Allie's 1 Button Shadow Dagger Falconer Build Guide

Your Mobility Skill Is Your Main DPS Skill

Very Simple Playstyle w/ Low APM

Very Tanky w/ Evasion & Armour + 100% Glancing Blow Chance

VERY Fast w/ Low CD Mobility Skill, Haste Scaling & Passive Tree

Your Mobility Skill Is Your Main DPS Skill

Requires Unique Shield To Hit 100% Glancing Blow Chance

Damage & Playstyle

This build is very simple to play! This build will revolve around us using Aerial Assault to not only move around but to also trigger Twilight Strike 3/3 making our Falcon cast 6 Umbral Blades for us! Not only does this simplify the playstyle as using Umbral Blades wasn't everyones cup of tea, but because the Falcon will spawn 6 Blades, we can take Explosive Blades 1/1 which will cause extra procs of Shadow Daggers which previously woudv'e been too clunky and not viable to use.

We will then pair this with Dive Bomb which does STUPID amounts of damage due to its 850% Effectiveness of Added Damage, its ease to get 100% Critical Strike Chance with the help of nodes such as Expose their Defenses 2/3, and insane scaling through abusing Falconry. The beautiful thing about both Aerial Assault & Dive Bomb is that the both specifically scale off of your Rogue Falcon which is granted through Falconry.

With us just zooming around with Aerial Assault while casting the occasional Dive Bomb which we can Num Lock, this playstyle should not only be fun but quick when we add on SuffixIncreased Cooldown Recovery Speed & Skyward Swoop 1/1 which allow us to get Aerial Assault off of cooldown even faster!

On bosses, all that will change is you also wanting to cast Smoke Bomb to gain its benefits such as Smoke Blades 5/5 and to generate Shadows for Dive Bomb's On Wings of Shadow 3/5.

On top of all of this, we will add in Falconry allowing our Falcon to actually be by our side providing extra DPS & amazing Utility. Trained to Hunt 1/1, Go For the Eyes! 1/1 & Exposed Weakness 1/1 along with Falconer's Journey 1/1 will allow our Falcon to scale off of our stats allowing them to have great PrefixCritical Strike Chance & up to 700% PrefixCritical Strike Multiplier at high gear levels! This extra damage then APPLIES to Dive Bomb as our Falcon IS the one actually casting the skill. Our Falcon should amazing amounts of damage when paired with nodes such as & Avian Hurl 5/6 allowing their Falcon Strikes to do great damage! Not only that but our Falcon will also heal us with Hunter's Spoils 1/1 keeping us very healthy with our other Defensive Layers.

Defences

This build is going to use Cradle of the Erased in a very unique way. Cradle is a shield that gives us stacking PrefixBlock Chance every second with us losing a stack every time we Block. Well.. Falconer adds the node Deflect and Weave 5/5 which covnerts all Block Chance to Glancing Blow chance at a 1:1 ratio.

This means that a fully stacked Cradle of the Erased is a free 56% Glancing Blow chance. Because we well... can never Block, that means we can never lose our stacks meaning that Cradle of the Erased will always give us its full value. Unfortunately, the rest of the stats on the shield are then also worthless but, because it is a Weaver item, we can potentially get SuffixAll Resistances on it for free which can roll up to 30%, instantly taking care of 1/2 of all Resistances we would ever need.

We will also be utilizing PrefixWard Gained When You Create a Shadow to pretty much have a permanent ~1-2k Ward due to Smoke Bomb's Umbral Assault 4/4 generating 1 Shadow per second. When paired up with Dive Bomb's Cloud Gatherer 1/1 we can extend the duration of every Smoke Bomb at the same time making them last forever. This means we will be dropping permanent Smoke Bombs throughout an Echo which will keep spawning 1 Shadow a second giving us Ward from PrefixWard Gained When You Create a Shadow. With this we will pretty much 2x our HP pool while having very very good recovery on the Ward.

Leveling this build will be an absolute breeze as we pretty much get to play our main skill from as early as ~Level 15. As soon as we unlock Umbral Blades, we can just manually cast it ourselves and get the Passive Tree ready on it for the point where we unlock Aerial Assault at which point our Falcon will press it for us and we swap to using Dive Bomb a few levels later.

If you want an in-depth explination of how to level this, id recommend watching the Video Guide!

Step by Step guide at the bottom

IMPORTANT: We will be leveling and playing with Umbral Blades. Umbral Blades does NOT benefit from any sort of melee bonuses, it is a throwing skill. Because of that, you don't care what weapon you use as long as it has a very high base Attack Speed. Once we pick up Lethal Darkness 1/1 you WILL need to use a dagger as the Shadow Daggers from Umbral Blades will be ~80% of our DPS. Kris will be the ideal base as Shadow Daggers has a 100% Chance to Crit meaning we only care about PrefixCritical Strike Multiplier.

The other VERY IMPORTANT thing is that Shadow Daggers loves ANY Added Damage due to its 340% Effectiveness of Added Damage. Because it has the tags Melee & Throwing you DONT care if you have PrefixThrowing Damage or PrefixMelee Physical Damage. To add onto this, before we start truly scaling Physical Penetration, any sort of Melee Damage is good especially the first few levels before Aerial Assault such as PrefixMelee Cold Damage or PrefixMelee Fire Damage.

Lastly, you really want to focus on PrefixThrowing Damage & PrefixThrowing Damage and Reduced Mana Cost. You want to make sure these are on all of your gear. The provided loot filter will have any item with those mods on them highlighted in PINK text. Make sure to pick them up and use them or use a Rune of Shattering to get them as Affix Shards to put on your gear.

Levels 1-16

To start our journey to becoming a Falcon Mom, we need to first unlock Umbral Blades. This just requires us to put 20 points into our Passive Skill Tree and this will happen ~Level 16 or so. Once we unlock Umbral Blades, we will swap to it and manually cast it until we get to ~Level 35 when we get Aerial Assault which will automatically use Umbral Blades for us with Twilight Strike 3/3.

To get us there, we will be using Puncture which is a skill that can be played with Melee & as a Bow skill but, we will want to play it with a Bow due to its range being substantually better. You want to Specialize into it as soon as you unlock it at Level 5 and until then, just play with an Unspecialized Flurry. At Level 8 you get your 2nd Specilization Slot and you will want to Specialize into Shift as our Mobility Skill of choice until Aerial Assault.

For Shift, put 2 points into Velocity 2/3 followed by 3 points into Momentum 3/3 to gain a large burst of Movement Speed every time you press it. After that, make your way up to Hidden Blades 2/2 for extra damage and at this point, you will be ready to swap to Aerial Assault.

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO PICK UP ANY BOW FOR PUNCTURE

The passive tree for Puncture will be very simple as we will only be playing it for a few levels. First put 2 points into Perforate 2/5 to unlock Bloodthirst 4/4 then put 4 points into that. By then you will be Level 15 and we can swap to Umbral Blades.

Levels 16-35

From Levels 15-35 this will play like a bog standard Umbral Blades build. With Cacophony of Steel 1/1 we will shoot out Bladestorms which will be massive due to Steel Torrent 4/4 that apply Shadow Daggers for us through Lethal Darkness 1/1. MAKE SURE you have a Dagger, and ideally a Kris, as Lethal Darkness 1/1 WILL NOT work otherwise (Buy one from the vendor in town if needed). Your whole playstyle will be to Shift around while throwing 2 Umbral Blades at an enemy or pack, letting the Bladestorms build up Shadow Daggers procs and then exploding the monsters, or Recalling them back to you which will cause them to also apply Shadow Daggers.

Your Boss DPS should be very high and you should have 0 issues as long as you prioritize PrefixThrowing Damage & PrefixThrowing Damage and Reduced Mana Cost on your Rings, Belt, Amulet & Relic. As mentioned above, this early on any Added Damage is great due to Shadow Daggers' 340% Effectiveness of Added Damage so, even if you find yourself a Kris with PrefixMelee Cold Damage for example, it will still be good this early on.

When you do get to ~Level 15 will be around the time you unlock your Mastery and become a Falconer. You will imideatly unlock Falconry and you want to make sure to put it on your Action Bar so you can summon your Falcon pet to aid you. At Level 20 you unlock your 3rd Specialization Slot which you will want to use on Falconry to finally be able to buff your Falcon. Follow the Skill Passive Tree for it from the top of the guide and enjoy being a Falcon Mom.

Levels 35-Endgame

At ~Level 35 is when you will finally unlock Aerial Assault at which point this build goes into overdrive! Despecialize out of Shift as we cannot use both skills together and Specialize into Aerial Assault. Immediately path up to Twilight Strike 3/3 & Plumed Daggers 1/1 and as soon as you have 1 point into Daggers, you can remove Umbral Blades from your bars as you will never need to use it again and it can be replaced with Decoy or Smoke Bomb as a Unspecialized Utility Skill.

With your 4th Specialization Slot, pick up Dive Bomb a few levels later, and use it in-between Aerial Assaults to pretty much just 1 shot anything on screen including bosses. Once you unlock your 5th Specializaiton Slot and can pick up Smoke Bomb, your DPS skyrockets on bosses as you can utilize On Wings of Shadow 3/5 & Dancing Shadows 1/1 to 7x your dps. Keep using Aerial Assault as your main way to clear though, it will 100% do all the work and dont worry too much about Dive Bomb outside of bosses.

From this point on, just keep following the Passive Trees & have fun!

Step by Step Guide

1. Play Flurry until you unlock Puncture & Specialize into it. USE A BOW & pick up 2 points in Perforate 2/5 followed by 4 points in Bloodthirst 4/4.
2. At Level 8 Specialize into Shift. This will be your Mobility Skill until Aerial Assault. Pick up 2 points in Velocity 2/3 followed by 3 points in Momentum 3/3 and then finally work towards Hidden Blades 2/2 at the top.
3. At Level 16 Despecialize out of Puncture and Specialize into Umbral Blades. USE A DAGGER (Buy one from Town if needed). Follow the Passive Tree for Umbral Blades in the Skills Section of the guide. At this point you will also unlock your mastery and become a Falconer. Put Falconry on your Action Bar to summon your Falcon to help you.
4. At Level 20 Specialize into Falconry. Follow the Passive Tree for Falconry in the Skills Section of the guide.
5. At ~Level 35 you will finally have enough Passive Points to unlock Aerial Assault. Despecialize out of Shift and Specialize into Aerial Assault. Follow the Passive Tree for Aerial Assault in the Skills Section of the guide. Once you have Plumed Daggers 1/1 you can stop pressing Umbral Blades & you can put Decoy & Smoke Bomb on your Action Bar for Utility.
6. At ~Level 40 Specialize into Dive Bomb with your 4th Specialization Slot and follow the Passive Tree for Dive Bomb in the Skills Section of the guide.
7. Blast the rest of the Campaign with ease until Monoliths!

The Endgame for this build will be to eventually get items such as a 4 LP The Kestrel due to us not needing any specific Body Armour while farming for a well rolled Cradle of the Erased. Since Cradle is 100% RNG, this is going to be an item you will want to keep hunting down & buying from other Players, equipping it, and praying it gives you good rolls. You'd continue this until you finally have one you are happy with, ideally one with stats such as PrefixMelee Damage or PrefixPhysical Damage for Prefixes & SuffixAll Resistances, SuffixHealth or any other Resistance for Suffixes.

You will eventually want a LP Unique in pretty much every slot, below we go over some good candidates.

All Unique items listed here are NOT recommended to used with lower LP values as they will just be worse/downgrades to an Exalted item.

In terms of what item you want to make as a donor item for the Unique items listed here, always make a perfect item with 4 desireable affixes.

I have a video discussing all of these items and how to farm them here - https://youtu.be/90qEVu4lNA8

Helmet - Ideally, you can either stick to a Falconry Helm with a Sealed Affix on it or you hunt down a 3+ LP Peak of the Mountain. Peak is pretty easy to farm at a high LP with it having a baseline 4.25% chance to drop at 3 LP. Since we don't leech there is no downside here and the up to +5 SuffixAll Attributes roll makes up for the Dex from a Falconry Helm.

Body Armour - You can either stick to a Sealed Affix Falconry Armor or look for a 3-4 LP The Kestrel. I HIGHLY recommend farming a 4 LP The Kestrel as it is one of the most common items in the game and has a baseline 0.4% chance to be 4 LP which will be substantually more powerful. A 3 LP one is fine too, its just the power level of 4 is crazy in comparison.

Belt - This slot will be a difficult to make better due to Jungle Queen's Chaps of Holding being rare and you NEEDING 1 LP on this that then HAS to hit SuffixIncreased Cooldown Recovery Speed. This build feels substantually worse when you don't have SuffixIncreased Cooldown Recovery Speed on both Boots & Belt and I highly encourage you to not use one unless you actually get CDR on it.

Boots - There are no boots to consider outside of Exalted boots. There are plenty of good candicates but, a pair of boots with PrefixMovement Speed, PrefixDexterity, SuffixIncreased Cooldown Recovery Speed & SuffixHybrid Health feels too good and is hard to be given up. Because there are no boots that are "easy" to get at 3-4 LP, we will stick to Exalted boots.

Amulet - Omnis is a great addition to this build especially if you get a good roll of it. This when combined with a SuffixAll Resistances roll on a Cradle of the Erased & the SuffixAll Resistances rolls on 2 Red Ring of Atlaria you will need 0 resistances on any gear. This allows you to drop all Idols for Idols with SuffixWard Gained When You Create a Shadow for significantly more EHP. You also don't need any Resistance on any of your gear allowing you to fit SuffixHealth & SuffixDodge Rating everywhere. Omnis is rare and becomes more common with higher Corruption but, you also need to keep in mind that the rolls on this amulet can vary heavily, dont just use the first one you drop if it rolls all sub 10% for example.

Rings - Red Ring of Atlaria is the only upgrade here. This is the "Mageblood" of LE if you know what it is from PoE. This item is VERY VERY RARE and i mean VERY RARE and you will want 2 of them. Red Ring of Atlaria gives us 10% Less Damage Taken which is the most important stat in LE. Getting to the 180 requirement will be hard and you will need to have very Min-Maxed gear to get to it. Do keep in mind that the ring itself will give you 20-25 Attributes on its own making getting to 180 easier. Any Red Ring of Atlaria is worth using, if you somehow get even 1 LP on it, you won the lottery.

Gloves - If 2 Red Ring of Atlaria wasnt enough, for gloves, we also want Ravenous Void. This is the other "Mageblood" of LE being just as rare as Red Ring of Atlaria. Ravenous Void effectivelly gives you a permanent 15% Less Damage Taken with it going to 30% if you happen to get to very low health. This is a massive defensive layer allowing you to live more than you were supposed to handle. Not only that but the gloves have amazing Implicits & other mods on them making them unbeatable.

The only downside is the nasty Mimic Feast they will place on you if you get low while also disabling all Health Leech. Luckily we dont Leech so we dont care but the DoT is nasty. This can either just be ignored due to our insane recovery or can be removed with a PrefixWard and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use roll on your belt or through Cleansing Steam 1/1 on Smoke Bomb.

Another option which you will most likely get while farming for Ravenous Void is to use 3 LP Riverbend Grasp. There are NOT better than Ravenous Void if you get them even as 4 LP. Riverbend Grasp are a great option due to their useful stats but, if you get yourself a 0-2 LP version, I personally dont like them unless you were to get something like PrefixDexterity & SuffixHybrid Health on a 2 LP pair. If you have a bunch of 2 LP Riverbend Grasp, throw some Donor Items at them and see if they turn out well and make a judgement call from there.

Weapon - There are 2 options here, Smoke Weaver & Drought's Release. Both of these daggers suck but they have 2 very useful rolls which make them useful for us.

Smoke Weaver has a LOT of SuffixDodge Rating on them which we will value heavily in high Corruption pushing but the downside is that getting even 2 LP on this hard. This means you trade Offensive power for Defensive power.

Drought's Release is pretty easy to get with 3 LP and, is fairly reasonable to get with 4 LP, meaning you dont sacrifice much to add this into your build. The downside is, the only usefull roll is a measly +3 to SuffixAll Attributes meaning we get very little out of it. This might actually end up being a BIG upside if the +3 to SuffixAll Attributes is enough to get you to 180 in total or helps you get to 180 SuffixAll Attributes for Red Ring of Atlaria.

Loot fitler can be found in the link below!

This filter is designed to show you leveling gear for Umbral Blades & Aerial Assault any other useful stats you might want while leveling!

This filter is also good as a general Endgame Monolith filter for this build.

Filter Link - https://www.lastepochtools.com/loot-filters/view/5BxXadBv

To import it into LE:

1. Go to the Link
2. Click Export at the top & click Copy to Clipboard
3. In-Game: Go to Settings - Gameplay - Manage Loot Filters
4. Click the Green Plus at the top
5. Paste Clipboard Contents

IMPORTANT 1.0 NOTE - Lethal Darkness 1/1 & Plumed Daggers 1/1 CURRENTLY STACK meaning you can get 2 stacks of Shadow Daggers per application. This is confirmed not a bug and is working as intended.

If you want to know more on this topic, I made a whole video on how this works - https://youtu.be/LPloTbX8z1Y

How do you do Infintie DPS & have Infinite EHP? - Well, Smoke Bomb & the interaction with Dive Bomb's Cloud Gatherer 1/1 is broken. With this setup, you can extend every Smoke Bomb to have effectively infinite duration. This allows for unintended things to happen such as permanently stacking Smoke Blades 5/5 giving us a lot of PrefixMelee Damage & PrefixThrowing Damage which both apply to Shadow Daggers while at the same time giving our Falcon PrefixThrowing Damage through Avian Hurl 5/6. Since PrefixThrowing Damage is the best way to scale all of our Damage through our Falcon... this means we can permanently ramp the longer a fight goes on giving us Infinite DPS scaling.

Smoke Bomb also has Shrouded in Darkness 1/1 giving us Dusk Shroud stacks giving us well.. you guessed it Infintie SuffixDodge Rating scaling. This means we can eventually get up to the SuffixDodge Rating cap of 85% which would be very potent in Arena or on any Boss Fight. Lastly, we can add on PrefixWard Gained When You Create a Shadow to abuse the fact that we will have 20 Shadows a second from 20 Smoke Bombs which you guessed it... can also Infinitely scale giving us Infinite Ward & Ward Recovery eventually.

With all of this, you could stand infront of a boss slightly outside of their agro radius, spam a lot of Smoke Bombs & Dive Bombs, build up a lot of Damage from Smoke Blades 5/5 and then just 1 shot the boss.

This is cool and all but, how does this effect Echoes? Well, even if we arent standing still in 1 spot, each Dive Bomb you do will increase the duration of ALL Smoke Bombs in a given Echo as long as the Dive Bomb hits inside of any Smoke Bomb due to Cloud Gatherer 1/1. This means, that even as you are doing Echoes, you will have ~1-2k Ward through PrefixWard Gained When You Create a Shadow due to each Smoke Bomb, even if they are 3 screens away, still generating Shadows through Umbral Assault 4/4

Why Subzero Intrusion 1/1? - Umbral Blades is ~5% of our total damage and is just a way to apply Shadow Daggers which is where all of our damage comes from. Think of this as a Fireball build that is using it to apply Ignite. We don't ever care about Umbral Blades and the damage it does. There are not many useful points on the Umbral Blades Passive Tree and because of that we end up picking Subzero Intrusion 1/1 and Coldsnap Strike 1/2 to just give Umbral Blades a bit more utility by allowing it to Chill & Freeze enemies every once in a while. Subzero Intrusion 1/1 DOES NOT convert Shadow Daggers to Cold which means we continue as normal and stack Physical based Affixes to raise its damage further.

If you want to know more on this topic, I have a whole video on why we swapped to Dive Bomb - https://youtu.be/xX-PErcbve8

Why did we swap to Dive Bomb? - Well... its broken. Not only does Dive Bomb have 850% Effectiveness of Added Damage from your Falcon, but it has SO MANY points that benefit it. Net & Puncture gave you ~100% increased dps when combined with Aerial Assault and were very very good but Dive Bomb will do ~10x more DPS. Dive Bomb just has way too many good things going on for it and, due to our Falconry being the one who actually casts Dive Bomb, buffing Falconry also buffs Aerial Assault.

Since Falconry is also the one who casts Aerial Assault, with all of the Passive Point changes we made to swap to this, we can easily see 100k+ Crits with Aerial Assault alone due to Falconry especially through OP nodes such as Avian Arsenal 3/3 giving our Falcon 300% of OUR damage. Not only that but, with Aerial Prowess 3/3 being a very competitive node to pick up due to Terrorwings 1/1 making it esentially being 72% More Damage for Dive Bomb, we can benefit from Aerial Prowess 3/3 and gain 72% More Damage for every Aerial Assault too as we dont need Dive Bomb while doing Echoes. Aerial Prowess 3/3 stacks so quickly that you pretty much go back to 36 stacks before every Aerial Assault you do making you be able to clear Monoliths without even actually procing a single Shadow Daggers due to Aerial Assault's newfound damage.

Back to Dive Bomb and its scaling. Exsanguinating Strike 1/1 is just a free 30% More Damage due to us being able to always get 30 Bleeds with Red Wings 1/1's Crimson Shrouds giving us 150% Global Chance to Bleed. With how many small hits we do, we can get 50-60 Bleed stacks pretty comfortably between Dive Bomb. Expose their Defenses 2/3 will permanently keep up 10 Shred Physical Resistance due to the multi hitting nature Dive Bomb has through On Wings of Shadow 3/5 & Dancing Shadows 1/1 giving us all the functionality of Puncture's Splinter 5/5.

On Wings of Shadow 3/5 essentially gives us 3 extra hits of Dive Bomb that only have the downside of 25% Less Damage meaning this is a 225% More Damage multiplier which then will do 2 hits with Dancing Shadows 1/1 meaning it comes out to 450% More Damage. We can generate Shadows very easily through Smoke Bomb's Umbral Assault 4/4 which we can Specialize into now as we don't need 2 Specialization slots for both Net & Puncture. We also get to pick up Smoke Blades 5/5 not only buffing Shadow Daggers IMMENSELY as it can double dip off of it but, also giving us Dive Bomb DPS through Avian Hurl 5/6.

Lastly, we also have Falconry's Avian Arsenal 3/3 allwing our Falcon to steal 300% of our stats greatly buffing itself, Falcon Strikes, Aerial Assault & Dive Bomb as they are all our Falcon's damage. When combined with Exposed Weakness 1/1 our Falcon can have ~700% PrefixCritical Strike Multiplier and can easily be Crit Capped adding even more insane scaling to Dive Bomb. The added benefit of scaling our Falcon's damage so much is that Aerial Assault now starts critting for 100k+ making it REALLY good for clear even if you dont proc a Shadow Daggers.

Theres even more to say here and even MORE multipliers I haven't mentioned but, at this point this FAQ on Why Dive Bomb? is getting long and I think you get the picture. Its not just that Dive Bomb does more DPS than Net & Puncture, its the fact that its also easier to use, buffs the rest of our build in very meaningful ways, and makes this build feel 10x better.