Avalanche Shaman Guide
Last Updated:July 26, 2024|Change Log
Call in the might of the tundra and pummel your enemies with this Avalanche Shaman build. This build rains down high damage boulders while brushing off heavy damage thanks to its huge recovery and defensives.
This build casts Avalanche to unleash one large boulder and ten small boulders dealing a combined 960 Cold damage with 4800% damage effectiveness, possibly the highest throughput ability in the game! Picking up the node Alpine Guide gives a great reason to cap our Spell Critical Strike to double the amount of boulders we get while Warcry, Summon Spriggan, Summon Thorn Totem, and Upheaval all provide great supporting effects. However, Avalanche is not without a downside and the 50 mana cost offers an interesting challenge to overcome with our gearing choices along with our primary focus on Mana Regeneration.
Defense comes from high Armour, a sizable Health pool as well as massive Health Regeneration for some of the best recovery in the game, feeding a Vessel of Strife for huge Ward per Second. This is an incredibly tanky build that has access to tons of Health, Ward, Health Regen, Armour, Dodge, and Damage Reduction.
This setup doesn't require any Uniques to function or perform. However, Items like Vessel of Strife greatly enhances your defensives while a Peak of the Mountain gives you all the Critical Strike Chance you need.
Overall the Avalance Shaman is a powerful build capable of completing all the content in the game. It's very tanky for a caster, which makes it good for Hardcore. If you're looking to pummel your enemies while brushing off heavy damage, this may be the build guide for you.
This article assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Shaman Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
- Insane Recovery
- Perfect For Hardcode
- High Tier Arena Pusher
- Great Scaling With Powerful Gear
- Targeted Casting
- Requires Gear Investment
- Average Movement Speed
- Desired Gear Is Very Specific For The Build
Skills
Avalanche
This is the main damage ability that bombards an area with high damage boulders. Alpine Guide is the signature node that significantly rewards us for capping our Critical Strike Chance. One point in Excavation gives us the occasional upheaval for defensive bonuses while Winter Buildup is crucial for our mana management.
Alternative Skills & Tips
Passives
Passives provide powerful effects that dictate the playstyle of a Class and its Masteries. Remember that you can allocate Passives on the first half of all Masteries regardless of the one you chose.
- Harmony of Blades is necessary to Dual Wield, though you may not need this while leveling with this build.
- Take all the Strength, Attunement, Health, Mana Regeneration and Health Regeneration.
- Aim to get powerful nodes such as Protective Circle and Ironbark.
- Grab 15 points in Druid to unlock Summon Spriggan.
- Ironbark, Natural Fortitude, Primal Strength, and Fist of Stone gives you heaps of Health Regeneration for little investment.
- Berserker, Ursine Strength, and Boar Heart provide insane Damage Reduction.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This Shaman wants to cover the battlefield in Avalanche, pre-emptively placing it forward of your pathing to combat the slight delay it takes for boulders to start coming down. Fury Leap around to get ahead and use Warcry to either become invulnerable for 1 second or group enemies. Aim to get Warcry on cooldown to maximize the value of its buffs.
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Keep Warcry on cooldown to maintain uptime of Frost Claw and Bringer of Winter.
- Cast Avalanche as you see fit. Avoid casting it too frequently while building towards your Mana Regeneration goals of >40.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective fast with unspecialized Fury Leap.
- Pull ranged enemies into you with the pull from Warcry.
- Cast Avalanche while keeping an eye on your mana.
Bossing
- Bossing can be all about mana management early on.
- Cast Warcry for its buffs.
- Cast Avalanche while you have the buffs from Warcry.
- Avoid casting Avalanche too much while bosses have their Ward. Instead, let some of the natural decay do the work and use this time to recover mana.
Advanced Skill Tips
Learn more about how to maximize your gameplay in the Build Scaling section of this guide.
Gear
Gearing in Last Epoch revolves around finding Items and then using the powerful Crafting System to enhance them. As long as an Item has Forging Potential left, players can upgrade or modify their Affixes up to Tier 5. However, the powerful Exalted Tier Affixes are drop only and can't be modified by players.
Using the correct Item Bases allows you to make use of their amazing Implicits, this is fundamental for gearing efficiently. Combine Implicits, Passives, Idols and Blessings to cap your Resistances and other defensive layers, while fitting as much Health related Affixes or Health Regen Per Second/Health Regeneration into your gear as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Blessings of your build while gearing. Finish up by farming Uniques with Legendary Potential and Sealing Affixes into Exalted Items to unleash all of your build's power!
Here are the Stat Goals for this build:
- Capped Resistances
- 2000-3000+ Health Regenerated per Second
- Capped Endurance
- 2000 - 3000+ Health
- 50% - 70%+ Armour
- 20% - 40%+ Dodge
- 80+ Strength
- 50% - 80%+ Movement Speed
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with four valuable T5 Affixes. The defensive rolls on T5 Suffixes are very important at this stage as they can easily cap all your Resistances when combined with Item Implicits, Idols, Blessings or Passives.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. It can be farmed by killing the Abomination in the Fall of the Outcast Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 3
Fit as much Health into your gear as possible. Hybrid Health and %Health are extremely valuable but can be hard to find early on. Use regular flat Health until you find them.
Milestone 4
Aim for T5 Health Regen Per Second on your Helmet, Gloves, and Amulet. In the meantime, get as much Mana Regeneration on your accessories.
Milestone 5
Work on getting Empowered Blessings with resistances to help your early gearing. Keep a decent Health pool and capped Resistances. A Vessel of Strife can be tricky to get for a starter build as it requires killing T4 Julra, but they can be found for cheap in the bazaar if you are Merchant's Guild. If you don't have access to one, use a Spirit Catcher instead.
Milestone 1
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. A Peak of the Mountain is very easy to get from the Lightless Arbor dungeon and be on the lookout for sources of Critical Strike Multiplier.
Milestone 2
Get Chance to Apply Frailty on Hit to decrease the Damage enemies deal to you. This Ailment is extremely important and should always be kept in mind as later on we rely on getting it from our Upheaval.
Milestone 3
Go for Exalted Health Regen Per Second pieces to see your recovery and effective HP scale drastically. Maintain a sizable Health pool to protect against incoming burst damage from enemies and bosses alike. A Throne of Ambition is a great item to help with damage and damage reduction against bosses.
Milestone 4
Farm for a Urzil's Pride with high Legendary Potential. At the same time, be on the lookout for Palarus's Sacred Light with its extremely low legendary potential level.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool and capped Resistances. Start working on capping 60% Endurance and getting extra armour where you can. Your goal is to have items with 4 valuable T5 Affixes, also known as T20. If you don't have access to a Vessel of Strife, use a Spirit Catcher instead.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 setup with Exalted items, high value Sealed Affixes or ideally both. Obtain the Affixes included in the Planner, but prioritize the indicated Item Bases for their Implicits. Make sure to Seal highly efficient low tier Affixes. Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use is a must have for Belts.
Milestone 2
Farm a The Shattered Cycle with Legendary Potential for its Mana Regeneration and Cast Speed, ignore all other affixes on the item. Other options include an Exalted Temple Staff, aiming for the Exalted affix to be a Critical Strike Multiplier.
Milestone 3
You should have a Vessel of Strife locked in by now, but given that we are not focusing on ward retention, we need to ensure we have a sizable Health pool as well. As a general rule of thumb, keep your Health and Health Regeneration at roughly equal values, with a priority on Health.
Milestone 4
Farm for your Idols as listed in the planner, but feel free to mix and match to meet your resistances. You may also favour stacking Idols with Health Regeneration instead. Lightning Resistance is useful for boosting our Mana Regeneration, but is far less value than what we get from Mana Regeneration or Attunement.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and in the correct Item Base. Min/Maxing your gear in Last Epoch can be pushed to the extreme as Items with multiple Exalted Affixes are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Get as close to perfect rolls for all your Empowered Blessings and find all your desired Idols with the best in slot Prefixes and Suffixes.
Milestone 3
Farm for a 2 or 3 Legendary Potential Frostbite Shackles. Keep in mind, it may end up being better to keep using your Exalted gloves if you miss your slams in the Temporal Sanctum.
Milestone 4
Red Ring of Atlaria is an extremely rare item, let alone one with Legendary Potential. You can use Quicksilver Coil or Exalted Coral Ring instead.
Milestone 5
Feel free to experiment with any crazy Unique, Legendary or Experimental Items that you might craft, trade or find! The possibilities are endless!
Learn the basics for crafting gear with our Beginner Crafting Guide.
Check our Unique Item & Set Farming Guide and learn how to get them!
Want to know more about Legendary Items? Check our Legendary Guide!
Blessings
Completing a Timeline in the Monolith of Fate lets you choose one of several randomized Blessings from its unique pool. Their benefits are permanent and persist even outside of the Monolith of Fate.
Empowered Blessings are a fundamental part of all builds, so getting the correct ones for each is key.
The sooner you reach Empowered Monolith, the faster you can start farming your desired Blessings!
Normal Blessings are not very important as they are eventually replaced by Empowered Blessings. However, they can still be a great source of Resistances, Critical Strike Avoidance or Life Leech for your build early on.
Pick up these Normal Blessings on your way to Empowered:
- Echo of Solarum
- Thirst of the Sun
- Mysteries of the Deep
- Bastion of Divinity
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Bulwark of the Tundra
- Heart of the Caldera
- Embers of Immortality
- Body of Obsidian
Note: Don't target farm Normal Blessings. Get to Empowered Monolith as fast as you can.
Reaching Empowered Monolith unlocks all the level 100 Timelines and the ability to farm Empowered Blessings. Unlike Normal Blessings, these need to be farmed until you get the desired ones for your build. It is extremely important to get this set up as quickly as possible to free up affix slots on your gear. Remember, the more value you get from your Blessings, the easier it is to craft efficient gear!
These are the core Combat Empowered Blessings for this build:
- Start with Grand Survival of Might. This can be swapped out later once you have enough HP, Armour, and Health Regeneration for Grand Resolve of Humanity
- Grab Grand Echo of Solarum initially and swap to Grand Emptiness of Ash when appropriate.
- Farm Grand Rhythm of the Tide for the amazing health regeneration.
- Pick Grand Bulwark of the Tundra and Grand Body of Obsidian for additional survivability. Later on, swap to Grand Rage of Winter for more damage once your survivability has been sorted.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Mark of Agony can help you find your Idols. Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to Grand Scales of Greed for gold or Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques instead.
- Use Grand Savior of the North and Grand Enmity of the Clans to find upgrades of your weapons.
- Use drop blessing to help you find your missing pieces and change as needed.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your character bonuses when equipped in the dedicated Idol Container. Unlock all the slots of your Idol Container by completing the Campaign and some of its Side Quests. Remember that some Idols are Class specific and you won't be able to equip them with other non-compatible Classes.
These are the Idols recommended for this build:
- Find 1 x Ornate Heorot Idol with a high roll of Chance on hit to summon a Thorn Totem and Increased Cold Damage per active Totem.
- Get 3 x Grand Heorot Idol with Health Regeneration and either Physical Resistance, Poison Resistance, or Increased Spell Damage if you have an active Totem.
- Pick up as many Stout Lagonian Idol with Health and Health.
- You might need extra Resistances out of your Idols early on, so keep an eye for anything useful until you get your final setup.
Other useful Idol Affixes
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Idol Slots.
Learn how to be efficient with Idols with our Advanced Idols Setups Guide.
Build Scaling
This Shaman casts Cold Spell damage with a 100% chance to Critical Strike and is largely limited by the heavy mana consumption of Avalanche so our Mana Regeneration is a big part of our sustained damage. This build has great survivability thanks to the multiple defensive layers it can take advantage of as well as possibly the best recovery in the game due to the extremely high Health Regeneration and Ward per Second thanks to Vessel of Strife.
- Attunement: This amazing stat does everything offensively starting with %Damage for Avalanche, Mana Regeneration thanks to Elemental Shrines, and added Mana to give all that regeneration a healthy buffer.
- Critical Strike Chance: Necessary to give us double the amount of boulders with Alpine Guide. Bringer of Winter and a Peak of the Mountain is all you should need.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Allows our crits to do more damage, and given we have 100% Critical Strike Chance, this is a very desirable stat.
- Cold Resistance Shred and Cold Penetration: Lower enemy resistances and give a multiplicative damage boost.
- %Cold Damage and %Spell Damage: Anything that increases Cold Damage is welcomed but likely favored for other stats.
- Mana Regeneration: The big limiting factor of your damage to bosses and high health targets is your Mana Regeneration. Aim to get 30-40 per second for a healthy range. Keep in mind we will also get some from other sources such as Attunement and Lightning Res.
- Attunement: This amazing stat does everything for us. Defensively it gives us dodge rating from Summon Spriggan, additional Healt for our Summon Spriggan, Stun Avoidance thanks to Earthen Supremacy, Armour and Endurance Threshold with Primal Bulwark, and lastly give us Health Regen Per Second with Ironbark.
- Health Regeneration Per Second: The bulk of your recovery and a hearty Ward pool thanks to Vessel of Strife. We get a lot of this stat for free thanks to Natural Fortitude and Ironbark.
- Warcry: Grants a brief Damage Immunity thanks to Warcry's Juggernaut Node.
- Berserker: Provides 20% Damage Reduction when you are below 35% of your total Health. The buff persists for 5 seconds after dropping below 35%.
- Endurance: A defensive mechanic that allows you to take up to 60% less Damage while below a certain Health threshold.
- Ursine Strength: Grants 16% Damage Reduction against Nearby enemies.
- Aspect of the Boar: Boar Heart grants 15% Damage Reduction when hit.
- Dodge: All our Attunement is converted into Dodge Rating thanks to Aura of Evasion in Summon Spriggan. Sources of increased Dodge Rating are welcome in our gearing choices but not necessary.
- Armour Mitigation: This setup can get insanely high Armour. Combine the Armour from your Item Implicits, Primal Bulwark, Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing, Grand Bulwark of the Tundra Blessing (if you choose to run it) and all the Strength this build has to reach 50% to 70%+ Mitigation.
- Reduced Bonus Damage from Crits: This stat is desirable and may be swapped out for Health to reduce the frequency of spiked damage. However, due to your large health pool and recovery, it is unlikely that this build can be burst down.
- Health: This build still gets a sufficient amount of health to allow your other defensive layers and recovery to do work.
- Chill and Slow: Ailments that greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. They are must haves on most builds, especially once you reach hard content with insane speed modifiers.
- Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
- Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use: Cleanse all Ailments on Potion use.
Our Damage Explained Article covers all you need to know to scale Damage.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Loot Filter
Loot Filters are critical in Last Epoch. Making sure you highlight all the related valuable Item Bases, Affixes, Uniques and Idols is crucial to ensure your character's progression. As your gear gets better, remember to hide the rules that are no longer useful to avoid screen clutter.
Here is the Endgame Loot Filter for this build:
Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.
Video Guide
COMING SOON!
Summary
This mighty Shaman build dominates the battlefield with Avalanche for some heavy hitting damage. Overall this Shaman is an incredibly tanky setup capable of completing all the content in the game.
- Spam Avalanche and destroy your enemies.
- Tank Boss mechanics with your insane effective Health pool and recover it in seconds thanks to Vessel of Strife.
- Keep your Summon Spriggan alive for even more damage buffs.
- Berserker, Ursine Strength, and Boar Heart provide insane Damage Reduction.
Credits
Written by Amarathy.
Reviewed by Lizard_IRL.