet. Split the difference if none can be found. With a +1, a player should prioritize Hunger over Amalgam of Sentinels. If the player has none at all, the player must remove 1 point from Amalgam of Sentinels and 1 from Hunger. The armor from this affix also plays a major roll for our Minions.

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 Skeletal Mage 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 never be anywhere near your 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 Spell Casters to slay a non-rare pack on their own, amplifying clear speeds. Be sure to use this skill as your movement ability, as it will summon and transport all of your minions with you.

• 1 point into Splintered Dominion: This gives all of our mages a chance to split shot.
• 4 points into Argonautic Speed: This increases the cast rate of our Mages. (only take 2 points at start, fill in the other 2 when all nodes are completed.)
• 2 points into Ossein Frenzy: This gives our mages a chance to gain Frenzy.
• 1 point into Forbidden Arcana: Our mages get more damage, based on our Maximum Mana.
• 1 point into Grave Passage: This will now be a movement skill, teleporting us to the position where we summon the mage.
• 2 points into Death's Cavalry: We can now transport with up to 6 minions, you and the 6 are transported with you.
• 5 points into Celer Mortis: The base critical strike chance and movespeed of our Mages increases drastically.
• 3 points into Grey Merchant: The critical strike multiplier for Mages is increases, and they gain 15% of thier health upon critically striking (this will be often).
• 1 point into Order of Death: We gain an additional Skeletal Mage to our pool.

Alternate Scaling: As a player increases the Corruption of an area, you may notice the  Summon Skeletal Mage begin to die rather quickly when in combat if not geared with enough Minion Life. One could choose to instead scale  Transplant with a generic Bone Armor node while maxing Apostasy. When tested, this did not feel very good, as Traversing without your Golem will always feel bad. Your personal damage is fairly low, making Transplant awkward at best as an option for movement. It is best to just have the minions as additive armor shred and use the movement skill with  Summon Skeletal Mage. However, if you decide you'd like to try and use  Transplant, we recommend taking the aformentioned nodes and working to max Cursed Exile with Reign of Blood and Doom Bringer to capitalize on self damage. Be sure to convert your damage to Necrotic with Ethereal Body as Necrotic Damage is scaled slightly better for us. An example is listed below.

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.

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 ways 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 pathing 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%.