Battle Hardened has been reworked, providing 100% cooldown recovery speed for Skeleton Mage abilities. This means that the cooldowns for Last Epoch gold both Hungering Souls and Necrotic Mortar are halved, so your minions can spam their abilities every 3 seconds instead of every 6 seconds.

As a result, you'll be able to field seven Death Knights (up from five) and watch them unleash Necrotic Mortars and Hungering Souls on their enemies, all with high-frequency and devastating damage.

Hungering Souls: Nuke or Mass Projectiles?

One of the most exciting aspects of this build is the Hungering Souls skill tree. There are several ways to play it, but the goal here is to focus on Necrotic Nukes rather than fire or mass projectiles.

In essence, you'll have seven Death Knights shooting Necrotic Mortars and launching Hungering Souls that hit like a truck. We're aiming for the following:

200% multiplicative damage

Base critical strike chance and multiplier

60% critical strike chance

60% additional multiplicative damage

And that's not all. With 10+ minions, you're also stacking another 60% multiplicative damage, making the damage output of this build absolutely massive.

Mana Stacking: Forbidden Souls + Necrotic Nukes

The twist on this build comes with mana stacking. The Forbidden Souls node increases the damage of your Hungering Souls based on your maximum mana. This gives you a massive damage boost, and it pairs beautifully with the Skeleton Mage buffs.

In this build, you'll be stacking mana (I aim for around 1,000 mana), which translates into more damage and more powerful spells for your minions. It's not for everyone, but with the right gear and passives, it has huge potential.

The Role of Golems and Zombies

For added protection and versatility, you'll be using two Golems (including the newly buffed Blood Golem) to tank and deal damage. The Blood Golem received a buff in Season 4, so it's definitely worth considering for this build. However, if you're not a fan of the Golem, you could easily replace it with Zombies.

The Zombie skill has also been reworked and now synergizes well with this build. Zombies deal Necrotic and Spell Damage, making them a perfect fit. They also bring additional kill threshold, ward generation, and even armor shred, which boosts your survivability. I'm currently leaning toward Summon Zombie as Last Epoch gold for sale the fifth skill, but I'm still testing options.