Paladin Healing Hands Rive Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.1)

Our base class is Sentinel and our chosen Mastery class is Paladin. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Paladin is our chosen Mastery for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will be spent. Almost all of our points will be spent between the Sentinel and Paladin trees, with a single point spent in the Forge Guard tree. However, there is a 'no uniques' version of this build linked in the gear section, that uses  Volatile Reversal instead of  Lunge, and thus needs to spend 5 points in the Void Knight tree to unlock the skill.  Volatile Reversal offers more damage, especially on Bosses, while  Lunge offers faster echo clearing and a more 'fun' playstyle, in our opinion. However, if you prefer Volatile over Lunge, you can easily swap the 5 points between passive trees, while leaving everything else alone and the build will work the same. Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

• 6 points into Juggernaut: Some base Strength and Fire/Void resistance.
• 2 points into Overwhelm: Flat melee physical damage and increased melee stun chance.
• 1 point into Fearless: Vitality and Increased Health Regen.
• 5 points into Armour Clad: Flat Armor and -10% damage taken from nearby enemies. A great defensive passive.
• 5 points into Valiant Charge: Flat Health and Cooldown reduction for our Movement Skills.
• 1 point into Stalwart: We only need to spend a single point, as we take this for the 3% block chance, which does not improve with more points spent in this node.
• 5 points into Time and Faith: A very important passive for our mana sustain, as well as healing us on attacks. With our high attack speed on  Rive, this generates all the mana we should need.
• 5 points into Blademaster: Increased Attack and Cast Speed with Swords or Axes.

Our base class is Sentinel and our chosen Mastery class is Paladin. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Paladin is our chosen Mastery for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will be spent. Almost all of our points will be spent between the Sentinel and Paladin trees, with a single point spent in the Forge Guard tree. However, there is an 'exalted items only' version of this build linked in the gear section, that also shows the trees for using  Volatile Reversal instead of  Lunge, which requires spending 5 points in the Void Knight tree to unlock the skill.  Volatile Reversal offers more damage, especially on Bosses, while  Lunge offers faster echo clearing and a more 'fun' playstyle, in our opinion. If you prefer Volatile over Lunge, you can easily swap the 5 points between passive trees, while leaving everything else alone and the build will work the same. Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Conviction: Increased Physical, fire and lightning damage as well as Increased Physical, Fire and Lightning Penetration
• 4 points into Defiance: Attunment and some Elemental Resistance.
• 1 point into Honour: Flat Block Effectiveness and Stun Avoidance. The first point also gets us 2% Block Chance, which is why we only spend one point here.
• 10 points into Valor: Adds Flat Health and Increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 1 point into Divine Bolt: Adds a 20% chance to cast Divine Bolt on melee attacks. While the damage isn't amazing, this helps us trigger more stacks of things like ignite and armor shred.
• 7 points into Holy Icon: Increased Healing Effectivness, as well as added Necrotic Resistance and Flat Health.
• 10 points into Prayer: Increased Damage and Healing if you have healed yourself or any ally recently.
• 8 points into Sanctuary Guardian: Flat Armour and Spell Damage while using a Shield.
• 2 points into Faith Armour: Increased ARmour and Critical Strike Avoidance.
• 1 point into Shield Wall: Adds Block Chance and Health gained on Block, but removes out ability to Dodge.
• 1 point into Divine Essence: Chance to trigger a Divine Essence when you heal, which grants 10% increased armor and healing effectivness per stack. Max 3 stacks.
• 12 points into Reverence of Duality: Increased Health, Damage, Healing Effectiveness and Mana.
• 12 points into Light of Rahyeh: Increased Fire/Lightning damage and Movespeed.

Our base class is Sentinel and our chosen Mastery class is Paladin. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Paladin is our chosen Mastery for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will be spent. Almost all of our points will be spent between the Sentinel and Paladin trees, with a single point spent in the Forge Guard tree. However, there is an 'exalted items only' version of this build linked in the gear section, that also shows the trees for using  Volatile Reversal instead of  Lunge, which requires spending 5 points in the Void Knight tree to unlock the skill.  Volatile Reversal offers more damage, especially on Bosses, while  Lunge offers faster echo clearing and a more 'fun' playstyle, in our opinion. If you prefer Volatile over Lunge, you can easily swap the 5 points between passive trees, while leaving everything else alone and the build will work the same. Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

• 1 point into Steel Aegis: Adds a 2% block chance and 50 block effectiveness. We only spend a single point, as the block chance does not scale past the 1st point spent.

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.

While  Healing Hands is our main damage dealer, we never cast it directly and, therefore, do not need to put it on our skill bar. It's recommended to replace that slot with an un-specced  Shield Bash just to help navigate long and straight areas between packs. It will share a cooldown with  Lunge, but you will still use it sometimes to speed up your Echo clears.
To make it so  Healing Hands is our main damage dealer, we have to get it to trigger off melee attacks and also convert it to a melee attack itself. Those are the most important nodes to grab. The rest are spent either upgrading the damage or healing ability, which is converted to Ward generation due to the Divine Barrier node and the Experimental Affix on our gloves.

• 4 points into Cleric's Hammer: This gives us a 100% chance to trigger  Healing Hands on melee hits.
• 1 point into Searing Light: Allows Healing Hands to hit enemies, dealing Fire Damage.
• 2 points into Bane of Evil: Adds 2 Spell Damage (which is converted to melee damage later on the tree) per 10% Healing Effectiveness.
• 2 points into Cleric's Wrath: Adds more damage per level of our Buff skills (Holy Aura, Sigils of Hope and Healing Hands all have the tag), which would be 66% more damage in the example gear.
• 2 points into Virtue of Patience: Increased Damage, Healing and Area at the cost of slower Cast Speed. However, that downside will not matter for our purposes.
• 1 point into Seraph Blade: Converts  Healing Hands into a melee attack, and converts spell damage effects on the tree to melee damage.
• 1 point into Divine Barrier: Adds Ward per 2 Attunement to Healing Hands, as well as converting all Healing into Ward if the target has the right experimental mod.
• 1 point into Purity of Thought: Reduces the Mana cost.
• 1 points into Blessed Parish: Increases the Area and reduces the Mana cost.
• 3 points into Prayer of the Fallen: Increased Healing EFfectiveness.
• 4 points into Urgent Healing: Adds Flat Up Front Healing, which benefits from all of our other healing modifiers and helps generate a ton of Ward for us.
• 2 points into Divine Catalyst: Triggers Divine Bolts when we heal ourselves with  Healing Hands, which provides a little bit of damage, but is more useful as another 'hit' for stacking up things such as Ignite and Shred Armor.

If you do not have the extra 4 levels from gear yet, you can remove up to 1 point from Blessed Parish, Divine Catalyst, Virtue of Patience, and Prayer of the Fallen until you acquire the needed gear.

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.

 Rive is our main skill, meaning the one we will use the most. As  Healing Hands triggers off melee hits, we want  Rive to attack as fast possible to maximize the triggers. Therefore, we are looking to boost its attack speed as much as possible. To that end, we remove the slower, third strike of Rive through the Double Slash node. In most Rive builds, you wouldn't do that as it is the hardest hit of the sequence, but our damage is not coming from Rive itself. We just want it to hit as often as possible.

• 5 points into Flurry: Increased attack speed for first and second strike.
• 2 points into Rending: Increased Armour Shred chance for First and Second strike.
• 1 point into Cadence: Increases our effective attack speed by changing Rive's sequence to 1, 2, 1, 2, 3.
• 1 point into Double Slash: Increases our effective attack speed by removing the 3rd strike from Rive's sequence completely.
• 4 points into Iron Reach: Increase the damage and area of the 2nd strike in Rive's sequence.
• 2 points into Concentration: Adds base Crit to the first and second strike.
• 4 points into Adrenaline: Rive's 2nd strike gives a Increased Crit Chance buff that can stack up to four times.
• 1 point into Challenge: Rive's 2nd strike will pull enemiess in closer, but adds 5 to the Mana cost. NOTE: If you are having Mana issues, you could drop this node for something else. If your Crit Chance is low, you could put another point into Concentration instead.

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.

 Holy Aura gives some great passive benefits, as well as additional effects when activated. Some of the benefits we are targeting are increased Critical Chance, Critical Strike Multiplier, Fire Penetration, Ignite Chance and Increased Fire Damage. All of these stats are then doubled when  Holy Aura is activated. Defensively, Holy Aura also provides 30% Increased Damage and 15% Elemental Resist naturally.

• 3 points into Rahyeh's Devotion: Adds Ignite chance.
• 2 points into Rahyeh's Fury: Adds Fire Penetration.
• 5 points into Burning Blows: Adds Increased Global Fire Damage.
• 3 points into Fanaticism: Increased Attack/Cast Speed.
• 4 points into True Strike: Increased Critical Strike Chance.
• 3 points into Extreme Zeal: Increased Critical Strike Multiplier.

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.

While clearing Echoes, you don't need to directly cast  Sigils Of Hope. However, for optimal damage, you'll at least want to do so on Bosses to keep 4 stacks going. Having all 4 Sigils up can add a decent amount of extra damage and survivability. We are targeting the passives that maximum these offensive and defensive bonuses for ourselves, as well making the Sigils have a chance to trigger on kill to make our clearing smoother, and increasing the duration of the Sigils so we don't have to re-cast them very often.

• 4 points into Empowering Sigils: Increased Damage per Active Sigil.
• 1 point into Last Wish: Chance to summon a Sigil On Kill.
• 3 points into Decree of Flame: Adds Flat Fire Damage per Active Sigil.
• 2 points into Iron Sigils: Adds Endurance Threshold per Active Sigil.
• 4 points into Enduring Hope: Increased Duration for Sigils.
• 1 point into Tetragram: Adds the 4th Sigil.
• 1 point into Meditation: Doubles the Health Regen from Sigils, but Sigils only effect you now.
• 3 points into Sign of the Guardian: Adds Block Chance and Block Effectiveness per Active Sigil.
• 3 points into Invigorate: Increased Healing Effectiveness per Active Sigil.

If you don't have the 2 extra points from gear yet, you could remove upto 2 points from Invigorate.

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.

 Lunge is our mobility skill of choice, as it has the lowest effective cooldown and two charges with how we've specced it. This gives us a great degree of mobility to jump between packs, maximizing our time spent attacking with  Rive. It also provides a debuff to enemies in the form of Frailty, and another healing effect based on our missing health.

• 3 points into Warrior's Renewal: Reduces cooldown by 24% for each of the next 3 attacks you perform. This is the main node that allows us to constantly have Lunge available.
• 2 points into Endless Will Improves the previous node by another 6% (a total of 90% cooldown reduction after three attacks for Lunge), as well as granting us Health when triggered.
• 2 points into Ambuscade: More Melee Damage to High Health targets.
• 1 point into Double Strike: Adds a second charge to Lunge, while increasing the cooldown by 15%. However, in practice, the 2 charges mean you are far more likely to have a use of Lunge available at all times.
• 3 points into Dawn Charge: A percentage of missing Health regained when we use Lunge.
• 1 point into Blade Stream: Lunge now hits all enemies along its path, which will apply any debuffs.
• 3 points into Broadside: Lunge deals damage in a wider area along its path.
• 5 points into Disarming Blow: 300% chance to apply Frailty to enemies hit.