Path Of Exile 3.26 May Be Saying Goodbye To Players! - My Personal Prediction

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!

Besides the new Druid class, Path of Exile 2 0.4.0 update also added a new ascendancy for Sorceress: Disciple of Varashta. This ascendancy quickly exploded in popularity in the early league by bypassing traditional critical strike damage bonuses and minion limitations.

Here, we'll showcase Djinn Disciple of Varashta build, which, based on the high burst damage of Djinn and flexible resource and cooldown management, has almost changed the current endgame meta.

Build Overview

The core idea of this build revolves around Navira's Fracturing and Ruzhan's Reckoning, ultimately using Cold Djinn to explode the entire screen.

Navira's Fracturing

The highlight of Navira's Fracturing is that it causes all Chilled Ground with enemies standing on it to deal high spell damage and have a strong Freeze effect.

However, to fully utilize Navira's Fracturing, we need to create a large amount of Chilled Ground. There are many different ways to do this, but we decided to primarily use a Cold-Infused playstyle with Ice Nova.

Because when it's Cold-Infused, it creates a patch of Chilled Ground. This Chilled Ground has the same radius as the explosion, meaning we can significantly expand the area of effect by continuously using Cold Djinn explosions, even covering the entire screen.

I need to remind you that Chilled Ground effect does not stack, meaning that even if you trigger many different Chilled Ground effects, it will only count as one instance of damage. So, don't continuously cast it.

Furthermore, the way Chilled Ground works is that it needs an enemy on it, so if there are no enemies on it, it won't explode. But if someone is standing on the edge of Chilled Ground, even if the effect extends beyond the screen, it will still explode. So you can use this to your advantage to maximize your attack range.

To obtain these infusion effects, you must use Frost Bomb, and increase the maximum number of uses through Overabundance. Then, use Spell Cascade in your skill links, which will create two additional bombs. Finally, using Short Fuse II, you can increase the detonation speed by 80%, making it explode almost instantly, but at the cost of reduced damage.

If you don't want to take any risks, you can also equip Harmonic Remnants II gem, which allows you to pick up remnants from 35% further away, allowing you to collect all the loot while staying away from the battlefield!

Ruzhan's Reckoning

For Ruzhan's Reckoning, it is mainly used to compensate for single-target damage, because although Navira's Fracturing deals decent damage, its cooldown is not short enough to deal sufficient single-target damage.

Casting Ruzhan's Reckoning skill also adds a large amount of fire damage, and then you gain a 100% Ignite Magnitudes bonus, which is essentially a 100% Ignite damage bonus. Since this is our single-target skill, we simply press the button, and it will jump up to attack the enemy and unleash a powerful shockwave.

Cold Djinn

Finally, Cold Djinn is crucial for Disciple of Varashta build because it perfectly complements the core mechanic of this ascendancy - summoning powerful and invincible Djinn minions.

Especially when used in conjunction with Cold Djinn, through interaction with support gems such as Frost Nexus and Encroaching Ground, and burst damage commands, it can generate powerful screen-clearing capabilities and massive damage to bosses, creating a satisfying and safe monster-clearing engine, and benefiting greatly from cooldown recovery and area of ​​effect.

How To Crit?

In fact, we have Baryanic Leylines and all the minion critical strike bonuses on the skill tree. Don't underestimate them; the minion critical strike bonuses are quite substantial, allowing our critical strike chance to reach approximately 45%. Combined with the high base critical strike chance of Navira's Fracturing skill itself, using Malice aura will bring our critical strike chance very close to the limit.

In addition, we also use Soul Joy, which not only provides a large amount of energy shield but also provides critical strike damage multiplier for summoned creatures, giving us critical strike bonuses that are usually unavailable.

Defense

Now let's talk about defense.

First, Djinn Disciple of Varashta is a hybrid energy shield and life build. If you're willing to invest more PoE 2 currency into your character, you could eventually even transition to a chaos immunity build. However, this is just an early-game league starter character, so we've opted for a hybrid build for now.

We utilize The Fourth Teaching, which increases your energy shield recharge rate by 40%. So now we can recover nearly 2000 energy shield per second, fully recharging in just 2 seconds. This means if we get hit, we only need to move away from enemies and wait 4 seconds to almost instantly recover full health.

Additionally, we need some chaos resistance and ailment immunity. You can use Amanamu's Gaze on your helmet, which removes a damaging ailment when you use a command skill. This way, every time you use Navira's Fracturing and Ruzhan's Reckoning, you can remove harmful ailments, providing us with decent defensive capabilities.

Equipment

Finally, let's talk about some key equipment for this build.

Throughout the game, we need to prioritize increasing our life and resistances, and look for Wands, Scepters, and Staffs with high Cold Spell skill level bonuses or all spell skill level bonuses to maximize the effectiveness of Cold Djinn.

For other equipment, prioritize boots with movement speed bonuses, and try to get some cast speed bonuses on rings and amulets. Focus on increasing maximum life on your equipment, but also try to get some energy shield if possible.

The equipment we chose is as follows:

• Scepter: Cataclysm Star
• Helmet: Fate Guardian
• Focus: Dread Spell Tasalian Focus
• Rings: Soul Knuckle & Demon Hold
• Amulet: Entropy Clasp
• Armor: Vis Mortis
• Gloves: Carrion Touch
• Belt: Mind Thread
• Boots: Bramble Sole

Essentially, Djinn Disciple of Varashta is not just a powerful summoner build; it transforms Disciple of Varashta into a powerful minion-centric destroyer through high interaction and a series of carefully crafted mechanics. Djinn can create constantly spreading ground effects, triggering powerful chain reactions across the screen for efficient and safe clearing of enemies.