Best Falconer leveling build in Last Epoch

Falconer is a new Rogue mastery coming with Last Epoch’s full release. If you’re thinking about making this new class your first character in the new game cycle, we’ve got the perfect leveling build for you. It’s great for taking out groups of enemies and also decent against single targets.

Best Falconer throw damage leveling build in Last Epoch

Skills

• Shurikens (specialized)
• Ballista (specialized)
• Falconry (specialized)
• Umbral Blades
• Aerial Assault (replacing Umbral Blades or Ballista, specialized)
• Dive Bomb (replacing Umbral Blades or Ballista, specialized)

For any leveling build in Last Epoch, it’s important to have a strong area skill for clearing mobs. At the start, as a Falconer with the Rogue base class, Shurikens are probably your best choice for area damage. They don’t use mana and automatically adjust their flight to hit enemies in their direction. I picked Shurikens as my first Specialized Skill and focused on enhancing them. I added Scintillant Steel for more damage, Alacrity for faster attacks, Aerodynamic for extra range, Charged Steel to add Lightning effects, and Shuriken Storm to make them debuff enemies, which boosts their damage even more.

Another powerful skill for taking on stronger mobs is Falcon Strikes, which comes from the Falconer’s passive abilities. When you use it, your Falcon attacks an area multiple times, dealing high damage. It’s my second Specialized Skill. I aimed for a straightforward approach to boost its damage directly and lower its cooldown. I chose upgrades like Falconer’s Mark and Is it a Bird? to increase damage, and because my strategy relies a lot on throwing skills, I also picked Side by Side to reduce the cooldown of Falcon Strikes even more when I use Shurikens.

With my area damage strategy set, and since my build combines throwing with minion damage, I chose Umbral Blades and Ballista as my other two skills.

Umbral Blades offers excellent single-target damage and burst, filling a gap in this build. Its low mana cost of nine makes it easily manageable for the Falconer, especially since using Shurikens doesn’t use up mana. This way, you will always have mana available for Umbral Blades. But I believe it doesn’t fully align with the Falconer’s endgame potential, so I didn’t focus on specializing it. If you choose to, targeting the Bleed and Poison upgrades like Cut and Leave or Slice the Legs would be good choices. These pair nicely with the Falconry’s Blade Talons node, increasing your Falcon’s chances to inflict poison and bleed.

Ballista excels in single-target damage and acts as an early warning system. You can place it far from your character, allowing it to attack enemies before they’re visible to you. Since the Falcon counts as a minion and your build benefits from minion damage, using Ballistas, which also count as minions, makes sense. I specialized in this skill to boost its firing speed, critical chance, and enable it to pierce through enemies.

For leveling in Last Epoch’s late game, you can consider swapping Ballista and Umbral Blades for Aerial Assault and Dive Bomb. Aerial Assault works well with throwing damage, and Dive Bomb can pair with most of the Rogue’s basic skills. You can even make Dive Bomb a throwing skill with the Featherfall upgrade.

Passives

For Rogue Passives, I recommend going for the top row, choosing Swift Assassin and Lethal Cadence for their benefits, and I put two points into Steady Hand for a small boost to Shuriken damage. Poison Tipped, at the bottom, is also great because it lets you poison enemies with any skill as long as you’re using a bow.

After you get into the Falconer class tree in Last Epoch, I suggest concentrating on Handler to increase damage for your Ballista and Falcon, and then move towards Crimson Strikes for a better chance to bleed and Tactician for increased damage. Avian Hurl is a good pick in the middle of the Passive tree for more Falcon damage. Since your area damage is already good, you can skip Blast Radius. Later in the tree, focus on Evasion Tactics and Stymphalian Feathers for better survival, Intuitive Connection for quicker Falcon attacks, Needle Like Precision for higher Falcon critical strike chances, and Finesse Them to gain health when you crit.

Gear

For your weapon, bows that increase your chances of causing Bleed and Poison and boost your Critical Strike Chance are good choices. If you’re using Lightning Shurikens, look for anything that adds Lightning damage to make them even more powerful. Also, pick gear that boosts Minion Damage and Throwing Damage to match your build perfectly.