The Spark Charge Runemaster obliterates enemies with a barrage of Lightning bolts and explosions. Any enemies who survive the initial attack are pushed far away, and all but the tankiest enemies are stunned, completely neutralizing their attacks. On the defensive side, this build combines a Low Life setup with powerful nodes in Runemaster to gain a massive amount of Ward generation. The combination of CC and Ward generation gives this build some of the best survivability in the game.
While this is technically a Melee build thanks to Mana Strike's Melee tag, we turn it into a Ranged playstyle thanks to the Teleporting Strikes node. Damage comes primarily from Spark Charge, which is supercharged by Fragment of the Enigma. The build also boasts excellent tankiness and CC thanks to Flame Ward and Lightning Attunement from Lightning Blast plus the ability to Stun and Knockback enemies.
While this setup doesn't require any Uniques to function, there are several that are needed to optimize the build. Fragment of the Enigma is a tremendous boost to our damage, while Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living allow us to get the most out of the Low Life setup. Dragorath's Claw and Peak of the Mountain add good value with the right Legendary affixes on them.
Overall this Spark Charge Runemaster is a Defensive and CC powerhouse that doesn't sacrifice damage and provides satisfying gameplay to anyone that prefers to control the battlefield. The results are truly explosive!
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.
- Great Clear
- Very Tanky
- Incredible CC
- No Mana Management
- Unique Intensive
- Lots of Repositioning
- Not the Fastest Farmer
- Flame Ward Uptime Management
Skills
Mana Strike
Mana Strike is our primary means of applying Spark Charges and Knockback. Spark Charges is a huge damage boost while Teleporting Strikes makes Mana Strike a ranged skill. Repulsing Strikes provides our Knockback and only needs 2/3 points. Rune Sap is a huge source of Increased Damage. Star Guide seems unnecessary for skilled players, but in our testing the damage is much higher with this node.
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.
- Calculated Destruction is a tremendous amount of Critical Strike Chance at high Intelligence stacking.
- Sphere of Protection is a great defensive passive.
- Arcane Shielding and Shattered Aegis are tremendous defensive buffs
- Storm Blade provides us with even more Spark Charges
- Mental Catalysis is almost half of the reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes we need to cap
- Edict of the Scion grants us 72 Ward every time we attack with Mana Strike
- Runeword: Cataclysm is a large source of Critical Strike Chance with some extra damage as a bonus.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This Spark Charge Runemaster attacks enemies from mid range, ensuring that all of 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
- Start by casting Flame Ward.
- Spam Mana Strike to deal damage to enemies. Aim for the middle of a large pack, or the farthest enemy in small packs.
- Just before your Flame Ward is about to expire, recast it as long as it's off cooldown.
- Use Enchant Weapon to take down tanky enemies
- Use Teleport for positioning and to avoid telegraphed attacks
Mapping
- Group as many enemies as possible before attacking with Mana Strike to maximize its AoE.
- Use Teleport to leave dangerous enemies behind and traverse terrain gaps.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your defensive buffs and keep them active.
- Try to time your Flame Ward and Enchant Weapon together to maximize your damage.
- Make sure you have some mana available at all times to use your defensive buffs.
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
- 100% Reduced Bonus Damage Taken From Crits
- 100+ Intelligence
- 3000+ Health
- 30% - 40%+ Armour (Pre Buffs)
- 100% Critical Strike Chance
- 300%+ Critical Strike Multiplier
- 30%+ Melee Attack Speed
- 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. Get a Weapon with double T5 offensive Affixes as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Pick up an Avarice from the early Campaign quest Erza's Ledger. This provides you with Leech until you replace it with a Blessing. Start pushing your health as high as you can. Work to get over 2k before reaching Empowered Monoliths.
Milestone 3
Fragment of the Enigma is the single biggest damage upgrade you can get for this build and is necessary to properly scale your damage. The build will feel much weaker before you have this, so get it as soon as you can by either farming the Unique Echo rewards from The Stolen Lance Timeline or by using Rune of Ascendance on Catalysts.
Milestone 4
Look for a Rune Dagger for the Added Critical Strike Chance and shoot for Melee Attack Speed and Critical Strike Multiplier as your prefixes.
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 Grand Glass Idols with Critical Strike Chance With Lightning Skills and Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit for a big damage boost.
Milestone 1
Farm a Peak of the Mountain with LP to get a tremendous boost to your Critical Strike damage. This can be acquired easily from Lightless Arbor.
Milestone 2
It's time to work towards your Low Life setup. Farm Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living from The Blood, Frost, and Death Timeline. Acquire a pair of gloves with Experimental Ward per Missing Health from Exiled Mages. Don't switch to low life until you have at least two of these and enough Intelligence to at least double your health with Ward when out of combat. Make sure when you switch to take off Avarice and any other sources of Leech that you may have.
Milestone 3
Get your Reduced Bonus Damage Taken From Critical Strikes at or near 100% to mitigate Critical Strike damage against you.
Milestone 4
Prioritize finding sources of Intelligence, Health, Critical Strike Chance, and Critical Strike Multiplier to push your damage and survivability higher.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep your Resistances capped. 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
Farm LP versions of Fragment of the Enigma, Exsanguinous, and Last Steps of the Living to add more valuable affixes.
Milestone 3
Farm Dragorath's Claw with Legendary Potential from Reign of Dragons or Rune of Ascendance. Don't switch to this unless you get at least Melee Attack Speed on your Legendary. If you already have a really good Rune Dagger, wait until you get both prescribed prefixes.
Milestone 4
Push your health as high as you possibly can while also working towards 100% Critical Strike Chance, 80+ Intelligence, and as much Critical Strike Multiplier as you can find. These stats are what turn this build into a true powerhouse, so focus them hard!
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 applicable Uniques for 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!
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
- Emptiness of Ash
- Mysteries of the Deep
- Resolve of Humanity
- 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 to cap out your resistances more easily.
- Grand Body of Obsidian and Grand Bulwark of the Tundra are big increases to your survivability.
- Grand Mysteries of the Deep and Grand Emptiness of Ash are both sizable damage boosts.
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 makes it easier to find our most impactful Idols. If you already have 4 well rolled version of these, switch to Grand Mark of Agony.
- Grand Arrogance of Argentus helps you find more Exalted Rune Daggers and Daggers with great affixes for items for Dragorath's Claw.
- Grand Temple of the Mind helps you find more Exalted items for Peak of the Mountain.
- Grand Hope of the Beginning and Grand Temple of the Mind provide very little value, but are the best options for their respective slots.
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:
- Look for four Grand Glass Idols with Critical Strike Chance With Lightning Skills and Chance to apply a Spark Charge on Melee Hit for a huge damage boost.
- Two Adorned Arcane Idols with Ward Retention and Health enhance our survivability by providing a substantial Ward spike.
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 Mana Strike to proc Spark Charges and Lightning Blast while building huge amounts of Ward and knocking back enemies with Repulsing Strikes.
- Fragment of the Enigma: Our damage revolves around this Unique, which provides Spark Charge with a massive amount of area, a huge damage multiplier, and Flat Spell Damage from Intelligence. Your build takes off when you equip this.
- Intelligence: The most important stat for this build. Each point provides 4% Increased Damage, 4% Ward Retention, and 2 Flat Lightning Damage to Spark Charge. Calculated Destruction gives us another 3% Critical Strike Chance per Intelligence, making this an insane scaler for the build and a very high priority stat.
- Flat Spell Damage: Primarily gained from Fragment of the Enigma and Intelligence scaling.
- Melee Attack Speed: The faster you attack the higher your DPS is and faster you build Ward. Enchant Weapon is a major source of this, with the rest coming from your gear.
- Flame Ward: In this setup we don't just use this skill for defense. It also provides 250% Increased Lightning Damage, which is a tremendous buff to our damage output that we can keep up 100% of the time.
- Rune Dagger: The added Critical Strike Chance and Flat Spell damage makes this an easy choice for the build. Dragorath's Claw is also a Rune Dagger, so we lose nothing when we switch.
- % Increased Damage: Any extra source of % Increased Lightning or Spell 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 wants as much Critical Strike Multiplier as you can get.
- 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%)!
- Grand Mysteries of the Deep: This provides a 20% increase in damage to bosses. Getting to the cap of 10 stacks is trivial for this build.
- Flame Ward: The Damage Reduction is insane. While this Skill is active you are almost immortal!
- Armour Mitigation: This build can get a decent amount of Armor thanks to the two Armor Blessings we take and Shattered Aegis.
- 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 an excellent Ward generator the low life setup we use plus Edict of the Scion and Jagged Veil.
- Health: Health stacking is very important to get the most out of our low life setup. The more HP you have the better.
- 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: Elemental Nova and Ice Barrage output enough damage to Stun the most enemies.
- Knockback: Repulsing Strikes in Mana Strike provides us with consistent and powerful knockback. The enemy has no defense against, so even bosses can be pushed into corners, neutralizing many of their attacks.
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 Spark Charge Runemaster is a high clear build with exceptional tankiness and extreme levels of Crowd Control. This build is suitable for all of the content in the game, but excels at Corruption, Arena and Tier 4 Dungeon pushing.
- Spark Charges provide great damage and huge clear thanks to Fragment of the Enigma
- Mana Strike turns this into a ranged and CC powerhouse.
- Teleport is a great Movement Skill that grants great defensive buffs on use.
- Flame Ward is an incredible Defensive and Offensive skill.
- The build is Uniques heavy, but scales exceptionally well.
Credits
Written by McFluffin.
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL