Uniques and legendary potential are what make builds in Last Epoch shine. By leveraging prophecies, timelines, Nemesis events, loot lizards, and Circle of Fortune imprinting, you can maximize your farming efficiency and dramatically increase your chances of getting the gear you need. Add in some smart rune and glyph usage, and you'll be well on Last Epoch gold your way to crafting legendaries that carry your character deep into endgame.

If you've ever wanted to melt bosses and entire packs of enemies under a mountain of poison stacks while comfortably pushing beyond 1000 corruption, then this build might be the one for you. This Poison Flay Lich build focuses on stacking an absurd number of poison stacks-up to 1500 at once-while leveraging 500% poison penetration. It combines unique items, clever skill synergies, and strong sustain mechanics to become both lethal and surprisingly durable.

Grab a coffee, because we're about to break down how this works from the ground up.

Core Concept of the Build

At its heart, this is a damage-over-time Lich that spreads poison like wildfire. The key lies in stacking as many poisons per second as possible while reducing enemy poison resistance to shred through high corruption content. Having enough Last Epoch gold will increase the damage even more.

The main tools are:

Aura of Decay - The real MVP for inflicting poison stacks.

Flay - Our active spam skill that provides consistent hits and curses.

Spirit Plague - A curse engine that synergizes with poison overload.

Harvest (via Great Harvest conversion) - A mana sustain and burst damage tool.

Reaper Form - An offensive and defensive layer, acting as a second life.

Together, these skills create a loop that feels smooth and highly effective once mastered.

Opening Rotation and Gameplay Flow

The flow is deceptively simple but relies on tight synergy:

Activate Aura of Decay and Reaper Form at the start.

Aura of Decay is constantly poisoning everything around you.

Reaper Form grants attack speed, poison chance, extra damage, and a "second life" mechanic.

Engage with Flay.

This delivers direct hits while stacking curses.

Flay is your bread-and-butter button spam.

Apply Spirit Plague to enemies.

Spirit Plague triggers Poison Overload, which grants 4% poison penetration per stack up to 100 stacks-that's a whopping 400% poison penetration at full uptime.

Against groups, curse a single enemy in the pack. Against bosses, target the boss directly.

Use Great Harvest when off cooldown.

Thanks to Executioner's Tiebreaks, Harvest transforms into Great Harvest with a 5s cooldown.

It restores mana (26% against bosses/rares, 4% against normal mobs), which is critical for sustaining Flay spam.

Repeat the loop.

Stay relatively still to maximize Aura of Decay's damage multipliers.

Use Flay for damage and curses, Spirit Plague for penetration, and Great Harvest for mana sustain.

Skill Synergies in Detail

Aura of Decay - The Real MVP

Poisons enemies four times per second baseline.

With Reaper Form's 500% poison chance, this results in 24 poison stacks per second.

Poison frequency can be doubled with nodes from Aura's tree and further multiplied via Flay's nodes.

Staying still builds Fester stacks (up to 9), granting 54% more multiplicative damage.

Fume Weaver reduces enemy poison resistance by 1 per point of Intelligence-so aim for 50+ Intelligence.

Also heals for 8% missing health per second, offsetting the self-poison drawback.

Important: Aura of Decay poisons you, too. For safety, deactivate it between echoes and use gear with cleanse on potion use for emergency resets.

Reaper Form - Your Extra Life

Functions as both a damage steroid and a survivability tool.

When your health bar hits zero, you revert to human form instead of dying instantly.

Grants:

50% increased poison chance

Extra attack/movement speed

Flat damage bonuses

Always have it active before engaging.

Flay - The Active Spam Skill

Your main attack is constantly dealing damage and applying curses.

Inflicts two curses via its skill tree.

Combined with Spirit Plague, enemies usually suffer from three curses at once.

Works beautifully with the Soulstealer Warlock passive, which refunds 13 mana per curse on hit.

Spirit Plague - Poison Overload Engine

Ensures near-permanent 400% poison penetration through Poison Overload.

Efficiently spreads in packs and is mandatory on bosses.

Also sets up Withering Curse when paired with Harvest, further boosting damage.

Great Harvest - Mana Sustain & Burst

Normally, Harvest has no cooldown, but Executioner's Tiebreaks convert it to Great Harvest with:

150% more multiplicative damage

50% more AoE

5s cooldown

Critical for mana sustain: restores 26% mana on bosses and 4% per kill on mobs.

Defensive Layers and Sustain

Even though Aura of Decay can be dangerous to you, the build has multiple ways to mitigate that risk:

Aura of Decay Healing - Restores 8% missing health per second.

Potion Cleanse Mod - Essential for safely removing self-poison stacks.

Ward Generation - Passive Warlock nodes provide steady ward gain.

Reaper Form Safety Net - Grants a valuable "second life."

This makes the build surprisingly tanky for cheap Last Epoch gold how much damage it pumps out.