The Best Builds For Starting This League In Path Of Exile 2

Lightning Arrow and Lightning Rod can provide a ton of damage, particularly when combined with Herald of Thunder. This is going to create a shock explosion when you kill enemies with shock damage, ideally creating a wave of damage that ripples through a group.

Single-target fights will require a different approach, but Voltaic Mark can ensure that you can still make use of shock effects on more powerful individual enemies.

Wind Dancerand Ghost Dance combine to both give you a big evasion bonus, and to make use of that evasion to help with survivability.

You can use Permafrost Bolts for the lifespan of this build, right from the start and all the way to the end. Combined with Fragmentation Rounds, you’ll be able to deal quite a bit of close-range area-of-effect (AoE) damage.

The combination of Judge, Jury, and Executioner and Pitiless Killer provides a lot of free damage at the front-end and back-end of an enemy’s health bar, essentially erasing the beginning and middle of their health bars at the beginning and end of a fight.

Sorcery Ward is capable of providing a ton of defensive help, especially if you include Ceremonial Ablution, which enables it to protect against chaos damage and physical damage, as well. Without this, the close-range nature of this build can get you into trouble.

This build can focus heavily on the bleed effect, combined with a big focus on mobility with skills like Rake, Disengage, and Thunderous Leap. Rake in particular uses both mobility and bleeding. However, Rake will not be available in the very beginning, and instead you’ll need to make do with abilities like Explosive Spear and Whirling Slash.

Combined with your ability to move quickly, this build can maim enemies in multiple different ways, including with Spearfield. This makes enemies move slower, further emphasizing the speed gap between you and them.

Bloodhound’s Mark causes a heavy stun when an enemy has suffered from enough blood loss, which perfectly combines with abilities that cause bleed.

This build basically creates an impossible bullet-hell game for your enemies to deal with, sending damage flying across the screen. Exploding Frost Wall with Fireball is one method of doing this, sending both ice and fire in multiple directions near the explosion.

In the early going, you’ll be sending a steady diet of Essence Drain at enemies, creating a damage-over-time (DoT) effect that can be spread by Contagion.

Later on, you’ll be able to make heavy use of Fireball and Living Bomb. The combination of these abilities is going to send damage in every direction, alongside the potential of adding Frost Wall into the mix in single-target situations.

While the above build might not have as big of a focus on the Essence Drain ability, this one is going to center around it. Just like before, combine it with Contagion to spread the DoT effect through groups of enemies.

Before you have access to Essence Drain, you’ll need to make do with Chaos Bolt and Unearth. Chaos Bolt is a fairly straightforward damaging ability (with an extra use that we’ll get into below), while Unearth is going to create temporary minions out of the corpses of enemies.

Chaos Bolt and Despair are going to combine to essentially debuff enemies to chaos damage, which is the damage that Essence Drain deals. If you’re going this route, combining Chaos Bolt > Despair > Essence Drain > Contagion is going to be bread-and-butter for you.