PoE 2 Warrior Deep Dive: Ascendancy + Skill Combos
Introduction: In Path of Exile 2, the Warrior class is the quintessential melee fighter, diving straight into the heart of combat. With a playstyle revolving around powerful slams, totems, and warcries, the Warrior can excel at both dealing devastating damage and taking hits in return. This guide will break down the Warrior's most promising skills, as well as the Titan and Warbringer Ascendancies, giving you a deeper understanding of the Warrior's potential in PoE 2.
Warrior Skills:
1. Earthquake
Skill Overview: Earthquake is a basic but effective slam that creates a Jagged Ground Effect, slowing enemies and erupting after a few seconds, dealing significant damage.
Combo Potential: To maximize Earthquake's effectiveness, you can combine it with Stampede to initiate combat, followed by stacking Jagged Ground Effects with skills like Totems or other supportive skills. This synergy should help maintain high damage output and crowd control.
Endgame Viability: With proper scaling and synergy, Earthquake can remain a strong choice for both boss fights and mapping.
2. Boneshatter
Skill Overview: In PoE 2, Boneshatter seems less potent as a main damage skill, but it can still be useful for stunning enemies and generating Endurance charges.
Combo Potential: Pair it with Enduring Stuns Support for consistent Endurance charge generation. The Impact Shockwave Support can also help with AOE clear, making it a versatile skill for crowd control.
3. Sunder
Skill Overview: Sunder boasts a high damage effectiveness of 237% and an increased critical damage bonus of 100%, making it an excellent choice for endgame slam builds.
Endgame Viability: Its impressive base numbers, combined with critical damage bonuses, make Sunder a top-tier skill for slam-based Warrior builds.
4. Armour Breaker
Skill Overview: Armour Breaker is a support skill designed to reduce enemy armor, amplifying the damage of your other skills.
Combo Potential: Use it in conjunction with Boneshatter and Devastate Support to break armor consistently, enhancing damage against tough enemies, especially in boss fights and rares.
5. Ancestral Warrior Totem / Shockwave Totem
Totem Playstyle: The Ancestral Warrior Totem provides a dedicated totem-based playstyle, which can be particularly strong in builds focused on Mace Skills.
Shockwave Totem: On the other hand, Shockwave Totem can synergize with Earthquake to enhance damage and crowd control. However, you'll have to choose between the two due to the totem limit.
6. Resonating Shield
Skill Overview: The Resonating Shield allows you to block incoming hits while dealing damage. This skill provides both defensive and offensive bonuses, especially when combined with Armor stacking.
Defensive/Offensive Synergy: It's an excellent choice for those who want to bolster their defensive capabilities without sacrificing too much damage output.
7. Infernal Cry / Seismic Cry
Warcries: Both Infernal Cry and Seismic Cry consume Endurance charges and grant buffs or debuffs to nearby enemies.
Infernal Cry: Deals with fire damage, making it suitable for hybrid or ignite builds.
Seismic Cry: Focuses on physical damage, providing a solid buff for slam skills like Hammer of the Gods.
8. Hammer of the Gods
Skill Overview: This skill is a high burst attack with a massive 1307% attack damage but with a 24-second cooldown.
Combo Potential: Despite the cooldown, it can still be a strong boss damage tool, especially when paired with Ignite for continuous burn damage. It's especially effective in Titan builds where you can manage cooldowns more efficiently.
Ascendancies:
1. Titan Ascendancy
The Titan Ascendancy is designed for self-cast slams and a playstyle centered around heavy hits and physical damage.
Key Nodes:
Earthbreaker: Provides a 20% chance for your slams to cause aftershocks, amplifying damage. A great synergy with skills like Sunder and Earthquake.
Crushing Impacts: Ensures all your hits are Crushing Blows, which reduces enemy physical damage reduction, leading to higher damage output.
Surprising Strength: Provides 40% more damage against heavily stunned enemies, synergizing perfectly with Boneshatter and allowing for devastating follow-up attacks like Hammer of the Gods.
Stone Skin: Doubles your Armor from body armor, providing additional defensive strength.
Ancestral Empowerment: Slams used by the player gain an ancestral boost, increasing their damage over time.
Colossal Capacity: Grants additional inventory slots, though this might be more of a fun or QoL choice than a core combat mechanic.
Mysterious Lineage: Increases your maximum life by 20%, offering more survivability in high-damage scenarios.
Summary: The Titan Ascendancy is ideal for slam builds, offering a balanced mix of offense and defense, and is a great choice for players who want to maximize physical damage output and defensive utility
2. Warbringer Ascendancy
The Warbringer Ascendancy is more focused on Warcries, totems, and totem synergy, offering a more sophisticated playstyle with a higher potential for clearing and building variety.
Key Nodes:
Answered Call: Triggers Ancestral Spirits when summoning a totem, allowing you to buff both totem damage and clear speed.
Jade Heritage: Generates Jade Stacks over time, which can be used to transform into a Jade Statue, significantly reducing damage taken. A unique defense mechanism is reminiscent of Vaal Arctic Armour.
Warcaller's Bellow: Explodes corpses when you use a Warcry, dealing 25% of the enemy's life as physical damage. This is an excellent synergy with Warcry builds.
Greatwolf's Howl: Removes Warcry cooldowns, enabling constant Warcry uptime for maximized damage and clear speed.
Summary: Warbringer is perfect for players who enjoy Warcry-centric builds, offering strong clear potential and tackiness, though it may require more skill management to maximize its effectiveness.
Summary
Titan Ascendancy is best for players looking for hard-hitting, slam-based builds, with powerful defensive passives and DPS boosts against stunned enemies. It's a solid choice for self-cast melee builds.
Warbringer Ascendancy, on the other hand, excels at Warcry-based playstyles, totem setups, and high-speed clearing, making it ideal for those looking for greater build diversity and higher speed in mapping, albeit with more complex mechanics.
Ultimately, both Ascendancies provide a distinct playstyle, and which one to choose depends on whether you prefer tackiness and big hits (Titan) or constant Warcry damage and totem synergies (Warbringer). Both are powerful and have their own merits in PoE 2's expansive world! Whichever Ascendancy you choose, Titan or Warbringer, make sure to complement it with the right PoE items and PoE currency for a smooth journey through Path of Exile 2's challenges!
———— Dec-04-2024 PST ————