Paladin Healing Hands Rive Endgame Build for Last Epoch (Patch 1.0) (2024)

Build Introduction

Become an unkillable avatar of righteous fury, slicing and dicing your way through thebattlefield while shrugging off enemy attacks as if they were wielding pillows. Your holy healing energies generate ahuge ward shield to protect you, while your trusty shield and plate armor makes that ward even more effective.Stand still and facetank bosses like the unmovable mountain of armor that you are!

Strengths

Extremely Tanky
Simple and fun to play
Easy to gear up
Capable of clearing high Corruption with the right gear

Weaknesses

Average single target damage
Some may find the tankiness makes content too easy

Skill Selection

While our main ability that we use is Rive, it's actually Healing Hands that deals the majority of our damage. Through it'sskill tree, we are converting it to a melee attack that triggers whenever we hit with a melee attack. The damage then scales off melee stats, but alsoHealing Effectiveness, which pulls double duty as a defensive stat by also increasing how much Ward Healing Hands generates for us. Therefore, we willfocus on maximizing Healing Effectiveness where it makes sense.

We add in Holy Aura and Sigils Of Hope for more passive damage, as well as more defenses. To make sure we can survive standing toe-to-toewith enemies, we have an immense amount of defensive layers. As long as we're attacking, Healing Hands can generate a few thousand Ward persecond or upwards of 25,000 total Ward for us. Additionally, we are stacking a very large amount of Armor as well as Block chance, making it impossiblefor most enemies to work their way through our Ward faster than we can generate it. As a final safety net, if somehow the enemies have churned throughyour Ward, we also have over 2,000 Health and a substantial amount of Endurance to match it.

Class and Skill Passive Trees

Class PassivesSkill Passives

SentinelPaladinForge Guard

Healing HandsRiveHoly AuraSigils of HopeLunge

Our base class is Sentinel and our chosen Mastery class is Paladin. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character willbe offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. Upon selectinga Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Paladin is our chosen Mastery for this build, and also where the majority of our Passive Points will be spent. Almost all of our points will be spentbetween the Sentinel and Paladin trees, with a single point spent in the Forge Guard tree. However, there is a 'no uniques' version of this build linked in thegear section, that uses Volatile Reversal instead of Lunge, and thus needs to spend 5 points in the Void Knight tree to unlock the skill.Volatile Reversal offers more damage, especially on Bosses, while Lunge offers faster echo clearing and a more 'fun' playstyle, in our opinion.However, if you prefer Volatile over Lunge, you can easily swap the 5 points between passive trees, while leaving everything else alone and the build will work the same.Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

3.1.

Sentinel Passive Points

Paladin Passive Points

8 points into Conviction: Increased Physical, fire and lightning damage as well as Increased Physical, Fire and Lightning Penetration
4 points into Defiance: Attunment and some Elemental Resistance.
1 point into Honour: Flat Block Effectiveness and Stun Avoidance. The first point also gets us 2% Block Chance, which is why we only spend one point here.
10 points into Valor: Adds Flat Health and Increased Healing Effectiveness.
1 point into Divine Bolt: Adds a 20% chance to cast Divine Bolt on melee attacks. While the damage isn't amazing, this helps us trigger more stacks of thingslike ignite and armor shred.
7 points into Holy Icon: Increased Healing Effectivness, as well as added Necrotic Resistance and Flat Health.
10 points into Prayer: Increased Damage and Healing if you have healed yourself or any ally recently.
8 points into Sanctuary Guardian: Flat Armour and Spell Damage while using a Shield.
2 points into Faith Armour: Increased ARmour and Critical Strike Avoidance.
1 point into Shield Wall: Adds Block Chance and Health gained on Block, but removes out ability to Dodge.
1 point into Divine Essence: Chance to trigger a Divine Essence when you heal, which grants 10% increased armor and healing effectivness per stack. Max 3 stacks.
12 points into Reverence of Duality: Increased Health, Damage, Healing Effectiveness and Mana.
12 points into Light of Rahyeh: Increased Fire/Lightning damage and Movespeed.

Our base class is Sentinel and our chosen Mastery class isPaladin. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character willbe offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each baseclass has three possible Masteries to choose from. Upon selectinga Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'llthen be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

Paladin is our chosen Mastery for this build, and also where the majorityof our Passive Points will be spent. Almost all of our points will be spentbetween the Sentinel and Paladin trees, with a single point spent in the ForgeGuard tree. However, there is an 'exalted items only' version of this build linked in thegear section, that also shows the trees for using Volatile Reversal insteadof Lunge, which requires spending 5 points in the Void Knight tree to unlock the skill.Volatile Reversal offers more damage, especially on Bosses, while Lungeoffers faster echo clearing and a more 'fun' playstyle, in our opinion.If you prefer Volatile over Lunge, you can easily swap the 5 points between passivetrees, while leaving everything else alone and the build will work the same.Each Passive Tree and their points are broken down below.

3.3.

Forge Guard Passive Points

1 point into Steel Aegis: Adds a 2% block chance and 50 block effectiveness. We only spend asingle point, as the block chance does not scale past the 1st point spent.

In this section, we will break down each skill and highlight the key passives we have selected to make the skill shine in the build.While some of these skills do allow for some variation to exist depending on your own custom choices, we recommend utilizing the skilltrees as presented until you have a strong understanding of the build itself.

3.4.

Healing Hands

While Healing Hands is our main damage dealer, we never cast it directlyand, therefore, do not need to put it on our skill bar. It's recommended to replacethat slot with an un-specced Shield Bash just to help navigate long and straightareas between packs. It will share a cooldown with Lunge, but you willstill use it sometimes to speed up your Echo clears.
To make it so Healing Hands is our main damage dealer, we have to get it to triggeroff melee attacks and also convert it to a melee attack itself. Thoseare the most important nodes to grab. The rest are spent either upgrading the damage orhealing ability, which is converted to Ward generation due to the Divine Barriernode and the Experimental Affix on our gloves.

3.4.1.

Order of Skill Points

4 points into Cleric's Hammer: This gives us a 100% chance to trigger Healing Hands on melee hits.
1 point into Searing Light: Allows Healing Hands to hit enemies, dealing Fire Damage.
2 points into Bane of Evil: Adds 2 Spell Damage (which is converted to melee damage later on the tree) per 10% Healing Effectiveness.
2 points into Cleric's Wrath: Adds more damage per level of our Buff skills (Holy Aura, Sigils of Hope and Healing Hands all have the tag), which would be 66% more damage in the example gear.
2 points into Virtue of Patience: Increased Damage, Healing and Area at the cost of slower Cast Speed. However, that downside will not matter for our purposes.
1 point into Seraph Blade: Converts Healing Hands into a melee attack, and converts spell damage effects on the tree to melee damage.
1 point into Divine Barrier: Adds Ward per 2 Attunement to Healing Hands, as well as converting all Healing into Ward if the target has the right experimental mod.
1 point into Purity of Thought: Reduces the Mana cost.
1 points into Blessed Parish: Increases the Area and reduces the Mana cost.
3 points into Prayer of the Fallen: Increased Healing EFfectiveness.
4 points into Urgent Healing: Adds Flat Up Front Healing, which benefits from all of our other healing modifiers and helps generate a ton of Ward for us.
2 points into Divine Catalyst: Triggers Divine Bolts when we heal ourselves with Healing Hands, which provides a little bit of damage, but ismore useful as another 'hit' for stacking up things such as Ignite and Shred Armor.

If you do not have the extra 4 levels from gear yet, you can remove up to 1 point from Blessed Parish,Divine Catalyst, Virtue of Patience, and Prayer of the Fallen until you acquire the needed gear.

3.5.

Rive

Rive is our main skill, meaning the one we will use the most. As Healing Hands triggers off melee hits, we want Riveto attack as fast possible to maximize the triggers. Therefore, we are looking to boost its attack speed as much as possible. To that end, we removethe slower, third strike of Rive through the Double Slash node. In most Rive builds, you wouldn't do that as it is the hardest hitof the sequence, but our damage is not coming from Rive itself. We just want it to hit as often as possible.

3.5.1.

Order of Skill Points

5 points into Flurry: Increased attack speed for first and second strike.
2 points into Rending: Increased Armour Shred chance for First and Second strike.
1 point into Cadence: Increases our effective attack speed by changing Rive's sequence to 1, 2, 1, 2, 3.
1 point into Double Slash: Increases our effective attack speed by removing the 3rd strike from Rive's sequence completely.
4 points into Iron Reach: Increase the damage and area of the 2nd strike in Rive's sequence.
2 points into Concentration: Adds base Crit to the first and second strike.
4 points into Adrenaline: Rive's 2nd strike gives a Increased Crit Chance buff that can stack up to four times.
1 point into Challenge: Rive's 2nd strike will pull enemiess in closer, but adds 5 to the Mana cost. NOTE: If you are havingMana issues, you could drop this node for something else. If your Crit Chance is low, you could put another point into Concentration instead.

3.6.

Holy Aura

Holy Aura gives some great passive benefits, as well as additional effects when activated. Some ofthe benefits we are targeting are increased Critical Chance, Critical Strike Multiplier, Fire Penetration, Ignite Chance and Increased Fire Damage.All of these stats are then doubled when Holy Aura is activated. Defensively, Holy Aura also provides 30% Increased Damageand 15% Elemental Resist naturally.

Order of Skill Points

3 points into Rahyeh's Devotion: Adds Ignite chance.
2 points into Rahyeh's Fury: Adds Fire Penetration.
5 points into Burning Blows: Adds Increased Global Fire Damage.
3 points into Fanaticism: Increased Attack/Cast Speed.
4 points into True Strike: Increased Critical Strike Chance.
3 points into Extreme Zeal: Increased Critical Strike Multiplier.

3.7.

Sigils of Hope

While clearing Echoes, you don't need to directly cast Sigils Of Hope. However, for optimaldamage, you'll at least want to do so on Bosses to keep 4 stacks going.Having all 4 Sigils up can add a decent amount of extra damage and survivability. We are targeting the passivesthat maximum these offensive and defensive bonuses for ourselves,as well making the Sigils have a chance to trigger on kill to make our clearing smoother, and increasing theduration of the Sigils so we don't have to re-cast them very often.

3.7.1.

Order of Skill Points

4 points into Empowering Sigils: Increased Damage per Active Sigil.
1 point into Last Wish: Chance to summon a Sigil On Kill.
3 points into Decree of Flame: Adds Flat Fire Damage per Active Sigil.
2 points into Iron Sigils: Adds Endurance Threshold per Active Sigil.
4 points into Enduring Hope: Increased Duration for Sigils.
1 point into Tetragram: Adds the 4th Sigil.
1 point into Meditation: Doubles the Health Regen from Sigils, but Sigils only effect you now.
3 points into Sign of the Guardian: Adds Block Chance and Block Effectiveness per Active Sigil.
3 points into Invigorate: Increased Healing Effectiveness per Active Sigil.

If you don't have the 2 extra points from gear yet, you could remove upto 2 points from Invigorate.

3.8.

Lunge

Lunge is our mobility skill of choice, as it has the lowest effective cooldown and two charges with how we've specced it.This gives us a great degree of mobility to jump between packs, maximizing our time spent attacking with Rive. It also providesa debuff to enemies in the form of Frailty, and another healing effect based on our missing health.

3.8.1.

Order of Skill Points

3 points into Warrior's Renewal: Reduces cooldown by 24% for each of the next 3 attacks you perform. This is the mainnode that allows us to constantly have Lunge available.
2 points into Endless Will Improves the previous node by another 6% (a total of 90% cooldown reduction after three attacks for Lunge), as wellas granting us Health when triggered.
2 points into Ambuscade: More Melee Damage to High Health targets.
1 point into Double Strike: Adds a second charge to Lunge, while increasing the cooldown by 15%. However, in practice, the 2 charges mean youare far more likely to have a use of Lunge available at all times.
3 points into Dawn Charge: A percentage of missing Health regained when we use Lunge.
1 point into Blade Stream: Lunge now hits all enemies along its path, which will apply any debuffs.
3 points into Broadside: Lunge deals damage in a wider area along its path.
5 points into Disarming Blow: 300% chance to apply Frailty to enemies hit.

Image courtesy of Last Epoch Tools

Healing Hands Rive Build Planner

Build Mechanics and Playstyle

The basic rotation for this build while clearing is extremely simple.Lunge into a pack, activate Holy Aura, and start spamming Rive.As you kill enemies, you will automatically trigger Sigils Of Hope, so you don't need to worry aboutdirectly casting them very much. For optimal damage, you would want to castto four stacks initially, and then rely on the trigger to keep it refreshed, but this may not be necessary inmost content. Use Lunge whenever it is up to close the distanceto other enemies until everything is dead. If it's off cooldown and you don't see an enemy to Lungeto, you can use Shield Rush to move along quicker. You don't needto worry about dodging mechanics as long as you are attacking with Rive as you will generate so muchWard from attacking that you can face-tank everything. The build wastested up to 400 corruption, with similar gear as the planner, and was still having absolutely no issues withsurvivability, even on Bosses.

On Bosses, unlike clearing Echoes, you absolutely should cast Sigils Of Hope to four stacks beforeengaging the boss and periodically refreshing the stacks manually to stay capped.The one 'weak' spot of the build is that it doesn't kill bosses as quick as the highest damage builds, butit will still kill them quick enough and you hardly have to worry about dying.The build is practically immortal as long as you have a target to attack. In many Echo Boss and Shade ofOrobyss fights, at 350-400 corruption, the build was able to tank every ability thrown atit without needing to dodge. After you've summoned your Sigils, the rotation is otherwise exactly the sameas clearing. Activate Holy Aura whenever it is up, and just spam Riveon a target. To maximize your damage output, use Lunge to close any gaps from the target movingaway, so you never waste a moment not attacking.

Notable Defensive Mechanics

As stated above, Healing Hands has been converted to produce Ward for us, as long as we havethe experimental missing health gained as ward affix on our gear.We have put a tier 5 version of this affix in the planner, on the Gloves, but the tier doesn't really matter.Even a tier 1 version will work, but you'll have slightly less Ward initially.With a Rune of Research, you can guarantee that you seal an Experimental Affix, opening up another Affixslot to craft on your preferred mod. For example, if you find a pair of gloves with 3/4of the recommended affixes and any tier of the experimental affix, you can then seal it and craft on the fourthaffix you need. This interaction is the basis of our main defensivelayer, and very important to not overlook. Without it, you will not be nearly as tanky, as you will not begenerating the thousands of Ward per second from Healing Hands.

When not in combat, you may think your Life and Ward numbers look a little low. With a highertier Experimental Affix, your life total may fall down to a few hundred, and you onlyhave a bit of Ward initially. Regardless, with all of our Armor and Block Chance, it's quite hard foranything to one-shot you. However, that is also why we chose the Core of the Mountainchest piece, to help prevent any potential damage spikes at the start ofcombat before you've generated a lot of Ward. If the very first hit doesn'tone-shot you, (which is very unlikely, only a few Boss abilities are capable of it and they don't happenat the start of combat anyway) you'll have 3 seconds of invulnerability to build up Ward.

Lower Budget Gear Planner

Until you can get your hands on the Uniques in the main planner, you can try aiming for a set of exalted gear like the one in thisBuild Planner. Even if you don't havethose exalted items yet, a set of rares targeting the same mods should also work quite well for all content up to, and including, early Empowered Monoliths.

Also note, that planner has taken Volatile Reversal instead of Lunge. It is not necessary to makethat swap if you prefer Lunge, it was included to show how you might spec itif you preferred that skill. You can swap either skill in either version of the build. You only need to change 5 pointsin the Paladin and Void Knight trees to do so. Specifically, the points forPhoenix Strike and Rahyeh's Strength can be removed to add 5 points into Abyssal Enduranceor Devouring Blade, depending on personal preference and gear.

Equipment and Gear Affixes

This build is not very gear dependent at all. While we've included some high end Legendary versionsof items in the main planner, as a goal to aim for, we have also included a version of theplanner with just Exalted items in the section directly above. On paper, the EHP (Effective Hit Points)is actually higher in the non-unique version. However, in practice, it fails to take into account someof the unique mods on those pieces. Also, the Boss damage is a fair bit better with the Uniques, which iswhere the build was 'weakest', but it had almost too much survivability.

Gear Slot	Implicits	Modifiers
Axe	MeleeDamange Base Critical Chance Increased Movement Speed	Prefixes Melee Critical Strike Chance Melee Attack Speed Suffixes Shared Fire Penentration Armour Shred Chance
Shield	Bulwark of the Last Abyss	Legendary Potential Block Chance, Flat Armor, or Increased Armor
Head	Peak of the Mountain	Legendary Potential +4 Levels to Healing Hands Armor, Reduced Bonus Damage from Criticals
Amulet	Less Damage Over Time Taken	Prefixes Increased Healing Effectiveness Fire Penetration Suffixes Chance to Shred Armour Needed Resistances
Chest	Core of the Mountain	Legendary Potential Increased Health, Increased Armor or Flat Armor
Belt	Shattered Chains	Legendary Potential Hybrid Health Armor/Reduced Bonus Damage from Criticals OR Potion Health converted to Ward (if t6 or t7)
Gloves	Armor % of Armor mitigation applies to Damage over Time	Prefixes Increased Melee Attack Speed Strength Suffixes Armor, Reduced Bonus Damage from Criticals Chance to Shred Armour Sealed Affix Experimental % Current Health lost per second, % Missing Health Gained as Ward
Rings	Cooldown Recovery All Attributes	Prefixes Increased Critical Chance Increased Healing Effectiveness Suffixes Needed Resistances
Feet	Foot of the Mountain	Legendary Potential Increased Movement Speed Hybrid Health
Relic	Fire Damage Increased Healing Effectiveness	Prefixes Healing Effectiveness +2 Levels of Sigils of Hope Suffixes Health Needed Resistances>

A loot filter made specifically for the gear table above may be copied by pressing the button below. Once inthe Loot Filter portion of the in-game menu, choose the "Paste Clipboard Contents" option to import the code.

Copy Loot Filter to Clipboard

Press the Copy 📋 button to copy the following text to your clipboard

Uniques

The Uniques listed in this build have been picked specifically to provide the best synergy possible, but none of them are required to make the build function.It's only if you wish to take this to very high corruption that you would want to acquire all of these pieces, with the recommended Legendary Potential.

8.1.

Peak of the Mountain

Peak of the Mountain: This Helmet provides a ton of Critical Strike chance for us, aswell as some Attributes (and we benefit from every stat, except for Dex).The only downside, not being able to leech from Criticals, is not really a downside for us as wealready have a ton of health regen and healing. An LP2 version is an uncommon dropfrom The Mountain Beneath in the Lightless Arbor Dungeon

8.2.

Core of the Mountain

Core of the Mountain As mentioned previously, the immunity helps to make sure we cansurvive during the very start of combat, before we've had a chance tohit and start generating Ward. However, the other stats on this item are quite amazing for ourbuild. %Armor, all attributes, and even endurance/endurance thresholdall benefit us quite nicely. Getting an LP1 version of this item will be a big upgrade, as thereare not many good prefix or suffix mods on Chest pieces for us. Findinganything beyond an LP1 will be quite difficult for non-Merchant's Guild players. This is droppedfrom The Mountain Beneath in the Lightless Arbor Dungeon

8.3.

Shattered Chains

Shattered Chains: This Belt provides a few unique mods that are quite useful forus. It gives some more %Armor, Increased Melee Damage, some flatVoid Damage, and lastly lets potions remove stuns/freezes while granting us Stun Immunity for4 seconds after using a potion. When you can add even 1 mod through LegendaryPotential, it beats any Exalted Belt you could wear. Once you find an LP2, or better, versionand get the right mods on it. It becomes one of the best belts in the game for our build.Ignore the line about melee damage per Stack of Doom, that is irrelevant to us.You may farm this from the Shade of Orobyss in an Empowered Monolith with a Corruption of at least 120.

8.4.

Foot of the Mountain

Foot of the Mountain: Of all the uniques included, these are the least important.We would recommend going for them last, and only once you can get an LP2 version.Prior to that, the difference over regular Exalted boots is minimal. The unique mods are mostlyirrelevant except on bosses, as you will not stand still long enough to activatethem while clearing Echoes. It is on bosses, however, where you will stand still while attacking that theywill come into play. You can target farm this from The Mountain Beneath" in the Lightless Arbor Dungeon.

8.5.

Bulwark of the Last Abyss

Bulwark of the Last Abyss: An amazing shield for our build, as we generally don't care about losingsome health, but we also don't stay at 'low life' the entire time like most Ward builds.Our healing, health regen and health on hit effects will often push us to high health, while we have asizeable amount of Ward, and then the shield's effect will trigger, giving us a bunch ofVoid Damage and (most importantly) Melee Crit Multiplier. The extra block chance, and %Armor also fitperfectly with the rest of our build.That said, we tried out quite a few other shields that could all work as well, depending on your othergear. These include Horns of Uhkeiros, Rahyeh's Light, Bastion of Honour, and Moenia Mentis.However, ultimately we feel the Bulwark is the best option and it can be target farmed from Harton'sHusk in the Monolith Timeline "Fall of the Empire".

Idols

Idol slots are gained through the campaign, unlocking small bonuses and unique affixes forthe player to discover and augment their builds with. The Idol screenconsists of a grid system for the player to fill out with different sized idols, eventuallyfilling in every part of the grid. As the Idol shape increases (1x1, 1x2,1x3, 1x4, etc.) the stronger an affix you might find for your build.

Until you start to perfect your gear, Idol slots are a great way to balance, and cap, yourresists whenever you get a new upgrade. Eventually, however, you will want toget three 2x2 Adorned Rahyeh Idols with Increased Healing Effectiveness and Fire Melee Penetrationrolls. You'll also want one of the unique 2x2 idol, Throne of Ambition.This unique idol is a great choice for any build that can take advantage of it's bonuses ofimproving fire/cold damage and increasing Armor. Since our main damage dealer, Healing Handsdoes fire damage, and we are stacking a lot of armor, it's a natural fit for this build. Youcan fit all four of these 2x2 idols, along with four 1x1 idols in the remaining slots.On the 1x1 idols, we recommend capping any resists first of all. If your resists are alreadycapped, then we recommend getting Ward Retention and Flat Health on Small Lagonian Idols.

10.

Blessing

Blessings are permanent buffs that are applied to your character. These come in two different powers, Standard and Grand. Grand blessings are significantlystronger than the Standard Blessings. In total, there are 10 Blessing Slots, one for each Monolith Timeline. When you complete a Monolith and defeat the final boss youwill be awarded a choice of three blessing with a random value.

We have recommended the most important Blessings below. Any remaining blessing slots can be filled based on the type of gear/affix shards the player is target farming.

Blessing Name	Affix	Timeline
Grand Emptiness of Ash	Critical Strike Multiplier	The Black Sun
Grand Breath of Cinders	Chance to Shred Fire Resistance on Hit	Spirits of Fire
Grand Bulwark of the Tundra	Increased Armor	The Age of Winter
Grand Resolve of Humanity	All Resistances	Reign of Dragons
Grand Grace of Water	Ward gained on Potion use/Ward Decay Threshold	Ending the Storm

11.

Changelog

07 May 2024: Guide added.

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