Wraithlord Necrotic Beams Necromancer Build Guide

Great single target damage (consistent 80-100k crits at high cast speed on okay gear)

Walking simulator gameplay (you don't press anything other than transplant and occasional shades)

Decent clear because most echoes don't have enough density to "overwhelm" the wraithlord so you just transplant through the maps

Tanky enough character for the playstyle (you don't actively use skills during combat so you can comfortably avoid danger)

Aoe clear isn't the best in situations where the entire scren is full of monsters.

Wraithlord movement AI is a bit buggy so you need a source of teleport minions with you (experimental boots recommended)

If you accidentally put dread shade on your flame wraiths, your dps will suffer.

Because existing wraithlord bugs out sometimes after switching zones, you should resummon wraithlord after a loading screen.

TL;DR

Summon the wraithlord, put both shades on it, walk. Refresh dread shade after it expires. Don't facetank enemies, especially large packs.

Gameplay

Gameplay is quite simple. When you enter a new zone, make sure your Aura Of Decay is active and then summon the Wraithlord and put Dread Shade and Infernal Shade on it. Afterwards, you can just walk and Transplant while the beams kill everything around you. Refresh the Dread Shade once it runs out. Use Transplant regularly because it prevents minion AI from getting bugged, provides Bone Armor 3/3 and gives your Wraithlord good damage buff.

The build is quite tanky but it is not an "immortal build". Try to avoid facetanking enemies directly. You don't have anything to do in combat while your wraithlord kills stuff and he has a long range, so stay away from direct danger, don't transplant into the middle of large packs.

For bosses (timeline bosses, dungeon bosses, and shades etc.), you can remove Aura of Decay from your skill bar after activating it and put an unspecialized Summon Skeleton instead. Before starting the fight and during boss phases, you can summon skeletons to feed the wraithlord, giving him insane damage buff. This is mostly unnecessary during echoes, and on bosses you should only do this when the Wraithlord is not able actively attack the boss because it won't be casting beams when it is busy consuming minions.

You can use Transplant to keep yourself and the Wraithlord close to the boss so that Infernal Shade applies extra armor shred stacks, but don't do this if you feel like it risks your own safety.

Wraithlord Mechanics

Wraithlord scales with your Summon Wraith skill tree. Wraithlord only shoots necrotic beams if you have maximum number of wraiths summoned. Therefore, we use Twin Spirits 1/1 and Sequel of Avarice 3/3. First, we lower our maximum wraith count to 2 and make them permanent, ensuring our wraithlord doesn't spend time summoning wraiths and constantly shoots beams. Second, we grant the 180% more damage modifier to Wraithlord.

Next, we want to increase the Wraithlord's cast speed. During echoes, Wraithlord will one shot almost every enemy, so cast speed is very important to make our clear good.

Dread Shade grants lots of damage, but more importantly, it gives a huge amount of cast speed with Dying Coven 3/3 and Blind Fury 1/1. Being blinded has no downsides on the minion because we guarantee crits by using Egoism 1/1.

Infernal Shade is used to grant cast speed.

Having PrefixExperimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills on our boots is very important as it increases our dps uptime a lot and enables us to reposition our minions as necessary. Until you get those, you can use Summon Skeletal Mage with Death's Cavalry 1/3. This is not ideal because it has longer cooldown and you lose defenses & damage by not having Transplant.

We use Simulacrum 1/1 on Transplant to spawn a Bone Minion regularly. This makes sure our wraithlord has at least a stack of +10 flat damage with good uptime and since we spawn it on transplant it doesn't interrupt our wraithlord's beams as his beams get interrupted after a Transplant anyway.

Optional - Flame Wraiths Utility

Since our Wraithlord has to summon wraiths, ideally we want a total 100% PrefixChance for Summon Wraith to summon a Flame Wraith instead to make sure our Wraithlord summons 2 Flame Wraith for us. This isn't too important but I believe for this build flame wraiths are the best choice. Do not worry about scaling Flame Wraith damage, we use them for utility. They still do noticable damage, just not our primary focus.

1. Flame Wraiths are ranged casters. While they won't directly benefit from minion necrotic scaling, they have good base damage and since we scale minion spell damage anyway, they'll do good enough damage on decent cast speed, helping us with our echo clearing.
2. Since they stay at ranged, they will die way less than melee wraiths, and our Wraithlord won't have to waste time re-summoning them.
3. Since they're ranged, they can apply Aegisfall 8/8 more reliably, helping with our single target damage.

Update: Unfortunately I noticed Flame Wraiths are starting to get very buggy at 400+ corruption because of mob density, they sometimes stand around and do nothing. If you also have the same problem, just drop flame wraiths completely to free up your idol slots.

Defences

There are multiple ways to build defences. I went with a life/endurance/block setup because it requires no uniques and is simple to setup.

Because our Wraithlord already deals insane damage, we can focus on making our character tankier. Our defences are based on Absence of Life 4/4 and scaling it with Healing Effectiveness.

Crit avoidance is less important in 1.0 than 0.9 because echo difficulty modifiers are reworked, but it is still very important to be crit protected as we don't want to take any "burst" damage. As long as we don't get one shotted, Aura of Decay and Endurance will ensure our survival.

As an alternative to crit avoidance, you can use Citadel Boots and an explicit reduced crit damage taken affix somewhere, but I think the haste effect from Vanguard Boots is just too good to pass on. Feel free to use a Woven Flesh early on.

You can get more damage by using a 2H weapon. Still, I recommend going 1h+shield because with Wraithlord's already great damage, your defences are going to be the bottleneck on your corruption progression before your damage falls off.

You can use any other necro build until level 65 to equip the helmet. I recommend leveling with a skeletal mages / archmage / cryomancer setup because the gameplay, gear and passives are quite similar to wraithlord.

After switching to the build and when you're leveling up the skills, prioritize the following:

• Dread Shade : Lone Watcher 1/1, Egoism 1/1, Blind Fury 1/1
• Infernal Shade: Soulfire 1/1, Manic Pyre 3/3
• Summon Wraith: Twin Spirits 1/1, Sequel of Avarice 3/3
• Aura Of Decay: Absence of Life 4/4
• Transplant: Acolyte's Fervor 3/3, Apostasy 3/3, Bone Armor 3/3

Movement Speed

Movement speed is your best friend. In the current state of the game, every activity benefits from high movement speed. First, you spend majority of your time walking. Even for bossing (timelines or dungeons) you need to reach the boss first. Current echo rewards also incentivize high speed clear instead of fully completing individual echoes. Second, high movement speed is actually a great defensive stat. It allows you to react better to danger and overall allows you to play more comfortably. Even if you want to push high corruption, you still need to farm a lot of gear before doing that.

So for endgame, you should focus on getting the good bases (Divine Girdle, Vanguard Boots) and getting your defensive affixes on optimal item slots. Vanguard boots with transport minion experimental mod and exalted movement speed are a huge upgrade. After getting a good exalted weapon, you should have enough damage to switch to 2 x Silver Ring to get even more movement speed.

Implicits are generally very strong in this game so try to avoid using bad bases (like Leather Belt) for your non-uniques.

Finally, you can use a legendary The Kestrel . LP is not hard to get on this item. However, you lose the defensive implicit from Revenant Plate so make sure your defenses are solid without the Revenant Plate. On a legendary Kestrel, you definitely want PrefixLevel of Summon Wraith.

Minion Cast Speed

A Julra's Obsession with T7 Cast Speed is a great upgrade and it isn't that hard to farm. Cast speed not only increases the Wraithlord's dps, but it also directly improves your clear speed as the beams do enough damage to one shot most enemies but are restricted by only hitting 3 targets per cast.

Crafting Endgame Boots

You want T6+ PrefixMovement Speed and T3+ PrefixExperimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills on Vanguard Boots, ideally with good suffixes. These are very rare as raw drops (and from a raw drop you can craft a 5-mod item by using the Rune of Research), but you can craft them like this:

1. Start on Vanguard Boots with exalted movement speed and decent forging potential.
2. Upgrade a prefix by using Glyph of Insight to get the minion transport prefix. You need at least T3. You can use the glyph of insight calculator tool to guarantee the craft: lastepoch.tunklab.com/insight
3. Fix your suffixes as necessary for your setup.
4. If your implicit haste effect roll is bad, use Rune of Shaping

You get Glyph of Insight by using Rune of Research so make sure your filter shows experimental items.

Endgame Shield

Cradle of the Erased is a great shield for this build, if you can get good weaver affixes on it. You want good block chance on the weaver affix here. I do not recommend using a Cradle without block chance over a good exalted shield.

Endgame Weapon

A LP2+ Reach of the Grave with SuffixMinion Spell and Bow Damage or SuffixMinion Melee and Spell Damage, and SuffixNecrotic Penetration and Minion Necrotic Penetration is better than a Soul Harvester because of the minion cast speed. However, this wand has an effective legendary level of 70 so it won't be easy to get one.

Alternatives

You can go ward instead of life, which is most likely the better option if you want to push like 600+ corruption. This allows you to dropAura Of Decay. This will have worse clear because on a traditional ward setup with Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living, you end up having to use Frostbite Shackles instead of Julra's Obsession with PrefixCast Speed. Also, you need a legendary Last Steps of the Living with PrefixExperimental Minions Transported with Traversal Skills, don't try to switch to the ward version before you have the boots ready.

I completely overlooked Bone Prison interaction with Wraithlord, so going for Bone Prison + Transplant looks like the best option on a ward setup.

Another option for ward is scaling health regeneration and using Vessel of Strife. This allows you to drop Aura Of Decay while still using Julra's Obsession. I did not test this myself yet, but I saw this on some of necromancer builds and it looks like the better option for late endgame, but the versions I saw used Aura of Decay too so I don't know how viable it is to drop the aura for high corruption on a Vessel setup.

You can find a very basic filter here to use while leveling and early monoliths:

https://www.lastepochtools.com/loot-filters/view/LB7XYOo3

This is not strict enough once you get higher level. If you feel like you're seeing too much loot on the ground, I recommend customizing it for your character's gear by disabling bad bases and so on.

Here is a much stricter endgame filter:

https://www.lastepochtools.com/loot-filters/view/boYPbJBJ

IMPORTANT: This is quite a strict filter, it is tuned for my current character. Please configure the strictness (tier requirements etc. of the items) if you feel like you're seeing no loot.

I want to go for high corruption, should I use this build?

If your goal is going for high corruption like 600+ (i really don't know what people mean when they say "high" corruption), I recommend checking out other Wraithlord beam builds. People posted quite a few variations over last few days. My version focuses on comfortable gameplay and farming while being easy to gear. Especially the low-life ward variants require more gear than this version, so you can use my version to easily farm for high end gear.

Where did my Dread Shade disappear?

After you enter a zone, you need to resummon the Wraithlord or your dread shade disappears after you cast it. Very weird bug.

My Wraithlord keeps infinitely circling around me. What do I do?

Not common but it bugs out sometimes, especially if the wraithlord has to fly a great distance to catch up with you. Use Transplant to transport it and "reset" its AI. I started using Locus Of Death 1/1 with some cooldown recovery for Transplant on my items and I'm very happy with it.

My regular wraiths are dying, should I get more minion defences?

No. They don't matter enough to invest in more survivability for them at the cost of other things.

How do I make sure I put Dread Shade on Wraithlord instead of Flame Wraiths?

Wraithlord has a large hitbox so this is usually not an issue, but if you have issues you can just re-summon the Wraithlord away from Flame Wraiths so you can reapply Dread Shade. Don't forget to also reapply infernal shade if you do this.

Should I put Infernal Shade on Flame Wraiths?

Technically yes, but honestly I rarely bother with this. It will help your single target though, since flame wraiths do decent damage and faster casts mean they do more armor shreds.

How can I farm the Wraithlord helmet?

It is a global drop, so you can farm Black Sun to fish for unique helmet echo rewards, and use Rune of Ascendance on helmets. If you play Circle of Fortune, you can also chase unique helmet prophecies. Of course, if you play Merchant's Guild you can simply buy it.

My Wraithlord is dying, what do I do?

Do not transplant directly into the middle of packs and use it to reposition Wraithlord away from very high damage abilities such as the siege golem's charged aoe attack. While Wraithlord is quite tanky, we don't build him to be immortal so it can't facetank everything. I don't think it makes sense to invest in minion survival on this build.

Why do you specialize Aura of Decay but have Summon Skeletons on your skill bar?

You turn on Aura of Decay at the beginning of your session, then remove it from your skill bar. It won't turn off unless you die or logout.