First Look on Huntress Ascendancies: Which One is the Best Ascendancy?
Alright, Pathfinders, gather ’round! The Dawn of the Hunt update for Path of Exile 2 is rustling the leaves just over the horizon, bringing with it the brand-new Huntress class. Agile in ranged combat, deadly, and ready to stalk the wilds of Wraeclast, the Huntress arrives alongside new Skill Gems emphasizing her versatility with both Spear skills and Bows. Before we delve into her powerful Ascendancy Class specializations – the Amazon and the Ritualist – let’s take a quick look at some of the core tools she’ll be bringing to the fight.
A Glimpse at the Huntress’s Arsenal: Key Skill Gems
The Huntress class introduces a suite of skill gems designed to synergize with her spear and buckler (or bow!). Naturally, these skills can be further customized with PoE 2’s extensive support gem system, allowing players to tailor the Huntress’s abilities towards her spear and bow mastery, differentiating her from classes focused on other weapon types like those utilizing crossbow skills. Here are some highlights revealed so far:
Whirling Slash:
A foundational melee skill creating a whirlwind of spears that damages and blinds nearby enemies, effective against foes within melee range. Successive casts expand its radius, and it explodes upon ending, dealing damage based on its size. Intriguingly, it can absorb elemental ground effects it’s cast over, adding that element to its damage.
Rapid Assault:
A swift level 5 spear strike skill, perfect for engaging enemies quickly and likely scaling well with attack speed enhancements.
Storm Spear:
An early-game (level 1) ranged attacks option allowing the Huntress to hurl her spear, dealing lightning damage to targets in its path.
Spearfield:
Unlocked at level 13, this skill rains down spears in a cone, damaging and significantly slowing enemies – great for crowd control.
Blazing Lance:
Also level 13, this summons a fiery spear from the sky to strike targets for substantial fire damage.
Naturally, these skills can be further customized with PoE 2’s extensive support gem system, allowing players to tailor the Huntress’s abilities, complementing her focus while differentiating her from classes that might utilize other existing skills or weapon types like crossbows (though Huntress herself primarily uses Spears/Bows). Now, let’s see how her Ascendancies enhance these capabilities.
The Amazon: Spear Skills, Speed, and Elemental Fury
First up, let’s peer into the leafy canopy of the Amazon Ascendancy. This path feels like a natural evolution of the classic Ranger archetype within the PoE 2 framework, focusing on skillful attacks, potent defenses against enemy attacks, and a touch of elemental magic. If you’re planning on using those dynamic new spear skills, the Amazon offers powerful synergy.
Early Game Sustain & Recovery in Path of Exile 2:
Right out of the gate, the Amazon offers interesting solutions for keeping resources flowing. “Azmeri Brew” (2 points) provides a neat two-for-one: “Life Flasks also recover Mana, Mana Flasks also recover Life.” If your mana flask is pumping out, say, 250 mana per second, bam, it’s also restoring 250 life per second. Your humble health potion suddenly pulls double duty for your mana pool, too.
Now, this plays real nice with all those flask charge and recovery nodes conveniently clustered around the Ranger/Huntress starting neighbourhood on the passive tree. You won’t have to wander far to juice up your flask game. This plays beautifully with flask nodes and Keystones like Eternal Youth or Oasis. On the flip side, “Mystic Harvest” (2 points) allows “Life Leech recovers based on your Elemental Damage as well as Physical Damage.” Seeing this on an Ascendancy feels like a big flashing sign pointing towards GGG’s design direction for recovery in PoE 2 – making it something you gotta work for and invest in, managing your own life pool and resources more carefully. This is significant in PoE 2, potentially opening up leech for elemental attackers.
Flipping the Defensive Script: Stalking Panther
“Stalking Panther” is a truly transformative node: “Evasion Rating from equipped Helmet, Gloves and Boots is doubled. Evasion Rating from equipped Body Armour is halved.” This encourages spreading evasion across smaller gear pieces, enabling powerful uniques like Queen of the Forest (QotF), Dusk Bloom, or Dancing Mirage that normally suffer from low base defenses. High evasion from smaller slots also helps maintain mobility while potentially layering damage with skills like Whirling Slash. You can even opt for a non-evasion chest without penalty. It’s a build-defining choice.
Infusing Attacks & Exploiting Weaknesses:
Moving into the four-point branches, Elemental Infusion turns Power/Endurance/Frenzy charges into elemental ammo, empowering your next projectile attack to explode for significant elemental damage (a whopping 612% weapon damage at level 20!). This seems like it could pair effectively with rapid-fire skills like Rapid Assault (for burst) or ranged combat options like Storm Spear or Blazing Lance for added impact. Infused Avatar makes these infusions 50% more efficient on average. This one’s short and sweet: “50% chance for Infusion to not be consumed when Infusing a projectile.”
Basically, it’s a ‘buy one, get one half-off’ coupon for your infused shots. This node lets you stretch those hard-earned charges further, effectively doubling the bang you get for each charge consumed, on average (RNGesus be willing, of course). It neatly ties back into that loop of needing good charge generation and attack speed – the more efficient your infusions are, the more boom-booms you can dish out. Simple, effective, makes the whole Infusion mechanic feel much smoother.
Another major branch starts with Predatory Instinct:
“Reveal Weaknesses against Rare and Unique enemies. 50% more Damage against enemies with an open Weakness.” So, what’s the skinny on these “Weaknesses”? From the sneak peeks we’ve seen, they look like highlighted segments on the enemy’s health bar. When their current health falls in one of these vulnerable zones, bam! They have an “open Weakness,” and you start hitting significantly harder – a cool 50% more Damage, to be exact.
Now, the big question is how much uptime this weakness state will have. Looking at the brief glimpse from the reveal video, if we assume the already-missing health didn’t have a weakness (big assumption!), it might average out to something like 20% more damage over the entire fight. But honestly, it wouldn’t shock me if there was some weakness early on, pushing the average closer to maybe 25% more damage overall. We’ll need to see it in action to be sure.
BUT! Here’s the really juicy bit. Pay attention to the wording: You deal 50% more Damage, not “the enemy takes 50% more damage.” Why does this tiny detail matter? Ailments!
If you smack an enemy with a damaging ailment – think Bleed, Poison, or Ignite – while they have an open Weakness, that ailment calculates its damage based on your hit, including that sweet 50% more damage bonus. And here’s the kicker: the ailment keeps dealing that boosted damage for its entire duration, even if the enemy’s health bar zips past the weakness zone! This makes Predatory Instinct potentially massive for ailment-focused builds. That’s some serious snapshotting potential right there.
Next up is In for the Kill:
“20% increased Movement Speed and 40% increased Skill Speed while an enemy with an open Weakness is in your presence.”
Key thing here: this speed boost is like a fair-weather friend – it’s only around while the enemy is sitting squarely in that weakness zone. The moment their health dips out, the speed boost vanishes.
Still, this is a pretty potent node! Faster movement helps you dodge incoming nastiness, and faster skill speed (think attack/cast speed) means less time standing still winding up your attacks. It’s a nice blend of offense and defense rolled into one.
Now, comparing it directly to the raw damage boost from Predatory Instinct? “In for the Kill” probably won’t give you quite the same oomph on paper for most builds. That’s because “increased Skill Speed” gets added together with all your other “increased Attack/Cast Speed” mods, while Predatory Instinct’s “50% more Damage” is a separate multiplier, which usually packs a bigger punch. But hey, speed kills (and helps you not get killed), so don’t sleep on this one!
Accuracy into Offense: Critical Precision
The final branch gets spicy with accuracy. Critical Precision allows “Chance to Hit Attacks can exceed 100%” and grants “additional Critical Hit Chance equal to 25% of excess Chance to Hit.” This makes stacking Accuracy/Dexterity highly rewarding for crit builds. Capping it off is Precision Strikes: “Attacks using your Weapons have added Physical Damage equal to 25% of the Accuracy Rating on the Weapon,” turning weapon accuracy rolls into substantial flat damage – an endgame focused node rewarding well-rolled weapons.
Amazon Initial Thoughts:
The Amazon looks versatile and powerful, offering strong offensive paths (hits, ailments, elemental infusion, crit scaling), unique defensive twists, and solid recovery. She seems well-equipped to leverage fast-paced Spear and Bow combat, making her a strong contender for a popular and effective Huntress choice right out of the gate.
The Ritualist: Dark Bargains, Blood Magic, and Gear Amplification
But the Amazon isn’t the only path. For those drawn to darker, more esoteric powers, the Ritualist Ascendancy offers a different flavour, blending visceral gore with potent, if sometimes costly, enhancements.
Gore and Sacrifice:
The Ritualist makes an immediate impression with Corrupted Life Force, passively growing Blood Boils on monsters that explode on death, applying the stacking Corrupted Blood Physical DoT (distinct from Bleeding). It seems geared towards enhancing clear speed, but its single-target value and scaling methods look questionable based on current info.
Next is the intriguing, yet confusing, “As The Whispers Ask,” granting the Ritual Sacrifice skill to absorb modifiers from slain unique monsters (Headhunter-lite). A crucial ambiguity exists from the reveal: does it grant one mod or all mods? This difference is massive. The follow-up, “As The Whispers Demand,” lets you sacrifice 20% life for one random mod. The cost is steep, the reward uncertain.
Charm Tech and Clutch Recovery:
Moving away from blood magic, “Intricate Sigils” focuses on Charms, granting “+1 Charm Slot” and “20% more Charm Charges Gained.” The companion node, “Mind Phylacteries,” allows consuming 25% Max Mana to trigger charms lacking charges – potentially guaranteeing crucial defensive charm uptime during long boss fights. Think of it as an emergency battery pack for your Charms, powered by your mana pool. When a Charm should trigger but doesn’t have the juice, this node lets you pay 25% of your max mana instead to force it to activate.
Why is this cool?
Because mana is generally way easier to keep topped up than Charm charges, especially during prolonged boss fights where you’re not constantly mowing down mobs to refuel. You’ve got mana flasks, mana regeneration, maybe even fancy mana recovery mechanics baked into your build. Another branch, “Wildwood Persistence,” increases “Life Recovery Rate per 5% missing Life” boosting recovery over time when health is low. It’s got that satisfying ‘clutch factor’ vibe. The lower your health dips – whether from taking a nasty hit or maybe dabbling in some self-inflicted Blood Magic shenanigans – the faster your life starts zipping back up.
Important distinction: it boosts your Life Recovery Rate. This means it supercharges recovery over time effects, but won’t do squat for instant life gains. So, think:
- Life recovery from your flasks (the heal-over-time part, not the instant chunk).
- Good old Life Regeneration.
- Life Leech (as long as it’s the gradual kind, not instant).
- Even Life Recharge if you’re rocking the Eternal Youth keystone.
It’s a nifty two-pointer that makes your recovery more potent precisely when you’re sweating bullets. However, there’s a big asterisk here. This node really shines in a world where monster damage isn’t constantly threatening to delete your health bar in one frame. If PoE 2 manages to tone down the one-shot fiesta potential compared to its predecessor, making prolonged scraps more common? Then yeah, Wildwood Persistence could be a great choice. If big spike damage is still king, its value might diminish.
The Ultimate Price for Power: The Extra Ring Slot
Finally, we reach the Ritualist’s defining feature. To access “Unfurled Finger,” you must first take a penalty node (-30% Max Mana / -25% Spirit / -15% All Res). Your reward? An entire additional ring slot! Rings in PoE 2 are no joke. They’re powerhouses, capable of rolling hefty amounts of attributes, crucial resistances, life, mana… the works. Plus, there are bound to be some tempting unique rings vying for that extra space.
The payoff, “Mystic Achievement”
Grants “25% increased Bonuses gained from equipped Rings and Amulets.” This combo massively amplifies the power derived from potentially three rings and an amulet, scaling incredibly well with high-end gear. It opens up exciting options to craft specialized jewelry for defensive layering or stat caps.
Ritualist Initial Thoughts:
The Ritualist feels heavily defined by its final branch. The extra ring slot offers immense scaling potential but requires significant gear investment. The other nodes offer situational utility or defense but lack the clear offensive identity of the Amazon based on current information. This makes the Ritualist feel flexible but potentially less immediately impactful, perhaps shining brightest as a second character once powerful jewelry is acquired to exploit its unique strengths.
The Huntress Ascendancy Classes Verdict (First Impressions)
So, there you have it – a first glimpse at the two faces of the Huntress based on the Dawn of the Hunt reveals.
- The Amazon offers a more direct path to offensive power and unique defensive mechanics, likely appealing to those who enjoy fast-paced, skillful combat and want to fully leverage the new Spear and Bow skills from the get-go. She feels like a well-rounded and immediately powerful option.
- The Ritualist presents a more enigmatic path, demanding sacrifices (own life, stats), but offering incredible gear scaling potential via its unique ring slot mechanic. Her strength lies in stat stacking and gear mastery, rewarding players who take time to optimize.
Which path will you stalk when Dawn of the Hunt arrives? The choice, as always, is yours, Exile. Good hunting!
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What is the Huntress class in Path of Exile 2?
The Huntress is a brand-new class introduced in Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt update. Described as agile and deadly, she embodies versatility, being proficient with both Spears (often paired with a buckler) for melee combat and Bows for ranged engagements. Her design emphasizes dynamic, strategic gameplay, supported by a unique suite of new skill gems tailored to her weapon specializations.
What are the Ascendancy Classes for the Huntress?
Upon reaching the appropriate point in the game, the Huntress gains access to two distinct Ascendancy Classes that significantly specialize her capabilities. The first is the Amazon, which leans into skillful attacks, speed, elemental infusions, and unique defensive mechanics, feeling like an evolution of the classic Ranger archetype. The second is the Ritualist, which explores darker themes involving blood magic, sacrifices, esoteric defenses like enhanced Charms, and powerful gear scaling through unique mechanics like an extra ring slot.
What are some key new Skill Gems for the Huntress?
The Huntress comes with several new skill gems designed for her spear and bow focus. Notable examples include Whirling Slash, a foundational melee AoE that creates an expanding spear whirlwind; Rapid Assault, a fast spear strike for engaging enemies; Storm Spear, a ranged spear throw dealing lightning damage; Spearfield, an AoE rain of spears that slows enemies for crowd control; and Blazing Lance, which summons a fiery spear from the sky for targeted fire damage. These skills form the core of her combat style and can be customized further with support gems.
What’s the main difference between the Amazon and Ritualist Ascendancies?
The core difference lies in their focus and approach to power. The Amazon provides more direct combat enhancements: speed, elemental damage via infusions, critical strike potential through accuracy, unique evasion mechanics, and reliable recovery options. She feels like a martial powerhouse enhancing skill execution. The Ritualist, conversely, offers power through less direct means: potentially powerful but situational monster mod absorption, enhanced defensive layers via Charms and life recovery, and massive potential stat scaling derived from sacrificing defenses/resources for an extra, amplified ring slot. Her power feels more conditional and heavily tied to gear quality and specific mechanics.
How does the Amazon help with sustain (life/mana)?
The Amazon offers two primary nodes for sustain early on. “Azmeri Brew” provides excellent resource management by making Life Flasks also recover Mana, and Mana Flasks also recover Life, essentially giving you two resources back for each flask charge spent. This synergizes well with flask investment. Alternatively, “Mystic Harvest” tackles sustain through offense by allowing Life Leech to function based on Elemental Damage, not just Physical. This is crucial for elemental attackers in PoE 2, opening up a vital recovery mechanic that would otherwise be unavailable.
What does the Amazon’s “Stalking Panther” notable do?
“Stalking Panther” fundamentally changes how evasion is built. It doubles the Evasion Rating gained from your Helmet, Gloves, and Boots, while simultaneously halving the Evasion Rating from your Body Armour. This shifts the focus from needing one high-evasion chest piece to valuing high evasion rolls on multiple smaller gear slots. The major benefit is enabling the use of powerful unique body armours (like Queen of the Forest or Dusk Bloom) that typically have low base evasion but offer strong unique effects, as the lost evasion from the chest can be compensated for elsewhere.
What is the “Weakness” mechanic from the Amazon’s “Predatory Instinct”?
“Predatory Instinct” reveals “Weaknesses” on Rare and Unique enemies, displayed as highlighted segments on their health bar. When the enemy’s current health falls within one of these segments, they have an “open Weakness.” While this condition is active, you deal a massive 50% more damage to that enemy. This is a powerful multiplicative damage boost, especially significant for damage-over-time effects like Ignite or Poison, as they “snapshot” this bonus for their entire duration if applied while the Weakness is open.
How does the Amazon convert Accuracy into offense?
The Amazon has a two-node branch dedicated to leveraging Accuracy. “Critical Precision” allows your Chance to Hit to exceed 100% and grants flat added base Critical Strike Chance equal to 25% of the excess percentage. This directly rewards stacking Accuracy or Dexterity for crit builds. Following this, “Precision Strikes” adds flat Physical Damage to your weapon attacks based on 25% of the explicit Accuracy Rating found on the weapon itself, turning a potentially less desired stat on a weapon into a significant source of added damage.
What is the Ritualist’s “Corrupted Life Force” notable?
This is a passive effect that causes “Blood Boils” to grow on nearby monsters. When these monsters are slain, the boils explode, applying stacks of “Corrupted Blood” to other nearby enemies. Corrupted Blood is a stacking Physical Damage over Time debuff (up to 10 stacks), importantly distinct from Bleeding and not scaled by Bleed modifiers. Based on initial impressions, it seems primarily useful for adding splash damage during clearing, but its single-target effectiveness and scaling options appear limited.
What is the Ritualist’s “Ritual Sacrifice” skill (“As The Whispers Ask”)?
This skill, granted by the “As The Whispers Ask” notable, allows the Ritualist to use the corpses of slain Rare monsters. By activating the skill on the corpse, you absorb power, gaining monster modifiers for a duration, similar in concept to Path of Exile 1’s Headhunter. However, a key point of confusion from the reveals is whether you gain one random modifier from the Rare, or all of the modifiers it possessed. This distinction drastically affects the node’s power level and desirability.
How do the Ritualist’s Charm nodes work?
The Ritualist has a two-node branch enhancing Charms. “Intricate Sigils” provides a direct defensive/utility boost by granting an additional Charm socket and making you gain 20% more Charm Charges from all sources, improving uptime. “Mind Phylacteries” offers a powerful sustain mechanic: if a Charm would trigger but lacks charges, you can instead consume 25% of your Maximum Mana to activate it anyway. This makes it much easier to maintain crucial defensive charms (like anti-freeze or anti-curse) during boss fights or situations where killing monsters for charges isn’t feasible.
What does the Ritualist’s “Wildwood Persistence” notable offer?
This is a defensive notable that increases your Life Recovery Rate – how quickly you regenerate life, leech life, or recover life from flasks over time – based on how much life you are missing. Specifically, you gain “5% increased Life Recovery Rate per 5% missing Life.” This means the lower your health gets, the faster your recovery effects work to bring it back up, acting as a clutch defensive mechanism when you are most vulnerable. Its value depends on PoE 2’s combat pacing and whether sustained recovery is viable.
What is the major feature of the Ritualist’s “Unfurled Finger” / “Mystic Achievement” branch?
This final branch is arguably the Ritualist’s most defining feature. To reach it, you must first accept a significant penalty by pathing through a node that reduces your Max Mana, Spirit, or All Elemental Resistances. The first major reward is “Unfurled Finger,” which grants a whole extra Ring Slot, a massive potential power increase given the strength of rings. Following that, “Mystic Achievement” significantly amplifies this by granting “25% increased Bonuses gained from equipped Rings and Amulets,” boosting the effectiveness of stats on all your jewelry. This combo offers unparalleled gear scaling potential.
Which Huntress Ascendancy seems better for beginners or league starting?
Based on the current understanding from the reveals and notes, the Amazon appears to be the more beginner-friendly and stronger league starter. Her benefits seem more direct, less conditional, and provide clear offensive and defensive advantages early on without requiring specific high-end gear or complex mechanics like sacrificing life or managing penalties for core power.
What is the cost/benefit of the Ritualist’s “As The Whispers Demand”?
This node modifies Ritual Sacrifice, allowing you to use it on yourself. The cost is steep: you instantly remove 20% of your Maximum Life. The benefit is gaining one random monster modifier from the general pool. You can only have one modifier active from this self-sacrifice method at a time. Given the high life cost, the randomness of the reward, and the limitation to a single buff, its general utility seems questionable unless targeting specific, powerful mods before major encounters, which may be unreliable.
How does the Amazon’s “Elemental Infusion” work?
This notable turns your primary charges (Power, Endurance, Frenzy) into offensive ammunition. When you consume a charge (through skills or mechanics that do so), you gain two stacks of a corresponding elemental Infusion (Cold for Power, Fire for Endurance, Lightning for Frenzy). The next time you use a projectile attack skill, it consumes one stack to empower the first projectile, causing it to explode at the end of its flight for a significant 612% weapon damage (at level 20), with its physical damage converted to the infusion’s element. It adds considerable clearing power and elemental flavour.
