If you’re diving into Path of Exile 2 for the first time and have your sights set on the Witch class, you likely find the concept of commanding your own minion army appealing. You’re not alone—many players feel the same excitement! This article serves as a comprehensive Path of Exile 2 Witch build guide to help you navigate the early stages of your journey.
Throughout this guide, we will explore the fundamental aspects of this particular build, including optimal skills, ideal support gems, and essential passive abilities. Additionally, we’ll give you insights on the most suitable weapons and armor for your witch.
Starting Your Path of Exile 2 Witch Build
A “Witch minion build”offers a surprising range of possibilities! The type of minion master you want to be can greatly influence your choices. Are your minions a resource to be used up for buffs, or do you prefer them to remain persistent? Perhaps you’re inclined toward a more transient approach, where minions rise from fallen foes. The flexibility in Path of Exile empowers players to create unique builds, and the Witch serves as an excellent example of this creative freedom.
In this guide, we’ll focus on constructing a build centered around Skeleton Archers, which you can summon right from Act 1. By focusing on enhancing these minions, you’ll see tangible improvements in their performance as you gain passives, support gems, and new skills. This build provides a solid foundation, allowing you to either invest further in your archers or pivot to different types of skeletons by Act 3, depending on your playstyle and discoveries.
Optimal Skills for the Witch in Path of Exile 2
In this build, we prioritize certain skills that complement our skeleton summons and bolster your survivability along with your minions’ damage output. It’s important to manage your Spirit wisely; allocating it effectively can significantly increase the impact of your minions.
Here’s a breakdown of the key skills and their roles:
- Skeleton Warrior: A formidable frontline tank that also serves to support your minions.
- Skeleton Archer: Your primary damage dealer that inflicts poison damage on enemies.
- Essence Drain: A single-target chaos spell that allows you to contribute while your archers do the heavy lifting.
- Pain Offering: Sacrifice a skeleton to enhance others with increased damage and skill speed.
- Vulnerability: Curse enemies to weaken their defenses, enabling more effective attacks.
- Skeletal Cleric: A supportive skeleton that heals and revives your other minions.
Key Support Gems for the Witch Build
Support gems play a critical role in enhancing your skills. While we recommend specific support gems, feel free to experiment with other options available in Acts 1 and 2 to see what fits your playstyle best.
- Skeleton Warrior:
- Meat Shield: Increases tankiness at the cost of damage.
- Maim: Slows enemies, increasing your minions’ effectiveness by making foes easier to hit.
- Skeleton Archer:
- Comorbidity: Inflicts additional poison but has a shorter duration.
- Feeding Frenzy: Enhances damage dealt and received by your minions.
- Essence Drain:
- Chain: Allows the spell to bounce between multiple enemies for area-of-effect damage.
- Chaos Infusion: Boosts chaos damage at a cost to other damage types.
- Pain Offering:
- Magnified Effect: Extends the range of its aura.
- Font of Rage: Generates rage for you and your minions based on proximity.
- Vulnerability:
- Heightened Curse: Increases curse potency.
- Hex Bloom: Spreads the curse when a cursed enemy perishes.
- Skeletal Cleric:
- Clarity: Grants enhanced mana regeneration when the cleric is active.
- Vitality: Boosts life regeneration, providing additional sustainability.
Essential Passive Skills for Your Witch
Your primary focus for this build will be on passives that fortify your Skeleton Archers. Expect to find passives improving minion damage and survivability, while you also pick up general-purpose passives that enhance your own durability as the Witch. As this build emphasizes Dexterity more than typical Witch builds, we’ll aim to include passive skills that benefit from this attribute investment.
A strategy to consider is to prioritize Dexterity and Intellect passives as needed, gradually building toward the significant Dead Can Dance passive, which rewards your Dexterity investment. Initially, focus on Intellect for mana until you’re ready to pivot into Dexterity as you complete the build.
Key passives to work towards include:
- Raw Destruction
- Open Mind
- Power of the Dead
- Pure Energy
- Living Death
- Relentless Fallen
- Fear of Death
- Necrotised Flesh
- Entropic Incarnation
- Grip of Evil
- Dead Can Dance
- Right Hand of Darkness
- Essence Infusion
- Restless Dead
- Growing Swarm
- Crystalline Flesh
By strategically acquiring these passives, you can significantly bolster your Skeleton Archers while enhancing your own resilience and power.
Choosing the Right Weapons and Armor
When it comes to equipping your Witch, your choices will influence your survivability and damage output significantly. Given the focus on Dexterity through the Dead Can Dance talent, you’ll find your evasion rating will increase, making it critical to find gear that offers both evasion and energy shield bonuses.
Early on, prioritize energy shields as this build favors Intellect. Once you obtain the Dead Can Dance passive, aim for a balanced mix of evasion and energy shield gear.
When assessing gear, look out for sub-stats that enhance Intellect, elemental resistances, mana, and mana regeneration. Since Dexterity becomes crucial after acquiring Dead Can Dance, seek items that boost this attribute in gear. Lastly, do not overlook movement speed—navigating swiftly can keep you out of danger while you rain down chaos from afar.
Remember, don’t hesitate to upgrade gear as you find it. Even seemingly common items could yield high-value upgrades that significantly bolster your character’s power. Hoarding materials won’t aid your character’s strength, so keep iterating on your gear!
With this guide, you’ve set a strong foundation for your Path of Exile 2 Witch build. From here, you can venture into more advanced builds or even switch it up as you grow comfortable with your character. The beauty of Path of Exile lies in experimenting with various builds—so embrace the journey!
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