Sorcerer Black Hole Frostbite Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.0)

Our base class is Mage, which fills the role of spell caster and magic user in Last Epoch. 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. For Mage, you can choose between Passive Trees for Sorcerer, Spellsword, and Runemaster. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Mage Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Sorcerer is the Advanced Class used for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will come from. The Sorcerer Tree will focus around picking nodes that increase our Cold Damage, Cold Penetration, and Mana Regen. A lesser amount of Passive Points will come from Runemaster, focusing on Ward and Mana, but also unlocking  Flame Rush and  Frost Wall as a usable spells. Spellsword is not used in this build. Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Elementalist: Increases Cold Damage.
• 6 points into Arcanist: Intelligence gains and Fire and Lightning Resistance.
• 6 points into Reactive Ward: This will trigger fairly consistently since, through gearing, we will be trading Health for Ward on every cast.
• 5 points into Warden: Ward Retention.
• 3 points into Silver Rune: Increases Ward gain from the previous node and cuts the cooldown of the effect in half.

Our base class is Mage, which fills the role of spell caster and magic user in Last Epoch. 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. For Mage, you can choose between Passive Trees for Sorcerer, Spellsword, and Runemaster. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Mage Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Sorcerer is the Advanced Class used for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will come from. The Sorcerer Tree will focus around picking nodes that increase our Cold Damage, Cold Penetration, and Mana Regen. A lesser amount of Passive Points will come from Runemaster, focusing on Ward and Mana, but also unlocking  Flame Rush and  Frost Wall as a usable spells. Spellsword is not used in this build. Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Mana Shell: Increased Armor and Mana.
• 5 points into Arcane Momentum: Casting a spell gives you a stack of Arcane Momentum, with each stack granting increased Cast Speed. Caps at five stacks.
• 8 points into Essence of Celerity: Increased Spell Damage and Movement Speed with Arcane Momentum.
• 8 points into Cryomancer: Cold Damage and Freeze Rate Multiplier.
• 5 points into Chill to the Bone: Invaluable Cold Penetration and Cold Damage Leech. Helps generate Ward with our gearing choices.
• 1 point into Arcane Avalanche: One point taken that allows you to Freeze bosses.
• 10 points into Arcane Insight: This has 100% uptime in combat, so think of this node as +10 Intelligence, +20% Elemental Damage, and +20% Ward Retention.
• 8 points into Elemental Ascendance: Elemental Resistance is mostly important for the Cold Resistance increase, but also increases Cold Damage.
• 4 points into Recollection: Lowers cooldown for  Black Hole and  Flame Ward.

Our base class is Mage, which fills the role of spell caster and magic user in Last Epoch. 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. For Mage, you can choose between Passive Trees for Sorcerer, Spellsword, and Runemaster. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Mage Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Sorcerer is the Advanced Class used for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will come from. The Sorcerer Tree will focus around picking nodes that increase our Cold Damage, Cold Penetration, and Mana Regen. A lesser amount of Passive Points will come from Runemaster, focusing on Ward and Mana, but also unlocking  Flame Rush and  Frost Wall as a usable spells. Spellsword is not used in this build. Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

• 8 points into Sphere of Protection: Since everything we do causes Chill stacks, this effectively becomes a permanent Damage Reduction.
• 8 point into Unsealed Mana: Taken for the Cast Speed.
• 8 points into Arcane Focus: Intelligence and Ward on cast.
• 6 points into Transcendence: Bonus Health, bonus node provides 36 Ward per second.

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.

 Black Hole is used specifically for crowd control in this build. Any and all enemies will be sucked towards the center of the Black Hole, creating the perfect opportunity for us to drop  Frost Wall on them and begin pummeling away with  Frost Claw. The cooldown has been reduced so it is feasible to use this in echoes without too much downtime.

• 3 points into Stability: 30% increase to the duration. In turn, reduces the downtime that the skill will not be active.
• 2 points into Endless Maw: Further increases the duration, but also increases the cooldown.
• 1 point into Scattered: Drops another Black Hole somewhere nearby, doubling the effective area we can suck mobs into.
• 1 point into Time Dilation: Mostly taken for traversal, but Black Hole also has a chance to apply Blind.
• 3 points into Rifts: Drops the cooldown, but also reduces pull strength and the effective area of Black Hole.
• 4 points into Intensity: Returns the Pull Strength we lost due to Rifts.
• 4 points into Massive: Returns the Pull Area we lost due to Rifts with a little extra.
• 3 points into Cascade Fracture: Adds a 30% chance that Black Hole will recast itself. This only applies to the original Black Hole we place, not the one created by Scattered.

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.

 Frost Claw is the main damage dealer for the build, and this is how we will apply a good chunk of our stacks of Frostbite onto mobs. This is considered the spam skill in the build. With constant uptime, you can easily hit 500 or more stacks of Frostbite with only this skill.

• 3 points into Gift of Winter: Reduces Mana cost and provides a small chance of refunding Mana on cast.
• 5 points into Artor's Sceptre: 100% chance to inflict Frostbite on each hit.
• 1 point into Frost Beyond Time: Frostbite, Slow, and Chill durations extended by 25% when applied by Frost Claw.
• 3 points into Brightfrost: Ailment cleanse on cast, and a boost to Cast Speed.
• 1 point into Hand of Morditas: Adds two extra projectiles to the cast, but increases the Mana cost at the same time.
• 1 point into Volley of Glass: The burst that happened at the end of this spell disappears. In exchange, every projectile has its own damage instance, perfect for applying Frostbite. This nearly doubles Mana cost.
• 1 point into Shiver Shell: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Rending Cascade: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Frozen Reign: Reduces Mana cost by 3.
• 1 point into Glamdring: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Cold Star: 6% damage increase. Ignore the area increase, the explosion is gone due to Volley of Glass.
• 1 point into On Through The Snow: Continues the cast beyond the first point of impact, used for clearing echoes. Increases Mana cost by 8.

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.

 Frost Wall is used in this variation to apply a handful of Frostbite stacks, as well as providing a much higher chance to Freeze enemies if they touch the wall. Walking through your Frost Wall will generate Ward and refund Mana when you walk through it, so its worth placing this down in your walking path when possible.

• 4 points into Biting Limit: Applies 8 stacks of Frostbite a second to all enemies inside of Frost Wall.
• 4 points into Crystals of Protection: Gain Ward and Mana when you walk through the Wall.
• 4 points into Marching Winter: Frost Wall stays active longer, and becomes longer.
• 5 points into The Dark Cold: Increases Frostbite damage the longer the Wall is active.
• 4 points into Biting Limit: Frost Wall applies 8 stacks of Frostbite a second to enemies within it.
• 2 points into Arch of Rimefrost: Frost Wall has higher Freeze Rate Multiplier.
• 1 point into Frigid Domination: This build will sit around 1200% Freeze Rate Multiplier, boosting the Spell Damage on Frost Wall by about 60.
• 1 point into Frozen Throne: Frost Wall now deals more damage to Frozen enemies and Freezes them for longer.

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.

 Flame Ward has dual purpose for this build, acting as an on-demand source of Ward, but also as a way to open burst windows to deal damage. A charge has been added to this to allow more flexibility in usage.

• 3 points into Dilation: Increases duration.
• 5 points into Infusion: Increases all Cold damage while Flame Ward is active by 250%.
• 1 point into  Fire Aura: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Frost Ward: Converts spell to Cold.
• 2 points into Frostguard: While Flame Ward is active, you have an extra 400 Armor.
• 5 points into Stalwart Defense: 200 Ward gained on use.
• 1 point into Desperate Defense: We don't get much use out of this, we're almost always at full Health.
• 2 points into Fuel The Flames: Flame Ward grants 20% more Ward.
• 1 point into Dual Aegis: Adds a charge to Flame Ward.

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.

 Flame Rush is the mobility spell for this build, but also provides stacks of Cold Shred to amplify burst damage when passing through enemies. Moving through enemies also applies Brand of Subjugation, which is a heavy hitting Cold DoT that scales off Chill chance. Flame Rush can be used to move through  Frost Wall for efficiency. Since mobs have collision, this is usually the best way to go about doing this and not getting stuck.

• 2 points into Fiery Overload: Provides Frenzy when Flame Rush ends.
• 3 points into Lunar Protection: Generate Ward while using Flame Rush.
• 1 point into Energy Equivalence: Traversal node.
• 1 point into Snowballing: Turns Flame Rush into Frost Rush with a Cold conversion.
• 1 point into Branding Cold: Passing through enemies applies Brand of Subjugation. This is the reason we take Chance to Chill on our Wand, as you will see in the gearing section of the build.
• 3 points into Blazing Flux: Reduces cooldown and Mana cost.
• 3 points into Runic Eclipse: Reduces damage taken while using Flame Rush, and mitigates twice as much damage from DoTs.
• 1 point into Celestial Guidance: Mitigative buffs persist after Flame Rush ends.
• 1 point into Solar Rush: Increases the Speed and Range of Flame Rush.
• 5 points into Smolder and Burn: Applies 5 stacks of Cold Shred on enemies when you pass through them.