Welcome to the Shatter Strike Spellblade Guide. The Shatter Strike Spellblade decimates enemies with a flurry of circular Cold attacks, building up huge amounts of ward every attack thanks to Lost Knowledge.
This is a Melee build with a large area, giving it very good clear. It also has excellent damage scaling thanks to huge Crit scaling from Cold Steel, incredible attack speed from Iceblink and a massive mana pool that allows it to attack many times before needing to recover with Mana Strike. The build is also exceptionally tanky thanks to a huge Ward pool and Flame Ward
While this setup doesn't require any Uniques to function, Shard of the Shattered Lance, Peak of the Mountain, Ferebor's Persistence and Strands of Souls are all very valuable, while Vessel of Strife is highly desirable to push Empowered Monoliths but also difficult to get without very good gear. The investment to maximize this build is considerable, so it is not recommended as a starter.
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 will reward you in the gear chase, this build is for you!
Flame Ward
Shatter Strike
Teleport
Enchant Weapon
Mana Strike
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.
Great Clear ✔
Easy to Play ✔
Great Scaling With Gear & Uniques ✔
Excellent Single Target and Defense ✔
❌ Mana Management
❌ Heavy Gear Investment
❌ DPS Downtime After Burst
❌ Windows of Vulnerability on Defense
Skills
Shatter Strike
Shatter Strike is your main Damage Skill. This build takes advantage of several damage multipliers from Absolute Zero and Breadth of Cold, a huge Crit damage boost from Cold Steel, and high attack speed from Iceblink. We also take Whiteout to get our cost over the 40 mana threshold needed for Lost Knowledge, which provides a huge defensive boost.
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.
- Lost Knowledge is by far the most important defensive passive for this build. Take it early!
- Take Mage Flurry and Essence Duel for the Attack Speed.
- Investing points into Arcanist and Elemental Affinity helps cap Elemental Resistances.
- Get Infused Weapon and Prismatic Blade for the Flat Fire Melee Damage.
- Volka's Razor is a significant damage buff for this build.
- Arcane Shielding and Shattered Aegis are great for increasing the survivability of the build.
- Warden helps significantly with keeping high Ward.
- Knowledge of Destruction helps to reach Crit cap.
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 or Focus 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.
- 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.
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 (Poison can be lower)
- Capped Critical Strike Avoidance
- 400-500% Ward Retention
- 500+ Health Regen
- 30% - 40%+ Armour (Pre Buffs)
- 2000+ Ward (out of combat)
- 800+ Mana
- 100% Critical Strike Chance
- 100%+ Increased Attack Speed
- 400% - 800%+ Increased Damage
- 200+ Added Melee Cold 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. 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 Mana into your gear as possible. This stat determines how much Ward we can generate from Lost Knowledge throughShatter Strike. It is exceptionally important to our survivability, especially before we get Vessel of Strife.
Milestone 4
Farm a Peak of the Mountain from Lightless Arbor with a high rolled Crit Chance. This is easy to get and has a high chance of dropping with Legendary Potential, so it shouldn't take long to get a good one.
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 Grand Glass Idol with Mana And Armor Suffix. These will have a substantial impact on your mana pool.
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.
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 3 or 4 Grand Glass Idol with Mana And Armor. Ideally these will also have Mana on the prefix, but the suffix is the priority.
- Complete your setup with a situational mix of Idols to cap your Resistances. For prefixes use Health Regeneration, Mana, Armour, Critical Strike Chance or Vitality.
- 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 Shatter Strike to deal massive damage and build huge amounts of Ward. The setup takes full advantage of Lost Knowledge by scaling high amounts of Mana to build insane amounts of Ward.
- Flat Melee Damage: This build gets great Flat Damage support from both the dual Wield setup and Spellblade passives. Dexterity also provides Flat Damage.
- 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. We don't explicitly build for it in this setup, but finding it on gear is a bonus if you can fit it.
- Crystal Sword: Its Implicits are insane for the build. Get a good rolled one!
- Intelligence: Shatter Strike gains 4% Damage per point of Intelligence. Additionally it grants 4% Ward Retention per point, which is a very important stat for this build.
- Dexterity: Shatter Strike gains 4% Damage and 1 Flat Damage per point of Dexterity.
- Throne of Ambition: Provides an insane DPS boost against Bosses.
- % Increased Damage: Any extra source of % Increased Cold Damage is welcomed.
- Critical Strike Chance: This build has a ton of Crit Damage, so scaling your Crit Chance as high as possible is a priority.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. This build gets a tremendous amount from the Shatter Strike node Cold Steel
- 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 Cold 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%)!.
- Grand Rage of Winter: This provides a 20% increase in damage to bosses. Getting to the cap of 10 stacks is trivial for this build.
- Throne of Ambition: This Idol is a 40% damage multiplier against bosses is they manage to survive long enough to reach max stacks.
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.
Recommended End Game Activities
Last Epoch has multiple end game activities with completely different roles and rewards. All the builds in Maxroll.gg have been tested and are designed to complete all available content. However, not all builds excel at doing the same activities. Make sure you are familiar with the end game strengths and weaknesses of your character.
The Monolith of Fate is the main end game system. Most of your character gear upgrades are found here. Once you get all of your desired Empowered Blessings, you can start pushing Corruption to increase your chances at finding incredible Exalted Items. The Monolith of Fate rewards speedy builds that are able to target farm Echo Reward Nodes or stack Timeline Stability as fast as possible.
This Spellblade is an excellent Monolith of Faith farmer. Its tankiness and DPS make both Echoes and Bosses easy. Shard of the Shattered Lance is a huge boost to Echo clear speed. For even more speed, take Flame Runner in Flame Ward
Monolith Goals
Your goals in the Monolith of Fate will differ greatly depending on what build you play and what stage your character progression is at. Here are the objectives you should aim at when playing this build:
- Reach Empowered Monolith as fast as possible.
- Farm your Combat Empowered Blessings. Prioritize gaining Timeline Stability and fight the Timeline Bosses as often as possible. Once you are done with one Timeline, move to the next one. Reach 200 Corruption to farm your desired Blessings faster, as it unlocks a 5th option to choose from after you defeat a Timeline Boss. Defeat the Shade of Orobyss to gain and transfer Corruption between Timelines.
- Farm your first Drop Rate Empowered Blessing in The Stolen Lance Empowered Monolith Timeline. Here you should also farm Throne of Ambition until you get it.
- Finish up the rest of your Drop Rate Empowered Blessings.
- Farm for key Uniques.
- As you farm for Uniques, stack Corruption as high as your gear can handle. The higher Corruption you do, the more Items you find. Get your character ready for the other end game activities.
Monolith Modifiers
Every time you choose an Echo a Modifier comes attached with it, adding difficulty and changing how enemies behave. These Modifiers stay active for a maximum of 6 Echoes and stack with each other. Some Modifiers can handicap your build immensely while others can almost be ignored. Monolith Modifiers scale with Corruption and increase the Item Rarity of Echoes. Ideally you want to do the hardest content possible, without delaying your clear times. Keep up Item Rarity as high as you can without it slowing you down.
Easy Modifiers
- Enemy Critical Strike Chance (Once you have 100% Critical Strike Avoidance).
- Enemies heal if they have not been damaged recently.
- Rare enemies have high speed and crit chance until approached.
- Rare enemies regenerate health.
Avoid these Modifiers
- Enemy chance to receive a Glancing Blow.
- Enemy Critical Strike Avoidance.
- Enemy chance to Dodge.
- High health enemies take less damage.
- High health enemies deal increased damage.
- Enemies are Deadly if not damaged recently.
- While bossing: enemies Enrage at half health and enemies gain Frenzy and Haste when hit.
Learn more about the Monolith of Fate with our Empowered Monolith Guide.
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 Shatter Strike Spellblade is an excellent Melee build that will destroy 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.
- Use Lost Knowledge and a large mana pool to stack massive amounts of Ward with Shatter Strike.
- Deal huge amounts of damage with Shatter Strike by scaling Crit thanks to Cold Steel
- Vessel of Strife large amounts of Health Regen further enhances the Ward style gameplay of this build.
- While they are not mandatory [Peak of the Mountain, [Shard of the Shattered Lance, Strands of Souls and Ferebor's Persistence are great items 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 McFluffin.
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL, Facefoot