In Last Epoch, the Acolyte is one of the five Base Classes available to choose from when beginning a new playthrough. You can customize this Class to your playstyle, through Skill selection and trees. If you’re wondering about the best Acolyte Skills to consider, we’ve got you covered, so follow along below.
Best Acolyte Skills in Last Epoch, Explained
In Last Epoch, the Acolyte is a Base Class that focuses on dark magic, with attacks that commonly deal Necrotic and Poison damage. In addition to this, the Acolyte has strong utility by inflicting debuffs on her opponent through status effects such as Bleed and Damned, which will further increase her damage output against enemies.
Rip Blood
| Class | Skill Type | Unlocked | Damage Type | Mana Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acolyte | Spell | Level 1 | Physical | 3 | Rips blood out of a target enemy dealing Physical damage to it. An orb of the blood is drawn back to you, restoring 10 health when it reaches you. |
Rip Blood is a great addition to an Acolyte build, and immediately accessible at level 1 of the Class. Not only does this Spell enable you to deal Physical damage to an enemy, but you can also restore health through the lifestealing bonus effect. However, the true power of Rip Blood comes from Skill Tree nodes, which can enable you to utilize this Skill in many different ways.
Blood Catalyst will remove the ability to heal through Blood Rip in favor of enabling the Acolyte to cast it again for free at a target near the dead one, effectively letting you hit more enemies at once. Stench of Blood will cause your minions to focus-fire a specific enemy, which is great for target prioritization. Rip Spirit enables you to convert the Physical damage of Rip Blood into Necrotic damage, which will scale with progression, making it great for certain builds.
Dread Shade
| Class | Skill Type | Unlocked | Damage Type | Mana Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Necromancer | Spell | Necromancer Passives Level 30 | None – Buff | 28 | Target minion takes 3% max Health per second for each second the shade has been active, but it and minions around it deal 25% more damage (multiplicative with other modifiers). |
Dread Shade enables you to target a minion that will receive some very powerful buffs and bonuses at full health, and further increases as health declines. These buffs can include increased Necrotic damage, increased attack and casting speed, and increased flat damage output.
In addition to this already being a huge asset to an Acolyte build, Dread Shade can also successfully stack with many different minion Skills, which enables you to establish strong combat synergy with the rest of your kit.
Reaper Form
| Class | Skill Type | Unlocked | Damage Type | Mana Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lich | Spell | Lich Passives | Necrotic | 0 | Take on the mantle of death itself and transform into a Reaper, temporarily gaining the Reap ability. While in Reaper Form, your health regen does not apply and your health decays over time. When your health reaches 0 instead of dying you transform back to human form and are healed to full health. |
Reaper Form is a brilliant addition to the Acolyte, as it can be used both offensively or defensively. This skill can either deal damage to enemies or improve the efficiency of other skills that you may wish to use.
Reap is a huge asset that works as a short-ranged dash in which you will deal damage to enemies you pass through, as well as gain health back for each enemy hit. Effectively, Reap pairs brilliantly with damage leech passives to improve uptime, and can give you a second life, which makes it a huge defensive asset to keep up your sleeve.
Chthonic Fissure
| Class | Skill Type | Unlocked | Damage Type | Mana Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warlock | Spell | Warlock | Fire + Necrotic | 45 | Opens an infernal fissure in the ground, dealing Fire damage over time to enemies on top of it, as well as releasing Spirits from the fissure that seek nearby enemies. These spirits inflict enemies with Torment, a Curse that slows and deals necrotic damage over time. |
Chthonic Fissure has a huge amount of potential for your Acolyte builds, as it pairs so nicely with other skills and debuffs that can be applied, such as Rip Blood, Chaos Bolts, and Bone Curse, which will enable you to function as a powerful bleed build.
Chthonic Fissure can be used to trigger Chaos Bolts, which in turn can trigger Bone Curse and Rip Blood for huge bleed damage, making this an integral Skill to base your Warlock Class around, due to how many other skills, perks, and debuffs it can proc and synergize with.
Bone Curse
| Class | Skill Type | Unlocked | Damage Type | Mana Cost | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acolyte | Spell | Acolyte Level 8 | Physical | 16 | Apply a curse to enemies in an area for 8 seconds that causes physical damage when hit. The damage is tripled if you inflicted the hit yourself. |
Bone Curse is a hugely powerful addition to your Acolyte build, due to being able to provide numerous buffs and a huge damage output. Bone Curse essentially guarantees critical hits when dealing damage yourself, due to tripling damage against enemies you target with an attack.
This means that Bone Curse synergizes very well with many different skills in the Acolyte Base and Mastery Classes, with flexibility that enables it to be incorporated into many different builds and playstyles. In the Lich Mastery Class, in particular, Bone Curse operates as the bread and butter for a ‘Crit Lich’ build, enabling you to maximize critical hits
That’s everything you need to know about the best Acolyte skills in Last Epoch. For more helpful gameplay guides, check out the rest of our content here at Twinfinite. We have a variety of different topics to assist you on your adventures in the world of Eterra.
If you’re struggling to decide which direction you want to progress your Base Class, then feel free to take a look at our guide for the best Mastery Classes in the game, as we’ve listed up everything you’ll need to recognize which options will work best for your playstyle.
