Last Epoch Season 3: Lich & Necromancer Updates

If you're as thrilled as we are about diving into the dark, undead-fueled world of Last Epoch, Season 3: Beneath Ancient Skies is shaping up to be a game-changer for Acolyte players. The Lich and Necromancer masteries are getting massive updates, from a brand-new skill to revamped passives and skills that promise exciting new builds. For those eager to explore these changes, consider bookmarking our site for the latest Last Epoch guides and checking out our Last Epoch store for in-game goodies to enhance your journey.

Lich's New Star: The Flay Skill

The spotlight of Season 3 shines on the Lich's new skill, Flay, a hybrid melee and spell attack that unlocks after investing 30 points in the Lich passive tree. Flay lets you Spirit Step toward an enemy within a short range, delivering a slashing melee attack. If the attack kills, it triggers Blood Eruption, an area-of-effect spell dealing physical damage. With no cooldown, Flay allows you to zip across the battlefield, cutting down foes with style and precision.

The Flay skill tree offers diverse build options:

• Deadly Plot: Boosts spell damage by 5% per point for every 100 maximum mana, making mana-stacking Lich builds a potential meta. This affects Flay and its triggered skills like Rip Blood or Chaos Bolts.

• Transference: Transfers your Aura of Decay to a boss or rare enemy for 6 seconds, letting you avoid its self-damaging effects while staying mobile.

• Damage Conversions: Flay's physical damage and bleed chance can convert to:

  • Corrupted Blood: Bleed becomes poison.

  • Frostblight: Physical damage turns to cold, with bleed becoming Frostbite.

  • Soul Ripper: Converts to necrotic damage, with bleed becoming Damned.

These options let you tailor Flay to your preferred playstyle, whether you lean into poison, cold, or necrotic damage for maximum synergy with other skills and gear.

Acolyte Base Skill: Rip Blood Reimagined

The base Acolyte mastery isn't left out, with Rip Blood receiving a significant overhaul. Instead of targeting a single enemy, it now hits all enemies in a line, creating blood orbs that return to heal you. This makes it a fantastic tool for clearing packs and sustaining in combat. New nodes enhance its power:

• Blood Bond: Hitting a boss or rare enemy attaches a Blood Tether, dealing physical damage over time that scales with bleed stacks (1% more damage per bleed). With builds capable of stacking hundreds of bleeds, this could lead to devastating single-target damage.

• Carnage: Hitting three or more enemies with Rip Blood triggers Marrow Shards, adding an automatic area attack to your arsenal.

These changes make Rip Blood a versatile skill for both Lich and Necromancer, offering healing, crowd control, and boss-killing potential.

Necromancer's Assemble Abomination Rework

Necromancer players will love the revamped Assemble Abomination, which no longer decays health over time by default. The Abomination now “remembers" the minions it consumes, devouring available minions of the same type to restore 10% of its health. This makes it a durable, self-sustaining minion for prolonged fights. Key nodes include:

• Tower of Bones: Each consumed Bone Golem reduces the cooldown of the Abomination's Stomp ability, while boosting its damage (120% multiplicative per golem) and area of effect. With items like Aaron's Will, you could stack multiple golems for a massive Stomp boost.

• Dead Eye: Consuming Skeletal Archers grants the Abomination Eternal Arrow, a bow attack with a 100% recurve chance, scaling with intelligence for additional bow damage.

These changes open up creative minion builds, though you'll sacrifice the ability to resummon consumed minion types, making strategic choices critical.

Aura of Decay: Back in the Spotlight

The Lich's Aura of Decay is getting a much-needed buff to reclaim its place as a viable skill. It now deals 50% less self-damage, though enemy aura damage reduction drops from 50% to 30%. New nodes enhance its flexibility:

• Blood Font: Converts poison damage to physical.

• Cold Death: Converts poison to cold.

• Putrid Bombs: Instead of dropping every 2 seconds, bombs now spawn when using traversal skills or Evade, exploding after a 1-second delay to poison enemies.

• Fester: Grants stacking buffs (up to three) while stationary, increasing Aura of Decay's damage by 6% per stack.

These changes make Aura of Decay a dynamic choice for Lich players who want to balance mobility and damage output.

Passive Overhauls for Lich and Necromancer

Both masteries receive significant passive tree updates to enhance survivability and damage:

• Lich Passives:

  • Executioner: Enables dual-wielding with daggers or axes, boosting attack and cast speed by 20% but increasing damage taken. This feels almost mandatory for Flay builds.

  • Accursed Feast: Boosts health leech but stops working above 66% health, perfect for high-risk, high-reward play.

  • Impact Ward: Reduces damage over time by 3% per stack (up to 9%), but after three points, DoT bypasses Ward, directly affecting health.

• Necromancer Passives:

  • Forbidden Teachings: Grants 1% minion critical strike chance per intelligence point and 1% more minion DoT per vitality point, ideal for scaling minion-heavy builds.

  • Effigies: Redirects 2% of damage per point to your lowest-health minion, with a three-point bonus restoring 20% health to other minions when one dies, adding survivability to minion builds.

These passives offer exciting new ways to theorycraft, especially for minion-focused Necromancers and mana-stacking Lich builds.

New Unique: Executioner's Tithe

A community-designed unique, Executioner's Tithe (a one-handed axe), is tailored for hybrid melee-caster Lich builds. It applies 50% of added melee damage to Chaos Bolts, converts Harvest to Great Harvest (with a 5-second cooldown, 150% more damage, and 50% increased AoE), and grants Spirit Battery stacks for kills or hits on bosses/rares. These stacks boost mana and restore 2% of max mana per kill (22% for bosses/rares with Great Harvest). This item synergizes perfectly with Flay's mana-stacking potential and Harvest builds, making it a must-have for Lich players.

Season 3 Context: Beneath Ancient Skies

Launching August 21, 2025, Season 3 introduces Chapter 10, new Primal Hunt mechanics, and Primordial gear, alongside these Acolyte changes. The focus on the Ancient Era and Rift Beasts adds fresh challenges, while quality-of-life updates (like offline cosmetic support and improved Bazaar filtering) enhance the experience. Expect more details in the full patch notes, but these Acolyte updates alone promise to shake up the meta.

FAQs About Last Epoch Season 3 Acolyte Changes

What is the new Flay skill for Lich in Season 3?

Flay is a hybrid melee-spell skill that lets the Lich dash to enemies, deal a slashing attack, and trigger Blood Eruption on kills for AoE physical damage. It unlocks after 30 points in the Lich passive tree.

How does the reworked Rip Blood work?

Rip Blood now hits all enemies in a line, creating blood orbs that heal you. New nodes like Blood Bond and Carnage add DoT tethers and trigger Marrow Shards for enhanced damage.

What changes were made to Assemble Abomination?

The Abomination no longer decays health by default, remembers consumed minions, and can restore health by devouring them. Nodes like Tower of Bones and Dead Eye enhance its Stomp and add Eternal Arrow.

How does Aura of Decay's rework affect Lich builds?

Aura of Decay deals 50% less self-damage, with new nodes for physical/cold conversions, bombs on traversal/evade, and Fester stacks for increased damage when stationary.

What are the new passives for Necromancer in Season 3?

Forbidden Teachings boosts minion crit chance (intelligence) and DoT (vitality), while Effigies redirects damage to minions and restores health to others when one dies.

Thanks for Reading

Whether you're a Lich zooming through enemies or a Necromancer commanding a minion army, Season 3 offers powerful new tools to reshape your build. Stay tuned to MMOJUGG for exclusive guides, theorycrafting breakdowns, and real-time updates as we dive deeper into Beneath Ancient Skies.to Beneath Ancient Skies.