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Hello, everyone. Today we’ll be going over some defensive layers that are very strong in Path of Exile. The first thing I want to mention is that these are only core components of a defensive layer strategy should be used in conjunction with other defensive layers to achieve a Powerhouse of mitigation.
Recharging POE 3.24 Currency in the game can make defensive components more powerful.
Now let’s go over the basic defensive components.
First, that are the strongest,in my opinion. And after we’ll look at some items and some defensive setups.
Spell Suppression is a core defensive layer because if we achieve 100% Suppression. We effectively are taking 50% less Spell damage. This is a common defensive layer, primarily effective when bossing. Because most of the damage dealt by bosses is Spells. 50% Spell prevention is a baseline which is achieved by having 100% Spell Suppression.
But this can be raised by some of the following.
There’s Ascendant Trickster notable. There’s Spellbreaker from the Trickster Ascendency, Inveterate and Spell Suppression Mastery. There are other ways but these were the ones that I found were the most impactful and accessible.
The number two is Armor. Armor is more effective when mitigating multiple small hits rather than one big hit. Ideally, though, you want 90% physical damage reduction from Armor which is the maximum. However, this mod doesn’t include things like Endurance charges giving you additional physical damage reduction and also the mod on a chest piece.
An Armor becomes more effective when physical damage is converted to an element. Because essentially you’re taking less physical damage. As a side note, if you’re a new player, Armor is extremely important in the campaign. Since there are many enemies that do physical damage, including big bad Kitava.
Either an element or chaos damage is one of the best physical damage mitigation components in the entire game. Aside from additional physical damage reduction, both of these, though, can be used together as well to get a lot of mitigation. And it’s very strong because as stated previously. This makes your Armor way stronger.
There are many items that can achieve this feat: Helmet, Chest piece, a Vaal on a shield, Passive Tree, a Taste of Hate, Dawnbreaker Lightning Coil, Cloak of Flame and Lethal Pride.
There are others, but these are just the most common. Now keep in mind that the more physical damage you have taken around 75% plus as an element, the less you’re going to rely on Armor and more on maximum Elemental resistances to mitigate the incoming converted damage. An Ascendency that really shines with converting all physical damage to an element is Chieftain since we get 90% all maximum resistances.
Another Ascendency that’s a good example of physical damage taken as, is a Trickster or an Occultist. So typically you go to Chaos Inoculation with these Ascendancies. And what you want to do is get physical damage taken as chaos damage on either a Corruption for your shield or your Helmet. And basically what happens is you void that damage, you don’t have to take it at all because with chaos inoculation we are immune to chaos damage.
Maximum Elemental Resistances are capped at 75% traditionally in Path of Exile. However, there are many sources in the game now. To raise those base values, any build can strive for 80% resistances comfortably and with the new flask changes in 3.24. It’s much more accessible. All Elemental flasks now have 5% to their respective maximum resistance and this can be scaled by a percentage increased flask effect.
Using all these flasks is not a good way but you can use them respectively for encounters with each Element. Like Searing Exarch for Ruby, Shaper for Sapphire and Eater of Worlds for Topaz.
Having the correct flasks for your build with the right modifiers is one of the most core defensive layers in Path of Exile. This is evident in the use of the Mageblood, unique that almost all top end builds will use.
For example, if you play a creep-based build, you may want to opt for the mod percent chance to gain a flask charge when you deal a Critical Strike. And if you get hit frequently, you can opt for the gain number of charges when you’re hit by an enemy mod. These are just some ways to help sustain those flasks and make sure you don’t run out of charges.
So now that we’ve covered some defensive components. Let’s look at items that synergize well with each other. The first defensive setup is Fourth Vow and Glorious Vanity Jewel. Glorious Vanity needs to be under the influence of Xibaqua to change any Keystone on the passive Tree in its proximity to Divine flesh. The Fourth Vow is a fairly new unique in Path of Exile as of Sanctum League.
It has a modifier which applies 100% of your Armor to chaos damage taken as from hits. Now notice how I said 100%. I’m using this in reference to the unbreakable modifier from Juggernaut Ascendency. That states only 8% of Armor is used against Elemental hits. This is insane because we can apply 100% of Armor instead of 8%. Juggernaut is already noticeably tanky with the unbreakable node.
So Fourth Vow is basically unbreakable, but better. We then use Divine Flesh to convert half of our Elemental damage to chaos damage and give us 80% total chaos resistance as a baseline. We can increase this further with items like Saffell’s frame or the small Cluster Jewel for chaos resistance with the born of chaos notable. Multiple of these can be used to try to achieve 90% chaos resistance.
If you want, normally though, Fourth Vaal is used against 80% chaos resistance for a considerable tanky boost. Another thing that Fourth Vaal really excels in is Elemental penetration. Shifting Elemental damage works very well against this.
An example would be Shaper boss. The idea here is that 50% of Elemental damage is shifted to chaos and that damage cannot be penetrated. Effectively reducing the amount of penetration damage we take by 50%.
It’s the Incandescent heart and Divine Flesh combination. The interaction we’re looking for is the extra 25% Elemental damage converted to chaos damage from chest piece. This is additive with Divine Flesh, providing us a total of 75% Elemental damage converted to chaos damage. Incandescent Heart can be used with Armor and energy Shield Mastery to provide 10% of Armor applies to chaos damage taken as from hits.
To further help with mitigation, this setup is more reliant on maximum chaos resistance being higher than Fourth Vaal setup. And this setup works better for Elemental penetration.
The last combination I want to talk about is Eternal Damnation Amulet with Loreweave body Armor. Personally, I think just using Eternal Damnation by itself is an impressive defensive layer since getting back to 75% maximum resistance is not that hard. Loreweave states that your Elemental resistances are 76 to 78% overriding the negative downside to Eternal Damnation.
This means that we have heightened resistances instead of the 70% new baseline that would be provided by using Eternal Damnation. This combination was very popular during Sanctum League when Eternal Damnation was introduced.
Lastly, another component that can be added into the setup is Transcendence Keystone. That’s provided by a Militant Faith Jewel under the influence of Max Auras. Transcendence has minus 15 to all maximum resistances which can be overridden by Loreweaves effect. Another key component of transcendence is that physical damage is no longer mitigated by Armor.
It is instead mitigated towards Elemental damage. In order to use Transcendence you will need many sources of physical damage taken as. It’s very common for this setup to use a Lightning Coil or a Dawnbreaker. Another interaction with Transcendence is you can use Endurance charges to make up the loss of physical damage reduction. This is an example where I mentioned before that using physical damage taken as an additional physical damage reduction work really well together.
There’s one honorable mention that I would like to talk about. And that is Aegis Aurora Shield. The interaction we’re interested in is recover energy Shield equal to 2% of your Armor when you block. The plus 5 to maximum Cold Resistance is also a really good mod.
The cap on the block is 75% but with investment can reach 90%. This can also be used in conjunction with Transcendence and enough physical damage taken as to provide a massive amount of mitigation and recovery.
You can also combine this with 20 life gained on block through the Block Mastery for even more recovery. Even without pushing for 90% block chance, this is still a considerable amount of mitigation and recovery if you have 75% block chance for both attack and Spells.
I hope you learned something. That’s all my suggestions.
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It has been confirmed that Path of Exile 2 Early Access will release the latest Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt on April 4, which will bring a lot of new game content to players, and the most exciting one may be the addition of an Ascendancy class to the existing 3 classes.
It is worth introducing you to the new Warrior Ascendancy class, Smith of Kitava, which brings some truly fascinating abilities and functions to this character with super survivability and damage capabilities, such as you can create a custom powerful armor for yourself based on the position you choose this class, but the premise is that you already have a Normal body armor with a white description in your build.
This is very beneficial for players who want to use super survivability to challenge and succeed in a onetime challenge in a more difficult encounter. If you are one of these players, you will be very interested in this guide to the passive skills in Smith of Kitava Ascendancy, as this will determine what kind of play style you will explore in POE 2.
Compared to Warrior’s two existing Ascendancy classes, Warbringer and Titan, Smith of Kitava is overall more powerful because of his passive skills that can provide you with additional resistances based on the resistances you stack for him in your build.
For example, Coal Stoke can modify your build’s fire resistance on the one hand, and on the other hand provide you with 50% of its value of cold or lightning resistance. With Forged in Flame activated, your maximum resistance will also have the same buff.
So without worrying about defensive capabilities, you can buy POE 2 Currency as much as you want to upgrade gear that can provide you with super high damage capabilities, so as to create a build with excellent offensive and defensive capabilities.
In addition, Smith of Kitava Ascendancy also has the ability to summon weapons, cause huge fire damage explosions, and increase the damage of minions, which can only be seen with Raging Spirits Gem in the previous Warrior build.
From the current trailer of the passive skill tree of Smith of Kitava Ascendancy, its shape is unique and seems to be only biased to one side. As its name suggests, all of its passive skills can enhance weapons with its own craftsmanship and make an armor that increases all resistances, making it an excellent character for single-player exploration missions.
Currently, POE 2 has only released unlockable passive skill points on 4 branches. Here are their names and specific effects. You can activate them according to your play style. We will also continue to pay attention to any information released by the developers and update them in time.
Among the above passive skills, you may pay attention to the three additional skills granted by Fire Spell on Hit, Temper Weapon, and Manifest Weapon, which are also passive skills that you can activate when using Smith of Kitava.
Unfortunately, the specific effect of Fire Spell on Hit has not been announced yet. We can only know from its name that it should be a skill that can cast fire damage. As for Temper Weapon, it can make your attacks explode on impact, causing devastating AOE impact. Manifest Weapon can make an animated copy of your weapon to fight alongside you.
It is worth mentioning that after you choose this Ascendancy Class you will get a new skill for free, Smith’s Masterwork, which you can insert into your build at will. This skill will allow you to spend Ascendancy points on additional body armor passive skills, but it should be noted that you can only use Normal Body Armor when using this skill.
Below are some of the passive skill options you can equip Smith’s Masterwork with and some benefits it can provide to your armor. These skill nodes are not related to each other, so they cannot be considered a branch. You can choose the corresponding skill node based on your defense requirements.
The above is all the information we know about Smith of Kitava Ascendancy added in Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which was released on April 4th. There are still many specific character skills and functions in POE 2 that have not been announced. We can look forward to what new gaming experience GGG will bring to players in this major patch!
In a livestream hosted by GGG late last month about Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt update, the developers announced that five Ascendancies will be added on April 4th to allow players to create more builds and play styles. The most exciting for players who are used to hitting enemies with spells and dealing tremendous damage is the addition of a Lich Ascendancy Class with increased spell damage for Witch.
If you are very curious about this new playable character, this guide will introduce you to all the passive skills used by Lich from all the current trailers and developer statements, so that you can master the use of this class as soon as possible after the patch is released.
In POE 2, Lich Ascendancy will turn your character into a powerful undead with a lot of magical passive skills, such as Crystalline Phylactery, Eternal Life, and Rupture the Soul. And it will provide you with higher spell damage capabilities based on your mana.
Similar to Witch, Lich is also a class based on non-channeled spells, so when making and building it, you need to buy POE 2 Currency as much as possible and invest on gear that can provide more Energy Shield, so that you can use Curses to create higher damage capabilities.
According to some informed players, Lich will also have the ability to gain an additional Energy Shield in battle to apply an explosion to the enemy. If this can be achieved, it will have a significant advantage in dealing with group enemies, because it can both increase its own defense and successfully kill those groups of enemies.
From GGG’s livestream, Lich Ascendancy’s passive skill tree looks very much like a spider web, spreading from the top to the left and right. So here we will not list all the passive skill points you can unlock in a branching path, but divide them into left and right branches so that you can distinguish them better.
Here we need to remind you that Unholy Might is a buff effect that Lich can obtain, which can cast 30% of all the damage you can cast as additional chaos damage, which makes up for the lack of direct chaos damage in the current POE 2. The following are all the passive skill points that Lich has.
From the above passive skills, it can be concluded that before you choose Lich as your Ascendancy Class, you need to think about whether your mana and energy shield value can support you to complete all the campaigns and successfully challenge all the content in the endgame, because when your energy shield is insufficient, your mana will continue to deplete and it will be difficult to restore to a healthy level.
The above are some of the passive skill nodes of Lich Ascendancy that will be added to the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt on April 4. At this stage, the beginning of this very strange passive skill tree has not revealed a bit, and we will continue to pay attention to it. Again, you need to really consider which passives are most important to their play style, and which passives will do the most damage to them so that you can have more fun with them.
Ever since the early access of Path of Exile 2, there have been numerous complaints about the endgame content, most notably that it lacks the depth of the original game. So on April 4, the developers will release the most significant patch since the release of POE 2, Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which aims to completely overhaul the endgame, introducing changes that are both substantive and meta-defining.
The changes we’ve seen so far include the introduction of some new endgame mechanics, the integration of campaign-related changes into the endgame, and major changes to existing mechanics in order to pursue deeper and more meaningful exploration. This guide will show you what new endgame mechanics will be available in patch 0.2.0 and how they work, so that you can explore further.
It’s worth mentioning here that in order to bridge the digital divide between the original and the sequel, there will be a lot of new endgame mechanics coming to POE 2 in Dawn of the Hunt, which indirectly prompted the developers to add 10 additional Atlas passive points for players to farm and grind.
The first new mechanic we need to introduce is Rogue Exiles, which look very similar to you will appear in maps with a lot of POE 2 Divine Orbs that you want to farm, as well as some super-powered Unique gloves.
According to the developers, there will be 12 Rogue Exiles when the patch is officially released, each with different item combinations and unique encounters. Rogue Exiles will use the same skills as you. For example, they can also do evasive rolling and can use very advanced pathing and enemy targeting mechanics. The gear used in the build is no exception, so this encounter is very challenging when they are equipped with Temporalis or Hands of Wisdom and Action.
For this kind of battle, you may want to equip as many gears as possible with higher damage or defense capabilities or buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the rarity and roll affixes of the same gear to ensure that your combat capabilities are higher than these Rogue Exiles. After you successfully defeat them, the Uniques they are equipped with will become your loot.
Wildwood Wisps in POE have also been added to the sequel to a new name, now called Azmerian Wisps. These little wisps have a very huge impact. They have already appeared in Grelwood in Act 1 of the original game, and become one of the monsters that players must defeat in the endgame.
In POE 2, Azmerian Wisps appear randomly in zones and Waystones, and will infuse monsters in the current zone with additional powers, such as offensive and defensive abilities. When you get close to them, Wisps will fly faster to normal monsters and turn them into rare or unique monsters.
These possessed monsters have additional attacks, such as summoning spectral animals to finish the fight, so you need to be flexible enough in these encounters to get the increased quantity and quality of loot and experience points.
Here are the names and specific effects of the four Azmerian Wisps that have been confirmed to appear in the game. In addition, as part of the endgame content, Azmerian Wisps will also have their own Precursor Tablets and Atlas Passive nodes, which may not be fully known until the official release.
These are all the new endgame mechanics added to the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which is expected to be released on April 4. Of course, as mentioned earlier, this patch also makes very significant improvements to the mechanics that already exist in the game, such as Towers, Strongbox, and Essence.
These improvements and additions are all designed to get players who once gave up on this over-marketed sequel back to the game, and to give all players a better endgame experience. In general, everything GGG has done this time seems to be based on the player’s perspective and carefully listens to the player’s opinions and suggestions, so we are very much looking forward to what surprises it will bring us this spring.
Five new Ascendancy Classes have been added in this Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt update, giving players more options for their builds. Mercenary has been one of the most popular classes in the game since its Early Access release, so naturally, the addition of a brand new Ascendancy to this class has been highly anticipated once it was leaked. Here, we discuss this Ascendancy and explain what its strengths are, and what builds you might see play on this Ascendancy. Let’s jump right in!
Let’s first take a look at the first skill node in Tactician dual-choice four-point branch, A Solid Plan.
First, note that it provides an 8% increase in Spirit, which is very solid for a small passive, especially considering the 50% reduction in Reserve modifiers for Persistent Buffs. Now this one is really powerful, you will be able to retain more buffs with this node, for example Combat Frenzy will only retain 15 Spirit baseline instead of 30. But you need to have gem socket links for these skills to fit.
Now one thing to mention about this node is that there are over 100 new Support Gems coming out in patch 0.2.0, so the chances of us getting new Persistent Buff Skill Gems, like Vitality and Clarity, are pretty high.
Keep in mind though, that even though they are Support Gems, something like Vitality is still a Persistent Buff that would normally retain 20 Spirit, whereas with this node it will only retain 10.
All of Herald Skills will also be marked as Persistent Buffs, and while they will most likely be severely nerfed in this patch, consider how powerful this notable node is. Especially since it allows you to retain a bunch of high-cost buffs for a very low investment.
For example, Blink will cost you 30 Spirits to keep, and Cast on Critical will be 50 Spirits instead of 100. And yes, all of these Trigger Gems count as Persistent Buffs as well. So they apply to this node as well.
Considering there are so many options for persistent and buffs, this is just a very versatile strong node that you can get with almost any build you want.
Now there are two different notable nodes branching off from this A Solid Plan node, each with a more specific effect on the build you want to use.
For Watch How I Do It, this causes allies in front of you to gain bonus attack damage equal to 25% of your mainhand weapon damage. Now, this may have some interesting effects on Spectres that appear in this patch. I’m sure there will be some mob types who abuse these fixed damage like crazy.
I think this node is more of a party support playstyle than any other mode, that’s because if you’re playing minions you can’t drop your Spectres, Gem Levels and Spirits, so you can’t use two-handed weapons here. You can only use one-handed weapons with Sceptres for fixed damage, which would be ideal for fixed damage, but I don’t really think that would be that great.
Also, there are Totems, but since all Totems in the game currently deal fixed damage based on Gem Level, I don’t think that would be too useful either, but from a party support perspective in group play this node is fine.
Then we have another branch option, Whoever Pays Best. Now this can place multiple Banners, in addition to War Banner. Banners are generally a bit weak in Path of Exile 2. So hopefully this change will get them some attention in the upcoming patches, but as of now I don’t see many people picking this up.
Let’s move on to the next four point branch, starting with Suppressing Fire. Pin is a debuff that essentially acts as a route, since projectile damage builds up Pin, which will bind the target in place, and while the target is pinned, they can’t move. Pin has a default base duration of 4 seconds.
It’s worth noting that Pin is pretty easy to build up compared to Freeze. When the target is pinned, they are also considered immobile, so you can take advantage of this, like with Leverage Support Gem, which increases critical chance by 50%. But perhaps more notable is Siege Cascade, which is a crossbow damage ability.
So, you’ll be able to use this to actually build up the pins for Suppressing Fire, and the skill itself has 50% more built-in damage to pinned enemies, so this is a nice secondary node.
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For the next node in Suppressing Fire branch, this makes it even more powerful, which is Right Where We Want Them. This node makes the pinned enemy unable to do anything, they can’t move, they can’t attack or cast spells, they just stand there for the entire pinning period, like a puppet.
You know, the crazy Freeze is already very powerful in POE 2, but Freeze is much harder to get compared to Pin. So this node essentially turns your Pin into a pseudo-Freeze, and when mapping, you can immobilize everything you hit with a projectile. So it’s a great option for when your character has very limited movement speed, so you can buy POE 2 Currency and make Pin easier to build. This will go up most of the time, and it’s a very good four-point branch.
Now moving on to the next four-point branch, Polish That Gear, this gives you 100% of your Armor as additional Stun Threshold, and 100% of your Evasion Rating as additional Ailment Threshold.
So how does this node generally work? Your Stun and Ailment Threshold are first based on your max life, so if your max life is 3,200, let’s say your Stun and Ailment Threshold are both 3,200, then those numbers are used to calculate whether a hit will stun you or cause an Ailment shock to you.
For example, for every 4% of Ailment Threshold, there’s a 1% chance of a Stun Threshold being struck, but Polish That Gear gives you the potential to increase those thresholds significantly. Of these, just having 5,000 Armour alone will more than double your Stun Threshold. Considering we can’t easily avoid Stun and Ailment completely in POE 2, I think this is an excellent investment, especially if Ailment becomes more dangerous in patch 0.2.0.
Now the next node off this branch is Stay Light, Use Cover, and this is where things get a little interesting. This node gives you 200% Armor Defense, and enemies have an Accuracy Penalty against you based on distance. Additionally, your maximum Evade chance against strikes is 50%, and your maximum physical damage is reduced by 50%.
What this node does for evasion is that it essentially makes monsters less accurate, which reduces the trade-off against your evasion, making a lower total Evasion Rating more effective. But the other half of this node is more interesting, because you can defend with 200% armor, which means that any hit that interacts with your armor will use twice your total armor to calculate the damage reduction it provides.
Now, armor is at the other end of the scale compared to evasion, and we hope to see buffs to this mechanic in an upcoming patch that will provide similar benefits to the other half of Evade node.
The next node we want to mention is Unleash Hell! From the trailer we can see the actual effect of this skill, to be honest it looks terrible, but who knew it was a very interesting skill design.
As we all know, for some off-screen minions, they are not actually with you, but with this skill, you can shoot a bunch of arrows to a location, and the minions will scale their damage based on your Dexterity and Strength. So there is a bit of attribute stacking factor, but in fact without the base damage number, we really don’t know how good this skill will be.
The last node is Cannons, Ready! This makes your totems’ skills 30% faster, and the totems only use skills when you fire attack projectiles.
But honestly, it’s not great, because the biggest problem for us is that the totem playstyle usually allows your totems to do all the work, but this node prevents the totems from using their skills until you specifically use skills to shoot and attack projectiles.
But for single target damage, 30% skill speed increase is a lot. And this node does not specify Ballista Totem, which means that you can use Weapon Swap to summon Shockwave Totem or Ancestral Warrior Totem, and then you can switch to another set of weapons to fire attack projectiles, making them trigger damage faster than usual. So this can lead to a lot of burst damage. As I said, it’s good for boss fights, but it’s terrible for mapping.
Now in general, Tactician Ascendancy does bring some pleasant effects, especially Pin branch and Reservation node are very good, and for those who like group games, the existence of Tactician will also provide unlimited support for you! I believe we will see some pretty good bows and crossbows built on this Ascendancy in the future.
