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How To Choose The Best Class For Yourself In POE 3.21? - Beginner's Guide

Apr 18, 2023

What do you need to know if you are choosing a character class?

First off, Path of Exile is not like most other RPGs where the character determines your skills or what weapons you get to use. Many people may tell you that any class can do anything in the game and while it’s technically true, it’s also not right.

Doing everything means doing it well and your Witch using Ground Slam will never be as good as Marauder’s Ground Slamming. She just doesn’t have the strength available to her. That is why a basic understanding of the makeup of the skill tree is required to understand the best classes to use, which leads me nicely onto attributes. After choosing your best class, you can use POE Currency to improve it and further make powerful builds to help you run game content quickly and easily.

POE Choose the Best Class for you

Three Attributes - Strength & Dexterity & Intelligence

There are three different attributes in the game, and these will determine the weapons and skill gems you can use.

*Strength can be found in the highest concentrations on the bottom left of the tree. As you move away, the amount of strength nodes gets more scarce.

That’s also true for life and melee damage nodes. Every two points of strength grants one maximum life and every five points of Strength grants 1% increased melee damage. This means that the character closer to the bottom left of the tree will be better at melee skills and will have more life. They will also have more heavy two-handed weapon nodes, like swords and shields, and will favor armor. The Marauder is located here and you will not find a better life based tank in the game.

*The bottom right is the tree is the Dexterity area and this grants two accuracy per two and 1% increased Evasion per five. You’re also going to find a lot of bow projectile and poison nodes. This is the home of the Ranger and she’s great with bows.

Between these two is the Duelist to hybrid between strength and dexterity. This will be better at tanking than the Ranger but also more evasive than the Marauder. They also start with a good mix of strength and dexterity, meaning they are more suited for red or green skills in the early game.

POE attributions

*The top of the tree is the realm of Intelligence and the home of the Witch. Every two intelligence grants one mana and every five intelligence will get you 1% increased energy shield, which is a protective layer to help those with small life pools stay alive.

The Witch needs this more than most because the scarcity of the life nodes in the top middle of the tree. To the left of the Witch, you’ll find the Templar, a character suited for both spell casting, and Melee is a combination of two in some cases.

To the right of the Witch, we have the Shadow, a hybrid magic and agility character, specializing in claws, daggers or even traps and mines.

In the middle of the tree, you’ll find the Scion starting area, but we’re not going to talk about her in this article because she’s more challenging to deal with and you also don’t get access to her until you get to the end of Act 3.

All Classes And Their Ascendancies

Now, if the article ended here, your choices will be a lot more clear, but it doesn’t. Each of the classes has three unique ascendancies and these grant powerful passive skills that you can pick up periodically as you level and they really can change what your character can do and how it plays.

Marauder

First, let’s talk about the Marauder and its first ascendancy is the Juggernaut offering possibly the best tank in the whole game and with the right skills and a ton of damage.

Second up, the Chieftain, a master of fire or totems or even fire terms and lastly the Berserker, a powerful ascendancy that specializes in Rage for faster and more damaging attacks, also higher movement speed. He also has the option to take 10% increased damage to gain a whopping 40% more damage. This can lead to a maniac ax wielding glass cannon if built wrong.

Templar

The Templar can ascend into the Hierophant, specializing in totems or brands with some interesting Mana tanking and some always undefensive and offensive charges.

Next up, the Inquisitor. This is a good all-rounder with good elemental offenses and defenses. As well, it’s the only ascendancy in their game to get 30 more percent attack damage if you use a mixture of spells and attacks. Although, this can be really finicky to pull off.

Next up, the Guardian who is decent with minions and has good defenses, including against curses.

Related: Players Master The Complex Wintertide Brand

Witch

Onto the Witch now, the first ascendancy is the Cultist. This has cold and chaos damage buffs and an extra curse to boot.

She also has some great buffs to energy shield recharge. If this doesn’t float your boat, then you can go with Elementalist for gun and base builds or all-out elemental destruction.

On top of this, she can select a powerful defensive shield against elemental damage. It also prevents monsters reflecting elemental damage onto her.

Last but not least, the Necromancer. This is great for powerful minion builds or anything that deals damage with corpses. That’s a thing.

Shadow

Onto the Shadow and we have the Assassin and Expert dealing with critical strikes and applying poison.

Next up, the Trickster. This offers some amazing defenses built around the energy shield and was my favorite ascendancy from last league.

The next one is a wonderful ascendancy built around traps and mines, which is called the Saboteur, a master of damage with both traps and mines but also some amazing shockingly night immunity along with some great quality of life.

Ranger

Down to the tree now to the Ranger and the first ascendancy is Deadeye with powerful movement speed buffs and some nice modifiers to project our skills.

Next is the Pathfinder. She is a master of poisons and gets amazing buffs for using flasks and then, the Raider, who can get strong movement as attack speed buffs as well as the ability to run through enemies whilst doing so making the weak to Elemental Damage while trying to avoid incoming Elemental Ailments.

Duelist

We now have my favorite character class of all, the Duelist.

First up, the Gladiator with amazing buffs to bleed, including making your enemies explode and also some strong block buffs.

The Champion is a really defensive option, and he’s also a master of impale and then there is one, the Slayer. This one is a master of leech, able to gain a huge amount of fences by dealing damage to his enemies.

So, which one should you go with? I think the Witch is probably going to be the best for complete beginners. Or, you can follow someone’s build guide. This has the bonus of telling you exactly which class to go and which ascendancy points to pick first.

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