Last Epoch Necromancer Build Guide: Flame Wraith

In this Last Epoch Guide we’re going to be covering a Necromancer Build that focuses on the use of big number of Minions to stack Armour Shred on enemies, while actively buffing your minions, and debuffing your enemies with Dread Shade. Last Epoch has very deep customization options for passive trees, and Skill perks, that can be difficult to navigate. In this Build Guide I’ll explain how to get the most from this Build, which also works great for Arena. So if you’ve been looking for a Necromancer build, with more active playstyle, then this Guide is for you.

Last Epoch Necromancer Build Guide: Flame Wraith (Spell Minion)

The Flame Wraith uses a combination of ranged minions that apply multiple stacks of Armour Shred on enemies. At the same time, it cast Dread Shade on minions, to buff them. The massive buff from Dread Shade can be applied outside of range, to have universal buff for all your minions. Wraith health decays over time, so we give them life leech, and minion health regeneration to make them stay longer.

Dread Shade enable us to summon Volatile Zombies, which then explode and grant us ward. We combine the ward from Zombies, with ward on movement, ward on potion use, ward on minion death, ward on using minion skill, and ward on mana spent. This Ward works as a shield on top of your health, and ward retention scales with our Intelligence stat. So it serve as a great tools for survivability, while minions kill enemies for us. That make Intelligence double dips as offensive and defensive stat at the same time.

Last Epoch Necromancer Build Guide: Flame Wraith Gameplay

In short, this Last Epoch Necromancer Build start casting Summon Wraith around enemy spawn spots. Then place a single wraith out of enemies attack range, so it’s doesn’t take aggro, nor overlap with other minions. You then cast Dread Shade on the single Wraith, you will see a circle on the ground around the wraith. Now all minions outside this circle get bonuses from Dread Shade tree, because we use Spectral Distance perk. The ranged Wraith will stay stationary, so we have easy control on their positioning.

Dread Shade will increase the health decay on targeted wraith, that will accelerate its death. Upon the death of wraith affected by Dread Shade, it will automatically summon a single Volatile Zombie. Volatile Zombies will seek out enemies, and self destruct, catching enemies in explosion. The explosion deal some ok damage, but also grant your character a ward equal to a percentage of Zombies health. To scale the ward granted from zombies, we need to invest in “Minion Health” stat, to increase the gain in wards. And to counter the decay of both Wraith, and Zombies health, we invest in “Minion health regeneration” stat.

The build have no tank, as neither the player can take a lot of hits for the minions, nor the wraiths have good enough defenses. However, we are constantly summoning wraiths, so it doesn’t matter if enemies keep killing them. As long as we maintain the maximum amount of wraiths, we are good.

Make sure your minions are always ahead of you, so you don’t take a lot of enemies aggression. If you play this build with a controller, the auto target will summon wraiths on top of enemies most of the time. This distract enemies, causing them to face wrong direction, and block their AOE and projectiles.

Flame Wraith Active Skills

In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills should be on your Skill bar to make this Last Epoch Necromancer Build work. Four of our five skills we specialize are considered mandatory, and the fourth is kind of flexible. The summon Wraith itself will not carry your character alone in early game, so we can use any minion spell along with it at start. Such skills are Summon Skeleton or summon bone golem. After we invest in Mana regeneration stat, we can spam Summon wraith none-stop, and can respec the skeletons into a proper support skill.

The final form of the build only pick skills from default Acolyte class, and from Necromancer Master Class.

Summon Skeletons

 This spell unlocks after an Acolyte character gets to level four, and is the first skill we specialize in. It starts summoning three skeletons, who are melee and slow. We will keep using Skeletons for leveling until much later. The easiest way to use Skeletons is focusing on Skeleton Rogues, and Warriors.

For Rogues, we take 2/5 Sweeping Strikes, 1/1 Skeleton Rogue, 1/1 Acid Flask. and 4/4 Individual Operator. These nodes enables the Skeleton Rogues, and gives them Acid Flask skill, which deal high damage. Also reduces their cooldowns by 200%. On top of that, they get 200% damage multiplier, and all skeletons get more damage and AOE. The Skeleton Rogues damage bonus is the biggest modifier you can get early on, but it split between all skeletons rogues. So getting more than one Rogue make each one get smaller bonus.

To Increase Skeleton Warrior effectiveness, we grab 3/5 Necrotic Conviction , 1/1 Bone Armor, 3/4 Impatience, and 1/1 Bone Share. These nodes give more health to warriors, and more damage to rogues. Then it enable the warriors to cast Bone Armor skill, which give themselves Armour and damage reduction. Then it gives Bone Armour more duration, enable it to cast on allies, and reduce the cooldown of all skeletons. This also allow Rogues to use their skill more frequently.

For the final points, we spend them in 1/1 Hollow Walker, and 1/1 Shambling Steel. These increase the maximum number of skeletons, and remove the Skelton archers from the pool of summonable skeletons. That way, you summon only Rogues and warriors. And complete 5/5 Necrotic Conviction, for more damage.

Transplant

The signature movement spell for all Last Epoch Necromancer Builds, and one of the very important utility skills in our arsenal. You unlock this skill at level 9, and can be specialized at second slot immediately.

There are many ways to build Transplant, but I always prefer to use it to recover life and mana, and grant us defensive buffs. The skill drains health to teleport you into the desired spot on screen, and we can allocate Anemia node to reduce the health cost.

We start with 3/3 Fleeting Form, to reduce cooldown, and increase cast speed of transplant. Get 2/4 Anemia to reduce health cost, and 3/3 Bone Armor to get more defenses. Then 3/3 Acolyte’s Fervor, to give character a cast and movement speed buff for short duration. 1/2 Azure veins, and 3/3 Pale Blood causes Transplant to recover 30 mana, which is huge boost to mana recovery.

Next is getting additional minions from Transplant, which is 1/1 Simulacrum. That leave four points, which you can invest in either, less health cost (4/4 Anemia), or Bone armor effect and duration (1/2 Plated Bone and 3/3  Apostasy)

Summon Wraith

This spell unlocks after choosing the Master tree of Necromancer, which is roughly around levels 25~30. You would have threes slot for skill specialization long before level 25, so you may use any other minion spell temporarily . I prefer using Bone Golem from level 12 to level 25, then respec Bone Golem and specialize into Summon Wraith.

Summon Wraith is the main skill in our build, and the primary source of damage. We try to optimize it as much as we can, and pick the absolute best nodes and perks for it. This might involve reallocating some points as character progresses and obtain better gear. The main concept of the build is to convert Wraiths into ranged Flame Wraiths. So you can spec into the node that give them massive damage, and causes them to stand still. Aside from that, we gain ward per Wraith summoned, to boost our survivability. And to maximize wraiths damage, we give them flat Necrotic damage, Necrotic damage multiplier, life leech, and base critical strike chance. And if you get additional levels to Summon Wraith from equipment, you can give them extra Critical multiplier, and reduce their health decay.

Summon Wraith Skill tree

Start with 2/5 in Reapers,  4/4 Wraith Bringer, and 2/2 Flame Wraith. This give you a small 22% chance to summon Flame Wraith, instead of normal melee wraith, so you need to compliment it with more chance to summon flame wraith on Adorned Idols. Once you get the Idols, you should may put points in 1/1 Locus of Resurrection and 1/1 Locus of Death. These are the nodes that make wraith stationary, so they focus on attacking, rather than wandering around.

Get 1/1 Spirit Link, and 3/3 Dawn of the fall, the combination of these gives 9% base critical strike chance. Base critical chance increase the critical rate of the wraiths by a lot. And with proper investment, and Logi’s Hunger Amulet, it can reach close to 100%. If you are curious to know your Wraith critical rate With these two nodes, it’s almost three times the critical rate shown in minion page in character sheet.

Then 5/5 Reapers, and 3/3 Necrotic Hunger for life leech and Necrotic damage multiplier. This damage multiplier from this node is much better than the Critical Multiplier from Dusk of The Living node. Because Critical Multiplier have diminishing returns without 100% Critical rate. You can then get 2/4 or 3/4 Delay The End, and leave Dusk of The Living as last option if you have excessive points.

You can also refund one point from Flame Wraith, in case you got your chance to summon flame wraith over 100% from idols.

Dread Shade

This is the main buffing ability in our Last Epoch Necromancer Build, and the second source of damage. By default, Dread Shade attach to a minion, buff the minion, and all other minions around it with 10 flat Necrotic damage, and 50% increase Necrotic damage. These buffs can be further increased by nodes in the tree, and its range can be extended to be virtually infinite. We also use Dread Shade to summon Volatile Zombies upon minion death. Also to buff attack and cast speed of minions.

We unlock Dread Shade after spending 30 points in Necromancer tree, which is around character level 38~40. it’s the Fourth skill we specialize in, and use it from there on.

Dread Shade Skill tree

We need to take 3/3 Wisdom of The Dead node to reduce the massive mana cost of Dread Shade. Then we go 1/4 Spectral Presence, and 3/3 Dying Coven, This grants 24% cast speed to minions affected by the buff. For final buff, we get 4/4 Lingering Doom for extra 20 flat Necrotic damage, and reduce health decay. This node alone ensure that all our minions affected by Dread Shade deal more Necrotic damage than any other type.

Up till now, Dread Shade would buff the minion it attach to, and minions surrounding it in a small circle. I personally prefer to take 1/1 Spectral Distance to change this behavior into buffing the minions outside the circle. So instead of buffing a portion of our shades that are summoned in small range, we buff almost all our minions.

Finally, we spend rest of our points into the path that results in auto summoning Valotile Zombies. Then 1/1 in Congregation of the Dead, 2/5 into Frenzied Phantom, and 4/4 in Beyond Death. For the final point, I use on 1/3 Flesh Harvest, and if I get extra levels from equipment, I use to reach 3/3 Flesh Harvest. This node can double the buff effects from Dread Shade.

Summon Volatile Zombies

Volatile Zombies itself is a skill that unlocks very early in campaign at character level 16. However, we only specialize in it towards midgame, at level 50 when we unlock the fourth specialization slot. The skill summon some zombies with decaying health, that move slowly towards enemies and explode on contact. We modify their behavior to move faster, instantly kill enemies at 16% health, and grant us ward.

We cast this spell in two ways: Upon the death of a minion affected by Dread shade, there’s 100% chance to summon a single Zombie. This zombie is summoned without costing mana. And when any minion die, there’s another 30% chance to summon a single Zombie. This one consume the skill mana cost, and one of the reasons we need huge mana regeneration in our Last Epoch Necromancer Build.

Summon Volatile Zombies skill tree

First, we take the path towards Vital Ward, to make Zombies give us ward upon their explosion. So take 1/5 Path of Destruction, 2/2 Necromancer Fervor, and 1/1 Vital Ward. The ward gained this way scale with Zombies max health, so we need to scale “Minions Max health” stat to improve it.

Then, we take the path to enemies instant death at 16% health. Take 2/5 Forceful Commander, 1/4 Daunting Blast, 2/2 Ravenous, and 2/2 Pull of the Grave. These nodes give casting speed, mana efficiency, massive damage multiplier, and instant death to enemies. Then we have the option to use 1/1 Horrific Vessels, to convert damage into necrotic. That’s because our minion necrotic damage is usually higher.

The auto summon node, 3/3 Awakening Presence is next. However, it cost a lot of mana, and only advised to be used when your mana regeneration is over 20 mana per second. You should also finish 5/5 Forceful Commander for more mana efficiency.

Finally, we improve Zombies speed by taking 3/5 Fervor, and 1/1 Ferocious Horde. That way, Zombies are able to keep up with your movement speed between packs, and ensure they don’t explode prematurely before reaching enemies. These are 22 points, so you need “+level to Volatile Zombies” affix on your helmet for this to work.

Wandering Spirits

The last skill in the arsenal of Last Epoch Necromancer Build is Flexible, and many skills can be used here. I choose Wandering Spirit for the simplicity and effectiveness, but you may also use Bone Curse, or Drain Life. We switch to this skill once we equip an “Aberrant Call” unique staff, because the staff drain life of all minions, so your Skeletons will no longer be able to survive. At this point, we Respec Summon Skeletons and specialize in Wandering Spirits instead.

We use Wandering Spirits for two main functions: Shredding Necrotic resistance, and applying fear. The resistance shred is pure damage modifier, without any complicated conditions. And the fear is used to prevent enemies from ganging you before you summon enough wraiths around.

Wandering Spirits skill tree

We need 3/3 Spirit Swarm, to reduce cooldown of Wandering Spirit. 5/5 Drained Will for 150% chance to apply Necrotic resistance shred. Then 1/1 Terrifying Presence to apply fear. And finally, 3/3 Harrowing Aura to increase the range of applying both Fear and resistance shred. That’s the main priority, then we can spend rest of the points however we want.

I prefer to get 3/5 Souls of Rage for spirits movement speed and to unlock next node. Then 1/4 Medium, and 2/4 Eternal Haunt, and put rest of the points in Daunting Presence. With default 20 points, you can only put 2/5 Daunting Presence, but if you get extra levels from equipment, you can add more points here. The reason I care about increasing the range even further with Daunting Presence is how spirits can overlap. On bosses, the bigger ranger each spirit have, the higher chance to stack resistance shred and increase damage.

Flame Wraith Passive Skills

Figuring out how to spend your points in the passive tree is one of the most important parts of making a Build in the Last Epoch, and generally, it takes a respec or two before getting it right. In this section, I want to show you how I’ve set this up for maximum performance.

Acolyte Base Tree

You start with the Acolyte tree by default, which requires you to spend 20 points in, to unlock the master class trees in this Last Epoch Necromancer Build. So, put 8/8 in Forbidden Knowledge, which add a nice scaling to all our abilities with Intelligence stat. Then 5/5 in Dark Rituals, for Cast speed for your minions and yourself. Get 1/8 in Stolen Vitality and 1/6 in Ethereal Revenant to get enough points to unlock next column. Max Crimson Gluttony at 5/5 for health regeneration and minion health regeneration. And finally put one extra point in 1/1 Soul Aegis. This tree end up with 21 points, but Soul Aegis is too good to miss, and add up to 300 Armour to your minions at highest level.

Necromancer Tree

Once you reach The End of Time and get to master the Necromancer class, you start investing in this tree. We will spend a lot of our points here, and we will find very good stats here, varying from character defenses, to all kinds of minion offensive and defensive stats. These passives will shape the entirety of our build, as we go very deep in the skill tree.

8/8 Risen Army is where we start, to boost minions damage and their cast speed. 5/5 Reclamation of Souls allow you to gain Ward on minion death, and get more Ward retention. 3/10 cursed Blood gives little extra minion damage, but more importantly, it’s required to unlock next node. One of the most important passives is 8/8 Aegisfall to shred enemies armour twice per minion hit. The number of minions enable this passive to stack hundred times on bosses, for more than 30,000 armour shred! This is the easiest way our Necromancer deal with very high health and resistant enemies.

Get 8/8 in Wisp Weaver for 100% chance to gain Ward equal to your mana spend upon using a minion skill. We are always spamming Summon Wraith, and we stack mana regeneration to keep up, so this passive grant us a lot of Ward. 3/3 Dark Retribution give us another three minions, in the form of Skeleton vanguard. And that conclude the first half of Necromancer tree.

Necromancer Tree Second half

The second half of the passive tree is where we get all of our heavy offensive and defensive stats. The next major offensive node is 10/10 Moonlight Pyre that grant all your minions 10 flat fire damage, and 10 flat necrotic damage. To realize how big this buff is, you should know that the base damage of your Flame Wraith is 25. So these 20 flat damage is equal to 80% damage multiplier.

For extra offensive stats, you then need 1/5 Frantic Summons to unlock 5/5 River of Bones, and 10/10 Heresy. These passive give massive Critical Strike chance to minions, Minion life leech on critical strike, and Intelligence. 10/10 Rite of Undeath is also a perfect fit for the build, increasing both Fire and Necrotic damage, and give some resistances as well.

The defensive side gets 1/8 Tyrant, 3/8 Cling To life and finally 4/4 Empty the Graves. That way, we get Increased health regeneration and Armour per minion we summon. And with our number of Wraiths, we can gain up to 160% health regeneration, and 320 Armour. This passive become even more relevant if we farm and acquire Vessel of Strife Relic, which apply Health regeneration to Ward as well.

Lich Tree

This tree gives you more Intelligence and mana regeneration through 10/10 Apocrypha. We fill this node as the very last one, from level 87 onward.

Flame Wraith Equipment & Stats

In this section we’ll be covering the type of equipment that you want to aim for in this Last Epoch Necromancer Build, and what stats you need on them.

Weapon

The first thing you’ll want is a good weapon that give your Flame Wraith the highest boost. Ideally, the best weapon is the Unique staff Aberrant Call, which give several buffs to the build:

• Increase maximum number of Wraiths you can summon by (6-12)
• Increase the level of Summon Wraith skill by (1-3)
• Increase mana generation.
• Increase minion damage.

All of these stats are very much desired, but only the maximum number of wraith is unique, and you have no other source for it. However, the staff have a drawback in the form of:

• All minions lose 6% of their current health per second, until they die.

So in early game, using the staff would be much harder, because it would doom your skeletons, killing them constantly. Also, it would make your wraith die much faster, and you don’t have enough mana to keep summoning them back. So we use any staff with some minions stats, until we are able to handle the change to Aberrant Call

Armour & Accessories

For Armour stats, we have these priorities (In order) by reaching Empowered Monolith at endgame:

Suffixes:

1. 1,000+ Health
2. Capped resistances at 75%
3. 100% Critical Strike Avoidance (up to 70% comes from the blessing of “Reign of Dragons” Monolith, so you need only one suffix on gear to max it)
4. 150+ Mana
5. High Endurance & Endurance Threshold
6. % Increased Armour

Prefixes:

1. Movement speed (on Boots)
2. + Levels to Skills that come with minions stats:
   1. + levels to Summon Wraith (on Body Armour).
   2. + levels to Volatile Zombies (on Helmet).
3. 22+ mana regeneration per second up to 24~25 (on Rings and Amulet)
4. 80+ Intelligence
5. Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use (on Belt)
6. Increased Critical Chance for you and your minions (on Body armour, or Helmet)
7. Ward gained on Potion Use (On Belt, Gloves, or Amulet)
8. Minion Health Regeneration (On Helmet, Belt, or Relic)
9. Increased Minion Health (for higher ward regain)
10. Increased Minion Damage

That covers most stats you need from a Last Epoch Druid Build, leaving only a few ones to pick from other sources.

Item bases

We need flat Minion Spell Damage for example, and we can only get that from some item bases such as Revenant Mask in the Helmet slot. In the Body Armour Slot, Pick either Immortal Regalia for all resistances for you and your minions, or Profane Regalia for minion life leech. Caged Souls is a great pick on Relics slot, to gain more ward on potion use and ward retention. However, Putrid Souls usually prove more effective, as it give constant ward per second passively. Ruined Bones give minions nice stats, but you lose your own survivability. These are the Acolyte specific slots.

For general armor slots, Ward Retention is fantastic stat for Boots, so pick Arcane Boots. And for Belt, we prefer to get as much potions slots as possible, so either Ranger’s Belt, or Plated Belt. And for Rings and Amulet, there’s no better choice than Turquoise Amulet and Turquoise Rings. These give much needed Minion critical chance, minion health, and minion damage.

You will find gearing a bit tighter, since Implicits from certain item bases are very important, so you need more farming. Fortunately, our Last Epoch Necromancer Build is very suitable for farming, and can get high Monolith corruption without much investment to begin with. It’s so self sufficient.

Honorable mention

Some unique items can be used as source of some nice stats, especially if you get ones with Legendary Potential for very endgame gearing. A notable unique I found is Transient Rest Boots, that gives three types of resistances, movement speed, and some ward every two seconds. It’s more stats than any rare Boots you can get, and with legendary potential, you can add even more Intelligence.

Logi’s Hunger is an amulet that can be farmed from last boss in Spirits of Fire Monolith. This amulet have several irrelevant stats, but it two overpowered stats:

• (2% to 3%) Minion Critical Strike Chance
• +2 to Level of Fire Minion Skills

These can elevate your Flame wraiths damage to highest levels. We convert our wraith to flame type, so it get two skill levels, and the base critical chance help them get closer to 100% critical chance.

Finally, Vessel of Strife is an item that need farming the hardest dungeon in game at highest tier. If you successfully  get one though, it give your Necromancer insane survivability by adding ward regeneration equal to your health regeneration. And we can get very high health regeneration from our necromancer tree.

Flame Wraith Idols

Idols are a good way to augment your character, and for this particular Last Epoch Necromancer build, we have several options to build towards. In all cases, we need two Adorned Immortal Idols (2×2) to maximize our chance to summon Flame Wraith instead of normal Wraith. That leave us with three other idols, that can be either:

• Two Large Immortal Idols (1×3) & One Huge Immortal Idol (1×4)
• Two Grand Bone Idols(3×1), 2 Ornate Bone Idol(4×1)

Usually, the Large and Huge idols have better stats for our Flame wraith build. The other option is less potent, but still useable. You can get some unique stats from idols, so pick idols that have one prefix and one suffix from the list:

Adorned Immortal Idol:

Prefixes:

• Chance for Summon Wraith to Summon Flame Wraith Instead.

Suffixes:

• Minions chance to apply Mark of Death on hit
• Critical Strike Chance for you and your minions
• Ward Retention

Ornate Bone Idol:

Prefixes:

• Vitality
• Volatile damage & Explosion area
• Armor

Suffixes:

• Necrotic damage to you and your minions
• Increase Transplant cooldown recovery

Grand Bone Idol:

Prefixes:

• Minion Fire damage
• Armour granted by Bone Armour

Suffixes:

• Necrotic damage to you and your minions
• Increase Transplant cooldown recovery

Huge Immortal Idol:

Prefixes:

• Stun Avoidance
• Potion health converted to ward

Suffixes:

• Critical Strike Chance for you and your minions
• Minions chance to apply Mark of Death on hit

Large Immortal Idol:

Prefixes:

• % Health
• Ward on Potion use

Suffixes:

• Critical Strike Chance for you and your minions
• Minions chance to apply Mark of Death on hit

Finally, for a small idols, just pick whatever resistances you are missing, or get an extra ward retention.

Last Epoch Necromancer Build: Flame Wraith Final Thoughts

Example build in build planner: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/zQq2y8LB

This Last Epoch Necromancer Build actually rely on one unique item to function, Aberrant Call staff. So you need to find fastest way to find a good version of this staff, with higher stats, and hopefully legendary potential. It’s usually a random drop, but there are two ways to get higher chance on getting it:

• Framing The Stolen Lance Monolith, and find nodes with “Unique or Set Staff or Sceptre” rewards
• Using all your Rune of Ascendance to convert any normal, magic, or rare staff into a unique. You will get one or more in few tries

Once you get the staff, you got yourself a build that’s viable in all game modes. Whether you play in Multiplayer, single-player, or even solo, you can build Flame Wraith and farm high corrpution on Monolith. It’s one of the best farmer builds, so a perfect match for first or second character in an account.

It’s especially good against bosses, and most dangerous dungeons. Because you get high single target damage, through all minions focusing fire on one enemy. You also don’t have to attack to deal damage, so you are more free to dodge and avoid enemies skills. And in terms of survivability, your hybrid health/ward style allow you to get the good from both worlds. On one hand, ward generation is very potent at low ward, since ward retention is still higher than ward drain. And on other hand, your health pool allow you to use endurance and endurance threshold to greatly reduce damage if you take major hits. On top of that, you will spam potions for stacking even more ward, and cleansing all damage over time, debuffs, and aliment from yourself.

Finally, this is another controller-friendly build, so it’s much more relaxing and less taxing on your wrist. But at the same time, it have active playstyle, with static minions that need strategic positioning, You need to be smart about the minion you choose to put Dread Shade on, because it buff enemies outside the circle, not the other way around.

Hopefully, this Last Epoch build gets you ready to take on the masses as a Flame Wraith Necromancer! If you enjoyed this build be sure to check out our Last Epoch Druid Build Guide: Physical Spriggan

Be sure to check out our Last Epoch Multiplayer coverage, and keep an eye out for future Builds and Guides. You can pick up Last Epoch on Steam!