The four S5 items that change your damage type, and how elemental conversion, ailments and resistances interact.
Last Epoch Damage Types and How Season 5 Conversions Work
A Season 5 conversion replaces your damage type, it does not stack on top of it. When Abyssal Heresy converts Radiant Lance's base damage to void, that damage stops scaling with your lightning increases and starts scaling with void instead. That single fact sits behind most "my damage went down after I equipped the new item" reports.
Season 5 added six conversion nodes across the three new skill trees plus three Uniques that convert existing skills. The priority rules EHG actually documented are short: some nodes cancel each other out, ailment conversions chain forward, and one debuff ignores conversion entirely. Conversion coefficients, resistance caps and an ailment-stacking table appear in no official source. Everything below is PC/Steam on Patch 1.5.1.1, live since October 3, 2026 and tracked in the Last Epoch news feed; the Season 5 overview covers the rest of the patch.
What a conversion actually changes
Official source: Last Epoch Patch 1.5 Notes
Radiant Lance's base damage is converted to void. Consequently, this damage now scales with increases to void damage, but not increases to lightning damage.
That is a one-way door, which is why a converted skill can feel like a dead pickup even when the item is an upgrade. Three separate axes decide a hit, and the notes print all three. Radiant Lance: Lightning, Spell, Area, Attunement, added damage at 500% effectiveness. Dreamslash: Physical, Melee, Area, Movement, Dexterity, at 150%. Tide Elemental: a Cold, Spell, Area minion, added spell damage at 200% on projectiles and 400% on Geyser. Damage type, delivery (spell or melee) and skill tags are different things, and a conversion only rewrites the first.
The notes show which node uses increased and which uses more, but never the ordering: Radiant Lance "gains 4% increased damage per attunement" is an increase, while its block scaling reads "1% more damage per 1% uncapped block chance (multiplicative with other modifiers)", a more multiplier.
The Season 5 converters, one by one
Official source: New Uniques — Coming to Last Epoch October 1
Scorched Earth is a Unique idol that converts Summon Tide Elemental to fire while granting your minions additional fire penetration.
| Converter and tree | What it converts |
|---|---|
| Sunbeam (Radiant Lance) | Damage to fire; electrify to Ignite; lightning shred to fire shred; tree pen to fire |
| Abyssal Heresy (Radiant Lance) | Damage to void; electrify to Time Rot; lightning shred to void shred; tree pen to void |
| Thunder Elemental (Tide Elemental) | Cold to lightning; frostbite to shock; cold shred to lightning shred; +20% crit multiplier |
| Wind Elemental (Tide Elemental) | Cold to physical; frostbite to frailty; cold shred to physical shred; +200 dodge rating |
| Trance of Isolation (Dreamslash) | Physical damage to cold; bleed and ignite chance to frostbite |
| Apocalyptic Vision (Dreamslash) | Physical damage to fire; bleed and frostbite chance to ignite; chill chance to fire shred |
| Effusive Oath (Unique helm) | Radiant Lance to physical; you take more damage from bosses and rares, and part of your damage to them lands over 4 seconds |
| Scorched Earth (Unique idol) | Summon Tide Elemental to fire, plus fire penetration for your minions |
| Fused Elements (Unique relic) | Gathering Storm randomly converts between lightning, physical and cold |
A Season 5 conversion drags three things with it: your ailment chance, your resistance shred, and that tree's penetration. Scorched Earth is the cleanest case: a conversion that also hands out the penetration you'd otherwise build.
One Season 5 Unique rewrites your damage plan without converting anything. Unbroken Legion, a helm, doubles your skeleton cap and grants Frenzy and Haste for four seconds — then adds that "with this Unique, you cannot summon non-skeleton specializable minions." Read it as a lock on minion selection, not a buff. The Season 5 uniques reference covers the other thirteen.
Effusive Oath converts Radiant Lance to physical; Sunbeam and Abyssal Heresy convert it to fire or void from the tree. No patch note through 1.5.1.1 says which wins or whether they compose, and the same applies to Scorched Earth against the Tide Elemental nodes.
Conversion priority: the three rules EHG published
Some tree conversions cancel each other out. Sunbeam "has no effect if Abyssal Heresy is allocated"; Trance of Isolation "has no effect if Apocalyptic Vision is allocated." Hard exclusions, not diminishing returns — you are not choosing between fire and void, you are losing one.
Ailment conversions chain forward. Anointed Flames on the Radiant Lance tree turns Ignite chance into Electrify chance, then adds: "If Radiant Lance converts electrify to another ailment, then this will also convert ignite to that ailment." Add Abyssal Heresy on top and Ignite becomes Time Rot, though Ignite is never named there. A Shock-to-Electrify node carries the same clause, which is why Electrify and Ignite builds diverge.
Some things ignore conversion entirely. Scathing Light is "unaffected by conversions," and Wellspring on your Tide Elemental "will also reflect any element changes you may have selected from the tree or unique items."
Six of these converters are max-1-point nodes you cannot revisit without spending skill points, and Effusive Oath takes the helm slot you may also want for block chance. The Weaver Tree guide covers where those passive points come from.
Ailments: exactly one non-stacking case is documented
Official source: New Skills — Coming to Last Epoch October 1
Scathing Light is a node that makes bosses and rare enemies hit by Radiant Lance take fire and lightning damage over time. This non-stacking ailment can help provide significant damage for ailment builds without needing to cast frequently.
That is the whole official position on non-stacking in Season 5. Scathing Light is a dual-element DoT that only lands on bosses and rares, does not stack, is unaffected by conversions, and deals "1% more damage (multiplicative with other modifiers) per 1% electrify and ignite chance with Radiant Lance." For every other ailment, EHG has published no stacking rule.
One general change affects any DoT build: when an ailment's duration resets, its remaining total damage resets to its original value, so reapplying it deals full damage again.
Resistances, penetration and the uncapped change
Season 5 leans on two official terms. Uncapped means the full number your gear produces, past whatever threshold the system clamps at; overcapped means the amount above it.
"Similar to Shield Bash, Radiant Lance gains more damage based on your block chance. But we've also updated all effects that scale damage based on your block chance to use your uncapped block chance, meaning you can continue to scale the benefit beyond 100% block chance." — from the Season 5 skills reveal
The same swap hit existing passives: Shieldstorm now grants "0.5% increased attack speed per 1% uncapped block chance (was previously capped at 100% block chance)." For a Paladin that is a sanctioned reason to over-invest in block — the official phrasing is a benefit, not a caveat. Resistances follow suit, with Conduit of Light scaling Electrify chance off uncapped lightning resistance and Battle Hardened cutting damage taken off overcapped physical resistance.
Penetration, resistance shred and armor shred are three separate mechanics: Piercing Light grants flat lightning penetration, Holy Inquisition grants lightning resistance shred chance, and Forge Scale grants armor shred. Patch 1.5 even corrected one node whose description wrongly called armor shred "shred physical resistance" — the game tracks them apart.
Neither the 1.5, 1.5.1 nor 1.5.1.1 notes state your maximum resistances, a penetration cap, or conversion coefficients. Any figure you read for those came from a datamined tool or a community guide, not EHG.
Ward, and the S5 item that changes what hits you
Vestige of Imprisonment is the defensive counterpart: it "causes all hit damage taken to bypass ward, but grants significant ward generation based on your uncapped cold resistance." Ward carries its own passives — Veinweave Belt raises Ward Decay Threshold, Farwood Branch grants Ward Retention — but no Season 5 source publishes a ward formula or a ward cap, so ward-versus-shield comparisons in this patch are community testing.
FAQ
Does a Season 5 conversion add damage on top of the original type? No. Converted Radiant Lance damage "scales with increases to void damage, but not increases to lightning damage" — a one-way swap, not a second layer.
Which ailments stack in Season 5? Only one documented case: Scathing Light is explicitly non-stacking. No rules exist for bleed, ignite, frostbite, shock, electrify, time rot, frailty or poison.
Does Effusive Oath beat Abyssal Heresy? Unknown — no patch note says whether an item conversion and a tree conversion compose.
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