Welcome to the Bleed Warlock Guide. This bloody spellcaster uses its dark powers to open a Chthonic Fissure in the ground that spits a deadly barrage of seeking Chaos Bolts, unleashing pure chaos and pain on the battlefield. Master the forbidden arts of the Warlock and make all your enemies Bleed to death.
Chaos Bolts is able to proc Harvest, Rip Blood and Bone Curse, which don't need to be on your Skill Bar. Apply Spirit Plague to your enemies for additional Damage and gain incredible Damage Reduction and DPS buffs when channelling Ghostflame. Additionally, the build has decent mobility thanks to unspecialized Transplant.
This build doesn't require any Unique to function. However, Exsanguinous, Frostbite Shackles, Last Steps of the Living and Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros are necessary to switch to its Low Life setup, which stacks Cold Resistance to scale Ward for incredible tankiness. Life's Journey provides amazing QoL.
Overall this powerful Warlock is an amazing Damage Over Time build capable of crushing all the content in the game, even in Hardcore. If you are looking for a Bleed based caster that has amazing AoE and is able to survive the hardest encounters, this build is perfect for you!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Warlock Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
- Amazing AoE
- Visually Stunning
- Good Single Target DPS
- Insane Scaling With Gear and Uniques
- Very Advanced
- Mana Management
- Needs Uniques To Shine
- Defensive Tools Require Timing
Skills
Chthonic Fissure
Chthonic Fissure releases Spirits which apply the Torment Curse. Combine Blood Gulch and Singed by Terror so the Spirits can apply Physical Resistance Shred. Grab two Points in Chaotic Rupture to automatically cast Chaos Bolts, if you have enough Mana Regeneration, max the node out. Forbidden Chasm provides the Acid Skin Curse.
Alternative 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.
- Take Nodes with Intelligence.
- Investing Points into Forbidden Knowledge helps cap Necrotic Resistance.
- Soul Stealer and Occultist's Mind provides Mana Sustain and maximum Mana.
- Place 5 Points into Harrowing Armor, Dark Protections and Wither for survivability.
- Doom Herald is very powerful when you're using Ghostflame.
- Grab Fleeting Crone for the chance to gain Haste and increased effect of Haste.
- Only put 2 Points into Aspect of Death, unless you can out sustain it.
- Allocate Points into Hollow Lich once you go Low Life.
- Use the FULL LIFE setup for Passives before going Low Life. CLICK PASSIVES TO OPEN FULL PLANNER.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
Spread Spirit Plague and open a Chthonic Fissure in the ground to hit enemies with tons of Chaos Bolts and Spirits to make them Bleed to death. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use Ghostflame to stay alive. Pay attention to the telegraphed attacks of your enemies and stay out of their range.
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Use Chthonic Fissure to automatically cast Chaos Bolts and Spirits.
- Apply and spread Spirit Plague to all enemies.
- Increase your DPS by manually casting Chaos Bolts to inflict additional Bleed stacks.
- Briefly channel Ghostflame to apply Decrepify to tankier enemies.
- Use Transplant to move around the map.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective with Transplant.
- Group up enemies and let Chthonic Fissure kill them as you cruise through the Echoes.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your Buffs and keep them active.
- Start by applying Decrepify with Ghostflame to maximize Damage.
- Spam Chaos Bolts to stack Bleeds before channelling Ghostflame for a DPS burst.
- Save Transplant for emergency situations.
- Use Ghostflame to tank telegraphed Boss attacks.
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 Critical Strike Avoidance
- 2500 - 4000+ Health
- 35% - 75% Armour
- 300%+ Cold Resistance
- 10000 - 20000+ Ward
- 300% - 800+ Ward Retention
- 65+ Intelligence
- 500%+ Increased Damage Over Time
- 60% - 90%+ Movement Speed
Gear Progression
Use the FULL LIFE setup for Passives.
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. Get a Weapon with double T5 offensive Prefixes as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance or Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. Farm it 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
When all your core Defenses are covered, start stacking Intelligence to increase your DPS drastically. Get at least 10 Dexterity for reliable Reaper of Mayhem procs.
Milestone 5
Aim for T5 Level of Spirit Plague on your Helmet. Chance to apply Damned on Hit, Shared Increased Bleed Duration and Increased Spirit Frequency with Chthonic Fissure are also great finds to increase your Damage. Look for Thorn Slinger.
Milestone 6
While you look for this basic set of gear, start farming your Empowered Blessings and look for any Idols that can help you cap all your Resistances momentarily or further increase your Damage output. Try to find a Large Immortal Idol with Chance To Fear On Hit to Crowd Control enemies.
Use the Low Life setup for Passives. Do NOT switch to Low Life unless you have ALL the Uniques needed and more than 2500 Life.
Milestone 1
Get Exsanguinous to transition into the Low Life setup. It is farmed by completing Unique Chest Reward Echoes in the Blood, Frost and Death Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 2
Simultaneously farm Last Steps of the Living and Frostbite Shackles in the Empowered Blood, Frost and Death Monolith Timeline by slaying Formosus the Undying.
Milestone 3
Once you get Frostbite Shackles stack as much Cold Resistance as possible to increase your Ward Retention and boost Chaos Bolts' Torment of the Red Tundra Node, increasing both your DPS and survivability at the same time!
Milestone 4
Peak of the Mountain is another great addition to the build, as it provides amazing stats and tons of % Increased Critical Strike Chance, useful to proc Agonizing Expanse and spread Spirit Plague.
Milestone 5
Farm Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros. You might find yourself healing too much from Chaos Bolts' Devour the Damned Node. This Unique counters that.
Milestone 6
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. Keep an eye for Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix and Chance To Fear On Hit or Health Suffix.
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
Farm Exsanguinous, Last Steps of the Living, Peak of the Mountain, Thorn Slinger and Frostbite Shackles with Legendary Potential. Aim for the indicated Affixes in the Planner for each slot. Experimental Ward per Missing Health Affix only drops from Exiled Mages.
Milestone 3
Omnis is a great addition to this build for the valuable +1 To All Skills. Farm it by killing the Shade of Orobyss at 200+ Corruption. High Resistance rolls are extremely useful as they make gearing with a lot of Uniques easier.
Milestone 4
Get Oceareon for its Damage Multiplier and to further scale Chaos Bolts' freezing capabilities.
Milestone 5
Get either Life's Journey or Flayer's Pride with Legendary Potential. Both of these Unique Shields have astounding value. Life's Journey provides incredible QoL and Flayer's Pride is pure DPS.
Milestone 6
Farm Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros with with Legendary Potential.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and in 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 perfect rolls for all your Empowered Blessings.
Milestone 3
Continue farming Exsanguinous, Last Steps of the Living, Peak of the Mountain, Thorn Slinger, Omnis, Frostbite Shackles, Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, Oceareon and Life's Journey with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find. Remember that some of these Items are extremely hard to get with multiple Legendary Potential. Good luck with the chase!
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!
Milestone 5
Consider adding Red Ring of Atlaria if you meet the Total Attributes requirement for the extra tankiness it provides.
Milestone 6
Finish your BIS Idol Setup. 4 Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix, 1 Stout Lagonian Idols with %Health Prefix and 2 Grand Bone Idols with Chance to apply Damned on Hit Prefix and Chance To Inflict Bleed On Physical Spell Hit.
The DPS Life Variant is less tanky and generates less Ward, but does not need any Uniques to properly function, as showed in the Starter Planner of this Endgame guide.
The Low Life version is currently better.
Milestone 1
Spec your Passive Tree accordingly. Don't grab Hollow Lich and allocate Spirit Leech instead.
Milestone 2
Since this variant does not need any of the Low Life Uniques, you can use the Blood of the Exile instead. This Unique provides an insane DPS boost, that compensates not being able to scale A Grave for Two.
Milestone 3
Get an Exalted Body Armour and a Helmet with the Affixes shown on the Planner. Consider switching Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros for Valdyr's Chalice for the amazing DPS boost this unique provides.
Milestone 4
Keep farming Blood of the Exile, Oceareon, Thorn Slinger, Omnis, Frostbite Shackles, Valdyr's Chalice and Flayer's Pride with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find. Remember that some of these Items are extremely hard to get with multiple Legendary Potential. Good luck with the chase!
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!
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
- Memory of Light
- Bastion of Divinity
- Light of the Moon
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Resolve of Humanity
- Bulwark of the Tundra
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Winds of Frost
- Heart of the Caldera
- Body of Obsidian
- 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:
- If you are lacking Critical Strike Avoidance, start with Grand Survival of Might. A high roll on this Empowered Blessing can be combined with a single high rolled T5 Critical Strike Avoidance to cap it. If you don't need it, grab Grand Hemmorage of Marrow or Grand Resolve of Humanity instead.
- Grand Echo of Solarum is great to cap your Void Resistance.
- Get Grand Body of Obsidian for the Flat Armor it provides.
- Target Grand Winds of Frost to further boost Chaos Bolts' freezing capabilities..
- Once your core Defenses are sorted, grab 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 is very valuable to help you find Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix and Chance To Fear On Hit or Health Suffix. Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to the Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques instead.
- Farm Grand Cruelty of Formosus to find more Wands.
- Lastly, take your other Empowered Blessing based on the Unique or Affix you are trying to farm.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your character 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:
- Get 4 Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix. For the Suffixes aim for 1 with Chance To Fear On Hit and 3 with Health, Elemental Resistance or Ward Retention. The Fear is crucial to keep enemies away from you.
- Get 2 Grand Bone Idols with Chance to apply Damned on Hit Prefix and Chance To Inflict Bleed On Physical Spell Hit Suffix for a huge DPS boost.
- You also want 1 Stout Lagonian Idols with %Health Prefix and Cold Resistance Suffix. This build can get an absurd amount of Health just from Idols.
- 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
This build uses Chthonic Fissure and casts Chaos Bolts to make enemies Bleed to death. This Warlock also has great survivability thanks to the amount of Ward it can stack and the multiple defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Bleed Chance: The more Bleed Chance, the more Damage you do.
- Damned Chance: Is converted to Bleed Chance for Chaos Bolts thanks to the Sanguine Reverie Node.
- Bleed Duration: The longer your Bleeds last, the more Damage you do.
- Frostbite: The build also applies this Ailment with Chaos Bolts and Frostbite Shackles.
- Cast Speed: Attack faster for more stacks of Bleed and Frostbite on the enemies.
- Intelligence: Your Skills gain 4% Damage per point of Intelligence. In addition, Spirit Plague can gain Flat Damage from it thanks to Plague of Eyes.
- % Increased Damage: Anything that increases Physical and Damage Over Time is welcomed.
- Low Life: A Grave for Two is great with Low Life. The more HP you are missing, the more Damage you do!
- Cold Resistance: The Torment of the Red Tundra Node in Chaos Bolts allows you to scale DPS of Cold Resistance.
- Physical Resistance Shred: Combine Blood Gulch and Singed by Terror so the Spirits can apply Physical Resistance Shred. 10 stacks increase the Damage enemies take by 50% (20% for Bosses).
- Physical Penetration: Mainly obtained through Spirit Plague's Exsanguination Node.
- Warlock Mastery Bonus: You get 5% more Damage per Curse on the target. This build can apply multiple Curses like: Torment, Acid Skin, Anguish, Decrepify, Spirit Plague and Bone Curse.
- Wither: Each stack of Withered increases Damage taken from Curses by 10% (6% against players and Bosses), lasts 3 seconds and can stack up to 20 times.
- Ward: The Low Life setup of this build can reach 20000 Ward and beyond.
- Bleed Immunity: With the Low Life gear setup, you are immune to any Bleed, including the ones from Exsanguination thanks to Exsanguinous.
- Ward Retention: Reduces the rate of Ward decay.
- Cold Resistance: Thanks to Frostbite Shackles you can scale your Ward Retention of Cold Resistance.
- Freeze: The Torment of the Red Tundra Node in Chaos Bolts allows you to scale Freeze of Cold Resistance. You can push this to the max with Oceareon and Grand Winds of Frost.
- Intelligence: Aside from gaining Damage per point of Intelligence with your Skills, each point of Intelligence provides 4% Ward Retention per point.
- Chance To Fear On Hit: The Fear provided by the Large Immortal Idols helps keep enemies Crowd Controlled.
- Health: This build can stack an insanely high Health pool that is very effective when combined with all the other defensive layers the Warlock has. Acolytes have access to Large Immortal Idols with %Health; not all Classes have access to these amazing Idols!
- Ghostflame: This channelled Skill grants insane Damage Reduction and has great synergy with Doom Herald.
- Armor Mitigation: This build can get high amounts of Armor. With the Armor from your gear, Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing and Ghostflame you can reach 75%+ Mitigation while Channelling.
- Harrowing Armor and Dark Protections: These Passive Nodes provide tankiness per unique Curse on the target.
- Wither: You take less Damage from Withered enemies.
- Chill: Reduces the Movement Speed and Cast Speed of your enemies.
- Slow: Greatly reduces the Movement Speed of your enemies.
- 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
Overall the Bleed Warlock is a horrific powerhouse capable of defeating all the content in the game. It has amazing clear, great single target DPS and great survivability thanks to its Ward and multiple defensive layers.
- Chthonic Fissure spews out tons of Chaos Bolts and Spirits inflicting enemies with deadly Bleeds.
- Increase your DPS by manually casting Chaos Bolts to inflict additional Bleed stacks.
- ChannelGhostflame to boost your Damage and become practically invincible.
- The Low Life setup of this build can reach 20000 Ward and beyond.
- This build doesn't require any Unique to function. However, Exsanguinous, Frostbite Shackles and Last Steps of the Living are necessary to switch to its Low Life setup, which stacks Cold Resistance to scale Ward for incredible tankiness.
Credits
Written by Lizard_IRL.
Reviewed by Volca, Tenkiei.