Strength Stacking Cold DoT Werebear Build Guide

Hello, this is Dr3ad from Epoch Builds, and in today's build guide we are showcasing Cold DoT Werebear, one of the best overall builds for Last Epoch currently, both in terms of how relaxing of a playstyle it has, and also its overall strength. Now this build normally gets over 100k-ish DPS on the Target Dummy, but I still say its one of the best builds? Why is that? Well in how it applies it damage. Thanks to the buff recently to Maelstrom, and the rework to the entire Druid Class, it has allowed this build to have a special place in my heart and also impressed me significantly. This build is also very SSF friendly, as there are no required uniques, and can be leveled as a regular Maelstrom primalist in the campaign then transitioned into Werebear when you have all the points allocated. It also boasts a very noob friendly playstyle, as all you do is Maul and Warcry through monolith echoes.

So the build relies upon Strength stacking thanks to Wisened Claws 1/1, which gives us adaptive spell damage per point of Strength we have. This allows us to scale Maelstrom and Entangling Roots to the point where we can deal enough damage to clear screens with ease.

Maelstrom is a Cold Damage Over Time Spell Skill, that applies it's DoT in an AoE around the caster. It ticks at twice per second, and it can be stacked infinitely, the only thing restricting you is mana, duration and cast speed. We cast all of our maelstrom stacks from Warcry's node Whirlpool 4/4. We cannot self cast maelstrom while in Werebear Form, so we are reliant on this. Maelstrom was changed recently to have a lot more base damage, and have better nodes to scale your damage like Turbulence 5/5, giving us up to 100% more damage with the skill. We also have Eye of the Storm which with a few points can give us 40% more damage, while reducing our AoE slightly. Since Maelstrom is our single target damage source, it losing AoE is not a huge concern at all.

Entangling Roots is a Physical Damage Over Time skill, that normally applies a debuff in a cone, which there is a hit portion, then it applies a debuff that immobilizes enemies and applies Damage Over Time. We convert it to cold with Winternid Thorns, so that all of our damage is cold so we can scale it all at once. We then grab Overgrown Garden, which turns the cone into a Circle AoE, which is huge. Then we use Maul inside Werebear Form with the node Woodland Bear, proc'ing our Entangling Roots, bypassing the cooldown. To clear screens of enemies, we just simply Maul, and Entangling Roots does the rest.

The rest of the build is focused on supporting these 2 skills and making the gameplay as smooth as possible