Which Class Is More Suitable For You To Explore Path Of Exile 2 Early Access Alone?
Jan 07, 2025 Source: POECURRENCY
In the last month of last year, the most anticipated Path of Exile 2 Early Access in the gaming circle was finally released, bringing very rich game content to players. As a large-scale MMORPG, the most important thing in the game is to choose a Class that suits you best, which will determine your game style and the game strategy you will use in this game.
In the current POE 2 Early Access, you will experience 6 Classes: Sorceress, Warrior, Monk, Witch, Ranger and Mercenary, each of which has a completely different game style. Although the new sequel provides players with the coveted couch cooperation and multiplayer features, there are still some players who prefer to explore this new game alone.
But unfortunately, the difficulty of POE 2 is recognized by many players as greater than the original, so whether it is for new exiles who have just come into contact or old exiles who have returned from the original, single-player exploration will be a great challenge. Fortunately, this guide will introduce you to several classes that can make your single-player exploration easier. You can choose according to your game style.
1. Sorceress
Sorceress is a very pure elemental magic user in POE 2. You can cast three different elemental magic damage (fire, frost and lightning) in a safe range away from the center of the battle, which is also the biggest advantage of this class.
If your build is strong enough, you can use Frost Nova to create a solid barrier for yourself after building a wall of fire to block the enemy, and cast chain lightning damage between the enemies. This will allow you to clear low-level and medium-level enemies in a very short time and pick up a lot of POE 2 Currency and loot from their corpses.
You can also use Sorceress’s ability to manipulate time and space to make the enemy unable to fight back in battle and can only safely suffer all the skills with high burst damage you cast. In addition, its crowd control ability can also effectively control those enemies with strong mobility and difficult to defeat, to cause greater damage later.
After talking about the advantages of Sorceress, let’s take a look at its disadvantages. Because of its low defense and health, Sorceress has been given the title of a glass cannon. Most importantly, Sorceress can only have a certain advantage in ranged attacks. Once the enemy gets close to you, you cannot use your weapons to cause strong melee damage, which is also a common disadvantage of all ranged classes.
So in the process of creating the best Sorceress build, try to use some shields with high defense attributes as the main means of defense. If you don’t have high-level items in the early and middle stages of the game, you can also upgrade your original shield through POE 2 Exalted Orbs and add an excellent affix to it, which will make it more tanky.
2. Ranger
Ranger is a new class added to this new sequel. Its arrival makes this game that advocates melee physical damage more diverse, because Ranger can use various natural forces to cause super high damage, debuffs or crowd control effects to distant enemies, so the construction of this class can be very diversified because you can focus on multiple element types on it.
Although Ranger, who is good at long-range attacks, has the same weakness as Sorceress that he cannot deal with close-range enemies, Ranger can keep enemies at a distance by creating some traps or vines to prevent them from getting close. At this time, you can use the expertise in the build, such as poison, lightning, fire, and even freezing, to cause irresistible damage to distant enemies.
Not only that, since the types of weapons used by classes in POE 2 are not restricted, Ranger can use various long-range weapons and combine the abilities of multiple classes to cause super damage to the enemy. This is most beneficial for single-player exploration players, because you can experience the fun of distinct characters in the same class, and you can use uncommon abilities in battle to make the enemy more vulnerable to multiple injuries.
3. Witch
Like Sorceress, Witch is also a class that is good at casting spells, but its focus has become necromancy and summoning minions. In battle, you can send your skeleton army to fight those enemies in close combat in the center of the arena; while you can buff the minions in a safe position and cause tremendous damage to the enemy.
Generally speaking, the more corpses you create in battle, the more minions you can use, and you will feel extremely smooth and controllable in battle. And the method of making these minions is also very simple. You just need to place some POE 2 Items that can increase their damage or defense capabilities in the build.
But it is worth reminding you that once you face a boss encounter that can cast group damage, and your minions are annihilated in an instant, Witch will lose its ability to survive. Although this is an extreme situation, it is not impossible. So in the process of using Witch for single-player exploration, try to keep the number of your minions within a controllable range, and never summon all at once.
4. Mercenary
Unlike the previous ranged classes, Mercenary’s defense and survivability are not so fragile. Some Mercenary builds can even actively attract enemies to deal close-range damage in order to launch a powerful counterattack. Although there is no fixed weapon type, Mercenary and the new crossbow can be perfectly combined. This new weapon type will continuously cause huge damage to the enemy like a gun, and it is in a mobile state.
Of course, Mercenary’s long-range attack ability is also very powerful. Different types of grenades and ammunition can cause huge burst damage to the enemy through crossbow, which also means that you can use multiple builds to make Mercenary get more damage potential, which makes the difficulty of single-player exploration a little lower and easier to control the progress of the game.
But this does not mean that Mercenary has no shortcomings. At present, the animation speed of its movement and attack on POE 2 is slow, which may make players feel that the picture is not coordinated. And this class pays more attention to group damage, and the damage ability to single-target enemies, such as various bosses, is not too strong.
The above are the most suitable Classes for single-player exploration in the current POE 2 Early Access. Although the road of single-player exploration is very hard, the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction gained after completion is something that ordinary people cannot feel. I hope these Classes can become your best helper in your exploration journey and bring you an unprecedented gaming experience!
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How To Get Waystones To Unlock Higher Tier Maps In Path Of Exile 2?
In Path of Exile 2 Early Access, you will need Waystones of different Tiers to unlock the maps you need to explore. Higher-tier Waystones unlock the ability to fight enemies in the map at higher levels, and improve the quality of the drops you get in them, ensuring that each run of the map is more profitable.
While Tier 15 Waystones are the highest level of Waystones you can get in POE 2, with the introduction of this guide, you will have the opportunity to get Tier 16, 17, 18 and even 19 Waystones to unlock higher-tier maps and earn more rewards.
About Tier 16 Waystones
The only way to get Tier 16 Waystones in the current game is to gamble with POE 2 Vaal Orbs on non-corrupted Tier 15 Waystones. You will face four results: upgrade to Tier 16 Waystones, downgrade to Tier 14 Waystone, randomly modify a modifier in Tier 15 Waystone, and nothing happens.
Although from the test, the probability of upgrading to Tier 16 Waystone is less than 5%, but the possibility of downgrading to Tier 14 Waystone is also very rare, the other two possibilities are more common. So if you have a lot of Vaal Orbs by farming in some low-level maps, this gambling method is also a valid method of producing Tier 16 Waystones in Path of Exile 2, as the risk involved is much smaller.
It is worth reminding you here that you cannot use Reforging Bench to upgrade three Tier 15 Waystones to Tier 16 Waystones. When you place Tier 15 Waystones on Reforging Bench, you will find that you cannot perform subsequent operations, because this method only applies to Tier 1-14 Waystones.
Also Read: Diablo 4 Season 8, Please Stop Blindly Benchmarking Path Of Exile 2!
About Tier 17 & 18 Waystones
It is important to remind you that there are no real Tier 17 and Tier 18 Waystones in POE 2, but you can use the map modifiers in Atlas nodes to achieve the effect of these two high-tier Waystones - modifying the enemy level in the map you explore.
For Tier 17 Waystones, you can use Tier 16 Waystones with the Corrupted or Irradiated Modifier on the map node, so that you will unlock an explorable map with monster level increased, about level 81.
Similarly, using Tier 16 Waystones with Corrupted and Irradiated Modifiers on the map stage will get you a map with a monster level of 82. Note that Corrupted modifiers are pre-generated by Atlas and cannot be affected by themselves, but you can use Irradiated Precursor Tablet in the nearby Tower to add Irradiated modifiers to the specified map node.
In these maps with higher-level monsters, you will have a good chance to get Level 19+ Skill Gems and Level 19+ Spirit Gems (Level 19 drops in maps with Tier 17 Waystones, Level 20 drops in maps with Tier 18 Waystones).
In addition, all Boss Atlas skill points on the very large skill tree in POE 2 will be randomly awarded to you in these high-level maps. On top of that, they contain a lot of higher item level loot with unique modifiers, which you can’t get by rolling.
But it is worth reminding you that the maps unlocked with Tier 17 & 18 Waystones are also very challenging because of Bosses with high level, so buy POE 2 Currency as much as possible before running maps to enhance the defensive capabilities of your build so that you can safely complete the exploration of these maps.
About Tier 19 Waystones
In theory, you can gamble with Tier 17 Waystones to get Tier 19 Waystones and unlock maps with level 83 enemies. All you need to do is use a Tier 16 Waystone with Corrupted and Irradiated Modifier on a map node, then select Corrupted Infusion passive skill in Atlas Tree and activate it.
Since Corrupted Infusion passive skill causes Waystones to be additionally corrupted when used on the map, this will cause the already corrupted Tier 16 Waystone to be corrupted again, allowing you to obtain Tier 17 Waystones.
However, it is worth noting that injecting a Corrupted Infusion node into a Tier 16 Waystone will also have four results: upgrading to Tier 17 Waystones, downgrading to Tier 15 Waystones, Tier 16 Waystone’s own modifiers being randomly rolled, and nothing happens.
This means that if you are lucky, you will get Tier 19 Waystones and the level of monsters in this map will increase by three levels; but if you are unlucky, you can still challenge the level 81 enemies unlocked by Tier 17 Waystones.
The above is the specific method to obtain higher-tier Waystones and unlock higher-level maps in the current Path of Exile 2 Early Access. I hope you can get the best results when gambling with these Waystones, and can run these higher-difficulty maps smoothly to get more loot from them. I wish you a happy game!
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How Should You Prepare For Mysterious Shade Quest With Three Bosses In Path Of Exile 2?
When exploring Act 1 of Path of Exile 2 Early Access, you will be tasked with collecting some spikes and nailing them to a tree. After completing this task, you will be given a new quest called Mysterious Shade, which requires you to go to a graveyard to collect some keys.
Since completing Mysterious Shade quest will unlock a new NPC called Hooded One, who can refund skill points in your unlocked passive skill tree with in-game gold and identify the rarity or attribute statistics of some gear, it is very important to your exploration process.
Unfortunately, there are three bosses that must be defeated in this quest, which requires a lot of combat strategy and a strong build. In order to make it easier for you to complete this quest, this guide will show you the specific locations of Mysterious Shade quest and some precautions that you need to pay attention to.
Arriving At Cemetery Of The Eternals
After you confirm to accept Mysterious Shade quest, you will see the quest log for this quest on your screen, and it will ask you to find Grim Tangle connected to Grelwood. Once you enter this map, please find Una and talk to her.
After you talk to her, this NPC will start singing and give you some experience points, and then you can walk away to continue to explore deeper in Grim Tangle. Note that you may encounter Brambleghast boss during your walk, which is an optional boss on Mysterious Shade quest.
You can choose to ignore it or beat it, and the amount of POE 2 currency it provides is pretty generous as well. Since Grim Tangle is directly connected to Cemetery of the Eternals, tombstones, coffins and mausoleums are the main landscape in this map, and players who like the landscape in dark games may like it very much.
Unlock Count’s Grave
Note that you will find an NPC named Lachlann near the waypoint on the current map. Be sure to talk to him, as this is an important prerequisite for you to enter Count’s Grave. After you enter Cemetery of the Eternals, your quest log will remind you that you need to enter Count’s Grave through Memorial Gate next to Lachlann, but you need two keys.
The necessary unlocking items can be found in Tomb of the Consort and Mausoleum during Sorrow Among Stones quest delivered to you by Lachlann. In these two tombs, there will be two bosses waiting for you to challenge: Asinia, The Praetor’s Consort and Draven, The Eternal Praetor.
Asinia is located in Tomb of the Consort, which is connected to the previous cemetery. In the battle, this boss will use projectiles fired on the ground and area damage, and will occasionally summon Draven, who can deal melee damage, to help her complete the battle.
Generally, Asinia is pretty easy to defeat as long as you buy POE 2 Currency for your build’s mobility and damage to maximize its effectiveness. After completing this encounter, you’ll also need to complete Draven challenge.
Draven is located in Mausoleum, which has almost the same landscape and furnishings as Tomb of the Consort, which may be a bit confusing. In contrast, Draven will focus more on melee physical attacks, so you’re better off using some ranged characters with high elemental damage.
After you’ve successfully completed both boss encounters, you can return to the cemetery with the two keys they dropped and unlock Count’s Grave.
Entering Count’s Grave
After you unlock Count’s Grave and free Lachlann’s family, you can enter it and begin the encounter with the final boss of Mysterious Shade quest, Lachlann of Endless Lament.
In this fight, Lachlann moves very quickly and will attack you fiercely when he gets close to you. In addition, this boss will fire some explosive shells that can cause heavy damage to you. In general, you can avoid being hit by explosive shells by running or rolling.
However, since the explosive shells have the ability to track, there is a high probability that they will explode near you, which is an important time to test the attributes of your build such as energy shields and armor values. To reduce the damage they can cause to you, upgrade and enhance these defensive gear to the extreme at the checkpoints outside the arena.
In addition, Lachlann will freeze parts of the arena ground, and those areas that look a little dim will have a slowing effect on you. In general, the easiest way to win your encounter with Lachlann is to circle around the main tomb in the center and let the boss chase you instead of you hiding from it.
Complete Mysterious Shade Quest
After you successfully defeat Lachlann, pick up all POE 2 Currency and loot on the ground and return to Clearfell Encampment to talk to Una again. You have now unlocked Hooded One and completed Mysterious Shade quest.
In subsequent POE 2 explorations, you can spend some Gold by talking to Hooded One to gain the passive skill points you chose previously and use them for better new passive skills.
These are all the steps and precautions for completing Mysterious Shade quest in POE 2 Early Access. Hopefully, you can beat it in 2-3 hours with the help of this guide, provided you have a strong build. It may take 6-8 hours to complete it all while making the best build. Have fun!
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Defeat Mighty Silverfist Who Provides Weapon Set Passive Skill Points In Path Of Exile 2! - Locations & Strategy
There is a large tree of passive skills in Path of Exile 2 that you can unlock and activate, and you can rely on them to get some great benefits to the offensive and defensive capabilities of your build. But there are other ways to increase your damage capabilities, especially if you are sure to use weapons, and that is to get some extra Weapon Set Passive Skill Points for your crossbow (or stave) that you use.
These Weapon Set Passive Skill Points do not require you to spend currency to obtain them, but rather require you to defeat specific bosses, and Mighty Silverfist in Act 3 is one of them. This gray-furred gorilla may be an optional boss in the game, but the rewards he offers are so important to you that it is worth the challenge.
It is important to note that because of its powerful combat capabilities, your encounter with it can take you a whole day if you are not prepared. So easing your grind, this guide will show you the location of this powerful optional boss and the strategies you can use when fighting it.
Location
When you explore Act 3 in POE 2 Early Access, you will definitely see a Jungle Ruins map with a Temple Ruins in the center of the map. This is the location of the arena where you fight Mighty Silverfist.
Don’t rush into Temple Ruins yet. Find the nearest checkpoint nearby and interact with it. This way, if you unfortunately die in this Mighty Silverfist encounter, you will respawn at the checkpoint closest to the arena and can quickly fight again, which will save a lot of boring exploration time.
In addition, please check your health (or mana) and damage capabilities at the checkpoint to see if they are at maximum. If there is a gap, it is recommended that you buy POE 2 Currency as soon as possible to improve the various attributes and buff stats of gear.
Combat Strategy
After you have done all the preparations, you can start to challenge Mighty Silverfist. But wouldn’t you think it would be easier to fight it if you knew all the attacks it could throw at you? Here are all the moves Mighty Silverfist can use on you and how to deal with them.
Pillar Crash
Mighty Silverfist will slam down one of the arena’s pillars, dealing a wave of damage as it crashes forward. Since this move has a non-damaging pre-swing, when you see the pillar being lifted over the boss’s head, you can start preparing to roll left or right to avoid the damage.
Swing
Here, the boss will swing his pillar in an arcing motion, which is his major attack. There is really no trick to avoiding this pillar, just time it and dodge it.
But note that this swing changes depending on where you are standing, so you need to have a very high mobility build to avoid all hits. It is recommended that you invest in some POE 2 Divine Orbs in gear such as boots or Dex attributes to increase their rarity or affix stats.
Roll
Mighty Silverfist will slam forward and deal tremendous damage, which can cause you to fail the challenge. This is the most important attack to watch out for in the entire encounter, as there is no warning that it is coming.
If you are using a ranged class like Sorceress, moving away from the boss in time will give you enough time to react and deal damage; but if you are using a melee class like Warrior, make sure you have enough health and armor to withstand the attack and go around the enemy’s back to attack.
Whirlwind
In this attack, Mighty Silverfist’s pillar returns and does two sweep attacks before slamming down to deal a huge wave of damage. Fortunately, the boss beats his chest with his free hand before this attack, so you can see from this animation that these three attacks will appear later.
Overall, this battle is not very difficult, but it requires you to dodge and deal a lot of damage to Mighty Silverfist. What you can provide here is that hiding behind the boss as much as possible will make it easier to see every attack, and this is also the place where bosses are most vulnerable.
After you successfully defeat Mighty Silverfist, you will receive two additional Weapon Set Passive Skill Points, which you can place on the two skill points that are most beneficial to your weapons, so that you can better face the remaining challenges in Act 3 and the endgame.
The above is the specific method and strategy for you to find and defeat Mighty Silverfist in POE 2 Early Access. Hopefully, with the help of this guide and your multiple practice, you will be able to get this permanent reward easily and make a more powerful build. I wish you a happy game!
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Path Of Exile 2 Early Access Support Gems For Patch 0.2.0 Have Been Leaked!
We are very happy to know that Path of Exile 2 Early Access will usher in its first major content update and the new season, Dawn of the Hunt on April 4, which will add a lot of new game content.
Although Grinding Gear Games is revealing the new additions through weekly updates, it is very tormenting for players, who are always eager to learn more. The most discussed thing at the moment is the addition of new gems, because this will have a huge impact on the subsequent builds used by POE 2 players.
At this stage, GGG has only announced 5 new support gems that will appear in the update, so this guide will give you a detailed introduction to them and what new possible build ideas they can provide you, so that you can make a powerful build at the beginning of the new season.
1. Derange - Blue Gem
In the current POE 2 builds, if you use HOWA-Pillar Gemling builds stacked with Intelligence, then the addition of Derange will make your build much more powerful: first of all, it can directly assist the skills in your build that can cause damage, and they will all gain an energy shield, whose cost is the same as your Intelligence value.
On top of that, your supported skills will deal 8% more non-ailment damage for every 100 Intelligence you have, which will result in a very strong increase in the survivability and offensive capabilities of your entire build.
By the way, the less popular Mind Over Matter Monk build may also benefit from this support gem, as it is also an Intelligence-focused build, but the specific synergy may not be apparent until after April 4th patch is released.
2. Commiserate - Green Gem
Compared to Derange, Commiserate may be used by a wider audience because it can be used as long as you are damaged by an elemental Ailment (except Freeze) during combat, and the strength of your Ailment when you cast it on the enemy will be increased by 30%.
For example, if you are facing an enemy that can cause Fire Ailment, then after you are hit by its attack skill, the damage skills of the same element you release will be 30% stronger, and even directly cause the enemy to Ignite. If you are hit by a bleeding Ailment from the enemy, the bleeding damage skills in your build will also be strengthened by 30%!
At the same time, these Ailments will disappear when you cast a skill supported by Commiserate. This means that you can continuously refresh this effect by standing on burning ground or in a range that can cause bleeding.
But it is worth noting that the elemental resistances in your build also need to be strengthened accordingly, so you should buy POE 2 Currency to strengthen all elemental resistances after equipping this support gem.
3. Volcanic Eruption - Red Gem
From the description that Volcanic Eruption only supports melee skill gems, it is very obvious that this gem will be more suitable for Warrior builds. It is triggering method is also very similar to Warrior game style - it can be triggered by melee attacks on those enemies that have been ignited, and three Molten Projectiles are released in the affected area.
However, in fact, Warrior builds are not favored by many people in POE 2 Early Access. However, some players who like powerful strike builds can also look forward to whether the specific effectiveness of Warrior builds will be more cost-effective after the release of patch 0.2.0 and this buff.
4. Embitter - Red Gem
Although Commiserate does not support skills that can cause Freeze damage, the developers will not forget any game style, so Embitter appears, which can convert all the additional damage gains of the supported skills into Freeze damage gains. The additional damage gains here include additional damage sources, such as Elemental Damage affixes possessed by gear, and Damage affixes carried in attributes.
In fact, from a personal point of view, the ability of this support gem may make the build focused on Freeze damage lose its characteristics in POE 2, which is harmful to the development of the diversity of the build, so the specific effectiveness may be adjusted before the official release of POE 2 Patch 0.2.0.
Also Read: Lost Towers Sparked A Lot Of Controversy - Is Path Of Exile 2 0.2.0 Update Necessary?
5. Concoct - Red Gem
In the endgame of POE 2, it is very easy to get an Ultimate Life Flask with 100+ charges. If you place Concoct in it, you will increase the bleeding by 2% for every 20% Life Flask charges consumed, which greatly increases the chance of triggering bleeding.
Although there is no meta-build focused on bleeding damage in the game at this stage, with the new Gladiator class that will be provided to players in Patch 0.2.0, this support gem based on bleeding effectiveness may have more use.
The above are the 5 support gems confirmed to be added in the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 released on April 4 and their specific effectiveness. We are very much looking forward to Grinding Gear Games adding more build options in the subsequent game process to increase the playability of players. I wish you a happy game!
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Which Options Should You Choose For Grenade Mercenary Endgame Build In Path Of Exile 2?
Your experience in this extremely challenging game officially begins when you complete all the main campaigns of Path of Exile 2 and enter the endgame stage. In this extremely difficult endgame, the build you use must also be nearly perfect, such as having fast map clearing capabilities or super combat capabilities.
Among the many excellent POE 2 endgame builds, Grenade Mercenary has become a choice for many players with its unique play style and unstoppable capabilities. But it is worth considering that entering the endgame means that there are more build options to choose from, so who is the best Grenade Mercenary endgame build?
In order to save you time and energy in trying various build options, this guide will introduce you to the current options that can make Grenade Mercenary endgame build play its best effect, including skills and gear. Without further ado, let’s start our exploration!
Skill Gems
When you enter the endgame with Grenade Mercenary build, you are no longer just considering your damage output, but also your defense, because as you go deeper into Atlas map, the enemies you face will become stronger and stronger. So you need to start looking for skill gems that allow you to rotate between controlling and weakening enemies.
In view of this, you can use Explosive Grenade and Explosive Shot as your main means of damage output, and then use Flash Grenade as a tool to reduce the threat of group enemies to you periodically. With the help of these three skill gems, you can effectively fight most enemies, except for those bosses with anti-stun abilities.
But here I need to remind you that although you are likely to be flashed by the large area of light generated by Flash Grenade, it is very suitable for you to use when you are forced into the corner of the arena, because you don’t have to have a high degree of accuracy to detonate the grenade on the ground, which is very friendly to some players with lower operation skills.
Additionally, you can rely on Gas Grenade and Oil Grenade to slow and poison enemies, just ignite them with your Explosive Shot. On top of that, these two grenades that deal area damage will also make enemies more vulnerable to fire damage or reduce their fire resistance after you choose the right support gems for them.
Coupled with the fact that Explosive Grenade can deal a lot of fire damage to them, this rotation combination can help you defeat most of the enemies you encounter during exploration. And in some trials or challenges with Rituals mechanics, you can try to distract the enemy with Ripwire Ballista.
Although Glacial Bolt is not a required skill gem in this build, if you put Fortress and Glacier in its support gem slot, it will give you more room for damage output in the arena because it will gather all enemies together.
Passive Skills
In the vast POE 2 passive skill tree, the best choices for Grenade Mercenary endgame build should be those passive skills that have strong buffs to your area of effect and skill damage. Here are Notable Nodes that are worth your attention and what they do.
- Devastation: Increases area damage and area of effect size by 15%.
- Overwhelm: Your attack speed is reduced by 5%, but your stun buildup is increased by 20% and your damage from two-handed weapons (includes crossbows) is increased by 40%.
- Cluster Bombs: Grenades take 50% longer to explode, but all grenade skills fire another round.
- Authority: Increases area of effect size by 20% and cooldown recovery by 10%.
- Crushing Judgment: Armor Break duration and area damage are increased by 25%.
- Smoke Inhalation: All damage penetrates 15% of enemy fire resistance and all damaging conditions last 15% longer.
- Repeating Explosives: Increases the chance of a grenade exploding twice by 15%.
In addition to the above options, there are several Notable nodes that are also worth your attention, such as the group of Evasion and Armor nodes located at the bottom of the entire passive skill tree and to the left of Crossbow and Grenade constellation.
But if you have trouble exploring the maps unlocked by higher-tier Waystones, you can try increasing the elemental resistance in your build and respeccing those more defensive passive skills.
Best Gear Modifiers
There isn’t a specific piece of gear to recommend for Grenade Mercenary endgame build, but there are a few modifiers you should be aware of. But there is one weapon that will be key to the entire build - Bombard Crossbow, which always adds an extra projectile to your grenade attacks.
And when you have Cluster Bombs passive skill activated, each of your grenade skills can fire at least three grenades, which means your area damage and single target damage will be tripled!
Given the power of this weapon, my advice is to buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade Bombard Crossbow to a weapon with Magic or Rare attributes once you get it, so that your physical and elemental damage will be greatly increased.
Once your Bombard Crossbow has very high physical and elemental damage modifiers, you can use two Artificer’s Orbs to create two rune slots on the gear and add two Iron Runes to them, which will increase your physical damage by 40%, and this is additive with the modifiers on the weapon itself.
It is also worth mentioning that you should try to farm belts that can provide you with additional amulet slots so that you can take less damage from fights that can cause you status damage, to enhance your endgame survivability directly.
These are some of the skills and gear options you can use for Grenade Mercenary endgame build in POE 2. With POE 2 Patch 0.2.0 will be released on April 4th, Mercenary will have a new Ascendancy Class, so this kind of ranged enemy health depletion build may set off a wave. Hopefully, you can make such a powerful build that can easily explore the endgame as soon as possible with the help of this guide. Have fun!
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How About The Two New Unique Items In Path Of Exile 2 Patch 0.2.0? - Prism Guardian & The Deepest Tower
Hello, Exiles, the biggest update since Early Access release of Path of Exile 2 is coming! Recently, GGG released a trailer for this patch 0.2.0, revealing some of the main contents of this update, including new seasons, Ascendancy classes, endgame balance overhaul, etc., but here, let’s focus on the two new unique items introduced in this patch.
It is well known that the current unique items in POE 2 are not good enough, or to put it bluntly, most of them are not worth the player’s investment currency. This is not only because most of them are mediocre in the early campaign, but more importantly, they will soon be surpassed by some medium-rare equipment, which means that all the efforts you put into this equipment may become a waste.
Therefore, players are eager to hope that the new unique items brought by this patch 0.2.0 will have a different effect and can remain powerful until the endgame. Without further ado, let’s take a look!
Prism Guardian
First up, we have Prism Guardian, a unique shield returning from POE 1, and as such, it unfortunately continues the trend of unique items having very low base defense values, minimal armor and energy shield counts, and no life scaling either.
However, its unique modifiers will make up for Prism Guardian’s shortcomings and provide a nice bit of flexibility, which could be useful for gear or support gem requirements. Additionally, it also provides a minimum of 18% bonus to all elemental resistances, and it’s worth mentioning that this modifier can even roll to 20% or more if you’re willing to invest more. But if you’re currently strapped for funds, you can also buy POE 2 Currency to fully utilize this mod, which is definitely not a poor investment.
The most important modifier here, though, is that you can add one to your maximum Spirit for every 50 maximum life. As such, this item will provide a way to scale your Spirit, allowing you to retain more Spirit to maintain powerful persistent buffs or more minions by expanding your maximum life at all times. This is a very powerful tool, and it’s just right for balanced defense.
The interesting thing about this modifier is that we currently don’t know how GGG plans to address life in the upcoming patch, whether they will improve life scaling to compete with energy shield, or whether they will keep it as is and nerf energy shield remains to be seen. But at 3,000 max life, this shield will provide 60 max Spirit, which is enough to reserve one or two low-cost persistent buffs or enable some extra minions.
Interestingly, however, we already have a way to scale Spirit from max life in Path of Exile 2, and that’s a skill node for Infernalist, Beidat’s Will, which only reserves 25% of your max life, but in exchange increases your max spirit by 1 for every 25 max life.
Combine this node with Prism Guardian, and you can greatly expand your total Spirit purely through life scaling, which is going to be very powerful. Keep in mind that there may also be some new abilities in 0.2.0, so there may also be new Spirit reservations to use.
An important thing to note about Prism Guardian is that Spirit gained from life only counts towards your total maximum life, it does not include any excess life you have.
The Deepest Tower
Next up, we have a crazy new unique helmet, The Deepest Tower. Unlike the Prism Guardian and a bunch of other POE 2 unique items, this one actually has a decent life modifier, breaking the unspoken rule of GGG that good unique items have no life modifiers. On top of that, it also has a decent amount of armor and energy shield and very good chaos resistance.
Then it has a special modifier where enemies in front of you count as low life. Now it’s important to mention that low life in Path of Exile 2 is 35% of max life, not 50% like in POE 1. So it takes longer to get a monster to low life, which in turn makes this modifier very powerful when combined with some of the other mechanics.
First up, Witchhunter Ascendancy adds 35% more damage to hits against low life enemies on the small connected nodes on the skill tree, these damage increases will always be active because any monster in front of you counts as low life. More importantly, because any class or Ascendancy can use them, these skill nodes together with The Deepest Tower provide an insane damage increase, with each small node adding 30% more damage to hits against low life enemies.
To put these nodes in perspective, a 30% increase in damage is about 2.5 times more than a normal small damage node. For example, 12% more damage when you’re swinging, or 12% more damage when you’re using a two-handed weapon.
So, just the small nodes themselves are pretty good, but there are two Notable Passives worth looking at as well.
First up, Finishing Blows adds 60% more damage to hits against low life enemies, which makes your damage rolls against low life enemies lucky, meaning you’ll always have lucky damage hits that can give you about 20% more damage. For example, this could be stronger for damage properties that have a much wider rolling range like flat lightning damage.
Then here’s another node, Finality Passive, that gives you even more bonuses against low-level enemies. It significantly increases the damage of hits against low-level enemies by 120%, which is crazy.
But the downside is that when your life is low, you take 5% more damage, which can be bad. But remember, in POE 2, low life is 35% of max life, so it's recommended that you get your life down to that low before you really start taking increased damage.
At this point, these nodes in the tree are well worth going with this helmet, even though some builds can’t even get to that point in the tree, but The Deepest Tower will still be useful even without these nodes. Because there is an Execute Gem here that provides 40% more damage on hits against low-life enemies, which is crazy.
Overall, both of these unique items have their own overwhelming advantages, and their appearance is bound to bring a new build gameplay change! Let’s wait and see!
