What Are The 3 Best Melee Builds In POE 3.23 Affliction League?

With the introduction of Temple of Atziri mechanism in Fate of the Vaal league, in addition to more reward sources, it also means you will once again face the infamous boss Atziri in Path of Exile 2, who was so feared in the first game.

In Path of Exile 1, Atziri had two different difficulty versions, accessible and challengeable through the corresponding map device. Now, in POE 2 Patch 0.4.0, this boss is the core of the entire league mechanism.

Below, we will introduce how to find and defeat this boss in the current Path of Exile 2 league, and the rewards you can obtain for killing her.

How To Unlock Atziri Boss Fight?

Temple of Atziri, as a league mechanism, is accessible to all players. The temple provides four types of rooms, which combine to form an unlockable room path for you to challenge.

After determining the route, you need to complete the tasks in these rooms one by one, in order of increasing difficulty. The boss room is particularly dangerous, where you may encounter one of the Temple of Atziri bosses, Architects.

After defeating Architects to complete the current room, you can unlock Royal Access Chamber and place it within your room path, then connect it to your starting position using room cards and path cards.

Afterward, you can build a new room unlock path between these two points, and after completing the preceding rooms, you can start Atziri boss fight.

It's important to note that this boss fight has no resurrection mechanism, and if you fail, the entire path and unlocked rooms will be reset, and you must start all over again.

What Preparations Should You Make?

While you can minimize the difficulty of the preceding rooms, Atziri herself is very dangerous. To avoid wasting challenge opportunities, you should first maximize your character level, gear strength, and Ascendancy points.

Based on this, considering Atziri's damage types, you should also carry supplies that can resist lightning and fire damage, or buy PoE 2 currency and then re-roll affixes on your existing gear to include these resistances.

If you don't have enough currency but are eager to fight Atziri, now is the best time to replenish your currency reserves! Because until December 31st, you can enjoy a 10% discount with XMAS code at POECurrency!

Based on this, you can also consume more currency to upgrade your boots for increased movement speed and your armor for improved defense, ensuring you can survive until the end of the battle.

Atziri Boss Fight Mechanics

This boss has two forms, the second form being more dangerous as the boss's skills and attack patterns are more varied and chaotic. Therefore, it's best to remember the effects and countermeasures for all major skills.

Phase 1: Atziri, The Red Queen

The boss uses many skills in this phase. Your job is to constantly observe her movements to determine her skills, then dodge or counterattack accordingly.

Basic Melee Attacks

Atziri will attack you with her spear weapon using stabbing and wide-area sweeping attacks. The only way to dodge is to keep as much distance as possible from her and move along the edge of the arena.

Flame Ring

The boss will swing her staff, igniting a large circle of fire around her. Touching the fire will inflict fire damage. You can stay inside or outside the circle, but be careful not to touch the fire.

Fire Blast

The boss will create a large circle of fire on the ground by gripping her staff tightly. All the flames will then quickly rush towards the center and explode. To avoid taking critical damage, you need to immediately dodge away as soon as the fire circle appears.

Fire Rune

This skill involves the boss throwing a fireball at the ground, which generates a rune that then explodes in flames. However, this skill has a very small area of effect, so it's usually not a major concern.

Lightning Rune

This works the same way as the previous skill, except the damage type is lightning.

Thunder Sweep

The boss will step forward while swinging her spear, throwing an arc of lightning runes at you. These runes will explode immediately upon landing. You can dodge by rolling backward or towards the boss.

Bolt Storm

Atziri will summon lightning bolts that fall from the sky, striking the surrounding ground randomly. Each lightning bolt has a corresponding blue indicator to show its landing point, which you can observe to dodge.

Blood Orb

The boss will throw blood orbs at you, which explode upon landing, dealing physical damage. The only way to deal with this is to dodge and stay away from them.

Circle Of Blood

The boss will throw a blood-soaked spear onto the ground, simultaneously launching many dense orbs of light that will deal damage to you. You can choose to stay away from these orbs, or time your dodges to roll under them.

When you dodge the boss's skills and deal damage in the first phase until the boss's health is reduced to 10%, Atziri will enter Phase 2.

Phase 2: Atziri, The Fell Serpent

In this phase, the boss's appearance will also change, reflecting her corrupted actions in pursuit of immortality in the backstory. As for the attack methods, most skills are upgraded versions of the skills in Phase 1, including:

• Circle of Blood II: More blood orbs will appear, and they will overlap.
• Bolt Storm II: The bolts of lightning will turn red.
• Flame Ring II: All areas outside the ring are now covered in flames, forcing you to get closer to the boss.
• Fire Blast II: Two additional overlapping blasts imbued with Vaal Energy will appear.

There are three new skills that require your extra attention:

Leap Slam

The boss will suddenly disappear into the air, then slam down to the ground. You can determine Atziri's reappearance location by the red circular indicator on the ground.

Crimson Valley

The boss will release red lightning that fills the entire arena, leaving only a small area in the center. You must ensure you are within this area.

It's worth noting that this area is very narrow, so if you are in animal form due to using skills, it's best to transform back into human form in time.

Spreading Corruption

The boss will curl into a writhing ball, simultaneously forming a huge red circle of corruption around her that continuously spreads to the edges of the arena. You need to deal as much damage as possible from a distance to stop this attack.

What Are The Boss Fight Rewards?

After defeating the boss in all phases, she will drop a Medallion, which is the key to opening the large chest that appears in the center of the arena. This chest will randomly give you one of the following five unique items:

• Atziri's Splendour
• Atziri's Rule Staff
• Atziri's Contempt Spear
• Drillneck Quiver
• Flesh Crucible Diamond

The rewards in other smaller chests mainly consist of various types of currency. You can keep the useful ones for gear crafting and sell the less rare ones.

That's all the information about Atziri boss fight. If you haven't finished this battle yet, our guide can definitely increase your chances of winning!

As Fate of the Vaal league progresses into its mid-game, if you've invested enough time, you should have reached the endgame and started clearing higher-level maps.

Therefore, to improve your mapping efficiency at this stage, you need to switch to new, more powerful builds, especially if your leveling build isn't strong enough.

Based on this, we will introduce crafting tips for Cold Bow Amazon Build, allowing you to increase your damage and instantly kill high-level bosses in maps!

Cold Bow Amazon Build Overview

Although Amazon and its base class, Huntress, are no longer the absolutely dominant options in Patch 0.4.0, they still have their merits in a more balanced environment.

At least for Cold Bow Amazon Build, based on the enhancements to cold builds in the new patch, this build can deal over 2 million damage with skills primarily using Snipe and Ice Shot, significantly increasing the speed of mapping and boss killing.

How To Choose Gear?

Undoubtedly, the core gear type for this build is the bow. As for the specific type, we recommend choosing Obliterator Bow, as it currently has the highest base physical damage among PoE 2 bows.

Previously, bows that could shoot extra arrows, such as Gemini Bow, would have been a better choice, but this mechanism is now random, so choosing the bow with the highest damage is wiser.

After choosing a bow, you need to craft it to make it more powerful. The best way to achieve this is to increase the bow's rarity or enhance the effects of its various affixes, and to do this, you must consume the corresponding type of PoE 2 currency.

It's generally recommended to prioritize maximizing accuracy as much as possible, as Amazon's ascendancy talents can fully utilize this. Generally, socketing a Vision rune can also achieve this, and it converts 25% of weapon accuracy into physical damage.

In addition, you need to increase critical strike chance to gain significant DPS. If you feel it's still not enough, then affixes that increase high percentage physical damage, fixed physical damage, or fixed cold damage are all viable options.

Since you're using a bow, you should also add a quiver. Visceral Quiver, which provides critical strike chance as an inherent attribute, is a good choice. On top of that, you need to roll affixes that increase critical strike chance and critical strike damage.

Regarding gloves, any gloves with a high evasion rating or those with evasion energy shields are suitable. We recommend stacking resistances on your gloves, as well as affixes that provide frost damage or fixed lightning damage to further increase DPS.

For boots, they should also have a high evasion rating, as well as movement speed and resistance-enhancing attributes or affixes, which will effectively improve your survivability.

The base type of the belt is not important; you can use any you like, but try to choose a belt that increases resistances. As for the helmet, you need to ensure it provides energy shields; the higher the energy shield, the higher the evasion rating you will gain.

For the amulet, you only need to ensure it has decent intelligence and projectile levels, as this can also improve the overall DPS of the build. If your budget is limited, Azure Amulet is a reliable option.

However, if you can farm a better amulet, it's best to ensure it has sufficient chaos resistance and upgrade it to a decent level to improve your overall survivability.

When choosing rings, we recommend equipping a Sapphire Ring first to increase frost resistance. As for other attributes, high frost damage, lightning damage, or physical damage are all very good, and you can switch between them as needed.

How To Choose Gems?

In Path of Exile 2, gems are mainly divided into two types: skill gems and support gems. The former is the source of skills, while the latter can make existing skills more powerful.

For Cold Bow Amazon Build, use the highest level cold gems possible and combine them with elemental weapons to gain a 25% increase in elemental attack damage.

For example, Cold Penetration increases cold resistance by 30% and strengthens any skills that attack enemies, allowing these attacks to penetrate the enemy's cold resistance.

Frost Nexus creates frozen ground when freezing enemies, and this ground feeds back into a pulse ring, shattering enemies when they are on the frozen ground created by Frost Nexus, resulting in extremely high clear speed.

As for Fork, it provides additional AoE cold damage, Snipe is the main skill for dealing with bosses, and Window of Opportunity provides 35% extra damage at the perfect moment, while also shortening the perfect timing window.

So if you're having trouble with accuracy, you can try using the moving Window of Opportunity. If you can still hit targets within the shortened timing window, it can improve your overall sniping DPS.

Combining the above gems, you will gain 30% extra area damage and 10% critical strike chance per second (up to 100%). Adding Close Combat II will also grant 30% extra attack damage to enemies within 1 meter.

In short, once you freeze enemies, immediately get close to them, enter their hit box, and unleash your skills to gain all the extra attack damage from melee attacks. Then you can use Barrage to attack twice for even more DPS.

Afterward, you can use Cooldown Recovery II for a 25% cooldown recovery speed increase. The main skills for freezing enemies include Ice Bite II and Freezing Salvo.

Passive Tree

Based on having already selected Amazon as your Ascendency class, you need to further unlock more passive nodes to improve the overall damage and survivability of the build, specifically including the following:

Predatory Instinct: Deals 50% extra damage to enemies with open weaknesses and rare and unique enemies.

• Critical Strike: Converts 25% of extra hit chance into base critical strike chance.
• Penetrate: 25% of weapon accuracy will be converted into physical damage.
• Eagle Eye: Increases accuracy.
• Precision Salvo: Increases attack speed and overall accuracy.
• Master Fletcher: Significantly increases the bonuses gained from the quiver.
• Cooked: Provides a large amount of critical damage and critical strike chance.
• Stand and Deliver: When enemies are frozen by Snipe, gain a damage bonus within 2 meters.

These are the basic information you need to master for Cold Bow Amazon Build. If your character's strength allows you to unlock most of the gear and gems we mentioned, then give it a try in the game!

The most disappointing part of PoE 2 Patch 0.4.0 was Vaal Temple. Its mechanics were complex, and the rewards were meager, making it incomparable to Abyss mechanics of Patch 0.3.0. However, the developers did make an emergency buff, making it slightly more rewarding.

Now, when you encounter Temple of Atziri, there's no need to avoid it. Below are two Vaal Temple farming strategies that might help you make the most of this league.

Temple Of Atziri Mechanics

Temple of Atziri is a league mechanic that allows you to customize your map. Upon entering, you'll see a large blank chessboard, and the system will give you a fixed number of room cards and path cards. Each room is connected by paths, and you need to plan ahead to decide the order in which you clear the rooms.

Temple of Atziri mainly has 4 types of rooms:

• Normal Rooms: Ordinary monsters and rewards, usually just passageways to other rooms.
• Enhanced Rooms: After completing a room, you can enhance the effects of adjacent rooms, increasing their rewards.
• Bonus Rooms: Rooms containing PoE 2 currency, equipment, corruption opportunities, and other rewards.
• Boss Rooms: Rooms containing bosses and Architects. Completing these unlocks Royal Access Chamber and grants excellent rewards.

If you build an extremely long chain of rooms, you need to destroy the earlier rooms in sequence to reach the later ones. The later rooms offer better rewards but are also more difficult.

Closing Temple of Atziri system prevents you from using the same strongest room chain indefinitely. It randomly destroys some rooms and layouts and randomly assigns you rooms and road cards in the next run.

Additionally, if the middle of the room chain contains an Architect's Reward Room and you complete it, it may cause a connection break, disconnecting the later rooms from the starting point until you reconnect them.

Main Farming Strategies

Speeding Through Architect

Since defeating Architect grants substantial rewards, you can build a direct path to Architect and place rooms on either side of that path. You only need to follow the path directly to Architect on the other side of the map, and you can skip the other rooms.

Since there are no rooms in the middle of the path, the path won't decay even after completing Temple of Atziri. This allows you to quickly and consistently complete temples and obtain Architect's reward each time. However, the downside is that your overall temple rewards are relatively low each time.

Building A Long Room Chain

This farming method requires you to build an extremely long room chain to maximize the long-term rewards of the temple. You need to place high-value rooms at the very end of the chain, and then use a large number of other rooms behind as a buffer to expand the rewards.

Once you successfully build the room chain, your temples will consistently produce high-value rewards each round, theoretically yielding far more rewards than the method above. However, this construction process is lengthy and highly susceptible to random factors.

If you find these two methods too slow, you can also directly buy PoE 2 Currency. Using the XMAS code before December 31st will also give you a 10% discount on Poecurreny.

Room Value

Although there are many types of rooms in Temple of Atziri, you only need to focus on two types here:

Corruption Rooms

Corruption rooms produce various items and can add corruption affixes to your items. They are the most valuable of all rooms, also known as reward rooms. You can focus on the following rooms:

• Juatalotli's Triumph: Produces Vaal Cultivation Orb, worth approximately 1.5 Divine Orbs.
• Corruption Chamber: Produces Vaal Infuser, worth approximately 70 Exalted Orb.
• Thamaturge's Cathedral: Produces Gem Double Corruption Options, worth approximately 50 Exalted Orb.

In a long-chain strategy, these rooms are the most valuable and should be located towards the end of the chain. You also need to ensure there are enough other rooms behind them. Because each time you complete Temple of Atziri, decay will prioritize starting from the very end of the chain, placing several normal rooms behind Corruption Room will prevent it from being destroyed, allowing you to use them indefinitely.

Normal Rooms

Besides increasing monster numbers, drop rates, and reward multipliers, improving overall drop rates, normal rooms also serve as a buffer to protect the high-value corrupted rooms at the front. Additionally, some rooms are the primary source of key badges.

Important rooms include Surgeon's Symphony, which produces limbs and has a chance to yield high-level medallions. Other rooms like Commander's Headquarters, Bronzeworks, and Workshop also have a chance to produce medallions.

How To Build Room Chains?

Ideal Loop Chain:

1.  Generator
2. Thaumaturge's Cathedral
3. Sacrificial Chamber
4. Corruption Chamber
5. Thaumaturge's Cathedral

You can then choose to enter normal rooms to extend and protect the chain. You can also try building multiple sub-chains centered around Sacrificial Chamber, scattered throughout the temple, to increase the yield per round.

Upgrading Sacrificial Chamber requires removing a room. This can be used to replan the path, but note that you can only remove rooms that will not break the critical chain.

Medallions

Medallions are key items for accelerating temple construction. The three most important medals are as follows:

• Zantipi's Medallion: Prevents a room from being destroyed. This is the most important medal, used to protect the key room chain you are building, preventing your efforts from being wasted.
• Quipolatl's Medallion: Upgrades a room. Used on rooms at the beginning of a long chain that are permanently protected, it can steadily increase their benefits.
• Uromoti's Medallion: Randomly adds a room. Since the net number of rooms added to the temple each round is very small, this medal can significantly speed up the construction process.

Other medals, such as Juatalotli's Medallion, do not provide much improvement for this method.

The second method has a very high degree of randomness, which may lead to a slow construction process. If you dislike this randomness, it is recommended to use the first method, or simply skip Temple of Atziri.

Sometimes, games are more than just entertainment, especially large games with complex mechanics. It's the examination of player skill and the impact on life that gives rise to the concept of the meta-game.

More simply, the meta-game refers to using patterns and strategies not explicitly stated in the game, but summarized by the player community, to take proactive actions and improve the gaming experience.

While not all gaming communities agree on this, the meta-game is quite important for Path of Exile 2 players, as the game has a relatively high barrier to entry, and it's difficult to play without understanding this extra information.

This article will analyze the current state of the meta-game in terms of classes and Ascendancies based on the newly released PoE 2 Patch 0.4.0, and predict the future development of PoE 2.

Why Should You Understand Meta-Game Changes?

You might think you just want to relax and play the game, so why bother with such in-depth meta-game information? But in fact, if you intend to look up information such as class or build recommendations, you're already involved in the meta-game.

Of course, you can still play the game without understanding this information, but you'll miss out on a lot of hidden information, potentially leading you down the wrong path or causing you to miss out on exciting details.

Patch 0.4.0 Meta-Game Overview

For PoE 2, the meta-game encompasses a wide range of content, such as endgame resets, currently dominant classes in the league, and new available builds, all of which can be considered part of the meta-game.

Originally, Patch 0.4.0 planned to rework the endgame to upgrade the gaming experience. Although this didn't ultimately happen, it brought about significant balance adjustments in other areas, most notably with the addition of the new Druid class.

With the addition of Druid, the power and intelligence areas of the passive skill tree were completely revamped, and nerfs and buffs were implemented based on build balance considerations, ultimately significantly impacting the entire PoE 2 meta-game.

Changes In Dominant Classes And Ascendancies

Since the release of Patch 0.2.0, Path of Exile 2 updates have been relatively stable. Based on this, both 0.2.0 and 0.3.0 had a dominant Ascendancy class that completely defined the meta-game.

In Patch 0.2.0, this Ascendancy belonged to the newly introduced base class, Huntress, specifically Amazon. Statistics show that a week after the release of Dawn of the Hunt, this class had an astonishing 48% usage rate.

While this extreme imbalance in 0.2.0 might have been due to the novelty factor, in Patch 0.3.0, the most used Ascendancy class, Deadeye, was not a newly added class.

Based on this, we can see that, at least before Patch 0.4.0, Path of Exile 2's balance was far from ideal, and any class dominating was far from accidental. Their excessive power ultimately led to a lack of challenge and innovation in endgame content.

0.4.0 Brings Revolutionary Changes

However, after the release of The Last of Druids, the usage rates of various Ascendancy classes became more balanced, and the class that gained the most advantage was not the newly added Druid, but Pathfinder.

At least currently, Pathfinder's usage rate is approximately 18%, a significant improvement compared to previous patches, but not so exaggerated as to completely dominate.

This is mainly due to the developers considering balance issues and reworking the class in many aspects, such as adding multiple Ascendancy passive skill options and other improvements to damage and defensive capabilities.

However, it's important to remember that regardless of your current class, don't overlook the importance of gear and its affixes. If you find your current affixes not good enough, now is the best time to buy PoE 2 currency at POECurrency to re-roll them!

From December 23rd to 31st, use code XMAS to enjoy a 10% discount at POECurrency! Don't miss this opportunity!

How Is Druid Ascendancies Performing?

Druid's two Ascendancies, Shaman and Oracle, currently have usage rates of approximately 17% and 14% respectively. Overall, they are not far behind the top-ranked Pathfinder, creating a relatively stable balance and leaving enough room for other Ascendancies to develop.

More importantly, as a new class introduced in Patch 0.2.0, the two Ascendancy classes of Huntress had extremely unbalanced usage rates, differing by more than 40%. Druid has perfectly avoided this "curse."

What If There Were No Druid?

Although the balance of Ascendancy class usage rates improved significantly in The Last of Druids, without Shaman and Oracle, would the situation with Pathfinder have repeated the dominance of Deadeye in Patch 0.3.0?

To make a reliable assumption based on this, we must consider Disciple of Varashta. Ascendancy class, which wasn't included in the livestream, was only announced a few days before Patch 0.4.0 went live, yet it still achieved a 4% usage rate.

Furthermore, while the once dominant Deadeye class saw a significant drop in usage after adjustments and nerfs, this is actually a sign of improved balance.

Therefore, it's expected that by the later stages of 0.4.0, Path of Exile 2's meta-game performance in terms of class balance should be even better.

Other Adjustments

In addition to class adjustments, Patch 0.4.0 also optimized the game's skill balance, and the unique item buff mechanics performed better than in previous leagues.

Predictions For Patch 0.5.0

Based on the game's regular update cycle, Patch 0.5.0 should be released around April 2026. It's unlikely that this patch will add new classes, so the adjustments to the meta-game will probably focus on the endgame.

After initially addressing class balance issues, 0.5.0 should introduce truly challenging content through an endgame reset, avoiding the current simplistic design where having enough damage is all that's needed to instantly kill bosses.

The above is our analysis and summary of Path of Exile 2's current meta-game performance in terms of class mechanics balance. We hope this helps you gain a deeper understanding of the game!