Here's everything we can share with you regarding the new Falconer Mastery! We've consolidated the information in one post for your reading pleasure and added some theory crafting from the Maxroll Last Epoch Team on what skills/builds might be good on the Falconer!
Note: The following information is the Falconer's initial reveal, some values could be incorrect or content could change by release!
What is the Falconer?
The Rogue's third mastery; Falconer brings a new playstyle to Last Epoch! She is a master tactician who employs deceptive traps and a fearsome pet bird of prey to gain the advantage against her enemies!
Maxroll x Zizaran
The Maxroll Last Epoch Team teamed up with Zizaran to bring you the most epic Falconer reveal possible! Check out our showcase video below!
Falconer Passive Tree
Mastery Bonus
+12 Dexterity
+1 Falcon Melee Damage per 4 Dexterity
Falconer Skills
Falconry
Falconry
Summon your trusted Falcon and unleash its devastating attacks! This Mastery Skill can act as your main Damage, or you can use it to supplement your other abilities.
Falconer Leveling
Based on what has been shown, the Maxroll Last Epoch Team would level the Falconer with a Falcon build using a combination of Explosive Trap and Falconry.
This setup revolves around buffing your Falcon with Sky Signal from Explosive Trap. There seems to be a lot of support for Falcon melee Damage in the Falconer Passive Tree and Skill Trees, such as Avian Arsenal, Trained to Hunt, Ranger's Mark, Raptor's Wings and Tactician. The build should deal considerable Damage during the Campaign and all the way to Empowered Monoliths.
Scaling & Mechanics
- Stacking Dexterity offers insane value on this build thanks to the Mastery bonus, Falconer's Journey, Relentless Talons and Stymphalian Feathers.
- The Explosive Trap Tree has Passives like Blast Rain to benefit from the easier attack speed scaling of Bows. Free Lofting Bird provides a lot of Cooldown Reduction for your Falcon abilities. specializing into Trap Sprinkler, Automated Bombardment and Trapuchet provides a high chance to drop an extra Trap when one detonates.
- In the Falconry Tree you can scale your Damage through Falconer's Journey, Is it a bird?, Agile Prey, Avian Stamina and The Blood Dance. Falconry can benefit from your characters stats with multiple different Nodes such as Trained to Hunt, Go For the Eyes!, Exposed Weakness and Avian Arsenal.
- Smoke Bomb provides a ton of Damage for the build through Smoke Blades.
- In the Passive Tree there are Nodes such as Coordinated Fade, Outlander's Tenacity, Stymphalian Feathers and Tailwind which should increase your survivability significantly.
- For Sustain, there are multiple options like Draining Arrows, Relentless Talons and Finesse Them.
- To be able to sustain the Mana Cost of Explosive Trap, you want to invest into Nodes like Subtle Sabotage and Jelkhor's Blueprint. In addition, you want to invest into Mana Regen on your gear and Passives.
- You can use Shift to move fast and regain Mana with Swift Recovery.
Falconer Builds
Falconer has very strong support for a Minion based build with an active playstyle. Buffing the Falcon by stacking Dexterity, granting it Damage from your character's stats, making its abilities instant cast with Intuitive Connection and all the synergies in the Skill Trees ensure that your new mighty bird companion should perform excellently.
In addition to various builds revolving around buffing the Damage of Falcon, the class also has clear synergy for Bleed builds with Passives like Sky Assassin and Skill Nodes such as Rending Wires, Barbed Net and Curved Hooks inside Net. Rending Barbs in Aerial Assault caught our eye as an extremely powerful Node.
Tactician in Aerial Assault looks powerful enough that it could single-handedly create an amazing Ballista Falconer build. The Damage potential of Ballista seems to be very high with Passives like Finesse Them, Needle Like Precision, Tactician and Handler. Siege Engineering in Explosive Trap offers synergy as well.
Using Explosive Trap as a Bow attack by speccing into Blast Rain and proccing Detonating Arrow with Arrow Traps looks like a very viable Bow build. A build like this would most likely be played on Marksman instead of Falconer, as you'd want to spec Detonating Arrow for Mana Arrow to remove its Mana cost. For this type of build, you want to maximize the amount of Traps thrown and detonated, to get as many procs as possible. Reign of Winter would fit this build well, as it offers extra procs in the form of Icicle. Mourningfrost comboes very well with this Unique Bow and the Blasting Device Node. Since you'd also be scaling Spell Damage, speccing Lightning Bomb seems like a good idea.
Falconry
- Falconry can benefit from your characters stats with multiple different Nodes such as Trained to Hunt, Exposed Weakness, Avian Arsenal and Go For the Eyes!.
- Falconer's Journey, Is it a bird? and Agile Prey provide big Damage multipliers.
- Apply Falconer's Mark to enemies to get Buffs when you consume it. The effects can be enhanced with Wake of Wings, Falcon's Gale and Avian Arsenal.
- The Cooldown of the active ability Falcon Strikes can be greatly reduced with Side by Side.
Explosive Trap
- For any type of build using Explosive Trap, grabbing Smoke Traps looks very strong. If you spec for maximum amount of Trap detonations, this Node alone would provide a ton of Dusk Shroud stacks.
- For Falcon builds, Sky Signal is very powerful, granting huge amounts of Elemental Penetration and Physical Penetration. In addition, Free Lofting Bird provides big Cooldown Reduction.
- Speccing into Trap Sprinkler, Automated Bombardment and Trapuchet provides a high chance to drop an extra Trap when one detonates.
- Placing points into Static Mines, Coldsnap Mines and Trapas converts the Damage and causes you to throw more Traps per use. These Nodes together with Clustered Explosives results in 5 Traps thrown per use.
Net
- Net immobilizes regular enemies and applies 35% less Movement Speed to Rares and Bosses, which on its own is very good for survivability. This crowd control can be further enhanced with Tanglewire.
- It has a lot of support for a high performing Bleed build with Nodes like Rending Wires, Barbed Net and Curved Hooks. Caltrops from Trickster Artist and Tinkerer's Combo provides a lot of additional Bleed stacks.
- Converting the Skill into a Trap with Net Trap and triggering Puncture with Spear Trap provides interesting build options.
- It can also be used to get Buffs with Nodes such as Leading the Hunt, Quick Throws and Exposed Bait. In addition, Entangled Weapons and Weakening Threads apply strong Debuffs.
Aerial Assault
- In the Aerial Assault tree, Skyward Swoop and Coordinated Assault provide a lot of Cooldown Reduction with your other Falcon abilities.
- You can spec Featherstorm to add a long lasting Damage over Time attack. You can increase its duration and Damage further with Razorblade Plume and Storm on the Horizon. With Darkwing Fall it can drop Black Arrows, similar to the ones from Dark Quiver.
- With Twilight Strike you can automatically drop Umbral Blades, and with Plumed Daggers, they can also inflict Shadow Daggers.
- Treacherous Pursuit, Vengeful Nails and Rending Barbs offer interesting Bleed synergy with the Falcon and Net.
Dive Bomb
- Inside the Dive Bomb tree, Devastating Dive and Dazed Prey provide big Damage multipliers.
- There's a ton of options for reducing Cooldowns with Nodes like Rush of the Hunt, United Assault, Diarchy and Rapid Pursuit.
- Exsanguinating Strike can synergize well with Bleed builds, consuming the stacks instantly.
- Get strong Buffs with Nodes such as Talon Blades and Gale of Blades. Expose their Defenses, To Shreds, Flesh Tearing Talons provide powerful Debuffs on enemies.
- Incendiary Collision Bird Missile offers synergy with a Decoy bomber build.
We're Blasting to 1.0!
With the reveal of the Falconer, we're just another step closing to Last Epoch's 1.0 release on February 21st! Until then, the Maxroll Last Epoch Team is in full swing getting the branch's final details done and ready for you to blast the great world of Eterra with our top-notch Leveling and Endgame Build Guides and Resource Guides. All our Guides will be updated to 1.0 on February 19th. Warlock and Falconer are now available on the LEPlanner aswell! Stay tuned for more!
If you haven't already, head over to our Discord and select the Last Epoch role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development.
Written by: The Maxroll Last Epoch Team
Reviewed by: Dredscythe, Tenkiei