Path Of Exile 3.23 Mid-League All Ascendancy’s Top Meta Builds
Currently, Affliction League has been launched for a month, and some new skills have been introduced in the game. So I bet you’re wondering which skills have been molded into powerful builds so far. So here’s a guide to each of Ascendancy meta-builds that currently rank high in DPS in Softcore Trade League.
To be fair, I’m going to filter these based on Mageblood and Original Sin builds to provide real data for a wider audience. But some of these versions may not even make it to the next league because they’re so inconsistent with the developer’s standards.
Top Deadeye Builds
Deadeye is the most used Ascendancy in POE 3.23. This is true in every league, as Deadeye comes in multiple types, from Bows to Wands and Caster builds.
This time, we have Sanctum Farming Icicle Miner Build followed by Omni Tornado Shot Build. Icicle Miner has been dominant in Sanctum since its introduction in POE 3.20.
By the way, these builds can handle hitless Sanctum runs to farm high-level items such as Original Sin, which currently sells for 1.3 Mirror of Kalandra.
Without Progenesis, both Icicle Miner and Omni Tornado Shot Build can be completed in Affliction League for less than 100 Divine Orbs.
Top Pathfinder Builds
Second on the list is Pathfinder, with most of its builds being Chaos or Poison. But what’s interesting is the diversity within the list.
The most important is Hexblast Miner, mainly used by Uber and Sanctum Farmers, followed by Viper Strike of the Mamba.
This is also a fairly affordable build for most players in POE 3.23, requiring only an extremely low POE Currency budget. This caught my attention when it first launched.
Interestingly, there is a guy playing a Crit Ice Spear Build with Pathfinder. Looking at his kit, I can say that this looks to be a pretty realistic defense considering he has good physical mitigation and spell suppression abilities. But this is another Pathfinder build that doesn’t use Master Distiller.
Pathfinder remains the best choice for Blade Vortex Poison Builds. Most players here seem to like Vaal version, and there are some guides for budget ones.
You may notice that Scourge Arrow of Menace and Caustic Arrow of Posion do not appear in DPS numbers. This is mainly because they are primarily used for Magic Find Builds that require less gear to run.
Magic Find Builds are significantly weaker than your average budget builds. Also, both skills have low theoretical POB counts, although they perform quite well in practice.
There are several other skills as a Pathfinder, such as Seismic Trap of Swells, Reave, Exsanguinate, Ethereal Knives, Ethereal Knives of Linging and Massacre, Spark of the Nova, and more. This is also the class used for Posion version of Herald of Thunder Autobomber.
Top Ascendant Builds
Ranked third is Ascendant. Now you’re probably looking forward to Aura Stackers and Ward Loop Builds. But this time, we have some Life Stacking Righteous Fire Builds led by some really cool budget Reap builds. It uses Entropic Devastation Gloves, which looks very simple.
We don’t see a lot of Impale Spells builds, but this one looks pretty stunning for a mid-budget project.
Top Inquisitor Builds
Inquisitor is the fourth most played build in the game. The top Inquisitor’s critical strike has several casts, using Cyclone of Tumult and Ice Spear of Splitting.
Most of the top Inquisitor builds are Energy Blade Ivory Tower builds. This brings me to Storm Brand of Indecision and Penance Brand of Dissipation. You can improvise to suit your play style.
Top Guardian Builds
With Guardian, we have several minion builds, such as Absolution and Summon Raging Spirits. Interestingly, we have a Righteous Fire on the top floor using Ivory Tower.
Top Champion Builds
Most Champions use Lightning Strike in POE 3.23, which is interesting. We also have some Spectral Shield Throw and Splitting Steel builds based on pure physical Impale, with good defense and damage.
Another great Champion Build is Corrupting Fever/Reap build, which is a purely physical DOT build.
Top Necromancer Builds
For Necromancer, we created Detonate Dead builds that couldn’t show their actual DPS numbers because most of them were based on Specter or Corpse’s life.
I should also mention that a new meta minion build is being built right now. And that’s exactly what Blink Arrow of Bombarding Clones is. You can check out some of their displays because their builds are pretty amazing.
Top Chieftain Builds
Besides the regular Righteous Fire Trap Builds, there are now several Chieftain Builds. One of my favorites is Volcanic Fissure of Snaking. I did try one version of it and it’s great for casual T16 mapping and bossing.
Top Occultist Builds
As usual, we have Ice trap Uber bossing builds for Occultist. This also competes well with Hexblast Miner and Cold BV Builds.
Top Elementalist Builds
At the top of Elementalist list, we have a Discharge build, which is your typical Power Charge stacker.
We’re excited to see a critical strike-based Lightning Conduit build. It’s one of the most powerful skills in the game, with the only drawback being that you have to use a secondary skill to apply shocks.
Then we have Ethereal Knives of the Massacre, which is basically a new upgrade of the old Ethereal Knives Ignite. DPS numbers look better, but not sure about their defense unless you use Progenesis setup.
Top Trickster Builds
For Trickster, we have Kinetic Bolt of Fragmentation builds. They won’t appear on the upper floors as it uses a type of Shenanigans with Nimis. This is pretty backward, but the ability to be nerfed in future leagues is pretty strong.
Top Hierophant Builds
Hierophant Builds are popular in Uber bossing using Ice Spear Totems. But you know what this league has really enhanced? That’s the old Siege Ballista Hierophant.
Because of the effect of quality on attack speed in this patch, they fire much faster than before. This was something I planned to try before the league started. Then we mixed in a few other builds. Storm Brand of Indecision is a good thing for Hierophant. It has good synergy with Ascendancy.
Top Slayer Builds
Most Slayer Builds are still the best choice for Voidforge Flicker Strike. This is a build you should try at least once during league time!
Top Juggernaut Builds
The top build on Juggernaut list is the quintessential Strength Stacking Reave. This is one of the purest melee builds out there. The only downside to these builds is that most spell hits are one hit because of the lack of spell suppression or spell blocking. However, they are quite resistant to most attacks.
Top Assassin Builds
Assassin Builds are usually DPS builds. This is the only Fire Trap of Blasting build. This is also a meme made as something overly restrictive, even if it actually works. I can confidently say that this is the best option for one-hit Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds.
Top Saboteur Builds
Most Saboteur are Hexblast Mines. This probably means this build is best suited as a Saboteur.
Top Berserker Builds
For Berserker, there are so many builds you can play with. Besides Flicker Strike, Ice Crash, Strength Stacking Reave, Boneshatter, Blade Flurry and Venom Gyre are all the most popular ways to play.
You may be wondering about Cyclone build with 900 million DPS. It’s basically a Frenzy stacker using Adorned Jewel. What I can say for sure is that this is another build designed for farming Uber Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds.
Top Raider Builds
Raider is also very flexible in terms of variety in builds. The most popularly used to be Flicker Strike, but now we have Lightning Arrow, Rain of Arrows, Spectral Shield Throw, Cyclone of Tumult, Frost Blades, Kinetic Blast, Bleed Bow, and even Penance Brand of Dissipation!
Top Gladiator Builds
Finally, let’s look at the best Ascendancy in the game. I’m just kidding! Here, you’d expect a Bleed Bow like the builds in my previous leagues.
But among 13 super-powerful builds, we have a new winner! Lacerate of Haemorrhage is the top melee blood build in POE 3.23. This is a build right that has yet to be replicated and popularized by famous streamers. So the build here looks pretty good and tanky for a melee build.
Summary
So my overall summary is that Affliction League has opened up a wide variety of builds. Whether you Magic Find, run Sanctum, Harvest, Heists or sell Essence, you can earn currency easily!
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Players, when you're meticulously planning your map and adjusting affixes in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0, have you noticed that this time is far longer than the actual time you spend on the map and fighting? The optimal gameplay everyone's chasing in endgames - finding suitable cities, stacking Deliriousness, and combining four tablets - seems to have gradually become repetitive labor.
Frankly, can we really derive enjoyment from PoE 2 endgames now?
The Preparation Phase is Tedious
Compared to the map's inherent appeal, the problems with Path of Exile 2 endgame gameplay seem to lie more in the pre-game preparation phase.
The tablet system, in particular, is incredibly tiring. Players constantly need to spend a significant amount of time managing tablet affixes and searching for suitable tablets to trade with, while also repeatedly searching for suitable city locations and modifiers in Atlas.
Furthermore, the search tools are limited, only allowing searches of visible areas and restricting bookmarks to 20, which falls far short of players' needs.
This results in players spending more time on tablets, trading, searching the map, and planning than actually fighting on it, leading to a significant imbalance in time allocation across PoE 2 content.
Profit Gap
The huge profit gap in endgames further exacerbates the players' predicament.
Based on player experiences, a single currency reward on a normal map is approximately 1 Divine, while a 200% Delirious map can yield a staggering 38 PoE 2 Divine Orbs!
This vast profit disparity forces many players, even those who find the preparation process tedious, to persevere for higher profits or to keep up with the game's economic pace.
While other gameplay options like Expedition exist, their efficiency is significantly lower than Delirious strategy, effectively limiting players' strategic choices.
Poor Map Design
Furthermore, many players have been tolerating the visual effects of PoE 2 endgame maps. Because the maps are so large, players have to spend a significant amount of time aimlessly running around in open areas, leaving very little time for meaningful combat.
Not only is the endgame map layout terrible, but the colors of the monsters and background terrain are also highly similar, making it feel like they are wearing natural camouflage during combat, which greatly affects the player experience, not to mention if Delirious effect is turned on.
Whether it's the clarity of combat or the ease of player control, the visually chaotic map design can, to put it bluntly, lead to player failure, wasting all their hard work and preparation.
Moreover, the core endgame mechanic, Towers, is actually quite disconnected from the overall game flow. If this isn't addressed, it will probably further damage the endgame experience.
Improvement Directions and Suggestions
To address the current issue of gameplay fatigue in PoE 2 endgames, the focus should definitely be on simplifying unnecessary and complex steps.
Many players believe that removing the mandatory requirement of four tablets is crucial for improving endgame gameplay. They argue that city terrain can be improved through other bonuses in Atlas Skill Tree, rather than relying solely on the benefits of four tablets.
Another important suggestion is to include key items like Grand Mirror in the currency exchange market, making them easily tradable like Breachstones or Ritual materials, thus reducing the time players spend trading and searching.
Based on the issues we mentioned earlier, another direction for game improvement is to optimize and modify the search tools and the maximum number of bookmarks, allowing players to truly devote more energy to endgame combat and character building.
Different Player Preferences
We need to recognize that everyone's gaming experience is highly subjective, so naturally, everyone will have different preferences.
Therefore, some players choose to ignore this strategy, continuing to farm at their own pace, or even enjoying the process of meticulous planning and pursuing maximum efficiency, viewing the complex preparation as part of the fun in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0.
However, the third type of player - those forced to follow - deserves our most attention, because being forced to execute strategies is the biggest source of fatigue in endgame gameplay.
Game design can certainly require players to put in effort for substantial rewards, but this effort itself should be attractive - it could be researching builds, challenging powerful bosses, but not repeatedly searching maps, mechanically placing tablets, or wasting excessive time on trading.
When players find themselves spending far more time planning how to play PoE 2 than actually playing the game, and this planning process is tedious, lacking interaction and a sense of accomplishment, the game essentially becomes just repetitive labor.
Therefore, the core goal of optimizing PoE 2 endgame gameplay should not be to reduce the rewards of high-end farming, but rather to make the preparation and execution of strategies more engaging and enjoyable.
Unnecessary and tedious actions in the endgame should be prioritized for reduction, allowing players more freedom to choose their playstyle based on personal preference. Every step in a high-yield strategy should be enjoyable, not a heavy burden.
Are you the kind of player who would go to great lengths to achieve the optimal economic strategy in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0 endgame?
Path of Exile 3.29.0b has optimized and strengthened the League mechanic, allowing it to provide more rewards in the endgame. Because of this, you may be looking for a Farming strategy that can clear maps quickly, collect Charts as efficiently as possible, and still generate solid returns.
Without a doubt, Strongbox is one of the best choices. It offers explosive rewards, requires little investment, and has strong synergy with other mechanics, making it a highly profitable option during the early stage of Curse of the Allflame League.
Why Choose the Strongbox Strategy?
The value of Charts is currently very high, and the main way to obtain them is through Cursed Treasure in regular maps. Therefore, your goal is to farm maps quickly and collect as many Charts as possible.
This change has brought Strongbox farming back into the spotlight as a high-value mapping strategy. The core goal of this setup is very simple. You quickly complete maps, defeat bosses, collect Charts, and obtain PoE currency, Scarabs, Divination Cards, and various additional rewards from Strongboxes.
In addition, you can receive a large number of Eldritch altar rewards and more maps. Completing maps also allows you to obtain items such as Astrolabes and a large number of map drops. These rewards are extremely valuable during the early stage of the league, making this one of the fastest and easiest ways to get started.
Your goal is Boss Rush. The purpose of Boss Rush is to obtain Eldritch altar rewards from map bosses. Along the way, you should click Strongboxes and Eldritch altars, collect Charts, and leave the map as quickly as possible.
Scarab Setup
Scarabs are an essential investment for this strategy. Some Scarabs may have higher value, but they can provide excellent returns.
Ambush Scarab ×2
Ambush Scarab is the core of any Strongbox strategy. Using 2 Ambush Scarabs adds 8 additional Strongboxes to the map. They are currently very affordable, and dozens of Ambush Scarabs can be exchanged for 1 Divine Orb.
Ambush Scarab of Potency ×1
It increases the effect of Strongbox explicit modifiers by 75%. This means the modifiers on Strongboxes will provide higher item quantity bonuses.
For example, a Strongbox that originally contains 4 additional Ambush Scarabs may now contain 7, while a 100% item quantity modifier can become 175%. The more Strongboxes you open and the more valuable their rewards are, the stronger this effect becomes. These Scarabs currently cost around 1 Chaos Orb.
Ambush Scarab of Hidden Compartments ×1
This Scarab gives each Strongbox a 15% chance to be opened again. If you have good luck, you can reopen Strongboxes multiple times. It is also worth around 1 Chaos Orb.
Ambush Scarab of Discernment ×1
It increases the chance for Strongboxes to appear as rarer variants, such as Arcanist's Strongbox and Diviner's Strongbox, which are the two main high-value Strongbox types in maps.
These are Scarabs you can use when your budget is limited. If you have enough Currency, you can replace one of the above Scarabs with Ambush Scarab of Containment. It converts a large amount of map content into Strongboxes. Its value is around half a Divine Orb.
Templar Astrolabe
Since this strategy requires Boss Rush, you can also use Templar Astrolabe.
Using Templar Astrolabe creates a Shaped Region on Atlas and enhances 6-9 nearby maps. These maps gain special influences.
Each completed map within the region grants additional enhanced modifiers to the remaining maps.
However, this is not mandatory. It only provides additional rewards, and you can obtain Astrolabes naturally while farming. Whether you use them depends entirely on your own choice.
It is also worth noting that you cannot obtain Astrolabes from maps that already have Astrolabe effects, so we choose not to use them. In fact, we collected almost every type of Astrolabe, along with a large number of regular Templar Astrolabes, within a single night. Therefore, whether you want to use Currency to acquire Astrolabes and gain their rewards is completely up to you.
Map Selection
Strongbox strategies usually require maps where you can quickly find and open as many Strongboxes as possible. Therefore, compact layouts, fast clears, and strong reward pools are the best choices.
Crimson Temple is a recommended option because its Divination Card pool is extremely attractive, although the layout can be somewhat complicated. Another choice is Defiled Cathedral. Its drops are slightly weaker, but the layout is simple, and you can usually clear it by running in a circle without missing much.
You can also choose Mesa map. It is a very open map with an extremely easy boss encounter. You can rush directly to the boss, defeat it, and then clear the remaining areas. The only downside is that its Divination Card pool is not as valuable. However, you can use a Scrying Orb to transfer good Divination Card pool from one map to Mesa.
Atlas Passive Tree Setup
All Strongbox-related passives are essential, including additional Strongboxes, increased monster count, rare and corrupted Strongboxes, and the ability to reopen Strongboxes.
Regular nodes that increase currency and Divination Card rewards are also necessary.
You should also obtain as many general Scarab bonuses as possible, including the small nodes in Shaping the World that increase additional map drops from bosses. Shrine-related passives are optional and can be skipped if you are short on passive points.
All available map modifier effect nodes are worth taking, especially when using Scarabs.
Strongbox remains a very fun and powerful strategy. In PoE 3.29, Scarab values are low, meaning the investment required is minimal, and the gameplay itself is also very straightforward.
If you took a break from Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0 over the last few weeks due to shader loading issues and the device removed bug, congratulations, these annoyances have been eliminated. It's time to jump back into Runes of Aldur league!
While these fixes might not seem like massive overhauls, PoE 2 team prioritized player experience enough to release a dedicated video explaining them. We've summarized the details here to give you a deeper understanding of these bug fixes.
What impact did the device removed bug have?
Before July 30th, you might have experienced moments where Path of Exile 2 suddenly froze. While such issues aren't uncommon, the freeze lasted an exceptionally long time on some players' systems.
To make matters worse, even after the freeze ended, you might have continued to experience poor performance for a short while. This was because shaders were still loading in the background, consuming significant CPU resources.
This bug tended to occur most frequently during mapping, and the frequency had increased over the last few weeks.
Undoubtedly, this had a major negative impact on your PoE 2 experience. It wasn't just the panic and frustration of having combat interrupted; it also meant potentially missing out on rare rewards, losses that couldn't be fully compensated for later.
The tricky part was that this bug had actually existed since Path of Exile 2 first launched. You might have encountered it before without realizing it, as it happened less frequently back then. However, it had recently escalated to the point of causing game crashes.
The root cause of the bug
Given the worsening impact, PoE 2 developers intensified their troubleshooting efforts. They discovered that the bug originated solely from the graphics card and affected only players using specific graphics cards or updated driver versions.
Typically, resolving such issues involves collaborating with the graphics card manufacturer. However, the challenge here was that such collaboration requires providing exact steps to reproduce the bug, something this particular issue didn't allow for.
How was the bug fixed?
Since the bug did not appear to be linked to any specific in-game state, Path of Exile 2 technical team had to invest significant time making random adjustments to the engine and manually playing the game to check if the specific stuttering bug recurred.
During this process, technicians also used the replay system to review lengthy gameplay sessions in an attempt to reproduce the device removed bug.
Fortunately, they eventually pinpointed the specific gameplay conditions that triggered the issue. PoE 2 team then handed the affected hardware over to the graphics card manufacturer, ultimately identifying the root cause as an internal parameter known as shader heap size.
Increasing this parameter eliminated the stuttering bug found in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0. Once a new driver incorporating this fix was released, crash rates dropped back to normal levels.
Shader loading bug
While graphics card issues were the primary culprit behind the recent frequent stuttering in PoE 2, excessively long shader compilation times pose a potential risk for future problems.
Simply put, most large-scale games involving frequent scene transitions do not compile shaders in real-time as you progress; instead, they spend a considerable amount of time compiling all shaders when you first launch the game.
These shaders subsequently occupy a large portion of your driver's cache. However, the older driver versions, the ones causing PoE 2 stuttering, failed to clear out old shaders.
Consequently, as you progressed through PoE 2, the relevant folders on your system would frequently fill up, requiring manual cleanup. Failure to do so resulted in excessively long loading times and potential display issues in new scenes.
Due to certain unchangeable limitations, the only solution available to PoE 2 team was to reduce the size of the shaders, thereby minimizing the likelihood of the cache filling up and causing issues.
What can you do now?
Generally, once the bug is fixed, you simply need to install the patch to resume normal gameplay. However, please be patient: because the old shaders are being cleared, the game will need to recompile them, resulting in longer-than-usual loading times.
With Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0, you can engage in mapping with greater peace of mind; even when rapidly switching maps or facing scenarios packed with enemies and loot, you no longer need to worry about losses caused by prolonged stuttering or lag.
Of course, this doesn't mean you'll never experience a crash again, but the frequency will certainly drop to an acceptable level, and issues won't linger unresolved for long, as the root cause has been eliminated.
What does the bug fix signify?
Bugs are a common occurrence in any game, but the difference lies in how quickly they are addressed. The speed of the response regarding Path of Exile 2 and the effort put into fixing these bugs have been evident to everyone.
Consequently, while short-term bugs might have caused some players to temporarily step away from PoE 2, the developers' serious commitment is likely to foster greater appreciation and anticipation for the game, a positive sign for the potential 1.0 launch at the end of the year.
More importantly, the fixes addressing the shader and device removed errors brought to light potential core issues within Path of Exile 2. Had these surfaced after the official launch rather than during Early Access, the impact would undoubtedly have been far more severe.
You might sometimes complain when bugs aren't fixed immediately, but PoE 2's actions demonstrate that the developers are constantly attentive to the player experience. If a problem persists, it is likely because it is exceptionally tricky to solve, not because of inaction.
In short, now is the time to return to, or invest more time in Return of the Ancients! Whether you are diving deep into the endgame or experimenting with new builds, the experience is sure to be better than ever!
While Martial Artist was popular in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0, its potential wasn't fully realized. This is because Ice Nova build, leveraging the synergy between Ascendancy Passives and a glove, maximizes the burst damage of large-area spells.
However, a full Ice Nova Martial Artist build, equipped with Divine Orbs, costs significantly more than a standard Path of Exile 2 build, but its performance and damage output more than justify the investment.
Core Gameplay
This Martial Artist build uses Ice Nova as its primary map-clearing ability, while utilizing Comet for boss fights.
The core of this build's overwhelming strength lies in the synergy between Ascendancy Passive: Way of the Stonefist and a glove - both provide double damage against full-health enemies, allowing for maximum burst damage from large-area spells.
However, this build also has a very high gear threshold, with an overall cost of approximately 2000 PoE 2 Divine Orbs. Core components include: specific armor without Life cost affix (approximately 400-500 Divine Orbs), a Rathpith Globe with two Mana-related affixes (approximately 200-300 Divine Orbs), and a Mageblood belt costing around 400-500 Divine Orbs.
If you lack these key components, even with a budget of 1000 Divine Orbs, it's not recommended to attempt this build, as it's not a progressive upgrade but rather a configuration that relies on specific affixes and unique combinations to be effective.
Skill and Gear Division of Labor
To achieve high mobility and high damage output for this Ice Nova Martial Artist build in PoE 2, our first weapon set will use a high-attack-speed Matsya Crescent Quarterstaff, paired with a Shattering Palm as the primary means of movement and closing the distance.
It's worth noting that this skill is linked to Brutality I Support Gem to prevent explosion damage from killing enemies, thus ensuring monsters are always at full health and creating the conditions for Ice Nova's double damage.
The first weapon set can also use Blasphemy in conjunction with Temporal Chains to automatically cast a curse to slow enemies when you charge in. While not essential, this improves Ice Nova Martial Artist's survivability and crowd control.
Next, we need Spellslinger and Infusion effect provided by Powered By Verisium to keep Remnants of Kalguur active, significantly enhancing Ice Nova Martial Artist's elemental damage.
Damage Skill Configuration
Our main damage skill, Ice Nova, is linked to Rakiata's Flow, Vorana's Siege, Efficiency II, Zenith II, and Pinpoint Critical Support Gems. With an 88% critical hit rate, even if a one-hit kill isn't possible, the high critical hit rate will improve the efficiency of finishing off enemies.
If your Ice Nova Martial Artist gear is already high enough, you can replace Pinpoint Critical Support Gem with Ambush Support Gem for higher single-hit damage.
Comet is specifically designed for boss fights in PoE 2, with Support Gems combination being Elemental Focus, Zarokh's Refrain, Ambush, Considered Casting, and Concentrated Area.
Because Comet usually hits after Ice Nova, when the enemy is no longer at full health, we need high critical strike chance to ensure Ice Nova Martial Artist's damage output.
Affix Priority
Besides needing a lot of core unique gear from Path of Exile 2 Divine Orbs, there are clear choices regarding affixes.
For weapons, Freeze Buildup affix feels better than pure damage stats, and Runic Ward affix is only needed on gloves, not on other slots.
The helmet must gain Spirit through corruption; otherwise, it won't meet the skill retention requirements of Ice Nova Martial Artist build.
Armor should absolutely not have affixes that consume extra Life, because this build isn't Blood Mage and lacks Life regeneration; such affixes would create excessive survivability pressure.
For rings, prioritize Mana Cost Efficiency, Cast Speed, and Mana. Rings with +1 skill level are extremely expensive, but you can consider them as a late-game upgrade option.
Boots need to maximize Energy Shield, as the entire Ice Nova Martial Artist build relies on Eldritch Battery to convert Energy Shield into Mana, combined with Mind Over Matter to absorb some damage with Mana.
Passive Skill Tree Planning
For this Ice Nova Martial Artist build, our PoE 2 Passive Skill Tree planning is relatively straightforward.
For Martial Artist build, prioritize all attack speed and skill speed nodes in the starting area to optimize the movement feel of Shattering Palm. Then extend towards Eldritch Battery and Mind Over Matter, while also considering damage and area-of-effect nodes for Ice Nova and Comet.
Ultimately, the radius of Ice Nova in Infused state is seven meters. A radius lower than this will significantly affect your map clearing efficiency, making it a crucial threshold to maintain.
In terms of gameplay, Ice Nova Martial Artist build isn't a one-button playstyle. Instead, you quickly approach enemies using Shattering Palm to apply a slowing effect, then unleash Ice Nova or Comet to finish them off.
While the current PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 tends to favor single-skill all-rounders, this build still retains room for combo attacks, especially in high-pressure scenarios like Delirium or Rituals. Alternating between movement and curses can greatly improve Martial Artist's survivability and damage output rhythm.
While this build is suitable for boss farming and endgame content, its performance is strictly dependent on the aforementioned gear requirements; a similar experience cannot be achieved with a lower budget and compromised setups. You can buy PoE 2 Divine Orbs from POECURRENCY.com to fully customize this Ice Nova Martial Artist build!
Once completed, this Ice Nova Martial Artist build will make you unrivaled in PoE 2.
