Shatter Strike Spellblade Guide
Last Updated:July 16, 2024|Changelog
Welcome to the Spark Charge Shatter Strike Spellblade Guide. This unconventional build uses Shatter Strike to apply a flurry of Spark Charges that can explode packs and destroy bosses in seconds.
Shatter Strike decimates enemies with a flurry of circular melee attacks that has the best hits per second in the game thanks to Whiteout and Iceblink. Combine this with Idols and Affixes that apply Spark Charge on Melee Hit to bombard packs of enemies with overlapping , high damage AoE Lightning explosions.
This build gets up close an personal to apply overlapping Spark Charge, giving it very good clear and huge Ward from our Ward gained on Crit/Hit affixes. It has unmatched damage scaling thanks to Fragment of the Enigma providing a More damage scalar and Lightning Damage per Intelligence which synergizes well with the new Spellblade passive threshold bonus Prodigy. The build is also sufficiently tanky enough to handle high corruption thanks to a huge Ward pool and Flame Ward.
While this setup doesn't require any Uniques to function, Fragment of the Enigma drastically improves the damage. This build requires heavy investment and can be a glass cannon at high corruption, so it is not recommended for hardcore or cycle starter builds.
Overall this Spellblade has incredible clear, single target, and defenses that make it suited for all the content in the game. If you are looking for a high performing build that rewards you in the gear chase, this build is for you!
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.
Skills
Shatter Strike
Shatter Strike is your main skill for applying Spark Charges from our Idols and affixes. We are not concerned with the damage of Shatter Strike itself so we will skip over all the Damage multipliers in favour more attacks per second with Iceblink and Whiteout, as well as increased area from Shiver.
- Flame Rush or Surge can be used instead of Teleport based on player preference, but Teleport offers the best mobility.
- Enchant Weapon essentially only provides %50 Melee Attack Speed for this build so it can be swapped out for other skills the spellblade can cast indirectly such as Elemental Nova, Frost Claw, or Lightning Blast. Elemental Nova is a strong candidate after taking the nodes Elemental Dawn, Elemental Dusk, and Elemental Midnight in teleport for more Spark Charges thanks to Elemental Nova's node Spark Charges.
- If you want to be even tankier against Elemental damage, grab Prismatic Buffer from Flame Ward instead of the Damage. This is complete overkill for almost all content, but it could have some situational use, particularly in the Endless Arena.
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.
- Gemini is required to Dual Wield.
- Take Mage Flurry and Essence Duel for the Attack Speed.
- This build wants to stack Intelligence so pick up Arcanist, Calculated Destruction, Arcane Warden, Mental Fortitude, and Prodigy.
- We gain >200% Spell Critical Strike Chance thanks to stack Intelligence and some Dexterity with the threshold bonuses from Prodigy, Calculated Destruction, and Defender of Welryn. The 200% is needed as Soul Gambler's Fallacy halves our critical strike chance, so we retain 100% when the debuff is active.
- Arcane Shielding and Shattered Aegis are great for increasing the survivability of the build.
- Warden helps significantly with keeping high Ward.
- Sphere of Protection and Mental Catalysis are a must for nearly every mage build.
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 Shatter Strike until the enemy is dead or you're out of mana.
- Use Mana Strike to gain your mana back.
- 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 Shatter Strike 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.
- Make sure to hit the boss in the overlapping area of Shatter Strike. Both your left and right swings can hit the target and doubling your damage.
- Use Enchant Weapon during your DPS window against Bosses.
- Use Mana Strike or Focus in between DPS windows. Make sure you're full mana when Enchant Weapon becomes available.
- Flame Ward can save you from incoming Damage. Time it against dangerous telegraphed Boss attacks.
- Keep using Shatter Strike on big packs of enemies even when you have sufficient Spark Charges on them currently to kill them. They still explode when the target creature dies and generate Ward thanks to the Ward on Crit of your Soul Gambler's Fallacy and Ring of the Third Eye.
- Always refresh the buffs provided by Teleport before they expire.
- Teleport is a blink and can be used to go over incoming attacks or terrain.
- You can use Flame Ward preventively before you engage dangerous enemies.
- Always hold one charge of Flame Ward for emergency situations.
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
- 150+ Intelligence
- 400-500% Ward Retention
- 30% - 40%+ Armour (Pre Buffs)
- 5000+ Ward (out of combat)
- 200% Spell Critical Strike Chance
- 100%+ Increased Attack Speed
- 300+ Mana
- 400% - 800%+ Increased Damage
- 30% - 60%+ 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. Dragorath's Claw is a stat stick so ignore all the text regarding Frost Claw. A Rune Dagger can be used as well with Crit related affixes.
Milestone 2
Get a source of Leech. The easiest sources are from Melee Damage Leeched as Health on your Gloves or Weapons, or from Bleeding Heart. This is not needed later on in the build but is a useful stepping stone for survivability.
Milestone 3
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 4
Farm for a Fragment of the Enigma. Be on the lookout for Idols with the suffix Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit or helmets with the prefix Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit
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 The Invoker's Static Touch as this item can be used until you have a Ring of the Third Eye with high Legendary Potential.
Milestone 1
Keep working on upgrading pieces to Exalted and focus on good item bases. Maintain your capped resistances and get as much Intelligence as possible.
Milestone 2
Look for a good Dragorath's Claw, the damage output of this item can drastically boost your damage while offering you All Resistances.
Milestone 3
Keep working on the Idols and and helmet prefix for the best possible chance to apply Spark Charge. This is the overwhelming majority of your damage so even increasing it a few percent can have big shifts in your damage.
Milestone 4
Start farming the Soulfire Bastion Dungeon for a Soul Gambler's Fallacy. This can be tricky to get as you need to gamble for an amulet at the end of the dungeon but luckily has a high chance of getting Legendary Potential.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep your Resistances. Your goal is to have items with 4 valuable T5+ Affixes with ideally one of them being Exalted.
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
A Boneclamor Barbute is amazing for this build as we need all the stats it offers. Farm one with Legendary Potential and try to get Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit.
Milestone 3
Be on the lookout for boots with Legendary Potential as getting a pair with extra movement speed is ideal for farming monoliths. While Blood of the Exile is ideal for this, most Legendary boots will work with high Movement Speed or Intelligence. Razorfall and Telf'un's Mirage are up there as substitutes for this reason.
Milestone 4
Push your Intelligence as high as possible as it increases all facets of your damage. These stats are what turn this build into a true powerhouse, so focus them hard. Having an affix or two of Mana can also help smooth the playstyle by not needing to rapidly swap between spending mana on Shatter Strike and gaining mana from Mana Strike.
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 Fragment of the Enigma, Dragorath's Claw, Ring of the Third Eye and Soul Gambler's Fallacy with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find.
Milestone 4
Also look for a Stormcarved Testament, Strands of Souls, or Static Shell with high Legendary Potential to replace your Exalteds.
Milestone 4
Continue to push your Intelligence as hard as you can. With enough of each it's possible to get very high burst and tankiness.
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
- 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 Resolve of Humanity. Combined with the All Resistances from your Dragorath's Claw, this can make capping resistances a lot easier.
- Farm a well rolled Grand Mysteries of the Deep next.
- Grab Grand Emptiness of Ash for more damage.
- Finish up by farming the best rolled Grand Body of Obsidian and Grand Bulwark of the Tundra 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.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Pride of Rebellion is essential to get your Grand Glass Idol with Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit.
- Grand Subtlety of Slaughter helps you find more daggers.
- Lastly, take Grand Arrogance of Argentus for your Boneclamor Barbute but swap around as necessary depending on your target farm Unique.
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 2 Grand Glass Idol with Mana and Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit. The best idols are the ones with the highest % chance of Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit.
- Get 2 Ornate Glass Idol with Elemental increased Area for Area Skills and Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit. The best idols are the ones with the highest % chance of Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit.
- A Large Arcane Idol with Chance to gain Lightning Aegis when hit helps with defence.
- Fill the 1x1 slots with whatever resistances you need.
- Health
- %Health
- Vitality
- Armour
- Elemental Resistance
- Lightning Resistance
- Fire Resistance
- Increased Stun Chance
- Void Resistance
- Physical Resistance
- Poison Resistance
- Ward Retention
- Chance to Gain 20 Ward on Melee Hit
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 Shatter Strike to apply explosive Spark Charges and build huge amounts of Ward by scaling Intelligence and Attack speed.
- Intelligence: The most important in this build as it increases Spark Charge damage by 2 lightning spell damage and 4% increased damage. It also provides Ward per Second and Added Critical Strike Chance thanks to Prodigy, Increased Spell Critical Strike Chance with Calculated Destruction. Additionally it grants 4% Ward Retention per point, which is a very important stat for this build.
- Melee Attack Speed: The faster you attack the higher your DPS is and faster you build Ward. Enchant Weapon grants a whopping 50% Melee Attack Speed while it's active thanks to the Celerity Node and the Shatter Strike node Iceblink adds another 75%.
- Cooldown Reduction: You can have permanent Enchant Weapon uptime with enough Cooldown Reduction.
- Dexterity: Gives Increased Critical Strike Chance thanks to the passive Defender of Welryn.
- Chance to apply Spark Charge on Melee Hit: The second most important stat for damage and survivability, focus on getting as high rolled as possible.
- % Increased Damage: Any extra source of % Increased Lightning or Spell Damage is welcomed.
- Critical Strike Chance: This build gets most of its crit chance from Intelligence, but you may wish to have more earlier on in the gearing process.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. Stack this as much as possible, and pick up the Lightning Critical Strike Multiplier as well.
- 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 Lightning Damage, while at -4000 Armour it takes 40%. With the amount of hits the build has, it's very reasonable to get to -10000 (54%) and can realistically get to -20000 (58%)!.
- Ignored Resistances: Gain additional more damage by ignoring enemy resistances thanks to Resistance shred from Grand Mysteries of the Deep and Chance to Shock, as well as Lightning Penetration.
- 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 high levels 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. Using Experimental Armour applies to Damage over Time also gives us a nice buffer against Damage Over Time effects that can quickly rip through Ward builds.
- Ward: A shield above your Health that is generated by certain effects, rapidly decays over time and is protected by Armour Mitigation. This build is one of the best Ward generators in the game, capable of reaching 20K+ Ward with great gear. After the Ward changes of Patch 1.1, this build hovers between 5-10k Ward outside of its burst amount.
- Health: This is one of the few builds where Health stacking isn't optimal. Get some early before you start to get 5k+ Ward pools.
- Chill: An Ailment that greatly reduces the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. It's a must have 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.
- Freeze: Even though we don't build for it, this build can still freeze many enemies, providing an additional CC layer beyond Stun.
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 Spark Charge Shatter Strike Spellblade is an excellent build that destroys the content with enough investment. It's easy to play, has incredible damage and incredible survivability thanks to its multiple defensive layers and huge Ward generation.
- Deal huge amounts of damage with Spark Charge by scaling Intelligence thanks to Fragment of the Enigma and Prodigy.
- Gain a huge Ward pool thanks to the Ward on Crit of Soul Gambler's Fallacy and Ring of the Third Eye or The Invoker's Static Touch.
- 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 Amarathy.
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL