Lich Build for Starting Season 3 in Last Epoch: Reaper Form and Necrotic Power

 

The Ultimate Acolyte Guide for Season 3: Harvest Reaper Lich Build Breakdown

Season 3 of Last Epoch is on the horizon, and if you’re looking to dive into one of the game’s most intriguing and versatile classes, the Acolyte, you’ll want to experiment with the Lich build. With its ability to wield devastating necrotic powers and transform into a terrifying reaper, the Lich offers a unique gameplay experience. Whether you're new to the class or revisiting it after some time, this guide will walk you through how to make the most out of your Lich character, particularly focusing on Reaper Form, the life-draining powers it offers, and how to synergize it all to create an unstoppable force for Season 3.

Understanding the Lich: The Foundation of the Build

Before diving into the specifics of the Reaper Form and its intricacies, it’s important to understand the Lich’s core mechanics and how they synergize with the rest of the Acolyte skill tree.

The Lich class revolves around necrotic damage, life-drain mechanics, and a constant struggle to balance between maintaining high damage output and managing your health pool. One of the core elements of the Lich is its Reaper Form, which empowers you significantly but also drains your life over time. This makes managing your health a delicate balance, requiring constant attacks and leech effects to keep you alive while dealing massive damage.

When building for Season 3, keep in mind that the upcoming changes to the Acolyte class may alter the skill trees slightly, so be sure to check the final patch notes once they’re available. However, this guide will give you a solid foundation to build upon as the new season unfolds.

Key Aspects of the Lich Build for Season 3

For this guide, we'll focus on optimizing the following key aspects of the Lich build:

• Reaper Form – The transformation that turns you into a powerful necrotic force but at the cost of your life.

• Leeching – A vital mechanic for staying alive, particularly when in Reaper Form.

• Bone Curse – Cursing enemies to deal more damage with your attacks.

• Death Seal – A skill that helps you mitigate the life drain and enhance your survivability.

• Endgame Gear – What to aim for when transitioning into high-level content, such as empowered monoliths and endgame bosses.

Let’s break down these components in more detail.

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Reaper Form: The Heart of the Lich Build

At the core of the Lich playstyle is Reaper Form, a skill that offers significant power but with a substantial drawback—life-drain. When you activate Reaper Form, your character becomes more powerful, but your health begins to drain steadily. This transformation prevents health regeneration, which means leeching from attacks becomes your primary method of survival.

How Reaper Form Works

• Transformation: Activating Reaper Form turns you into a powerful entity, significantly increasing your damage output, particularly for necrotic damage.

• Life Drain: The main drawback of Reaper Form is that it drains your life slowly over time. As you spend time in this form, your health will deplete, requiring you to leech or find ways to sustain yourself.

• Leeching: You must prioritize leech as a key part of your build. By hitting enemies regularly, you can sustain your health and keep yourself alive in Reaper Form. You should invest in melee leech on your gear and passive skills that enhance your leeching ability.

• Reverting Back to Human Form: If your health reaches zero while in Reaper Form, you revert back to human form and go on cooldown for 18 seconds. This is a critical moment that you want to avoid, as you’ll be much weaker and more vulnerable during this time.

The trick to making Reaper Form work effectively is ensuring you can sustain it through leeching, while also avoiding the downtime where you revert back to human form. In the mid-to-late game, once you have your leech mechanics in place, you’ll be able to stay in Reaper Form for extended periods, dealing immense damage while staying relatively safe.

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Bone Curse: Amplifying Your Damage

To make the most of your Reaper Form, you’ll want to curse enemies with Bone Curse, a skill that increases the damage dealt to cursed enemies. This makes Bone Curse an essential part of the build, as it doubles your damage output on cursed targets.

Bone Curse Mechanics

• Curse Enemies: Bone Curse applies a debuff to enemies, which causes them to take double damage from your attacks. This synergizes perfectly with your Reaper Form swings, significantly boosting your damage potential.

• Cursed Limbs: A notable passive node that allows you to continuously apply Bone Curse even after casting it. With this, you can curse enemies at the start of combat and keep them cursed without needing to reapply it constantly.

• Combo with Reaper Form: Every time you swing your Harvest skill (the core melee attack for this build), you’ll deal double damage to cursed enemies. This makes Bone Curse an essential part of your rotation for maximizing damage.

The idea is to curse a group of enemies with Bone Curse, then proceed to obliterate them with the Harvest skill. This synergy between Reaper Form and Bone Curse forms the foundation of your damage strategy.

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Leeching: The Lifeblood of the Lich

Since Reaper Form drains your life over time, managing your health becomes the most important aspect of your survival. Leeching is how you sustain yourself in combat, and your build should revolve around making sure you’re always hitting enemies to restore life.

Leech Mechanics and Optimization

• Leech Effects: As long as you’re hitting enemies at least once every 3 seconds, you can sustain your health. Leech only lasts for 3 seconds, so you need to keep attacking to maintain full health.

• Item Affixes: Focus on acquiring gear that provides melee leech, particularly on your weapon and gloves. These items will help you stay topped off even as you drain health in Reaper Form.

• Passive Skill Trees: Later in your passive tree, there are nodes that increase your leech effectiveness. Be sure to allocate points into these to maximize your survivability.

• Death Seal Synergy: One of the ways to offset the life drain from Reaper Form is by using Death Seal. This ability reduces the drain and provides you with a steady health pool, allowing you to focus on damage without constantly worrying about health depletion.

Death Seal: Mitigating Life Drain

One of the standout skills for managing the life drain mechanic in this build is Death Seal. When activated, Death Seal disables the life drain from Reaper Form, effectively freezing your health at a fixed value, typically around one-third of your max health.

How Death Seal Works

• Life Freeze: Death Seal sets your life at a specific value and stops the life drain. This gives you some breathing room to focus on dealing damage without worrying about your health dropping too low.

• Damage Buff: Death Seal also increases your damage, based on the percentage of missing health. The lower your health, the more damage you deal. This makes Death Seal a powerful tool for both survivability and damage output, especially in the later stages of the game.

• Damage Reduction: Along with the damage buff, Death Seal provides a damage reduction based on your missing health, which further helps mitigate incoming damage and keeps you alive.

Endgame Setup: Transitioning into Empowered Monoliths

Once you reach the higher levels and start entering Empowered Monoliths and endgame bosses, your gear choices and passive skill tree will play a crucial role in enhancing your damage and survivability.

Gear Choices for Lich Build

For the Lich build, you'll want to focus on high melee damage, leech, and necrotic power. Here's a look at some key items you’ll aim for:

• Death’s Embrace (Weapon): This weapon is tailor-made for the Harvest skill, offering massive melee necrotic damage and necrotic penetration. It also reduces damage from crits, making it perfect for this build.

• Titan Heart (Chest): A high-quality chest piece that provides plenty of health and allows you to focus on endurance stacking, which reduces incoming damage.

• Revenant Plate (Chest): Offers extra maximum health, which increases your endurance threshold and provides more survivability.

• Blood of the Exile (Boots): These boots give you high movement speed, which is essential for dodging around in Reaper Form and for speeding up your progression through monoliths and bosses.

• Ring of the Dead: This ring boosts necrotic damage, life leech, and critical strike chance—all crucial for this build.

Final Notes on Endgame Scaling

For the Lich build, the endgame is all about stacking attack speed, critical strike chance, and necrotic damage. Your weapon should offer a good balance between melee damage and necro scaling to complement your Harvest skill. On top of that, focus on scaling your critical strike chance to 100% and increasing your leech through passive nodes and affixes. Empowered Monoliths and boss fights require you to maintain high pressure on enemies while staying topped off in health, and with the right gear, your Lich can thrive in these environments.

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Conclusion

Season 3 is shaping up to be a promising time for the Lich build in Last Epoch, and if you’re looking for a powerful and unique class to experience the new content, this is an excellent choice. Focusing on Reaper Form and Necrotic Power, along with Leeching, Bone Curse, and Death Seal, you’ll be able to deal massive damage while staying alive through strategic leeching and health management.

Remember that while Reaper Form offers incredible power, it requires careful planning and gear optimization to maximize its potential. With the right setup, the Lich can easily become an unstoppable force in Season 3, capable of conquering even the toughest challenges the game has to offer.

Good luck, and may your Reaper Form bring death to your enemies!

FAQ: Lich Build for Starting Season 3 in Last Epoch: Reaper Form and Necrotic Power

1. What is the Lich build in Last Epoch?
The Lich is a class that specializes in necrotic damage and life-draining abilities, allowing you to harness the power of death to deal massive damage.

2. How does Reaper Form work?
Reaper Form transforms your character into a more powerful being, increasing damage output while draining your health over time. You need leech effects to stay alive.

3. What is Bone Curse used for?
Bone Curse curses enemies, causing them to take more damage from your attacks. It's essential for maximizing the Lich’s damage output, especially when using Reaper Form.

4. How do I sustain health while in Reaper Form?
To sustain health in Reaper Form, focus on leeching by hitting enemies. Leech effects from your gear and passive skills are crucial to surviving the life drain.

5. Is Death Seal important for the Lich build?
Yes! Death Seal mitigates the life drain from Reaper Form and boosts your damage, making it essential for both survival and maximizing damage in endgame content.

6. What should I focus on when gearing up my Lich?
Focus on gear that boosts melee necrotic damage, leech, and critical strike chance. Items like Death's Embrace and Titan Heart are key for this build.

7. What are the best passive skills for the Lich?
Invest in passives that enhance leeching, necrotic damage, and survivability. Look for nodes that improve attack speed, life leech, and critical strike chance.

8. Can the Lich build handle endgame content?
Yes, the Lich build can thrive in empowered monoliths and endgame bosses. With the right gear and strategy, it becomes a powerhouse for high-level content.

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