Introduction

The Bladedancer's Dancing Strike skill is a bit special and deserves some explanation to better understand it. This attack is broken down into several instances of movements (rolls, dash, somersault) that will inflict damage. It is actually a rotation of 4 movements. The attack speed does not affect the execution speed of the instances but the damage of the skill itself, on the other hand the reduction of delays makes it possible to launch the movements more quickly. Dancing Strike is considered a movement skill, which means that when you attack with it, you are always considered to be moving, this notion is very important, we will come back to it just after.

This build is not impacted by the Patch 0.9 Last Epoch, it is perfect to start on this patch! Note however that the Falconner specialization has not yet been implemented, it may be that this build can be further improved by its skill tree.

Build Explanation:

Dancing Strike must be played with two one-handed weapons, so you will necessarily have a defense penalty (+15% additional damage suffered). The build is based on bleed chance and damage which allows you to focus your talent and skill trees defensively:

• Since Dancing Strike is a movement skill, you will always have the passive bonus Evade from the base tree which reduces the damage you take by 25% when moving.
• Second defensive axis of this build is the Dancing Strike skill itself, the Graceful Arena passive allows you to invoke every 3 attacks a ground area (Arena), when you are inside you will suffer 20% less damage .
• Your third defensive axis is the Perfection branch of the Bladedancer tree, each instance of Dancing Strike will grant you a stack of Perfection and you will gain 50 armor and evasion for each stack, you can stack Perfection up to 10 times . Remember though that you lose all your stacks if you get hit.
• You will also take all points from Glancing Blow which increases damage taken on one hit to 65%.
• Your last defensive axis is the skill Shuriken which will give you a permanent 150% armor bonus.

All your skills are described below:

• Dancing Strike: Your main damage attack which will inflict all your stacks of bleeding but also give you a large defensive bonus as explained above.
• Smoke Bomb: This skill allows you to blind enemies, give you chances of bleeding on your shurikens and finally increase to 100% chance of Glancing Blow.
• Shuriken: You will never cast this spell yourself. It gives you a significant armor bonus and a chance to reduce enemy physical resistances which will increase your bleed damage.
• Shift: Your shift spell that will activate 5 shurikens at the same time and give you a large bleeding bonus on your next attack. Finally, Shift will instantly kill a target with less than 15% of their maximum health
• Lethal Mirage: This skill is mainly used for single-target fights (boss and rare), the more bleeding the target has on him, the more damage this skill will inflict. This skill also makes you invulnerable during its execution and can therefore allow you to survive complicated situations.

On average, taking all of these passives into account and using only Dancing Strike and Shuriken will give you 2000 armor, 3000 evasion, and a 45% chance of getting a Glancing Blow. Add to that, Smoke Bomb which will blind your enemies and increase your Glancing Blow chances to 100%, you can venture without any worries into the enemy hordes without even knowing where your character is. Dancing Strike, however, requires some grip to manage your moves on non-moving or imposing bosses like Lagoon or the Emperor of Corpses.

Since Dancing Strike is not influenced by attack speed and delay reduction is rare (helmet only) we will therefore be looking to maximize our chance of inflicting one bleed per hit and bleed damage and damage over time. With a rather advanced build (as presented here) you can go up to 500% chance of bleeding per hit, 600 base damage per bleed and 1500% damage over time. Note that the delay reduction is effective on all your other skills so you will be very mobile with Shift and you will more regularly Smoke Bomb and Lethal Mirage for the defensive aspects.

Also find our other articles on LE!

Skill trees

Dancing-Strike:

• 2 x Slicing
• 2 x Grievious Wounds
• 3 x Trickling Cuts
• 2 x Broad Dancing
• 1 x Eluding Steps
• 1 x Nimble
• 2 x Underdog
• 4x Graceful Arena
• 4 x Lacerating Aura

Dancing Strike Skill Tree

Shurikens:

• 3 x Alacrity
• 4 x Abrasive Arsenal
• 1 x Thin Shurikens
• 1x Blade Shield
• 4 x Floating Blades
• 3x Bladed Armor
• 4 x Ethereal Blades
• 1 x Weighted Projectiles

Shuriken Skill Tree

Shift:

• 3x Velocity
• 5 x Hypovolemia
• 3 x Jagged Cuts
• 1 x Momentum
• 1 x Emergency Flask
• 2x Shadow Recovery
• 5 x Sleight of Hand

Shift Skill Tree

Smokebomb:

• 5 x Smoked Lingering
• 1 x Concealed in Carnage
• 1x Smoke Blades
• 4 x Hidden Blows
• 1 x Shrouded in Darkness
• 4 x Impending Gloom
• 4 x rapid Concealment

Smoke Bomb Skill Tree

Lethal Mirage:

• 1 x Consuming Darkness
• 2x Unending Mirage
• 2x Ravaging Mirage
• 3 x Umbral Traversal
• 2 x Umbral Expanse
• 4 x Weeping Cuts
• 5 x Wounding Ambush
• 2 x Sounding Blows

Lethal Mirage Skill Tree

Items to collect

This build does not need a unique object to work, although some are highly recommended, remember that you must have an ax and a sword, prefer:

• Chance of bleeding
• Damage over time
• Reduction of delays
• Elemental Resistances
• Evasion / Armor
• Vitality and life percentage

For your idols, none is mandatory, however prefer idols giving damage over time (1x3 or 1x4) or area of ​​effect with Dancing Strike (3 x 1). Complete the rest with resistances and life.

The 4 unique items recommended for this build are:

• Valdyr's Chalice: This relic is specific for bleeding builds giving you chance and duration of bleeding, life per hit based on the number of bleeding on the target as well as life recovered on damage inflicted.
• Corsair's Blood Cowl: This helmet offers all the base stats the build needs.
• Stymied Fate: Chance for Haste on hit, damage over time, and cooldown reduction on Shift skill.
• Thorn Slinger: It gives you chance to bleed, movement speed and above all a passive point on physical skills.
• Woven Flesh: This armor has a good armor base, improves your lifesteal and above all you will no longer take a critical hit, which constitutes a last defensive barrier on your build.

Objects used in the build

You can grab the build on the scheduler Last Epoch Tools.