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Beastmaster Strategy
Beastmaster Skills And Passives
Beastmaster Items And Affixes
How To Play Your Beastmaster
There are many minion-focused subclasses in Last Epoch, but none of them make you feel quite as much like a Disney princess as the Beastmaster. As a Beastmaster, you’ll travel the ages with a retinue of woodland creatures, from the toothsome sabertooth to the highly venomous scorpion.
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Maybe your average Disney princess doesn’t have quite as many claws and venom sacs associated with their woodland friends, but the Beastmaster cares not for the cute and cuddly. This Primalist subclass is out for blood with their furry bestie's help; with this guide, you’ll find out just how deadly the Beastmaster can be.
Beastmaster Strategy
It’s best to think of your minion (or minions) as helpful allies than your main source of damage. You’ll still be the main damage dealer fighting in the thick of things alongside your chosen animal companion. Your animal friend(s) can offer damage buffs and supplemental damage but don’t expect them to do all the work for you.
That said, your animal companions can provide some potent support. Your Wolves' Howl, for example, provides a 25 percent damage boost, a 20 percent attack speed boost, and heals you too. For this reason, Wolves are the most popular choice of companion for Beastmasters, even though you start the game with Wolves unlocked.
Supplementing your pack will be Fury Jump, Swipe, and Warcry. Fury Jump not only helps you leap from engagement to engagement but also offers additional buffs every time you do. Swipe synergizes with Wolves to summon even more Spirit Wolves, and Warcry offers both buffs to your pack and debuffs to the enemy in equal measure. The only skill taken from the actual Beastmaster line in the recommended leveling build is Frenzy Totem for yet more stacking damage buffs.
This build is intended for leveling only and will only discuss skills, passives, and items until level 60 or so (about when most people will beat the main campaign). Although each skill is described to level 20, you almost certainly won’t get all of them that high before the end of the campaign.
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Beastmaster Skills And Passives
The best part of this build is that you'll start the game with one of your skills already unlocked. Summon Wolf provides a helpful companion that will eventually grow into an entire pack of friends which multiply their damage with each new canine that joins.
Your next skill will be your bread-and-butter attack: Swipe. It'll synergize with Summon Wolf to summon Spirit Wolves later on, but in the early game, it'll mostly just kill whatever is in front of you. At level 10, you'll start skilling Fury Leap to not only deal more damage but also buff you and your team.
You'll unlock Warcry at Primalist level 10, but you won't be able to start skilling it until level 25. And finally, Summon Frenzy Totem arrives in the late game to help further boost your damage.
Because Fury Totem doesn't arrive until late in the campaign, feel free to replace it with Summon Raptor or Summon Bear until then. Just make sure it's something that scales off of Strength.
Summon Wolf Skills
The objective with Summon Wolf is to eventually unlock both the Pack Hunters and Safety in Numbers nodes. This will eventually allow you to summon a pack of five wolves when combined with your Beastmaster passive skills.
Start by heading to the right side of the skill tree, with four points into On the Hunt, Howl of Might, and finally, the coveted Safety in Numbers. Now able to summon three wolves, you can head to the left node with two points into Lupine Endurance, Wolfen Recovery, and one point into Earthborn before unlocking Pack Hunters. With the Beastmaster passive Nature's Embrace, that's five wolves to do your bidding.
To give your doggos a little extra bite, finish their skill tree with Savage Hunters and Legendary Bite.
Swipe
While Summon Wolf will follow a pretty standard path, how you unlock skills with Swipe will depend on how you feel. If you feel you need more damage, put more points into Way of the Hunt and Wengarian Reach. If you feel your damage is killing enemies just fine, then it's time to put points into Aspect of the Panther and Wild Calling.
Wild Calling is what synergizes Swipe with your wolves. Each time you hit at least one enemy, there's a chance you'll summon a Spirit Wolf to deal even more damage. With some increased attack speed from Fury Leap and Warcry, you'll find yourself summoning Spirit Wolves fairly often.
After you max our Spirit Wolves, focus on the Aspect of the Panther nodes and eventually Culling for a big damage boost.
Fury Leap
Fury Leap makes this build feel far more dynamic. Warriors Entrance and Frenzied Onslaught gives you a big damage buff every time you leap, while Panther Strike and Regain Stamina will have you jumping almost as often as you'd like. A single point into Windhammer makes longer leaps especially damaging.
The beauty of this skill is that it can be used both offensively and defensively. Leap into combat, kill and stun on impact, and then leap away when you need to.
Unlock Regain Stamina first if you want to have a shorter cooldown. Then you can focus on Warrior's Entrance and Frenzied Onslaught for more damage.
Warcry
Warcry will start as just a temporary stun and knockback to keep from being overwhelmed, but once you unlock the Berserker node, it'll become a buff you'll want to activate before combat. It becomes a game of trying to get as many Berserker stacks as possible to improve your damage, with Brutality increasing the duration and number of stacks possible.
Once you've unlocked those nodes, unlock Deep Roar, Battle Cry, and Ferocity for additional crit damage, and Frailty to remove your enemies' damage potential.
Juggernaut is a mandatory grab that allows you to Warcry while surrounded without taking any damage.
Frenzy Totem
Once you've reached skill level 15 or so with Summon Wolf, you can summon wolves up to your companion maximum. This means there's no reason to have Summon Raptor or Bear around. Thankfully, Summon Frenzy Totem doesn't count towards your companion maximum since it's a totem.
Start heading down the right side of the Frenzy Totem tree with two points in Rabidity and Bestial Frenzy, then grab Furious Cry and Lead The Pack. This will improve your wolves' damage and refresh Howl's cooldown every time you cast Frenzy Totem, allowing you to double cast Howl for double the healing when necessary.
Once done, head down the left side of the tree with Grounded and Dig In. The tether mechanic added to Frenzy Totem is worth it for the massive damage boost, and eventually, you'll max out Totemic Reach to make the tether as long as possible.
Primalist Passives
We're going to stick with the minimum number of Primalist passive skills to help your summons (and yourself). The main skills here are Primal Strength, which increases your primary stat (Strength), and Survival of the Pack, which provides health leech and a boost to both your and your minions' damage.
Hunter's Restoration unlocks Hunter's Emanation, which provides yet more damage and Primal Medicine is there for a little bit more damage and some healing for your minions.
If you find you're a little higher level than 20 before unlocking your Beastmaster subclass, just put a few more points into Hunter's Emanation or Primal Medicine.
Beastmaster Passives
The party starts with Ursine Strength as it improves your Strength stat. With all eight skill points placed there, next put eight points into Savagery for yet more damage for both yourself and your minions. Now at 16 levels into Beastmaster, put one point into Lamprey Teeth for a little extra health leech, two points into The Chase for increased minion move and attack speed, and one point into Ambush to unlock the Aspect Of The Shark buff, which we'll return to a bit later.
Next comes Boar Heart for five levels, and then Axe and Claw for the next five levels. This improves your Strength and base melee attack damage, which will serve as a solid damage base for the rest of the game.
Remember: Strength is your primary stat that increases both your damage and both the health and damage of all your minions.
Now, head back to the bottom row of passives to unlock Rending Maw and four points of Hunters of the Deep. This allows you to keep Aspect of the Shark up almost constantly while in combat, providing a 75 percent melee damage boost and 10 percent melee attack speed.
A 60-percent increase in Aspect of the Shark's three-second duration amounts to about 4.8 seconds, which means there should only be a 0.2-second downtime between activations.
And since Aspect of the Shark's 75% damage boost is way more than any of these nodes can provide with more skill points, we're choosing to maximize this passive's duration rather than point more points into Ambush.
From here, put another point into Rending Maw for a little additional armor shred, and then one point into The Circle Of Life, and then eight points into Ocean Maw. This will improve your Aspect Of The Shark buff to have constant up-time during combat and also improve its damage by 120 percent.
Once you unlock Ancient Might, keep putting points into it until you roll credits.
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Beastmaster Items And Affixes
With your skills settled, it’s time to talk equipment. Lost Epoch’s extensive crafting system allows you to customize your character’s gear with exactly the stat boosts you need.
For more on how to craft items in Last Epoch, check out our crafting guide here.
When you’re hunting for equipment, these are the affixes you should focus on finding the most.
- Strength
- Shared Increased Melee Damage
- Melee Physical Damage
- Physical Damage
- Minion Physical Damage
- Movement Speed
- All Resistances
- Armor
- Health
- Health Regen
Strength and Melee Physical Damage should be at the top of your list. Strength improves every aspect of your character and should be as high as possible. It’s not a bad idea to have a Strength affix on every piece of gear you’re wearing.
Melee Physical Damage adds to your base damage value. Because the Beastmaster has a lot of percentage increases but relatively few hard numerical increases, adding to your base damage can drastically improve your overall damage output once all your percentage-based skills are added on.
If this is your first playthrough, you'll have to use whatever you can find. You'll do just fine if you craft the above affixes onto the right items, though. Here are some items to keep an eye out for.
Basic Items
Name | Intrinsic Bonuses | Reason |
|---|---|---|
Wolf Pelt | +18 Armor +1 to 4 Strength | This is going to be your standard helm for the early game. Added Strength and armor values are great to have for a Primalist Beastmaster. |
Darkwolf Pelt | +84 Armor +32% to 64% increased Physical Damage +32% to 64% increased Minion Physical Damage | Even better than the Wolf Pelt is the Darkwolf Pelt, with way more armor and percentage increases to your physical and minion damage. |
Shamanic Garb | +136 Armor +2 to 6 Attunement +36% to 60% increased Minion Damage | Attunement isn't all that important, but it's nice to have alongside a lot of armor and increased minion damage. |
Bearded Axe | +42 Melee Damage +24% to 50% increased Minion Damage | This two-handed axe is the best way to vastly boost your minion damage. Too had it only starts dropping around level 20. |
Orbit Cleaver | +100 Melee Damage +50% to 100% increased Physical Damage +50% to 100% increased Minion Physical Damage | You won't find this two-handed axe until the late game, but by level 50, this will be your preferred choppy-choppy implement. |
Sage Antler | +8% to 19% increased Physical Damage +8% to 19% increased Minion Physical Damage | Of all the relics a Beastmaster can have, this one increases damage, so prioritize it over things like the Dreamcatcher or Living Seed. |
Uniques And Named Items
Name | Description |
|---|---|
Artor's Legacy | The cold damage doesn't help much, but an extra wolf and added minion skills are too good to pass up. If you do find this, consider altering your Summon Wolf skills to include the Tundra Stalkers node. |
Howl of the West Wind | This build doesn't use lightning-based attacks, but if you find How of the West Wind early enough, you can swap out Swipe for Gathering Tempest to get even more lightning damage out of your wolf pack. |
Urzil's Pride | A big Strength, armor, and mana bonus. It's simple, but quite useful. |
Keeper's Gloves | All of your minion-focused passives work on those bees these gloves can summon, making them far more powerful than they'd otherwise appear. |
Stormhide Paws | Added lightning damage to Swipe is fine, but the real bonus here is the additional Swipe level, +1 to all attributes, and the enormous health and cold resistance bonuses. |
Swaddling of the Erased | More melee damage, increased attack and cast speed, and a buff to all attributes. No complaints here. |
| | |
Thorn Slinger | Increased movement speed and +1 to all skills is a big deal for a simple belt. |
Jung Queen's Chaps of Holding | The Dexterity bonus is mostly irrelevant, but the increased physical minion damage is grand. |
Cleaver Solution | +1 to all skills, a big bonus to Strength, and a massive physical melee bonus makes this a great weapon for any physical class. Bonus points for letting you also hold a shield too. |
Beast King | You won't b e able to find this until later in the game, but if you do, it's a great one-handed axe with a ton of minion modifiers. |
Harthenon's Vow | Big Strength and damage modifiers alongside some companion boosts make this a great early-game two-handed axe. |
Dedication of an Erased Primalist | +1 to all skills makes this worth using over most rare Dreamcatchers. |
Arboreal Circuit | Giving your minions more armor than you'll ever wear is pretty great, but what really makes this ring is the amount of movement speed you'll gain from it. |
Singularity | Since this build doesn't care to boost its critical hit chance, you can use Singularity to benefit from a constant increase in damage. |
Although Herald of the Scurry doesn't drop until level 70 or so (after you've already completed the game), it's worth mentioning here as it will double your wolves by turning them into squirrels, and a pack of 10 squirrels is absolutely capable of handling Last Epoch's endgame.
Idol Affixes
Obviously, you’ll be using whatever Idols you can find, but here are some affix effects to look out for.
- All Resistances
- Health
- Health Regen
- Physical Damage
- Increased Minion Cooldown Recovery Speed
- Shared Physical Damage
- Melee Damage For You And Your Minions
- Increased Aspect of the Shark Effect
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How To Play Your Beastmaster
Playing the Beastmaster is very simple. First, summon your wolves, and then it’s time to go on the offensive. Most trash mobs can be dealt with by simply using your Swipe ability. For tougher enemies and bosses, throw down your Frenzy Totem, give a little Warcry, and then just keep Swiping until they die.
Your health regen and health leech should allow you to tank through most damage (so long as you keep attacking), but if you find yourself using up your potions, use Fury Leap to disengage.
A few other pointers:
- Use your wolves’ Howl ability to regain health and also give both yourself and your wolves an attack bonus.
- Fury Leap can be a great way to traverse maps quickly and it can often kill small packs of trash mobs.
- Don’t like using Wolves as your summon? Want a Bear, a Sabertooth, or a Raptor instead? Just replace the active skill and remember to pick up the Artor's Loyalty and Natural Bond passive skills in the Beastmaster passive tree.
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