Falconer is a new mastery for Rogues in Last Epoch version 1.0, which came out with the full game release. It lets your Rogue control a falcon, teaching it various skills, including some of yours, to defeat all types of enemies.
Below is an explanation of how the Falconer works in Last Epoch Patch 1.0.
Last Epoch Falconer’s Skills, explained
When you pick Falconer as your Rogue’s specialty in Last Epoch, your character gets an instant bonus of 12 extra Dexterity. Plus, for every four Dexterity points your character has, they gain one point of falcon damage. So, just by choosing Falconer, you get three points of falcon damage for free.
Falconer’s Mastery skill, Falconry
When you become a Falconer in Last Epoch, your Mastery skill is Falconry, which has two parts: passive and active. The passive part gives you a falcon companion that flies around and attacks nearby enemies or those you target with the A key, and adding it to your skills bar is the only way to make the falcon spawn. Falcons act as minions that cannot be hit, so they don’t have health, but their damage can be increased with gear and passives that boost minion damage. Their attacks are considered physical and melee, which is another way of increasing their damage.
The active part of Falconry is Falcon Strike. This turns your falcon’s attacks into a rapid assault on all enemies in the area, doing damage to them individually but so fast that it effectively acts as area damage against large mobs. This damage gets better with boosts to physical, melee, and minion damage. It’s a powerful skill for handling groups of enemies or tough single targets, making it a key skill to include in your setup.
Falconry’s specialization tree essentially lets you choose the paths of increased critical strikes, debuffs, area damage, throwing damage, and raw falcon and player damage buff. I personally think the best leveling build with the most overall synergies is picking throwing damage.
All Falconer’s active Skills
Besides Falconry, a Falconer in Last Epoch can also use these active skills:
- Explosive Trap: You throw a trap that explodes when enemies step on it. It gets stronger with fire, throwing, and area damage. Unlocks at Falconer level five.
- Net: This skill immobilizes normal enemies while it slows down bosses and rare enemies instead. It gets better with throwing and area damage, and also with movement and physical damage. Unlocks at Falconer level 15.
- Aerial Assault: Your Falcon picks you up and moves you to a chosen spot, dealing damage to enemies where you land. It improves with minion and physical damage. Unlocks at Falconer level 30.
- Dive Bomb: This is an area skill that causes a lot of physical damage. It grows stronger with physical, minion, and melee damage, but interestingly, it apparently doesn’t improve with area damage. Unlocks at Falconer level 35.
In the Last Epoch campaign, I didn’t really need to use Net, and Explosive Trap felt too slow for most battles. But Aerial Assault and Dive Bomb are excellent skills to include in your specialization slot. They work well with other Rogue and Falconer skills, such as Umbral Blades and Decoy.
Last Epoch Falconer’s Passive skill tree details
The Falconer’s Passive skills offer ways to enhance your base Rogue setup. Here’s a brief overview of the Falconer paths:
- Minion Damage: This path boosts the damage of your Falcon and Ballista through critical strikes or direct minion damage increases.
- Key Nodes: Needle Like Precision, Relentless Talons, Handler.
- Throwing Damage: Enhances your throwing damage skills and also buffs your falcon based on your throwing damage. This is a solid option as many Falconer Skill specializations involve throwing damage, making it easy to find good combinations.
- Key Nodes: Leog’s Stratagem, Avian Hurl, Tactician.
- Dodge and Glancing Blow: Focuses on survival by upping your dodge rate, armor, and chances of taking a glancing blow (a reduced damage hit). Works well with active skills that increase mobility and builds that use two weapons.
- Key Nodes: Tailwind, Final Souvenir, Coordinated Fate, Deflect and Weave.
I suggest picking the throwing damage skills first because they help you level up faster and clear enemies easily in the early game and throughout the campaign. Many of the Falconer’s active skills work well with throwing damage, either naturally or through specializations.
In summary, the Falconer in Last Epoch is versatile but works best with minion damage because your falcon acts as a minion. How you build your character will determine if your falcon does most of the work while you focus on staying safe or if you’ll join in on the action to deal more damage together.
