Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction Is Coming! - Everything You Need To Know About Affliction

PoE 2 0.4.0 update is coming soon, bringing many new features that will undoubtedly impact character builds.

If you're still wondering which build will give you an edge over other players in Path of Exile patch 0.4.0, consider Poisonburst Pathfinder build. This build is easy to learn and use in the early stages, while possessing high development potential, and is sure to surprise you.

Below, I will provide a detailed introduction to this build, allowing you to quickly understand its key features.

Poisonburst Pathfinder Build

Poisonburst Pathfinder build centers on archery, utilizing poison damage to suppress enemies. This requires players using this build to pay close attention to the effects of poison-related skills and weapons.

Its core appeal lies in its simple and easy-to-understand controls. Clearing maps in combat or exploration requires only a single click, and the single-target damage rotation is very smooth. Therefore, regardless of prior experience, players can easily grasp the essentials.

When clearing maps, Poisonburst Arrow is your primary attack method. Upon hitting an enemy, the arrow releases a large amount of poison, damaging enemies within its area and efficiently clearing groups. If you're fast enough, you can deal considerable damage.

If you're a new player and your current gear and weapons aren't yet sufficient for the large-scale battles in PoE 2 patch 0.4.0, you can use Toxic Growth early in the game to gain more survivability. However, once your gear is upgraded, Poisonburst Arrow alone can deal damage comparable to current popular builds.

For bosses and high-difficulty enemies, you can easily defeat them with a series of combos. First, use Poisonburst Arrow to create a poison field, then use Vine Arrow for additional damage, and then continuously apply Toxic Growth to the boss.

Toxic Pustules generated by Toxic Growth will automatically explode, dealing massive burst damage. With good gear, Poisonburst Pathfinder build is enough to instantly kill bosses.

Buffs

In PoE 2 patch 0.4.0, several game content adjustments significantly boosted the build's power, more than offsetting the negative effects of the nerfs.

Arakaali's Lust

In Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4.0, Arakaali's Lust increases the damage dealt by Grants Supported Skills by 8% for each stack of poison gained, up to a maximum of 40%.

Compared to the previous 6% damage increase, with a maximum of 30%, the adjusted Arakaali's Lust will help characters deal significantly more damage.

Especially for builds like Poisonburst Pathfinder build that rely on poison for damage, Arakaali's Lust will become a popular choice.

Garukhan's Resolve

It helps increase the critical hit chance of Grants Supported Skills, up to a maximum of 50%. Furthermore, patch 0.4.0 removed the 20-meter movement requirement for players to use Grants Supported Skills.

While a 50% critical hit chance isn't high in the game, it's barely enough for bow-wielding characters. These characters generally don't have a high critical hit rate, so even a 50% chance can result in unexpected critical damage.

Undoubtedly, this change will make it more popular with players.

New Bow Cluster

Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4.0 also added a bow skill cluster, giving characters using this weapon a Surpassing chance to fire an extra arrow.

Hyrri's Ire

Hyrri's Ire's evasion rating has been nearly doubled, the freeze duration on enemies has been increased by 25%, and it inflicts an additional 25% Cold Damage, enhancing the defensive and offensive capabilities of evasion-centric builds.

Nerfs

However, Poisonburst Pathfinder build isn't all buffs in PoE 2 patch 0.4.0. Some in-game changes have also caused it to lose some of its advantages.

Ghost Dance

After the adjustments, players can now obtain a maximum of 3 Ghost Shrouds using Ghost Dance. Furthermore, the interval between obtaining it has been lengthened. However, overall, it remains a powerful defensive buff that enhances a player's survivability on the battlefield.

Rune Restrictions

In PoE 2 patch 0.4.0, the official support for runes has been limited for various builds. However, you can avoid making your build dependent on a single rune by using runes in different directions, such as Countess Seske's Rune of Archery to fire extra arrows, and Farrul's Rune of the Chase to increase movement speed.

While these changes are regrettable, the overall benefit of this update outweighs the drawbacks.

Skill Gems

The following are skill gems that players can try using.

Poisonburst Arrow

As the core of this build, Poisonburst Arrow is essential. Whether you choose to clear maps or fight bosses, it will provide excellent results.

Herald Of Blood

Blood Loss causes explosions when monsters are killed. Enemies killed by these explosions deal additional damage to nearby monsters, creating an infinite explosion effect that results in massive damage.

Herald Of Plague

Herald of Plague's special effect allows players to spread poison to nearby enemies when they kill poisoned enemies. This spread can also slow down enemy movement.

This infinitely spreading effect helps players clear maps quickly and defeat opponents.

Wind Dancer

This skill gem has always been popular with players. It grants players periodic evasion, increasing their survivability.

Poisonburst Pathfinder build is a standout in PoE 2 patch 0.4.0, boasting unparalleled simplicity, speed, and damage. The numerous buffs in this update make it a top-tier game build, easily handling map combat and exploration.

Whether you're aiming for the top of the leaderboards or simply looking for casual fun, the long-term potential and low learning curve of Poisonburst Pathfinder build make it a worthwhile investment.

Just one day later, you can dive into Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 and enjoy all the content this update brings, even if you don't own the game - you can play for free for three days!

Undoubtedly, most PoE 2 players will want to experience the new Druid class first, but if you're the type of player who wants to quickly complete the campaign and start mapping, it's best to use a class you're familiar with.

Even if you've thoroughly researched Druid, you'll still need to get used to it once the game officially starts, which will inevitably slow down your progress.

Therefore, this guide will use Warrior, a basic class, as an example to show you how to quickly complete the campaign and then experience the endgame content of the new league.

Path Of Exile 2 Campaign Overview

This mechanism, as the foundation of the game's main story, aims to allow you to accumulate XP and currency while completing story quests, enabling you to enter the dangerous endgame phase with stronger abilities and solid resources.

According to the planned design, the official version of PoE 2 should have 6 acts, including hundreds of bosses and monster types. However, in the current early access stage, you can only play the first four acts and three interludes.

After completing all the acts in the campaign, you will reach Ziggurat Refuge and obtain the map device, after which you can start experiencing the endgame by collecting and using Waystones for mapping.

Why Choose Warrior?

As a melee tank class in Path of Exile 2, although Warrior isn't exactly beginner-friendly, its survival and damage output are both excellent, and its diverse gameplay and adaptability make it very useful during the campaign stage when your character is still developing.

How To Start Clearing The Campaign?

No matter what stage of the game you're in or what your goals are, as long as you're still fighting, crafting efficient builds should be your first step.

Therefore, if you're playing as a Warrior to complete the campaign, we recommend trying Poison Bleed Resonating Shield Build. It combines Shield Wall and Resonating Shield skills to ensure both single-target and AoE damage.

How To Use This Build?

Although this build's clearing speed isn't the fastest, the total damage output is still very considerable. Generally, when encountering rare elite monsters, simply using Shield Wall to block their attacks and then striking twice with Resonating Shield will easily resolve the battle.

More importantly, this build doesn't rely heavily on gear, which is very friendly during the resource-scarce campaign phase. You only need a good shield and sufficient defensive gear.

As for weapon selection, increasing extra and physical damage and upgrading attack power by one level is enough, because the class and build characteristics ensure you are very tanky and won't take much damage.

How To Start Leveling?

In fact, completing the campaign is your leveling process in Path of Exile 2; all campaign quests combined should give you enough XP.

In Act 1, for about three-quarters of the time, you'll need to constantly use Rolling Slam and Boneshatter to deal with normal enemies. If you encounter a boss, you'll also need to intersperse Infernal Cry between attacks.

In addition, combine this with the support gem Impact Shockwave, which generates aftershocks when heavily stunning enemies, dealing damage to enemies within a 1.5-meter radius, helping you clear mobs faster.

When you reach approximately level 15, the first thing you should do is obtain a pure strength-based shield, as only it has the highest armor value, which is very important in the following stages.

After that, your main skills will be Resonating Shield and Boneshatter. You will also need to unlock War Cry nodes in the passive skill tree to enhance Warcry effects, damage, and utility.

This setup will support you until level 20 or higher, after which you need to switch your main skill to Shield Wall, and then use Infernal Cry, Shield Charge, and Shockwave Totem in sequence as a combo.

At the same time, it's recommended to add the support gem Mana Leech, which converts 2% of physical attack damage into mana, ensuring your mana doesn't run out.

Although Warrior itself isn't a mana-dependent class, getting extra mana is still good, and not being dependent on mana also extends the duration of your mana bar from another perspective.

Which Ascendancy Class To Choose?

After reaching level 30 or higher during the campaign using the above techniques, you can start choosing your Ascendancy class. Here, we prioritize Warbringer to unlock an important exclusive ability, Warcaller's Bellow.

This skill allows Warcry to cause enemy corpses to explode, dealing physical damage equivalent to 25% of their maximum health, and ignores Warcry cooldown, making it easier to use the combos we recommended earlier.

After this, you can continue progressing using the skills and gear techniques from the previous level stages. Of course, it would be even better if you could add armor and resistance values ​​to your gear.

However, if you want to try the other Warrior Ascendancy class, Titan, you'll need to acquire Enraged Warcry after reaching Act 4 and unlocking Tier 4 support gems to unlock the effect that bypasses Warcry cooldown.

The above information should be sufficient to help you complete all campaign content. It's worth noting that some of these approaches are also applicable to playing Druid class, as most skills in Path of Exile are universal.

The new league is about to begin, and we hope our guide will help you have a better gaming experience! Have fun!

Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0, Fate of The Vaal league, not only added new classes but also made some adjustments to existing builds.

Since the league hasn't truly started yet, and further patches are expected to adjust class balance after the league begins, we can only predict their initial league rankings based on the official patch information and the performance of all Ascendancies in Patch 0.3.0.

Tier S

Deadeye Ranger

Deadeye Ranger has long been a top-tier class, and this change is considered an adjustment rather than a nerf.

The removal of Deadeye Ranger's Wind Ward slightly reduces its survivability, but the increased Critical Weakness generated by Bullseye from 5 stacks to 10 stacks improves its DPS.

Furthermore, it gains the new Mirage Archer passive skill, which summons clones that use your abilities. If its clone numbers are strong, Deadeye Ranger could even reach S+ tier. Even if its clone numbers aren't strong, its current power is enough to secure its S tier status.

Pathfinder Ranger

Pathfinder Ranger has received a significant boost. The patch adds immunity to severe stuns when using Running Assault and a substantial increase in movement speed, making it a very fast class for farming PoE 2 currency.

Trail Wisdom provides additional passive skill points and offers extra options for damage, global defenses, or Cost Efficiency reduction. Cost Efficiencyis a valuable attribute that's hard to obtain in other classes. Combined with the speed-oriented meta-environment of PoE 2, Pathfinder is expected to perform very well in this league.

Tier A

Invoker Monk

The key boost to Invoker Monk is in Soulspring Eternal node, which now provides 50% spirit reservation efficiency. This made it a viable option for any build that relied on Spirit and used multiple custom criticals. Invoker Monk is inherently very flexible and can be paired with a variety of abilities, giving it the potential to even reach Tier S.

Lich Witch

While Lich Witch received no changes in the patch notes, it can be considered a solid Tier A, very close to Tier S.

Lich Witch has consistently been one of the tankiest classes in the game, primarily due to its survivability through leech and stacking large amounts of Energy Shield.

While Lich Witch isn't the strongest mage ascendancy, it remains consistently reliable, though it lacks the high damage or farming efficiency of Tier S Ascendancies.

Witchhunter Mercenary

Witchhunter Mercenary received a significant buff. This is mainly because Ceremonial Ablution now directly provides Sword Ward to mitigate physical and chaos damage. This change is significant, allowing Witchhunter to achieve extremely high tankiness with very low investment, making he one of the most tanky classes. However, it still retains damage bonuses and is not a pure tank class.

Titan Warrior

Titan Warrior has always been a reliable melee choice, although this adjustment removed Surprising Strength node. However, it added "deals 25% more damage to heavy stunned enemies" to Crushing Impacts node. While total damage may decrease slightly, the 2 talent points saved are a net gain.

Mountain Splitter allows Titan to trigger an additional aftershock every third time they cast a Slam ability that doesn't trigger Fissures, which seems promising. While their strength has increased, they are still expected to perform slightly worse than Witchhunter.

Blood Mage Witch

Blood Mage Witch has long been one of the best caster classes, but she was nerfed in patch 0.4.

This is primarily due to the nerf to Tul's Catalyst, which weakens overall regeneration. Since Blood Mage's defenses are entirely built on extremely high regeneration, this change has a significant impact.

Blood Mage will now find it more difficult to run maps with reduced regeneration affixes. While she may still be one of the strongest spellcasters if you invest enough PoE 2 currency, she won't be as comfortable as she was in patch 0.3.0, and fewer players may use her.

Stormweaver Sorceress

Stormweaver Sorceress is a class that utilizes infusion as its core gameplay. With the continuous enhancement of the infusion mechanic, its status has risen.

Specific changes such as Refraction Infusion, Multiplying Squalls, and Storms Recollection have provided useful bonuses. Previously, many spellcaster players chose Blood Mage, so in patch 0.4.0, Stormweaver will also be a good choice.

Infernalist Witch

Infernalist Witch remains largely unchanged and is still a core summoner build choice, pairing well with Lich. Its Demon Form is also valuable for spellcaster builds that want to maintain this form.

Ritualist Huntress

Ritualist Huntress was not changed in the patch, so its status remains the same. It's S-tier on a high budget. In the late game with top-tier gear, it's very versatile and powerful, serving as a spellcaster or ranged class, but on a low budget, its damage is only A-tier.

Tier B

Amazon Huntress

Amazon Huntress has the potential to achieve extremely high survivability by stacking evasion rating and deflection, but achieving this requires a significantly higher investment than Witchhunter or Lich. On a lower budget, Amazon only ranks B, with its Deadeye being much stronger, making Amazon less attractive.

Smith of Kitava Warrior

Smith of Kitava Warrior received some buffs, such as increased Armor from Smith's Masterwork, as well as increased thorns damage, increased spirit, and complete ignoring of critical strike damage.

However, because Smith of Kitava is a pure defensive ascendancy, it severely lacks damage and speed bonuses. In the current speed-driven PoE 2 meta environment, pure tank classes are at a disadvantage. Furthermore, in terms of tankiness, Lich and Witchhunter are expected to perform better.

Tactician Mercenary

Tactician Mercenary itself remains good, but mainly due to the buffs received by Witchhunter, players are more inclined to choose Witchhunter over the other class, therefore its ranking has been downgraded to A.

Tier C

Acolyte Of Chayula Monk

While receiving some buffs, the impact is not significant. It might only find a place in chaos or poison builds, but the class as a whole needs major changes or a rework to become popular.

Warbringer Warrior

Warbringer Warrior was previously unpopular due to its somewhat clunky and slow gameplay. PoE 2 meta-environment highly values speed, making it less favored. With Titan buff, even fewer players will choose it.

Chronomancer Sorceress

Chronomancer Sorceress has always lacked a place in the meta-environment. While it has the potential to create niche builds through extreme slowdowns, its inherent slowness and the need to manage numerous skills and cooldowns simultaneously make its gameplay complex.

Tier F

Gemling Legionnaire Mercenary

The changes to Gemling Legionnaire Mercenary are minor. It's placed in Tier F because it's been surpassed by other classes, making it uncompetitive in the current meta, and it may only have a few unique playstyles remaining.

Druid

Full information on the three Druid classes hasn't been released yet, and their performance in-game remains to be seen, but the developers are unlikely to make them too weak.

• Oracle Druid: Some nodes look strong, but with a large number of additional skills, the gameplay might be complex, potentially placing it in Tier A or Tier B.
• Shaman Druid: it looks more stable than Oracle, so it is possible at the top of Tier A or even close to Tier S.

These are just predictions at the start of the league, and subsequent official adjustments will likely change this ranking.

Before the full release of PoE 3.27 Keepers of the Flame content, many players anticipated significant balance changes due to comments made by the game director in a previous patch Q&A session. However, the official patch notes were disappointing in terms of balance adjustments.

Unexpectedly, the biggest impact of PoE 3.27's meta gameplay wasn't on balance changes, but rather on the addition of hundreds of Foulborn unique items. Now that the official focus is primarily on POE 2, there shouldn't be any new Foulborn unique items in this league. So, will Foulborn unique items be integrated into the core gameplay?

What Are Foulborn Unique Items?

Foulborn unique items are not new unique items, and they are unique items that already existed in the game, whose one or more affixes have been replaced by Foulborn affix.

Because Foulborn affixes are generally stronger than regular affixes, these Foulborn Unique items become unique and powerful enough in many situations to form an entire build idea around them.

The Red Drea (Foulborn)

Foulborn unique items were used in many builds in Patch 3.27. The Red Drea (Foulborn) was the most frequently used Foulborn unique item in both softcore and hardcore trade leagues in patch 3.27. In softcore, 8% of level 95-100 characters used it, while in hardcore, this figure rose to 11%.

Its most common Foulborn variant replaces its Endurance Charge chance affix with Fire Resistance or All Elemental Resistances talent allocated nodes based on Jewel range, providing an increase in maximum life. This provides a much-needed boost to life-based builds, allowing them to compete with the energy shield configuration.

The Red Drea (Foulborn) is used by approximately 40% of Chieftains, 17% of Juggernauts, and 20% of Gladiators, with Elementalists also making significant use of it.

The effectiveness of a Jewel is closely related to its position in the jewel socket on the Passive Skill Tree. The classes with 3 jewel sockets have particularly strong effects.

The sockets outside Marauder's starting point have the greatest potential. By using Tattoos to replace Strength path talent points with "+6% Fire Resistance" nodes, and combining them with The Red Drea (Foulborn), each small node provides an additional 4% maximum life increase. This allows for a total of approximately 55% additional maximum life increase using this unique item.

Templar slots outside the starting point offer slightly less potential, providing approximately a 30% increase to maximum life. Ranger slots south of the starting point offer around a 20% increase to maximum life.

This allows life builds in this area to either become more durable due to the significant increase in life or save talent points invested in damage, thus better tackling endgame content.

Hand Of Thought And Motion (Foulborn)

Foulborn unique items even impacted the PoE 3.27 meta. Hand of Thought and Motion (Foulborn) boasts a powerful affix that increases accuracy rating by 5% for every 25 points of Intelligence.

It fundamentally solves the scaling accuracy problem inherent in past accuracy-stacking builds. Previously, these builds heavily relied on Precursor's Emblem Rings, but the improvements they provided were limited and had limitations.

Now, Hand of Thought and Motion (Foulborn) allows you to scale accuracy simply by stacking Intelligence. This is incredibly powerful because Intelligence stacking has been strong in recent leagues, and it also provides a significant amount of energy shield.

Combined with Shaper's Touch Crusader Gloves' boost to energy shield and accuracy, Stormrider Boots' base Lightning damage, and Juggernaut's Undeniable Ascendancy node's massive attack speed, you can create an extremely powerful build, potentially the strongest build of the league. But if Foulborn items don't carry over to the next league, this strongest build will only be available in Patch 3.27.

Doedre's Scorn (Foulborn)

Foulborn affix of Doedre's Scorn indicates that the socketed gem is supported by a level 30 Impending Doom. This provides approximately 6000 to 9000 flat Chaos damage. Players can equip it at level 39.

A normal level 4 Impending Doom Support Gem only provides 175 to 263 flat Chaos damage at level 38. This means that at the corresponding level, Doedre's Scorn (Foulborn) version can deal approximately 34 times the damage.

It allows players to quickly complete campaigns and even one-shot campaign bosses. Its ingenious design lies in the fact that in the endgame, it is surpassed by the highly sought-after Forbidden Shako Helmet.

However, the latter is extremely rare or it requires a vast amount of valuable PoE Currency. So Doedre's Scorn (Foulborn) will give players the freedom of choice if it could be in core game. You can choose to use it from start to finish or simply as a fast leveling tool.

Other Noteworthy Foulborn Unique Items

Berek's Respite (Foulborn)

Berek's Respite provides a new way to obtain the explode affix for various builds, especially when combined with Elementalist's Ailments transformation, creating interesting explosion chains.

Esh's Mirror (Foulborn)

Provides a relatively easy way to obtain damage reflect immunity, used by approximately 2% of characters above level 95, primarily in Detonate Dead builds.

Kaom's Spirit (Foulborn)

Kaom's Spirit (Foulborn) is very useful for mana stacking builds, and even more so when you use two. It provides immunity to curses, a large number of attributes, mana regeneration, and a flat mana of up to 200.

Will Foulborn Unique Items Be In The Core Game?

Foulborn Unique items will probably be added to the core game in some form. This is because Breach rework is almost certainly going to be included in core content and won't just appear in this league, and this mechanic requires unique rewards.

The hundreds of newly added Foulborn Uniques items have enormous potential, much like Replica Uniques. Many of them may remain dormant across multiple leagues, but should specific balance changes occur elsewhere, one or two of them could become key to a meta, enabling new builds.

Even if some of Foulborn items clearly require balance tweaks, they provide players with more options and more playable toys, which is a good thing in Path of Exile.