Cold/DoT Exploding Orbs Runemaster Build Guide

Respectable damage before gear modifiers (low gear requirements)

Simple to pick up and utilize effectively, due to linked abilities

High mobility

High burst

Decent sustain utilizing elemental ailments + ward/armor/endurance generation

Cold monotype, supported by armor/cold resist shred

Unforgiving execution, due to linked abilities

Sustain could be better (no defensive skill, requires picking up defensive passives)

Mechanics

My personal checklist, which this build meets:

• low gear requirements
• utilize as many of the elemental synergies in the Runemaster tree as possible
• high mobility
• sufficient AoE & boss damage
• defensive enough to play aggressively

Flame Rush + Volcanic Orb + Static Orb + Runic Invocation > Revik's Blizzard

Flame Rush - deals decent damage, applies multiple stacks of cold resist shred to enemies directly hit by you, ends with an AoE, for applying ailments, and allows us to link all of our abilities together to deliver a massive burst of damage. It also provides a reasonable amount of ward on exit, which we enhance in our Runemaster passives tree.

Volcanic Orb - deals a respectable amount of damage to enemies we traverse through, and we take stun chance, increased damage for shrapnel to chilled targets, as well as a decent explosion at the end, to further apply ailments.

Static Orb - doesn't deal as much damage as Volcanic Orb, but we take the nodes converting it into 2 large, 4 small projectiles that orbit around us for its duration. we also take the nodes giving it a large amount of freeze chance, and a massive amount of frostbite stacks applied to enemies we pass through.

Runic Invocation - our bread and butter, which we further optimize by taking Author of Arcana 1/1, so make sure you have your 3 frost abilities on your bar. this makes building runes and other resources significantly easier with Runebolt. It also gives more flexibility in which invocations we want to play, allowing us to change them simply from moving around a few nodes.

Revik's Blizzard - this ability really meshes the build together. it is misleading at first, as the amount of base damage it deals and the fact that it can't crit seems unappealing, but its 400% damage effectiveness (effectively a multiplier of a skill's base + added damage) per second and its 100% chance to apply chill per second gives us a massive damage boost to our other abilities for the remainder of its duration. It also guarantees that any enemy in the blizzard will take Frostbite + Chill stacks.

You can also consider swapping Volcanic Orb back to fire, providing Swirling Frost, which also does respectable damage. This setup may even scale better with your gear setup, despite converting one of our large damage dealers to a different element, depending on which Uniques or Sets you have acquired. It is more defensive, as the aura is around you, as opposed to stationary AoE.

Runebolt - pretty self explanatory spam ability between bigger pulls, building a ton of resources, specifically ward and mana, allowing us to divebomb large amounts of enemies without worry.

This is our core combo, and it is all triggered via Flame Rush (Beta Decay 1/1, Magma Starter 1/1, Epilogue 1/1). This means we are paying 80% of Static Orb, 110% of Volcanic Orb, and 125% of Runic Invocation's mana cost, on top of Flame Rush. It deals respectable damage, but there is a lot of play with things like positioning, keeping track of DoT's, etc. Though, because we pay more mana for our skills, rebuilding Mana with Runebolt becomes absolutely necessary.

We make up for this by going with Runebolt as our primary spam/builder/filler ability, which provides us with a good amount of health, mana, ward, armor, and haste to make up for our lack of a defensive skill. It also does respectable damage and applies all 3 elemental ailments through Amplified Cascade 1/1.

Rotation

Pretty much just run around spamming Runebolt to apply all 3 elemental ailments, proccing our Runemaster buffs from the passives tree, building ward, armor, and leech if you have it.

You need to make sure you have full runes before bursting.

When you need to deal more damage, or the enemies are stacking up, you can dive in with Flame Rush, which will subsequently proc Volcanic Orb + Static Orb during the channel > both of their explosions when you stop channeling > then casting Runic Invocation > Revik's Blizzard at the end position.

The benefit of frontloading all of our burst with Runemaster is that it allows us to capitalize as efficiently as possible on even the shortest of our passive tree and skill buffs.

Even with gear focused solely on resistances and other defensives, this build still performs well. It can be further optimized with as much increased cold damage, frostbite chance/damage, and cold penetration offensively, as well as mana regeneration (allowing us to cycle our burst more frequently), ward generation on cast/mana converted to ward defensively.

You can start playing this build pretty much as soon as you reach Runebolt.

Before Runebolt, it is still possible, but you may consider dropping all the nodes linking your abilities, to conserve resources, and manually casting Volcanic Orb + Runic Invocation instead. Cast speed isn't a huge issue, thanks to nodes in our skill trees.

As far as Static Orb, before you reach it you might choose Flame Ward and take advantage of the Frost Ward 1/1 + Fire Aura 1/1 combo.

The beauty of Runemaster is the level of flexibility in damage types, skill choices, element combinations for invocations, etc. As far as direction for experimentation, I'd consider checking out this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMo-rQ1Lu4Q, which goes more into the Ice Barrage + Flame Ward stationary turret playstyle. Consider incorporating more of these defensive options.

From here, further gear optimizations might continue down the same general stat focuses, though once you are level capped, you might start considering how to further scale your elemental damage, or further scale your ailment support, depending on playstyle, really.

If you had fun with this build, I am also working on 2 builds in addition to this one:

• a further enhanced cold focused variation of this build with, Frozen Ire + Frey's Retreat + Frost Wall + Volcanic Orb + Flame Rush + Runic Invocation + Runebolt
• a league starter, tanky, spellcaster paladin build to efficiently progress through leveling > mid-endgame

Feel free to offer suggestions/perspectives/insight, I'm always looking to expand my knowledge.

My personal loot filter: https://www.lastepochtools.com/loot-filters/view/OBjGGWoD

You can use this loot filter from Lvl1, just keep in mind that you may need to increase the affix tier thresholds as you leveling (I normally bump it up from T2 > T4 once I get into Monoliths)

How the loot filter is set up:

1. Shows all Unique, Set, Experimental, and Personal items
2. Hides unusable items
3. Recolors and emphasizes items with 4+ valuable affixes >= T2
4. Recolors items with 2+ valuable affixes >= T2
5. Recolors idols with 2+ valuable affixes >= T2
6. Hides remaining unwanted item types/subtypes
7. Recolors and emphasizes base items with valuable affixes lower than T2 (potential crafting bases)
8. Hides all remaining items