Flame Reave Spellblade Guide
Last Updated:July 2, 2024|Changelog
This Flame Reave Spellblade faces its enemies with a Sword coated in Fire while protecting himself with a Shield and bursts of Ward. Attack with Firebrand to stack Rhythm of Fire and Blade Weaver to enhance the destructive power of your next Flame Reave.
This build dives into combat head first to fight at close range and has tools to protect himself in case enemies surround him. Flame Ward is an incredible Skill with tons of Damage Reduction that can save you even from the most dangerous situations. The build also has decent mobility thanks to Teleport; a Movement Skill that grants great defensive buffs on use.
While this setup doesn't require any Unique to function, Sunwreath completely empowers Flame Reave by changing its default cone shape into a giant circle that expands around you. Items like Bulwark of the Last Abyss, Omnis or Aurora's Time Glass can enhance the build tremendously, but are not mandatory.
Overall this beginner friendly Spellblade has amazing AoE clear and is suited for all the content in the game, even in Hardcore. If you are looking for an easy to play yet powerful melee build, this guide is perfect for you!
Flame Ward
Flame Reave
Teleport
Enchant Weapon
Firebrand
This article assumes you have a Level 70 Character. Reach Level 70 with our Spellblade Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle check all our Build Guides.
- Easy to Play
- Giant AoE and Burst Damage
- Great Defensive Support Skills
- Good Scaling With Gear and Uniques
- Rotation Playstyle
- DPS Downtime After Rotation
- Some Enemies Counter Melee
- Defensive Skills Require Timing
Skills
Flame Reave
Flame Reave is your main Damage Skill. This build takes advantage of the synergies between Rhythm of Fire, Versatility and Firebrand. Flame Reave returns to you thanks to Flame Caller and Sunwreath Ring turns its default cone shaped AoE into a giant circle; greatly increasing its clear potential.
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 Mage Flurry and Essence Duel for the Attack Speed.
- Mana Reaver provides Mana sustain for the build.
- Investing points into Arcanist and Elemental Affinity helps cap Elemental Resistances.
- Get Infused Weapon, Fire Blood and Prismatic Blade for the Flat Fire Melee Damage.
- Blade Weaver is a crucial offensive component for the build. Stack it by spamming Firebrand and consume it with Flame Reave.
- Arcane Shielding and Shattered Aegis are great for increasing the survivability of the build.
- Burden of Knowledge synergizes amazingly with Arcane Severance.
- Grab Arcane Flames provides an additional Fire Damage Multiplier.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This melee Spellblade wants to dive into enemies to fight them at close range. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use your Support Skills to stay alive. Pay attention to dangerous telegraphed attacks and be aware of ranged enemy threats.
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Buff your defenses by casting Teleport.
- Cast Enchant Weapon to buff your Damage momentarily.
- Attack with Firebrand to stack Illuminating Fire and Rhythm of Fire to enhance your next Flame Reave. Each extra attack grants an additional Incineration and Blade Weaver stack.
- Attack with Flame Reave and release a giant wave of destruction.
- Use Flame Ward defensively before you take Damage.
- Refresh your Teleport defensive buffs by casting it before they expire.
Mapping
- Group as many enemies as possible before attacking with Flame Reave to maximize its AoE.
- Time Enchant Weapon and maximize the uptime of its buffs.
- Use Teleport to leave dangerous enemies behind and traverse terrain gaps.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your defensive buffs and keep them active.
- Fully stack Blade Weaver and Incineration with Firebrand for maximum single target Damage.
- Use Enchant Weapon during your DPS window against Bosses.
- Flame Ward can save you from incoming Damage. Time it against dangerous 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 other defensive layers, while fitting as much Health related Affixes or Endurance Threshold into your gear 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
- Capped Endurance
- 2600 - 3500+ Health
- 45% - 60%+ Armour
- 2000+ Ward (while in combat)
- 40% - 100% Block Chance
- 30%-45%+ Block Mitigation
- 100%+ Increased Attack Speed
- 400% - 800%+ Increased Damage
- 300%+ Melee Critical Strike Multiplier
- 40% - 70%+ 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. Get a Weapon with double T5 offensive Affixes as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. It can be farmed 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 Flame Reave on your Body Armour to invest more Points into Heat Wave for more Damage with Flame Reave. T1 Flame Ward Charge and Added Ward and T5 Level of Enchant Weapon are great upgrades too.
Milestone 5
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 increase your Damage output. Keep an eye out for any Adorned Arcane Idol with Chance To Gain Lightning Aegis When Hit Suffix. Lightning Aegis provides 25% Damage Reduction while it's up.
Milestone 1
Once you cover your Void Resistance with a well rolled Grand Echo of Solarum Blessing, replace your Crusader Gauntlets with Engraved Gauntlets for their Endurance Implicit.
Milestone 2
Get an Ironglass Shield with T5 Block Chance, Damage Taken on Block and Block Effectiveness. Aim for Chance to Apply Frailty on Hit to decrease the Damage enemies deal to you. This Ailment is really important and should always be kept in mind.
Milestone 3
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get Chance To Shred Armour on Hit on your Gloves and your Amulet. Melee Attack Speed and Critical Strike Multiplier are also amazing for this build.
Milestone 4
Get a Sunwreath. This Unique completely empowers Flame Reave by changing its default cone shape into a giant circle that expands around you. It's fairly common and can be farmed in the Age of Winter Monolith Timeline; which has Unique Ring Echo Rewards.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances 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. Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use is a must have for Belts.
Milestone 2
Farm Throne of Ambition in The Stolen Lance Empowered Monolith Timeline. It's a rare drop from God Hunter Argentus so it might take a few tries to drop. This Idol is great for increasing your Boss DPS and survivability.
Milestone 3
Farm Sunwreath Rings with the maximum Legendary Potential you can. Aim for the indicated Affixes in the Planner for each slot.
Milestone 4
Aurora's Time Glass and Omnis are great Amulet options for this build if you are looking for additional survivability. Use the best one you find. Remember that Omnis can only drop by defeating the Shade of Orobyss at 200+ Corruption in the Monolith of Faith.
Milestone 5
Bulwark of the Last Abyss is a powerful Unique Shield that can be farmed by defeating Harton's Husk in the Fall of the Empire Empowered Monolith Timeline. While it's not mandatory, it's best in slot for the build. Combine it with the Grand Bones of Eternity Empowered Blessing to get really tanky against Hits. Use an Exalted Ironglass Shield until you get one.
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 as close to perfect rolls for all your Empowered Blessings and find all your desired Idols with the best in slot Prefixes and Suffixes.
Milestone 3
Continue farming Sunwreath, Bulwark of the Last Abyss, Aurora's Time Glass or Omnis 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
If you manage to get Quicksilver Coil with multiple Legendary Potential consider using it over your current Ring for its Haste chance. 30% Movement Speed it's really nice for kiting enemies in hard content.
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
- Crash of the Waves
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Bones of Eternity
- Heart of the Caldera
- Embers of Immortality
- Body of Obsidian
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 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.
- Farm a well rolled Grand Echo of Solarum next.
- Grab Grand Bones of Eternity for the Block Chance and Block Effectiveness it provides.
- Once your core Defenses are sorted, grab Grand Crash of the Waves for additional Stun Chance.
- Finish up by farming the best rolled Grand Body of Obsidian you can get. It grants an insane amount of Flat Armour that helps increase the survivability of the build and synergises greatly with Shattered Aegis. Grand Embers of Immortality is also good but not as efficient for Min/Maxing. If you wish to go for a completely offensive approach you can go for Grand Breath of Cinders instead, but it's really not necessary due to the base Damage output of the build.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Winds of Fortune since this build can use many Unique Items.
- Grand Enmity of the Clans helps you find more Exalted Crystal Swords.
- Lastly, take Grand Talon of Granduer, Grand Vision of the Aurora or Grand Binds of Sanctuary depending on what type of Unique you are looking for.
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:
- Find 1 or 2 Adorned Arcane Idol with Chance To Gain Lightning Aegis When Hit. You gain 25% Damage Reduction while Lighting Aegis is up. These Idols are great for increasing your survivability.
- Complete your setup with a situational mix of Idols to cap your Resistances and increase your total Health pool.
- Use Throne of Ambition for Boss fights. You can farm it in The Stolen Lance Empowered Monolith Timeline. It's a rare drop from God Hunter Argentus.
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 build uses Firebrand to enhance Flame Reave's DPS. The setup takes full advantage of Blade Weaver and Rhythm of Fire to deal massive burst Damage. This Spellblade also has great survivability thanks to its multiple defensive layers and the Unique Items it can take advantage of.
- Sunwreath: This Unique completely empowers Flame Reave by changing its default cone shape into a giant circle that expands around you.
- Flat Melee Damage: With the amount of Multipliers this build has access to, you want to stack as much Flat Damage as possible. Grab all the Flat Fire Melee Damage from Infused Weapon, Fire Blood and Prismatic Blade. Enchant Weapon also adds to the pool of Flat Melee Damage with Nodes like Molten Steel.
- Blade Weaver: is a crucial offensive component for the build. Stack it by spamming Firebrand and consume it with Flame Reave.
- Melee Attack Speed: The faster you attack the faster you stack Illuminating Fire, Incineration, Rhythm of Fire and Blade Weaver. Enchant Weapon grants a whopping 50% Melee Attack Speed while it's active thanks to the Celerity Node.
- Cooldown Reduction: You can have permanent Enchant Weapon uptime with enough Cooldown Reduction.
- Crystal Sword: Its Implicits are insane for the build. Get a good rolled one!
- Intelligence: Flame Reave gains 4% Damage per point of Intelligence. Additionally it grants 4% Ward Retention per point, which adds a nice defensive layer for the build.
- Dexterity: Flame Reave gains 4% Damage per point of Dexterity.
- Throne of Ambition: Provides an insane DPS boost against Bosses.
- % Increased Damage: Any extra source of % Increased Fire Damage is welcomed.
- Critical Strike Chance: Attacking with Firebrand stacks the Illuminating Fire and Accelerando Nodes and greatly boosts your next Flame Reave Critical Strike Chance.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. Build as much as you can on your gear.
- 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 16.5% increased Fire Damage, while at -4000 Armour it takes 40%. With the amount of hits the build has, the stacks ramp up quickly.
- Omnis: This build can greatly benefit from the +1 To All Skills that this Unique provides.
- Grand Breath of Cinders: Flame Reave does not need it to deal good Damage, but if you wish to go fully offensive, the build can easily apply the maximum 10 stacks to your targets, increasing the Fire Damage enemies take by 50% (20% for Bosses).
- Cooldown Reduction: Cast Flame Ward and Teleport more often.
- Flame Ward: The Damage Reduction is insane. While this Skill is active you are almost immortal! Get all the charges you can (3 max) and lower its Cooldown as much as possible.
- Arcane Shielding: Combined with Shattered Aegis it provides 12% Damage Reduction and 80% increased Armour at 4 stacks.
- Armour Mitigation: This build can get tons of Armour. Just with the implicit Armour from your gear, Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing, Flat Armour from Teleport and Shattered Aegis you reach 50%+ Mitigation. Throne of Ambition boosts this Mitigation to 60%+ while Bossing. This is huge on top of all the other defensive layers the build has.
- Ward: A shield above your Health that is generated by certain effects, rapidly decays over time and is protected by Armour Mitigation. Most of your Ward is generated with Flame Ward, Arcane Warden and Pyroshielding while fighting enemies. The build can easily reach more than 2k+ Ward without further investment.
- Block: Block is a defensive mechanic that reduces a percentage of the Damage taken from Hits. This percentage depends on how much Block Effectiveness you have. Reach 50% Block Chance and 40%+ Block Mitigation by combining an Exalted Ironglass Shield with the Grand Bones of Eternity Empowered Blessing. Bulwark of the Last Abyss has very high Block Chance and it's best in slot for the build.
- Lighting Aegis: Procced thanks to the Adorned Arcane Idol with Chance To Gain Lightning Aegis When Hit. You gain 25% Damage Reduction while Lighting Aegis is up.
- Health: This build can stack a decent Health pool that is very effective when combined with all the other defensive layers the Spellblade has access to.
- Melee Leech: Get Melee Damage Leeched as Health to sustain after taking Damage.
- Aurora's Time Glass: This optional Unique can save you from dangerous situations.
- Chill and Slow: Are Ailments that 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.
- Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use: Cleanse all Ailments on Potion use.
- Stun: Thanks to its Damage output the build is able to Stun most enemies.
- Stun Immunity: Provided by the Rock Phase Node from Teleport. The buff is sustainable thanks to Tunnel Finder and Time Dilation. This is recommended while doing hard content.
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
COMING SOON!
Summary
Overall the Flame Reave Spellblade is a solid melee build capable of completing all the content in the game. It's easy to play, has insane AoE and great survivability thanks to its multiple defensive layers and powerful Unique Items.
- Attack with Firebrand at least 3 times to stack Illuminating Fire to ensure your next Flame Reave Crits. Blade Weaver is a crucial offensive component for the build. Stack it by spamming Firebrand and consume it with Flame Reave for massive burst Damage.
- Sunwreath empowers Flame Reave by changing its default cone shape into a giant circle that expands around you.
- While they are not mandatory Bulwark of the Last Abyss, Aurora's Time Glass, Omnis and Throne of Ambition are great Uniques that you want to scale the build to its full potential.
- Cast Enchant Weapon to buff your Damage momentarily.
- Teleport is a great Movement Skill that grants great defensive buffs on use.
- Flame Ward is an incredible Defensive Skill with tons of Damage Reduction that can save you from incoming Damage. Time it against dangerous telegraphed Boss attacks.
Credits
Written by Lizard_IRL.
Reviewed by Facefoot