The Ballista Falconer lays down her Ballista and unleashes a constant flow of Ballista Bolts to annihilate any opposition. Buffed by your trusted Falcon through Aerial Assault, you swiftly dispose of any threats.
Ballista serves as your main source of Damage, with short bursts supported by Falconry. The Ballista Falconer has incredible mobility and utility thanks to Aerial Assault, Smoke Bomb, Falconry and Decoy.
This setup doesn’t require any Uniques to function, but it can take advantage of many. Arrowguard helps with tankiness, allowing you to reach up to 100% Glancing Blow. Other Items such as Uethrin's Stand, Peak of the Mountain, Death Rattle, Melvern's Writ, Woven Flesh, Jungle Queen's Chaps of Holding and Foot of the Mountain provide both great offensive and defensive stats.
The Ballista Falconer is an amazing build capable of defeating all content in the game. It’s easy to play, has great Damage with massive range and excellent Minion AI. If you are looking for a fast, turret defense style build that performs well and can fill the screen with Ballista Bolts, this setup is perfect for you! Welcome to the Ballista Falconer!
This article assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Falconer Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
- Fast Clear Speed
- Incredible Sustain
- Excellent Mobility
- Great Damage Scaling
- Can't Facetank
- Mana Management
- Needs Gear to Crit Cap
- Defensive Tools Require Timing
Skills
Ballista
Ballista is your main damage dealing ability. With Perfect Aim, Shared Enhancements and Contaminating Shots, your own stats and ailment chance also apply to your Ballistae. Efficient Construction is essential to lower the skill's Mana Cost. Bodkin Bolts provides better clear speeds in density.
Alternate Skills & Tips
Passives
Passives provide powerful effects that dictate the playstyle of a Class and its Masteries. Remember that you can allocate Passives on the first half of all Masteries regardless of the one you chose.
- Grab the Dexterity and Dexterity scaling Nodes for the many stats and multipliers you are scaling with Dexterity.
- Finesse Them provides a great way to further scale your Damage and provides incredible sustain.
- Tailwind and Evasion provide great Damage Reduction when moving.
- Needle Like Precision gives a lot of Crit Chance and Critical Strike Multiplier.
- Tactician and Swift Assassin provides a high amount of Flat Damage for Ballista.
- Poise and Cloak of Shadows are great ways to scale Glancing Blow Chance.
- Allocate Coordinated Fade to activate when you use Ballista. In this setup, 2 points are allocated. This means Ballista should be the second Skill on your Action Bar, from left to right.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
Summon Ballistae from a safe distance and Buff them with Aerial Assault. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use your Support Skills to stay alive. Pay attention to their telegraphed attacks!
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Summon Ballistae at a sustainable pace for your current Mana Regen.
- Use Aerial Assault to Buff the Ballistae and move around the map. With Experimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills on your Boots, a number are teleported to you as you land.
- Employ Falcon Strikes as Crowd Control and to Cull enemies when needed.
- Throw Decoy when in danger to give yourself some breathing room.
- Make use of Smoke Bomb as an extra Movement Skill when needed, and to avoid telegraphed attacks. Make use of its Invulnerability window and its Silver Shroud!
Mapping
- Move quickly with Aerial Assault and lay down Ballistae while moving to the objective.
- Use Decoy at the objective to ensure a safe disposal of any threat.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your Defensive Buffs and keep them active.
- Use Decoy to distract the Boss. Take advantage of this window to reposition or deal damage.
- Avoid telegraphed attack and reposition with Aerial Assault.
- Smoke Bomb can save you from incoming damage. Time it against dangerous telegraphed Boss attacks.
- Use Falcon Strikes to Cull when the Boss is low enough.
Advanced Skill Tips
Learn more about how to maximize your gameplay in the Build Scaling section of this guide.
Gear
Gearing in Last Epoch revolves around finding Items and then using the powerful Crafting System to enhance them. As long as an Item has Forging Potential left, players can upgrade or modify their Affixes up to Tier 5. However, the powerful Exalted Tier Affixes are drop only and can't be modified by players.
Using the correct Item Bases allows you to make use of their amazing Implicits. This is fundamental for gearing efficiently. Combine Implicits, Passives, Idols and Blessings to cap your Resistances and other defensive layers, while fitting as much Health related Affixes into your gear as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Blessings of your build while gearing. Finish up by farming Uniques with Legendary Potential and Sealing Affixes into Exalted Items to unleash all of your build's power!
Here are the Stat Goals for this build:
- Capped Resistances
- Capped Endurance
- 50% - 100% Glancing Blow Chance
- 200%+ Armor Shred Chance
- 2000+ Health
- 30%+ Armour
- 100% Ballista Critical Strike Chance
- 150%+ Ballista Critical Strike Multiplier
- 80+ Dexterity
- 80+ Intelligence
- 15-18 Flat Mana Regen
- 30% - 50%+ Movement Speed
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with two valuable T5 Affixes. The defensive rolls on T5 Suffixes are very important at this stage as they can easily cap all your Resistances when combined with Item Implicits, Idols, Blessings or Passives.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance is capped. Especially on this build, it also provides Damage from the Falconer Passive Finesse Them. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. Farm this by killing the Abomination in the Fall of the Outcast Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 3
Fit as much Health into your gear as possible. Hybrid Health and %Health are extremely valuable, but can be hard to find early on. Use regular flat Health until you find them.
Milestone 4
Aim for T5 Level of Ballista on your Relic to invest extra Points into its Tree. It provides a significant damage increase.
Milestone 5
While you look for this basic set of gear, start farming your Empowered Blessings and look for any Idols which help you cap all your Resistances or increase your Damage output. Keep an eye out for Large Shadow Idols with Health Prefix and Elemental Resistance Suffix. Also lookout for Adorned Majasan Idol with Shared Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Bow Critical Strike Chance Suffix.
Milestone 1
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get Intelligence and Dexterity to increase your DPS drastically. Mana Regeneration also helps a lot as Ballista has a high Mana cost.
Milestone 2
Look for Peak of the Mountain in the Lightless Arbor Dungeon. It is a common drops from The Mountain Beneath Boss. Farm it on the highest Tier you can, ideally Tier 4.
Milestone 3
Look for Uethrin's Stand in the Fall Of The Outcast Timeline by targeting Unique Bow Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance.
Milestone 4
Farm a Death Rattle in the Age of Winter Monolith Timeline. The Amulet is quite common and easy to get just by targeting Unique Amulet Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances, Endurance and Critical Strike Avoidance. Your goal is to have items with 4 valuable T5 Affixes, also known as T20.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 set up with Exalted items, high value Sealed Affixes or ideally both. Obtain the Affixes included in the Planner, but prioritize the indicated Item Bases for their Implicits. Make sure to Seal highly efficient low tier Affixes.
Milestone 2
Keep farming Peak of the Mountain and Foot of the Mountain in the Lightless Arbor Dungeon from The Mountain Beneath Boss. Experimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills is needed on the Boots, be on the lookout for Exiled Mages inside Echos to find Experimental Items!
Milestone 3
Farm Woven Flesh from Abomination in the Fall of the Outcasts Timeline. Its Critical Strike Avoidance is great at boosting your Damage. Only use it if you manage to get at least Max Ballista and Increased Ballista Attack Speed on it as a Legendary.
Milestone 4
Look for Melvern's Writ in The Last Ruin Timeline by targeting Unique Relic Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance. Only use it if you manage to get at least Level of Ballista on it as a Legendary.
Milestone 5
Farm for Arrowguard in The Fall Of The Outcast Timeline by targeting Unique Quiver Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance. Only use it if you manage to get at least Chance to Shred Armour on Hit on it as a Legendary.
Milestone 6
Look for Jungle Queen's Chaps of Holding in The Fall Of The Empire Timeline by targeting Unique Belt Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance. Only use it if you manage to get at least Hybrid Health or Health on it as a Legendary.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and on the correct Item Base. Min/Maxing your gear in Last Epoch can be pushed to the extreme as Items with multiple Exalted Affixes are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Get as close to perfect rolls for all your Empowered Blessings and get all your Large Shadow Idols with Health Prefix and Elemental Resistance Suffix. Also lookout for Adorned Majasan Idol with Shared Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Chance to Slow on Bow Hit or Bow Critical Strike Chance Suffixes.
Milestone 3
Red Ring of Atlaria is an insane addition to the build. You benefit from so many of its stats, making the build way tankier while not sacrificing too much Damage. Farm it in the Age of Winter Monolith Timeline by targeting Unique Amulet Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance. Keep in mind, this is one of the rarest Item in the entire game!
Milestone 4
Keep farming until you get the maximum Legendary Potential you can find on all of your Uniques.
Milestone 5
Feel free to experiment with any crazy Unique, Legendary or Experimental Items that you might craft, trade or find! The possibilities are endless! Good luck with the chase!
This variant is harder to gear for but deals significantly more Damage. For each point of Dexterity, you lose Physical and Cold Resistance but gain 1 Flat Cold Damage via Mourningfrost. Mitigating the loss of these Resistances is the hard part, but if you are looking to deal more Damage, this is the way to go!
Milestone 1
Farm Mourningfrost with Legendary Potential in the Spirits of Fire Timeline by targeting Unique Boots Echo Rewards or using Rune of Ascendance. Make sure to craft at least Experimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills on them in the Temporal Sanctum.
Milestone 2
Since you no longer use Foot of the Mountain, you need Endurance in other places. In this setup, you use the Relic and Helm slots to reach the Endurance Cap of 60%.
Milestone 3
To cover the missing Resistances, this setup uses Cold Resistance on Arrowguard and Physical Resistance on Death Rattle and a sealed Affix on your Gloves.
The stat priority is also slightly altered between Dexterity and Intelligence, since you get Flat Cold Damage for each point of Dexterity. A fine balance between Dexterity and Resistances is needed to achieve capped Resistances. Good luck with the chase!
Learn the basics for crafting gear with our Beginner Crafting Guide.
Check our Unique Item & Set Farming Guide and learn how to get them!
Want to know more about Legendary Items? Check our Legendary Guide!
Blessings
Completing a Timeline in the Monolith of Fate lets you choose one of several randomized Blessings from its unique pool. Their benefits are permanent and persist even outside of the Monolith of Fate.
Empowered Blessings are a fundamental part of all builds, so getting the correct ones for each is key.
The sooner you reach Empowered Monolith, the faster you can start farming your desired Blessings!
Normal Blessings are not important as they are eventually replaced by Empowered Blessings. However they can still be a great source of Resistances, Critical Strike Avoidance or Life Leech for your build early on.
Pick up these Normal Blessings on your way to Empowered:
- Echo of Solarum
- Light of the Moon
- Survival of Might
- Resolve of Humanity
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Heart of the Caldera
- Embers of Immortality
Note: Don't target farm Normal Blessings. Get to Empowered Monolith as fast as you can.
Reaching Empowered Monolith unlocks all the level 100 Timelines and the ability to farm Empowered Blessings. Unlike Normal Blessings, these need to be farmed until you get the desired ones for your build. It is extremely important to get this set up as fast as possible to free up affix slots on your gear. Remember, the more value you get from your Blessings, the easier it is to craft efficient gear!
These are the core Combat Empowered Blessings for this build:
- Start with Grand Echo of Solarum for the Void Resistance.
- Farm Grand Resolve of Humanity for the All Resistances.
- Pick Grand Body of Obsidian for the Armor it provides.
- Grab Grand Fury of the North for the damage it provides.
- Finish up by getting Grand Light of the Moon to increase your Mana pool.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Sight of the Outcasts us valuable to help you find Large Shadow Idol with Health and Elemental Resistance.
- Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to the Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques, or Grand Scales of Greed for Gold.
- Grand Apex of Fortune helps you find more Quivers for Arrowguard.
- Grand Vigilance of the Damned helps you find more Bows for Uethrin's Stand.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your Ballista Falconer bonuses when equipped in the dedicated Idol Container. Unlock all the slots of your Idol Container by completing the Campaign and some of its Side Quests. Remember that some Idols are Class specific and you won't be able to equip them with other non-compatible Classes.
These are the Idols recommended for this build:
- Use 4 Large Shadow Idol with Health Prefix and Elemental Resistance Suffix.
- Equip 1 Stout Lagonian Idols with %Health Prefix and Health Suffix, and 1 with Elemental Resistance Suffix.
- Use 1 Adorned Majasan Idol with Shared Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Bow Critical Strike Chance Suffix.
- Use 1 Adorned Majasan Idol with Shared Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Poison Resistance Suffix.
Other useful Idol Affixes
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Idol Slots.
Learn how to be efficient with Idols with our Advanced Idols Setups Guide.
Build Scaling
The Ballista Falconer summons multiple Ballistae and Buffs them with Aerial Assault. It primarily uses Dexterity and Intelligence for lots of its scaling. The build mainly deals Physical Minion Damage and aims to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance with Ballista. This build also has decent survivability thanks to the defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Minion Flat Damage: You want to get as much Flat Damage as possible. Tactician and Minion Melee and Bow Damage are your main sources.
- Bow Flat Damage: Any amount you can get partially applies to Ballista thanks to Shared Enhancements.
- Intelligence: This stat scales Ballista thanks to Tactician from Aerial Assault.
- % Minion Damage: Any increase to Minion Damage is welcomed.
- % Increased Damage: Ballista benefits from this stat, thanks to Shared Enhancements.
- Penetration: Penetration subtracts from resistances, causing a source of damage to deal more damage. You can get it on your Weapon with Physical Penetration and Minion Physical Penetration.
- Mana Regen: The more you have, the more you can freely cast the high Mana Cost Ballistae.
- Chance To Shred Armour on Hit: Each stack of this Ailment reduces enemy Armour by 100 for 4 seconds and stacks infinitely. Enemies have 0 Armour by default and it can go into the negatives. At -1000 Armour a target takes 23.7% increased Physical Damage, while at -4000 Armour it takes 57.2%. With the amount of hits the build has, the stacks ramp up quickly. Contaminating Shots is the key node for Ballista to share your own Ailment Chance stats. Aim for at least 100+ stacks.
- Dexterity: Each point gives Ballista 1% Increased Attack Speed and 4% Increased Damage.
- (Minion) Critical Strike Chance: Perfect Aim makes your Ballistae scale with your own Crit stats. Added Critical Strike Chance from Uethrin's Stand, Melvern's Writ, Sharpened Tips and Handler, in combination with Peak of the Mountain and Needle Like Precision provide the bulk of the stats needed to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance.
- (Minion) Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Minion's Crits deal. Death Rattle, Critical Strike Multiplier and Needle Like Precision provide a lot of it.
- Critical Strike Avoidance: Thanks to Finesse Them, you can convert it into Critical Strike Multiplier. Build as much as you can on your gear.
- Level of Ballista: Get this Affix on your Relic to invest more points into its Tree.
- Physical Shred: Grand Fury of the North provides this Ailment chance. At the maximum amount of 10 stacks, it reduces enemies Physical Resistance by 50%, but is 60% less effective against Bosses.
- Movement Speed: Reduces the reaction time needed to avoid attacks. The faster you move, the faster you can get out of danger!
- Glancing Blows: You take 35% less damage from Hits with Glancing Blows. You want to reach at least 50%, which will be doubled by Poise.
- Dusk Shrouds: Each grants 5% Glancing Blow Chance and 50 Dodge Rating. Rapid Concealment in Smoke Bomb provide them.
- Silver Shrouds: As long as you have one up, the next hit you take is Dodged instead. You also gain 100 Ward per Silver Shroud once they proc to Dodge the incoming attack. Allocate points into Coordinated Fade to activate when you use your Ballista for an easy way to get uptime on Silver Shrouds.
- Dodge: Dexterity, Dodge, %Dodge and the extra Dodge provided by Dusk Shrouds, allow you to reach high Dodge Chance, on top of Silver Shrouds.
- Smoke Bomb: This Skill gives immunity frames while it's used thanks to the Escape Tactics node. Time this Skill properly to avoid incoming damage or potential 1 shots. In this setup, it also provides Dusk Shrouds and Cleanses Ailments.
- Armour Mitigation: Just with the implicit Armour from your gear, the Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing and Stymphalian Feathers, your Armour easily reaches 35%+ Mitigation.
- Decoy: This Skill Taunts enemies. While Taunted, enemies focus the Decoy instead of attacking you. It is an extremely powerful tool to give you some breathing room.
- Health: Rogue has access to Large Shadow Idols with %Health. Not all classes have access to this amazing Idols, so take advantage of it.
- Endurance: A defensive mechanic that allows you to take up to 60% less Damage while below a certain Health threshold. Your base Endurance Threshold is 20% of your total Health.
- Health on Crit: Finesse Them is your main way of sustaining your Health pool. Ballista can deal an absurd amount of Hits when multiple are summoned, refilling your Health pool easily.
- Evasion & Tailwind: The Damage Reduction while moving is great while escaping from threats.
- Red Ring of Atlaria: This build has access to the Less Damage Taken Affix since it easily reaches the Attribute requirement.
- Crimson Shroud: Stacks up to 3 times, providing less Damage Over Time Taken. Gained from Crimson Skies.
- Slow/Chill: Greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. They are must haves on most builds, especially once you reach hard content with insane speed modifiers.
- Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
Our Damage Explained Article covers all you need to know to scale Damage.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Loot Filter
Loot Filters are critical in Last Epoch. Making sure you highlight all the related valuable Item Bases, Affixes, Uniques and Idols is crucial to ensure your character's progression. As your gear gets better, remember to hide the rules that are no longer useful to avoid screen clutter.
Here is the Endgame Loot Filter for this build:
Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.
Video Guide
Summary
The Ballista Falconer summons many Ballistae and Buffs them with Tactician from Aerial Assault. This Falconer is amazing at completing all the content in the game.
- Summon many Ballistae and move with them, thanks to Experimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills .
- Stack as much Dexterity and Intelligence as you can to increase their Damage.
- Get a comfortable amount of Mana Regeneration to freely summon Ballistae.
- Your Crit stats apply to Ballista.
- Your Damage stats also apply to Ballista, but at a reduced % Effectiveness.
- Peak of the Mountain is incredible to cap your Crit, and is easily target farmable in The Lightless Arbor Dungeon.
- While they are not mandatory, Uniques Items like Uethrin's Stand, Woven Flesh, Peak of the Mountain, Death Rattle, Arrowguard, Melvern's Writ, Jungle Queen's Chaps of Holding, Foot of the Mountain and Red Ring of Atlaria are great for unleashing this build's potential.
Credits
Written by BinaQc
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL, Tenkiei