Bleed Warlock Guide
Last Updated:July 13, 2024|Change Log
Welcome to the Bleed Warlock Guide. This bloody spellcaster uses its dark powers to open a Chthonic Fissure in the ground that spits a deadly barrage of seeking Chaos Bolts, unleashing pure chaos and pain on the battlefield. Master the forbidden arts of the Warlock and make all your enemies Bleed to death.
Chaos Bolts is able to proc Harvest, Rip Blood and Bone Curse, which don't need to be on your Skill Bar. Apply Spirit Plague to your enemies for additional Damage and to generate tons of Ward. Cast Wandering Spirits to easily generate Mana. Additionally, the build has decent mobility thanks to unspecialized Transplant.
This build doesn't require any Unique to function. However, Items like Flayer's Pride, Taste of Blood, Valdyr's Chalice, Blood of the Exile, Salt the Wound, Thorn Slinger, Omnis, Nihilis and Red Ring of Atlaria are amazing for the build.
Overall this powerful Warlock is an amazing Damage Over Time build capable of crushing all the content in the game, even in Hardcore. If you are looking for a Bleed based caster that has amazing AoE and is able to survive the hardest encounters, this build is perfect for you!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Warlock Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
- Good AoE
- Easy To Play
- Visually Stunning
- Really High Sustain
- Average DPS
- Mana Management
- Unique Heavy Build
- Limited Scaling Options
Skills
Chthonic Fissure
Chthonic Fissure releases Spirits which apply the Torment Curse. Combine Blood Gulch and Singed by Terror so the Spirits can apply Physical Resistance Shred. Grab two Points in Chaotic Rupture to automatically cast Chaos Bolts, if you have enough Mana Regeneration, max the node out.
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.
- Take Nodes with Intelligence.
- Investing Points into Forbidden Knowledge helps cap Necrotic Resistance.
- Soul Stealer and Occultist's Mind provides Mana Sustain and maximum Mana.
- Place 5 Points into Harrowing Armor, Dark Protections and Wither for survivability.
- Grab Fleeting Crone for the chance to gain Haste and increased effect of Haste.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
Spread Spirit Plague and open a Chthonic Fissure in the ground to hit enemies with tons of Chaos Bolts and Spirits to make them Bleed to death. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use your Support Skills to stay alive. Pay attention to the telegraphed attacks of your enemies and stay out of their range.
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Cast Wandering Spirits to Fear enemies and to generate Mana.
- Open a Chthonic Fissure that automatically cast Chaos Bolts and Spirits.
- Apply and spread Spirit Plague to all enemies.
- Watch Chaos Bolts trigger Harvest, Rip Blood and Bone Curse.
- Use Transplant to move around the map.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective with Transplant.
- Group up enemies and let Chthonic Fissure kill them as you cruise through the Echoes.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your Buffs and keep them active.
- Once Spirit Plague is applied, increase your DPS by manually casting Chaos Bolts to inflict additional Bleed stacks.
- Save Transplant for emergency situations.
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 stack as many other defensive layers as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Empowered 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
- Capped Less Damage Taken From Crits
- 3000 - 5000+ Health
- 35% - 50% Armour
- 3000 - 8000+ Ward
- 65 - 100+ Intelligence
- 500%+ Increased Damage Over Time
- 60% - 100%+ 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. Get a Weapon with double T5 offensive Prefixes as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance or Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. Farm it 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
Get 10+ Dexterity for reliable Reaper of Mayhem procs.
Milestone 5
Farm Flayer's Pride, Taste of Blood, Valdyr's Chalice and Thorn Slinger. This build can be very Unique heavy, so its good to include the ones that shine even without Legendary Potential as soon as possible.
Milestone 6
While you look for this basic set of gear, start farming your Empowered Blessings and look for any Idols that can help you cap all your Resistances momentarily or further increase your Damage output. Try to find a Large Immortal Idol with Chance To Fear On Hit to Crowd Control enemies.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 set up 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.
Milestone 2
When all of your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Intelligence, Damage Over Time and Chance to Bleed on Hit are very important to scale the DPS of the build.
Milestone 3
Get Flayer's Pride, Taste of Blood, Valdyr's Chalice, Blood of the Exile and Thorn Slinger with Legendary Potential. This powerful Uniques are core for most Bleed builds and incredibly important to increase their damage.
Milestone 4
Look for Nemesis encounters in Echoes to give your regular Uniques Legendary Potential or new Affixes.
Milestone 5
As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances, Endurance and Critical Strike Avoidance. Your goal is to have items with 4 valuable T5 Affixes, also known as T20. Keep an eye for Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix and Chance To Fear On Hit or Health Suffix.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 set up with T7 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.
Milestone 2
Keep farming Flayer's Pride, Taste of Blood, Valdyr's Chalice, Blood of the Exile and Thorn Slinger with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find.
Milestone 3
Omnis is a great addition to this build for the valuable +1 To All Skills. Farm it by killing the Shade of Orobyss at 200+ Corruption. High Resistance rolls are extremely useful as they make gearing with a lot of Uniques easier.
Milestone 4
Get Salt the Wound for the scaling opportunities it provides. Build Critical Strike Multiplier to greatly increase the DPS of your Bleeds.
Milestone 5
If you manage to get two Red Rings of Atlaria you must prioratize itemizing Intelligence to reach the 180 Attribute requirement. This amazing Item provides an amazing layer of tankiness for the build, crucial for pushing Corruption.
Milestone 6
Keep looking for Nemesis encounters in Echoes to add Legendary Potential or Affixes to your rarest and hardest to get Uniques with the Egg of the Forgotten.
Milestone 7
Finish your BIS Idol Setup. 4 Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix, 1 Stout Lagonian Idols with %Health Prefix and 2 Grand Bone Idols with Chance to apply Damned on Hit Prefix and Chance To Inflict Bleed On Physical Spell Hit.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with high tier Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and on the correct Item Base. Min/Maxing your gear in Last Epoch can be pushed to the extreme as Items with multiple Exalted Affixes and Legendary Potential are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Get as close to perfect rolls for all of your Empowered Blessings and find all of your desired Idols with the best in slot Prefixes and Suffixes.
Milestone 3
Continue farming Flayer's Pride, Taste of Blood, Valdyr's Chalice, Blood of the Exile, Salt the Wound, Thorn Slinger, Omnis and Red Ring of Atlaria with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find. Remember that some of these Items are extremely hard to get with high Legendary Potential.
Milestone 4
Get a GG rolled Nihilis for the stats it provides.
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, so be open to explore new options. Good luck with the chase!
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 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
- Memory of Light
- Bastion of Divinity
- Light of the Moon
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Resolve of Humanity
- Hemmorage of Marrow
- Bulwark of the Tundra
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Heart of the Caldera
- Body of Obsidian
- Embers of Immortality
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 fast 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:
- Get Grand Hemmorage of Marrow for the Bleed Chance it provides.
- Grab Grand Resonance of the Sea for additional Ward generation. Alternately, you can grab Grand Bastion of Divinity for its Lightning Resistance or Grand Light of the Moon for the Mana.
- Grand Echo of Solarum is great to cap your Void Resistance. When you get Salt the Wound, take Grand Emptiness of Ash instead to boots your DPS.
- Farm Grand Body of Obsidian for the Armor it provides.
- Pick btween Grand Bones of Eternity or Grand Bulwark of the Tundra depending on your gear and needs.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Sight of the Outcasts is very valuable to help you find Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix and Chance To Fear On Hit or Health Suffix. Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to the Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques instead.
- Farm Grand Scars of Blood to find more Axes.
- Get Grand Right of Conquest for additional Boots.
- Lastly, take your other Empowered Blessings based on the Unique or Affix you are trying to farm.
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:
- Get 4 Large Immortal Idols with %Health Prefix. For the Suffixes aim for 1 with Chance To Fear On Hit and 3 with Health, Elemental Resistance or Ward Retention. The Fear is crucial to keep enemies away from you.
- Get 2 Grand Bone Idols with Chance to apply Damned on Hit Prefix and Chance To Inflict Bleed On Physical Spell Hit Suffix for a huge DPS boost.
- You also want 1 Stout Lagonian Idols with %Health Prefix and Cold Resistance Suffix. This build can get an absurd amount of Health just from Idols.
- 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 build uses Chthonic Fissure to make enemies Bleed to death. This Warlock also has great survivability thanks to the amount of Ward it can stack and the multiple defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Bleed Chance: The more Bleed Chance, the more Bleeds you apply and the more Damage you do.
- Damned Chance: Is converted to Bleed Chance for Chaos Bolts thanks to the Sanguine Reverie Node.
- Bleed Duration: The longer your Bleeds last, the more Damage they do.
- Intelligence: Your Skills gain 4% Damage per point of Intelligence. In addition, Spirit Plague can gain Flat Damage from it thanks to Plague of Eyes.
- % Increased Damage: Anything that increases Physical and Damage Over Time is welcomed.
- Cold Resistance: The Torment of the Red Tundra Node in Chaos Bolts allows you to scale DPS of Cold Resistance.
- Physical Resistance Shred: Combine Blood Gulch and Singed by Terror so the Spirits can apply Physical Resistance Shred. 10 stacks increase the Damage enemies take by 50% (20% for Bosses).
- Physical Penetration: Increases the Damage your Bleeds do.
- Warlock Mastery Bonus: You get 4% more Damage per Curse on the target. This build can apply multiple Curses like: Torment, Anguish, Spirit Plague and Bone Curse.
- Ward: This build can reach 20000 Ward and beyond.
- Ward Retention: Reduces the rate of Ward decay.
- Intelligence: Aside from gaining Damage per point of Intelligence with your Skills, each point of Intelligence provides 4% Ward Retention per point.
- Chance To Fear On Hit: The Fear provided by the Large Immortal Idols helps keep enemies Crowd Controlled.
- Block Chance: Grants a chance to reduce the Damage taken from Hits.
- On a successful Block, a percentage of the Damage is mitigated.
- This build can easily reach 100% block.
- Block Effectiveness: The percentage of Damage reduced on Block depends on how much Block Effectiveness you have and cannot exceed 85%.
- Health: This build can stack an insanely high Health pool that is very effective when combined with all the other defensive layers the Warlock has. Acolytes have access to Large Immortal Idols with %Health; not all Classes have access to these amazing Idols!
- Armor Mitigation: This build can get high amounts of Armor. With the Armor from your gear and Blessings you can reach 35% - 50% Mitigation.
- Harrowing Armor and Dark Protections: These Passive Nodes provide tankiness per unique Curse on the target.
- Wither: You take less Damage from Withered enemies.
- Chill: Reduces the Movement Speed and Cast Speed of your enemies.
- Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
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. Click on the Generate Loot Filter button down below then use the Paste Clipboard Contents button in-game to import it!
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
Overall the Bleed Warlock is a horrific powerhouse capable of defeating all the content in the game. It has amazing clear, great single target DPS and great survivability thanks to its Ward and multiple defensive layers.
- Chthonic Fissure spews out tons Spirits that inflict enemies with deadly Bleeds.
- Chaos Bolts is able to proc Harvest, Rip Blood and Bone Curse, which don't need to be on your Skill Bar.
- Apply Spirit Plague to your enemies for additional Damage and to generate tons of Ward.
- Cast Wandering Spirits to easily generate Mana.
- This build doesn't require any Unique to function. However, Items like Flayer's Pride, Taste of Blood, Valdyr's Chalice, Blood of the Exile, Salt the Wound, Thorn Slinger, Omnis, Nihilis and Red Ring of Atlaria are amazing for the build.
Credits
Written by Lizard_IRL.
Reviewed by Volca, Tenkiei.