Plasma Orb Runemaster
Last Updated:July 10, 2024|Changelog
The Plasma Orb Runemaster blitzes onto the battlefield, wielding the power of the cosmos itself. Combine Fire, Lightning, Fire (F,L,F) Runes with Runic Invocation to conjure Plasma Orbs, spheres of crackling Lightning, and zap foes into oblivion.
Plasma Orb serves as your main source of Damage, specifically its Lightning portion. Generate your Fire Runes with Runebolt, your Mana generator, and Lightning Runes with Static Orb. Flame Rush serves as a powerful dash, granting Offensive and Defensive Buffs, alongside Flame Ward and Static Orb.
While this setup doesn't require any Uniques to function, it revolves around Reowyn's Fortress. You aim to obtain a fine balance of Armor, Dodge, and Ward, to scale your Flat Damage. Fundamental Criterion, Stealth, Omnis, Boneclamor Barbute, Jungle Queen's Chaps of Holding, Red Ring of Atlaria, Nihilis and Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros dramatically bolster the build's power, especially with Legendary Potential.
Overall, the Plasma Orb Runemaster is a great build suited for all content in the game. If you are looking for a fast-casting build with orbiting balls of destruction, this build is perfect for you!
This article assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Runemaster Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle check all our Build Guides.
- Robust Defense
- Visually Pleasing
- Engaging Gameplay
- Scalability With Gear
- Mana Management
- Needs Uniques To Shine
- Rotation Based Playstyle
- Complex Button Management
Skills
Runic Invocation
Runic Invocation is your main Damage ability. Combine Fire, Lightning, Fire (F,L,F) Runes before casting Runic Invocation to cast Plasma Orb. With Copied Scrolls you can occasionally repeat Plasma Orb, invoking 2 at once. Word of Lagon is crucial to cap your Critical Strike Chance.
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.
- Focus on Intelligence , Cast Speed and Spell Critical Strike Chance related Nodes.
- Calculated Destruction is crucial to raise your Spell Critical Strike Chance.
- Runeword: Cataclysm, Decree of the Burning Wind and Celestial Doom grant substantial Damage Multipliers.
- Sphere of Protection is a great for survivability.
- Ancient Inscriptions is a must have for most Runemasters.
- Jagged Veil and Celestial Doom are great to build up Ward.
- Runeword: Inferno, Runeword: Hurricane, Runeword: Avalanche and Celestial Doom provide Flat Spell Damage.
- Rune of Winter is needed to generate Cold Runes with Lightning Blast, if you wish to cast Reowyn's Frostguard.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
The Plasma Orb Runemaster attacks enemies from close to long range, ensuring that all the Skills at his disposal can hit the target. 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
- Cast Plasma Orbs by repeating the process of combining (F,L,F) Runes with Runebolt, Static Orb, and Runebolt, and then casting Runic Invocation.
- With Plasma Orbs orbiting you, you can now engage enemies.
- Use Flame Rush to move around the map and proc Static Orb, providing you multiple Buffs.
- Cast more Plasma Orbs between Flame Rush uses.
- Keep track of your Mana. Ensure that Runebolt hits enemies to gain Mana.
- Use Flame Ward Offensively or Defensively.
- Use Flame Rush and Evade for positioning and to avoid telegraphed attacks.
Mapping
- Use Flame Rush and rush to your objective.
- Keep many Plasma Orbs orbiting you to dispose of enemies.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your Defensive Buffs and keep them active.
- Position as close to Bosses as possible to get as many hits with Plasma Orb as possible.
- Flame Rush through Bosses to apply the Brand of Subjugation and benefit from the Runemaster Passive Celestial Doom.
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, Ward 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
- 100% Reduced Bonus Damage Taken From Crits
- 90+ Intelligence
- 80+ Dexterity
- 5000+ Ward
- 320%+ Ward Retention
- 150%+ Cast Speed
- 100% Critical Strike Chance
- 800%+ Increased Damage
- 65%+ Armor
- 70%+ Dodge
- 40% - 60%+ 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. Get a Weapon with double T5 offensive Affixes as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes is at or near 100% to mitigate Critical Strike Damage against you.
Milestone 3
Aim for Level of Runic Invocation to invest more points into its Tree.
Milestone 4
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.
Milestone 5
Keep an eye out for Large Arcane Idol with Increased Cast Speed while you have Lightning Aegis Prefix and Shared Lightning Damage Suffix and Adorned Arcane Idol with Increased Lightning Damage while you have Lightning Aegis Prefix and Increased Lightning Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana) 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 Cast Speed, Intelligence, Critical Strike Multiplier and Spell Damage to drastically increase your DPS.
Milestone 3
Get Reowyn's Fortress and pay attention to your Armor, Dodge and Ward. The goal is to scale them all evenly and get as much Flat Damage as possible from this Item.
Milestone 4
Fundamental Criterion is a core part of the build, making Dexterity a Damage Multiplier. Additionally, Dexterity provides you with Flat Dodge Rating, which the build desperately needs.
Milestone 5
Further scale Dodge with Jungle Queen's Chaps of Holding and Razorfall. Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros is a great addition for its amazing stats, + Levels and Ward generation.
Milestone 6
Boneclamor Barbute provides excellent Offensive and Defensive stats for the build. The Ward per Second, Attributes, Resistance and Armor it provides are all welcomed.
Milestone 7
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent amount of Armor, Dodge Rating, and your Resistances capped.
Milestone 1
Continue upgrading your gear with T7 Exalted items and begin farming all your Uniques with Legendary Potential. Look for Nemesis encounters in Echoes to add Legendary Potential or Legendary Affixes to any Unique with the Egg of the Forgotten.
Milestone 2
Obtain as much Dexterity as possible, and keep scaling your Dodge, Armor and Ward. This will scale your Damage tremendously thanks to Fundamental Criterion and Reowyn's Fortress.
Milestone 3
Omnis is a great addition to this build for the valuable +1 To All Skills and Resistances. Farm it by killing the Shade of Orobyss at 200+ Corruption. High rolls are not mandatory, but optimal. Cap your Resistances with Idols or Ring Suffixes.
Milestone 4
Keep farming until you get all of the build's Unique Items 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 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
Nihilis not only provides amazing Offensive and Defensive stats, but also Movement Speed! If you are lucky enough to obtain a well rolled one, this Unique can be amazing!
Milestone 4
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. Keep in mind, this is one of the rarest Item in the entire game!
Milestone 5
Keep farming until you get the maximum Legendary Potential you can find on all of your Uniques.
Milestone 6
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:
- Hunger of the Void
- Mysteries of the Deep
- Resolve of Humanity
- Persistance of Will
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Heart of the Caldera
- 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:
- Grand Resolve of Humanity makes it much easier to reach Resistance Cap.
- Grab Grand Emptiness of Ash for its Crit Multi. Grand Shadow of the Eclipse is also a good option to scale Reowyn's Fortress.
- Pick up Grand Mysteries of the Deep to increase your Damage.
- Farm Grand Bulwark of the Tundra to further increase your Tankiness and Damage from Reowyn's Fortress.
- Finish up by farming the best rolled Grand Body of Obsidian you can get. It grants Flat Armour that helps increase the survivability of the build as well as increase its Damage.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Chill of Death helps you find Reowyn's Fortress.
- Grand Arrogance of Argentus increases your odds at finding Boneclamor Barbute.
- Lastly, Grand Sight of the Outcasts helps you find Large Arcane Idols with the much wanted Increased Cast Speed while you have Lightning Aegis Prefix and Shared Lightning Damage Suffixes.
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 2 Large Arcane Idol with Increased Cast Speed while you have Lightning Aegis Prefix and Shared Lightning Damage Suffix.
- Get 3 Adorned Arcane Idol with Increased Lightning Damage while you have Lightning Aegis Prefix and Increased Lightning Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana) Suffix.
- Complete your setup with a situational mix of Idols to cap your Resistances or scale Armor and Dodge. You might need extra Resistances out of your Idols early on, so keep an eye for anything useful until you get your final setup.
- Throne of Ambition can be great if you need the More Armor Multiplier to further scale your Armor for Reowyn's Fortress.
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 Plasma Orb Runemaster combines Fire, Lighting, Fire (F,L,F) Runes with Runic Invocation and casts Plasma Orb. He primarily uses Dexterity and Intelligence for lots of its scaling. The build deals a mix of Fire and Lightning Damage and aims to reach 100% Critical Strike Chance with Plasma Orb. This build also has great survivability thanks to the defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Reowyn's Fortress: Scale Flat Damage by balancing Ward, Dodge and Armor.
- Intelligence: Plasma Orb gains 4% Damage per point of Intelligence. Additionally, it grants Elemental Penetration via Elemental Lore, and Critical Strike Chance from Calculated Destruction.
- Dexterity: Provides Dodge Rating for Reowyn's Fortress and Damage Multiplier from Fundamental Criterion.
- Flat Spell Damage: Any additional Flat Spell Damage you can get on Skills, Passives or gear is welcomed. Reowyn's Fortress does not have a lot in its Implicit, therefor you must use other sources like scaling Dodge, Armor and Ward, Transcriber of Power, Word of Rahyeh, Celestial Doom, Runeword: Inferno, Runeword: Hurricane, and Runeword: Avalanche.
- Cast Speed: The faster you attack, the higher your DPS is and the faster you build Ward. Mage Flurry, Unsealed Mana and Arcane Momentum provide some in the Passive Tree, with the rest coming from your gear and Skills.
- Critical Strike Chance: Your biggest source comes from the Sorcerer Passive Calculated Destruction, Word of Lagon and Cosmic Tapestry.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. Any additional amount you can get is welcomed.
- 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 16.6% increased Non-Physical Damage, while at -4000 Armour it takes 40.1%. Aim for at least 100+ stacks.
- Penetration: Penetration subtracts from Resistances, causing a source of damage to deal more damage. Elemental Lore, Rift Bolt and Penetration with Lightning Invocations are your main sources.
- Resistance Shred: Grand Mysteries of the Deep is your source of Resistance Shred.
- % Increased Damage: Any extra source of % Increased Damage is welcomed. Since your Damage is split between multiple different Damage types, % Increased Spell Damage is very valuable.
- Movement Speed: Reduces the reaction time needed to react from attacks. The faster you move, the faster you can get out of danger!
- Flame Ward: The Damage Reduction provided is insane. While this Skill is active, you are almost immortal!
- Armour Mitigation: This build can reach a very high amount of Armour Mitigation. With your gear, Passives and Blessings combined, it's reasonable to get over 65%+ Armour Mitigation.
- Ward: A shield above your Health that is generated by certain effects, rapidly decays over time and is protected by Armour Mitigation. Your main sources are Boneclamor Barbute, Arcane Focus, Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, Jagged Veil and Celestial Doom.
- Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros is a huge Ward builder that can easily keep you in the thousands of Ward.
- Health: Excellent synergy with Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, any extra Health you can get is welcomed.
- Leech: Rift Bolt is you main source of it to provide the sustain to the build.
- reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes: This build requires gear affixes to cap this stat.
- Intelligence: Grants 4% Ward Retention per point, which is a very important stat for this build.
- Sphere of Protection: This is a great source of Damage Reduction that we get naturally from our Shocks.
- 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.
- Slow/Chill: An Ailment that greatly reduces the Action and 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. Click on the Generate Loot Filter button down below then use the Paste Clipboard Contents button in-game to import it!
Here is the Endgame Loot Filter for this build:
Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.
Video Guide
Comming Soon!
Summary
Overall the Plasma Orb Runemaster is a fast-casting build that excels in both Offense and Defense. It easily handles all content in the game, even in high Corruption. It involves a very active playstlyle, has amazing Damage, and excellent survivability.
- Combine (F,L,F) Runes and cast Plasma Orb with Runic Invocation to deal Damage.
- Get a massive amount of Flat Damage by scaling Armor, Dodge and Ward for Reowyn's Fortress.
- Further increase your Damage by stacking Dexterity for Fundamental Criterion.
- Scale your survivability with high Cast Speed by generating Ward with Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros.
- Use Flame Rush to avoid telegraphed attacks, proc Static Orb, and benefit from the Buffs it provides.
- Keep track of your Mana. Ensure that Runebolt hits enemies to gain Mana.
- This build revolves around Reowyn's Fortress and Fundamental Criterion. Make sure to properly scale Armor, Dodge, Ward and Dexterity!
Credits
Written by BinaQc
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL, Volca