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.

Smith Of Kitava Ascendancy Overview

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.

Passive Skills

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.

Branch 1

• Fire Damage - Increases fire damage by 20%.
• Heat of the Forge - Grants the skill called Fire Spell on Hit.

Branch 2

• Fire Resistance - Increases fire resistance by 15%.
• Coal Stoker - A modifier to Fire Resistance also grants Cold Resistance and Lightning Resistance at 50% of its value.
• Forged in Flame - A modifier to maximum fire resistance also grants maximum cold and lightning resistance.

Branch 3

• Melee Damage - Increases melee damage by 20%.
• Against the Anvil - Grants the skill called Temper Weapon.

Branch 4

• Minion Damage - Minions deal 20% increased damage.
• Living Weapon - Grants the skill called Manifest Weapon.

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.

• Flowing Metal - Body Armor increases 5% maximum fire resistance.
• Molten Symbol - Body Armor grants 25% of physical damage from attacks received as fire damage.
• Internal Layer - Body Armor grants a 50% reduced critical damage bonus to hits against you.
• Leather Bindings - Body Armor restores 5% life per second.
• Lead Lining - Body Armor increases 75% Lightning Resistance.
• Support Straps - Body Armor increases Strength by 20%.
• Kitavan Engraving - Body Armor increases maximum life by 15%.
• Tantalum Alloy - Body Armor increases 75% Fire Resistance.
• Heatproofing - Body Armor grants Immune to Ignite effect.
• Heavy Bracing - Body Armor increases stun threshold by 100%.
• Padded Plates - Body Armor increases 75% cold resistance.
• Dedication to Kitava - Body Armor grants armor that also applies to Chaos damage taken from hits.

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.

About Lich Ascendancy

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.

Passive Skills

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.

Branch 1 - Left

• Necromantic Conduit: While you are not low on mana, you and your nearby allies have Unholy Might, losing 5% of your mana every second.
• Mana: Increases maximum mana by 3%.
• Dominion Over Flesh: You can cast additional curses, which can affect enemies with Hexproof resistance.

Branch 1 - Right

• Soulless Form: 10% of damage taken bypasses energy shields. No inherent mana regeneration, and regenerate mana equal to 6% of your maximum life every second.
• Life: Increases maximum life by 3%.
• Eternal Life: While you have the energy shield, your life remains unchanged.

Branch 2 - Left

• Rupture the Soul: Cursed enemies killed by you or your nearby allies have a 33% chance to explode, dealing chaos damage equal to 1/4 of their maximum life.
• Curse Area: Curse area of ​​effect is increased by 25%.
• Blackened Heart: Every 100 max mana grants an increased 4% Unholy Might strength buff.

Branch 2 - Right

• Energy Shield if Consumed Power Charge: If you have recently expended a power charge, your energy shield is increased by 30%.
• Price of Power: Non-channeled spells consume a power charge to deal 25% extra damage.

Branch 3

• Energy Shield: Maximum Energy Shield increased by 20%.
• Eldritch Empowerment: Non-channeled spells consume an additional 3% of your maximum Energy Shield. Non-channeled spells deal 30% more damage. Note that consuming Energy Shield does not interrupt its recharge.

Branch 4

• Energy Shield: Maximum Energy Shield increased by 20%.
• Crystalline Phylactery: You can socket one non-unique basic gem. The effect of the socketed gem is increased by 100%. If you don’t have energy shields, the mana cost is increased by 50%.

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.

Rogue Exiles

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.

Azmerian Wisps

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.

• Wisp of the Great Bear: This is part of Wild Wisp family. It increases the health and stun level of the possessed monster. When possessing a rare or unique enemy, it adds an attack that uses spectral bear to slam the enemy.
• Wisp of the Winter Owl: This is part of Primal Wisp family. It provides additional cold damage and additional energy shield to monsters, and turns enemies killed by it (such as minions) into vortices. In addition, these possessed monsters will summon a large tornado to track the player.
• Wisp of Wild Cat: This is part of Vivid Wisp category. The affected monsters have a higher chance of dealing with critical hits and have increased evasion. Those possessed by rare or unique monsters can summon a group of feline spirits to track you down.
• Sacred Wisps: Unlike the first three, this is a general term for special types of elves, including Wisp of the Cunning Fox, which can turn ordinary monsters into magic monsters, magic monsters into rare monsters, and rare monsters into bosses. This is somewhat similar to how POE 2 Currency works.

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!

A Solid Plan

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.

Watch How I Do It

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.

Whoever Pays Best

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.

Suppressing Fire

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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Right Where We Want Them

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.

Polish That Gear

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.

Stay Light, Use Cover

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.

Unleash Hell!

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.

Cannons, Ready!

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.