Welcome to the Bleed Falconer Guide. This Falconer unleashes her trusted Falcon to apply multiple strong Bleed stacks to enemies, dealing Physical Damage Over Time and rending everything in sight. This build offers an agile Minion-focused playstyle that comes with incredible damage potential.
Falcon Strikes from Falconry serves as your main source of Damage, while your other Skills focus on buffing it. Aerial Assault is your Movement Skill and thanks to Rending Barbs provides a huge Damage buff. Net is your main source of Caltrops and it also triggers Puncture to provide powerful Buffs. Use the unspecialized Decoy Skill to draw enemy aggro.
You need Blood Roost and Doublet of Onos Tull to play this build, as they provide incredible Damage. These Uniques are relatively easy to find world drops, check out the Starting Gear section for more information on how to acquire them. Additionally, items like Bulwark of the Last Abyss and Red Ring of Atlaria increase the tankiness substantially, while Omnis is convenient for reaching the Resistance cap.
The Bleed Falconer is an amazing build capable of defeating all content in the game. It’s easy to play and has incredible Damage with great clear speed. If you are looking for a minion build with a fast and active playstyle, this setup is perfect for you!
This article assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Falconer Leveling Guide.
This build needs Uniques. Check our Unique Item Farming Guide for tips!
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
- Fast Clear Speed
- Respectable Survivability
- Amazing Single Target DPS
- Great Scaling With Gear and Uniques
- Mana Management
- Buff Micromanagement
- Requires Uniques to Shine
- Needs Gear for Good Tankiness
Skills
Falconry
Falconry is your main Damage source. Use its active ability, Falcon Strikes, to apply tons of Bleed stacks to enemies. Rending Talons grants a portion of your generic Bleed Chance to the Falcon. Take Side by Side to reduce the Cooldown by spamming Net. Falconer's Journey and Is it a bird? provide great Damage multipliers. Bird of Prey provides a Cull, great for Bossing. Grab Hunter's Spoils to sustain your Health and Mana.
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 Dexterity related Nodes to further scale your main stat and the multipliers associated with it.
- Tailwind and Evasion provide great Damage Reduction when moving.
- Get extra Bleed Chance and Damage Reduction against DoTs with Crimson Shrouds from Crimson Skies.
- Place 5 Points into Fencing Grace to scale your Block Effectiveness with Dexterity.
- Sky Assassin provides additional Bleed Chance to your Falcon.
- Placing 6 Points into Leog's Strategem grants a reliable source of Frailty.
- Allocate Coordinated Fade to activate it when you use Decoy. In this setup, 1 Point is allocated. This means Decoy needs be the first Skill on your Action Bar, from left to right.
- Maxing out Swift Assassin is an option for Bossing, as it allows you to get more Damage by spamming Caltrops faster with Net, increasing the Buffs from Rending Barbs.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
The Bleed Falconer uses Falcon Strikes to apply Bleeds on enemies and instantly consumes the Bleed stacks with Dive Bomb. 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
- Throw Net to apply its Buffs and create Caltrops.
- Use Falcon Strikes as your main Damage, applying Bleed stacks to enemies.
- Instantly consume all Bleed stacks with Dive Bomb.
- Throw Decoy when in danger to give yourself some breathing room and to get a stack of Silver Shroud thanks to Coordinated Fade.
Mapping
- Move quickly around the map with Aerial Assault.
- Use Falcon Strikes to destroy enemies while staying on the move.
- Dive Bomb on enemy packs to keep the Buff from Gale of Blades active and deal heavy Damage on bigger targets.
- Net provides extra Damage when needed. Most of the time you instantly kill enemies with the Falcon abilities, so only use it on tankier targets to maintain clear speed.
- 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.
- Spam Net to apply as many Caltrops as possible in 5 seconds to maximize the Damage gained from Rending Barbs.
- Use Falcon Strikes and then cast Dive Bomb to instantly consume all Bleed stacks.
- Recover the Cooldown of your Damage Skills by spamming Net.
- Throw Decoy to distract the Boss. Take advantage of this window to reposition or deal damage.
- Avoid telegraphed attacks and reposition with Aerial Assault.
- Use Falcon Strikes to Cull when the Boss has low enough HP.
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 stack as many other defensive layers as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Empowered 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
- 100% Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Crits
- 3000+ Health
- 50%+ Armor
- 100+ Dexterity
- 100% Block Chance
- 40%+ Block Effectiveness
- 45% Glancing Blow Chance
- 80% - 100%+ Movement Speed
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with four 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 Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Crits is as close to 100% as possible. Citadel Boots and the Armor and Reduced Bonus Damage from Crits Suffix on your Helmet and Shield are great sources of it.
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
Find Doublet of Onos Tull, a common world drop that substantially raises the Damage of the Falcon. Farm it by targeting Unique Body Armor Echo Rewards in the Blood, Frost and Death Timeline or by using Rune of Ascendance.
Milestone 5
Get Blood Roost, a world drop that provides a huge Damage boost. Farm it by targeting Unique Gloves Echo Rewards in the Ending the Storm Timeline or by using Rune of Ascendance.
Milestone 6
Citadel Boots is the preferred Boots base type, but has a level requirement of 85. Use Vanguard Boots, Solarum Greaves or Heoborean Boots until you can equip them.
Milestone 7
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. 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
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get Chance to Bleed on Hit and Dexterity to increase your DPS drastically.
Milestone 3
Look for Blood of the Exile. This item provides a great Damage boost against moving enemies, along with valuable stats. It's an uncommon world drop and relatively easy to farm by targeting Unique Boots Echo Rewards in the Spirits of Fire Timeline or using Rune of Ascendance.
Milestone 4
Start farming for Doublet of Onos Tull with Legendary Potential. Get at least Armor and Reduced Bonus Damage from Crits on it.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances, Endurance and Armor and Reduced Bonus Damage from Crits. Keep an eye for Large Shadow Idols with %Health Prefix and Elemental Resistance Suffix.
Milestone 1
Continue upgrading your gear with T7 Exalted items and begin farming all your Uniques with Legendary Potential.
Milestone 2
Farm Bulwark of the Last Abyss with Legendary Potential. This Shield allows you to easily cap Block, providing a lot of tankiness. It has a 50% drop rate from Harton's Husk in Fall of the Empire Empowered Monolith Timeline. Get Block Chance on it. While farming in this timeline, look for Thorn Slinger with Legendary Potential from the Unique Belt Echo Rewards. This Belt provides extra Damage, but Praetorian Belt is still an option if you want to be as tanky as possible.
Milestone 3
Omnis is a great addition to this build for the valuable +1 To All Skills and Resistances it provides. Farm this by killing the Shade of Orobyss at 200+ Corruption. High rolls are not necessary but the item itself could take significant time to farm.
Milestone 4
Focus on finishing your Large Shadow Idols with %Health Prefix and Elemental Resistance Suffix. You also want Stout Lagonian Idols with %Health Prefix and Health Suffix. The Suffixes on these Idols can also have Resistances, use them as needed.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with high tier 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 and Legendary Potential are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Red Ring of Atlaria provides amazing tankiness as long as you hit the total attribute requirement of 180. This item is an extremely rare world drop. It's usable even without Legendary Potential, but this results in lower Damage. The trade-off can be well worth it for difficult content where better survivability is required.
Milestone 3
Farm Anchor of Oblivion with Legendary Potential to easily cap your Endurance and increase your Armor. It's a rare drop from Harton's Husk in Fall of the Empire Empowered Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 4
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!
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. If you're already Resistance capped, use Grand Memory of Light.
- Farm Grand Hemmorage of Marrow for the Damage it provides.
- Grand Body of Obsidian provides a huge amount of Armor that helps increase the survivability of the build.
- Grand Bones of Eternity helps cap your Block Chance.
- Finish up by getting Grand Rhythm of the Tide for the extra sustain. Grand Bastion of Divinity is an option if you need the Resistance.
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 is 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 Talon of Granduer helps you find more Red Ring of Atlaria.
- Grand Scars of Blood helps you find more Dragonbone Axes.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your Bleed 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 Idols with the Health Prefix and Elemental Resistance Suffix.
- Equip 4 Stout Lagonian Idols with the %Health Prefix and Health Suffix. These Idols can also have Resistances, use them depending on your needs.
- You might need extra Resistances out of your Idols early on, so keep an eye for anything useful until you get your final setup.
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 Bleed Falconer uses Falcon Strikes to apply stacks of Bleed on enemies. The build focuses on dealing Physical Damage Over Time and most of it comes from the Falcon, which is a Minion. This build also has great survivability thanks to the defensive layers it takes advantage of.
- (Minion) Bleed Chance: This Ailment stacks and deals Physical Damage Over Time, which is your main source of Damage.
- The more Bleed Chance you have, the more stacks of Bleed you apply.
- Your Bleed Chance applies to the Falcon thanks to Blood Roost, Rending Talons, and Sky Assassin.
- (Minion) Bleed Duration: Changing the duration of an Ailment that deals Damage increases the total Damage the Ailment deals over its duration.
- Bleed stacks can be instantly consumed with Dive Bomb, which makes this a very powerful stat.
- The Falcon benefits from Minion Bleed Duration such as the one from Doublet of Onos Tull, while regular Bleed Duration only affects your own Bleed.
- Dexterity: The Falcon gains 4% increased Damage per point of Dexterity.
- Rending Barbs in Aerial Assault provides a ton of extra Damage scaling from this attribute.
- Throwing Attack Speed: Faster Attack Speed allows you to spam more Caltrops with Net to stack up Rending Barbs.
- % Minion Damage: Any increase to Minion Damage is welcomed.
- % Increased Damage: The Falcon benefits from this stat, thanks to Trained to Hunt.
- 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.
- Physical Shred: Splinter in Puncture provides this Ailment.
- At the maximum amount of 10 stacks, it reduces enemies Physical Resistance by 50%, but is 60% less effective against Bosses.
- Blood of the Exile: Provides more Physical Ailment Damage to moving enemies.
- Glancing Blows: You take 35% less damage from Hits with Glancing Blows.
- You reach 45% chance from your Passives, which is then doubled by Poise.
- Silver Shrouds: As long as you have one up, the next hit you take is Dodged instead.
- Allocate 1 point into Coordinated Fade to activate it when you use your Decoy.
- Dodge: Dexterity, Added Dodge and %Dodge, allow you to reach 25%+ Dodge Chance.
- Block Chance: Grants a chance to reduce the Damage taken from Hits.
- On a successful Block, a percentage of the Damage is mitigated.
- This build can have anywhere between 50% and 100% block.
- Block Effectiveness: The percentage of Damage reduced on Block depends on how much Block Effectiveness you have and cannot exceed 85%.
- The Grand Bones of Eternity Blessing is an exceptional source of Block Chance and Block Effectiveness.
- Fencing Grace provides Block Effectiveness per point of Dexterity.
- Armour Mitigation: Just with the implicit Armour from your gear, the Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing and Stymphalian Feathers, your Armour reaches 50%+ Mitigation.
- Decoy: This Skill Taunts enemies.
- While Taunted, enemies focus the Decoy instead of attacking you.
- Health: This build stacks enough Health to surpass the 3000 mark, providing a good Health pool.
- Rogue has access to the amazing Large Shadow Idols with %Health.
- 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 Hit: Blood Roost and Relentless Talons is your main way of sustaining your Health pool.
- 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's able to reach the Attribute requirement.
- Crimson Shroud: Stacks up to 3 times, providing less Damage Over Time Taken.
- Gained from Crimson Skies and Red Wings.
- 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.
- Frailty Stacks 3 times.
- Leog's Strategem provides a reliable source of Frailty.
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
Overall the Bleed Falconer is an agile powerhouse capable of defeating all the content in the game. It has amazing clear, insane single target DPS and great survivability thanks to its multiple defensive layers.
- Unleash Falcon Strikes to apply tons of strong Bleeds on enemies and then instantly consume the stacks with Dive Bomb. Use your other Skills to Buff your Falcon and skyrocket its Damage.
- Throw Net to apply its Buffs and create Caltrops.
- Stack as much Dexterity as possible for both Damage and survivability.
- Your Bleed Chance applies to the Falcon with a huge multiplier thanks to Blood Roost, Rending Talons and Sky Assassin.
- While they are not mandatory, Uniques like Bulwark of the Last Abyss, Blood of the Exile, Thorn Slinger, Omnis, Anchor of Oblivion andRed Ring of Atlaria are great for unleashing this build's full potential.
Credits
Written by Volca.
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL, Tenkiei.