Want to become the harbinger of death itself or looking to rule the end of time with an army of the dead? Look no further than the Acolyte class in Last Epoch. From summoning legions of skeletal warriors, turning into the Grim Reaper, and becoming a dark wizard, the Acolyte’s Mastery has all of it.
We will discuss the Acolyte class in detail throughout this guide and try to explain why this class might be ideal for you in Last Epoch.
Acolyte – Base Class
The Acolyte class in Last Epoch is the master of forbidden magic. She uses powerful necrotic and blood spells to raise dead, manipulate blood and bone, and quickly rip her enemies apart or curse them and drain them of their life until they wither away for good.
Summoning builds, minion builds, curse builds, and all the common dark magic builds are here. The Acolyte is similar to the Mage class; however, there is one key difference.
The mage relies on single bombastic spells while the Acolyte in a lot of instant cast minor spells that can overwhelm enemies with damage over time or a quick Death By A Thousand Cuts from summoning 30 minions to fight your battles for you.
You will need to focus on building defenses so you can stay alive long enough to spread your curses and watch your enemies die. It can take some time to set up your attack combos, especially on bosses so having multiple ways to absorb hits or keep enemies away from you can go a long way.
Acolyte Skills
Rip Blood
Rips blood out of a target enemy dealing physical damage to it. An orb of the blood is drawn back to you, restoring 10 health when it reaches you.
Summon Skeleton
Summons a skeleton warrior or skeleton archer to guard you.
Marrow Shards
Fires sharpened bones from your body. The bones pierce through enemies inflicting physical damage. This attack consumes HP instead of Mana.
Wandering Spirits
Reveals wandering spirits around you for 6 seconds. The spirits wander randomly, dealing necrotic damage over time to enemies they pass through.
4 spirits are revealed immediately after casting the skill and 17 more are revealed over the next 6 seconds.
Harvest
A melee attack that hits all enemies in an area in front of you, dealing double damage to those that are Cursed.
Bone Curse
Apply a curse to enemies in an area for 8 seconds that causes physical damage when hit. The damage is tripled if you hit them yourself.
Transplant
Creates a new body for you at the target location, then detonates your old body to deal physical damage to enemies around it. Consumes HP to cast this skill.
Summon Volatile Zombie
Summons a Volatile Zombie which limps towards the nearest enemy. When it reaches an enemy or dies, it explodes dealing physical and fire damage to surrounding enemies.
Hungering Souls
Calls forth five hungering souls that seek out enemies, on hit they deal necrotic damage and then possess the target.
Possessed enemies take necrotic damage over time for 1.5 seconds.
Summon Bone Golem
Summons a bone golem, which attacks slowly, but has a 15% chance to retaliate with Bone Shatter when hit.
Spirit Plague
Curses a target with powerful necrotic damage over time effect which lasts 3 seconds. Spreads to a single nearby target on target death.
Infernal Shade
Target enemy and all nearby enemies take fire damage per second.
Necromancer – Mastery
Passive Bonuses:
- +1 max number of skeletons
- +1 max number of skeleton mages
- 50% increased minion damage
The Necromancer is Acolyte’s summoning class in Last Epoch. It is stacked with all sorts of undead to summon and ways to enhance them with different damage types, different spells, or alter them to specialize in a certain type of combat. Get ready to summon forth your own skeleton crew.
You will be summoning an army of skeleton warriors, wraiths, skeleton mages, and huge abominations made from the remains of your minions. The Necromancer is rewarded for playing around with different types of minion combinations.
Each of the minions you summon can be altered in different ways. They can do different types of damage, and summon different specialized versions, they can be buffed or exploded at will to cause massive amounts of damage.
Many of the spells from the Acolyte or Necromancer tree can also interact with your minions in different ways giving you plenty of options to combine spells and minions for powerful builds.
The best part about the Necromancer is that it is pretty easy to overwhelm most of your enemies with powerful minions and you can just stay as far away from the battle as possible so you don’t get hit by any enemy attacks.
The only downside to this class is after a while it can get pretty boring to let the minions do all the work work. Your gameplay just becomes running around avoiding attacks while your minions have all the fun.
Necromancer Skills
Summon Skeletal Mage
Summons a Skeletal Mage to assist you. They cast Dread Bolt, which has 150% added damage effectiveness and has a 50% chance to apply Damned on hit.
Sacrifice
Rips apart an allied minion, dealing physical damage to enemies around it.
Dread Shade
While the ability is active, your minion’s health will be reduced by 3% of its maximum health every second. In turn, your minion and the ones around it will deal an additional 10 necrotic damage with their spells and attacks. Moreover, their necrotic damage will be increased by 50%.
Assemble Abomination
Hold the ability key to channel to absorb minions in a moderate area. When you release, summon a single hulking abomination with added health and more damage per minion absorbed. The abomination’s health decays over time.
Summon Wraith
Summons a wraith that rapidly fades from this world, but will seek and attack your foes while it remains.
Lich – Mastery
Passive Bonuses:
- Gain 1% of the damage dealt will replenish HP
- Your spells and melee attacks will deal increased damage equal to your missing health
The Lich is probably the most badass of all the masteries in Last Epoch. You let go of the role of a summoner and transform into death itself. This class is all about risk and reward.
You gain access to the Reaper Form that turns you into a Reaper to deal increased necrotic and melee damage, attacking with two huge scythes that sweep across the battlefield. With a spell called Reap, you are constantly recovering HP among other skills that have similar effects.
The risk lies in the continuous loss of health when you are in this form. This forces you to play aggressively so that you can prolong your Reaper State by taking advantage of their health-siphoning skills. Depending on your playstyle, this type of gameplay can be really fun or extremely frustrating.
As you can probably tell the theme of the Lich is blood and death and taking the life of enemies to power your own.
The reaper form looks amazing, and when you use Harvest and Reap, your two melee spells, you swing your scythes through the enemies so smooth like butter, almost as if you’re slicing through their spirit and not their physical bodies.
Transforming back to human form will feel incredibly weak so you better be prepared to harvest a ton of soul quickly to satiate your hunger.
Lich Skills
Drain Life
A channeled spell that targets up to 3 enemies around the target location, dealing necrotic damage over time and leeching 30% of that damage back as health.
Aura Of Decay
Toggling aura of decay poisons you every second but leaves a trail of decay. Enemies near you or in the trail are poisoned four times a second, and your chance to poison on hit applies to each of these instances at 25% effectiveness.
While the aura is active you take 50% less poison damage.
Death Seal
Toggle to remove all wards and seal your health, preventing it from going above its current value for 5 seconds. Deal more damage equal to your percent missing health and take less damage equal to half your percent missing health.
Reactivate to unleash a wave of death-dealing damage based on how long Death Seal has been active and your current percent missing health.
Reaper Form
Take on the mantle of death itself and transform into a Reaper, temporarily gaining the Reap ability.
While in Reaper Form, your health regen does not apply and your health decays over time. When your health reaches 0 instead of dying you transform back to human form and are healed to full health.
Warlock – Mastery
Passive Bonuses:
- 5% more damage per curse on a target
- 35% increased fire and necrotic resistance
The Warlock is a dark arts sorcerer class/mastery in Last Epoch. This class specializes in exploiting its enemies with a plethora of curses while dealing with a menacing amount of fire and necrotic damage. Perfect for distracting enemies with low-level summons while you eat them away with your spells.
The Warlock comes with these curses; Anguish, Penance, Decrepify, Acid Skin, and Torment. You can also open up fissures around you that not only hurt the enemies standing over them but also send out spirits to drag the others down to hell. You can even spew fire from your mouth and watch as those souls get burned to ashes.
The Warlock is a very recent addition to Last Epoch, and players are still figuring out ways to make some OP builds, but what we have witnessed so far is nothing short of mind-boggling.
If curses, dark spells, weird occult skills, and morbid combat are your jam and you don’t want to be a goody-two-shoes mage then this is the class for you.
Warlock Skills
Chaos Bolts
A barrage of chaotic projectiles which lands in an area around the target. The explosions deal necrotic and fire damage in a small area.
Ghostflame
Channel to release a continuous jet of horrid flames in front of you dealing fire and necrotic damage over time.
Soul Feast
Feasts on the souls of Cursed enemies, dealing necrotic damage to them, and drawing fragments of their souls back to you. The soul fragments each grant 3 ward when they reach you.
Profane Veil
Channel to conceal yourself within a Profane Veil that deals necrotic damage over time to enemies around you. While concealed you dodge every Hit, but you can still take damage from damage over time effects, such as ailments, and you move more slowly.
Chthonic Fissure
Opens an infernal fissure in the ground, dealing fire damage over time to enemies on top of it, as well as releasing Spirits from the fissure that seek nearby enemies. These spirits inflict enemies with Torment, a Curse that slows and deals necrotic damage over time.
Every Last Epoch player I know has a guaranteed alternate Acolyte character. Who can resist the urge to amass the undead brigade and look all gothy while doing so?
For this reason, my personal pick will always be the Necromancer Mastery. You can not go wrong with this class granted you properly buffed up your skeletal crew.