Path of Exile 2’s largest update yet, Dawn of the Hunt adds a ton of new content and changes the game in many ways. IGN and Maxroll have teamed up to bring you lots of new, helpful guides and builds to take on the daunting swatch of new stuff that we will do our best to summarize here: Patch 0.2.0 brings more ways to play with the all-new Huntress Class along with 5 Ascendancies, Azmeri Wisps to chase, shiny new Uniques to hunt for, and a revamped endgame experience.

The Huntress

A new class joins Path of Exile 2’s roster of characters, the Huntress. This Azmeri lost everything when she used a Virtue Gem to defend her home. So now she wields new skills in addition to her trusty Spear. The Huntress is a Dexterity class that shares a starting area with the Ranger in the lower-right portion of the Passive Skill Tree. Spears have a mix of close-range melee strikes and long range projectiles with bonuses that incentivize the use of both. Create an elemental surface with Frostbolt, drop a Whirling Slash, and unleash a flurry of Twisters, before leaping back in to do it all again. Another new item class is Bucklers, a special shield with the ability to Parry regular attacks. When you Parry an enemy you put them off balance increasing the attack damage they take. Unlike Souls games, there is no Parry window and you can use the Parry to animation cancel other skills making it quite agile. However, each time you Parry your stun meter increases and when the bar is full you are heavy stunned for 2.5 seconds, which is likely to result in your untimely demise.

Dive deeper with Maxroll’s Dawn of the Hunt Megapost, or read on for more information.

New Ascendancies

In addition to the new Huntress class, Dawn of the Hunt adds 5 new Ascendancies to Path of Exile 2. After completing a Trial of Ascension, your Ascendancy further specializes your class by unlocking new synergies and catering to unique playstyles. The Huntress has 2 Ascendancies to choose from, Ritualist and Amazon, and the Warrior, Witch, and Mercenary each get one new option.

Ritualist

The Ritualist learned in the depths of the Wildwoods, that power is achieved through sacrifice. You can steal bonuses from Rare monsters, or sacrifice a portion of your own health for a random bonus. With Corrupted Life Force, you gain a skill causing nearby enemies to grow Volatile Blood Boils, slay them to infect surrounding foes with Corrupted Blood a powerful degenerative effect that deals Physical Damage. The Unfurled Finger Notable grants a third ring slot, this is especially potent when paired with Mystic Attunement and a high-end ring. Lastly, the Ritualist has a variety of charming bonuses making it easier to combat dangerous elemental effects.

Amazon

An Amazon strikes swiftly. Elemental Infusion consumes charges to add elemental damage to your Attacks, and Infused Avatar gives a chance for your projectiles to benefit from the infusion without consuming it. Critical Strike and Penetrate further scale damage, based on accuracy rating, which is particularly notable because Dexterity classes have easy access to accuracy. Defensively, Mystic Harvest opens up access to leech, a recovery layer usually limited to Physical damage, and Azmeri Brew makes Flasks far more versatile. Lastly, her Predatory Instinct and In for the Kill Notables grant massive bonuses against Wraeclast’s most dangerous foes.

Smith of Kitava

The Smith of Kitava wields the Devourer’s power to his own ends. This ascendancy is harder to nail down, as many of the bonuses like Temper Weapon, Maifest Weapon, and Fire Spell on Hit are the sort of thing you need to play with to truly understand. However, Coal Stoker and Forged in Flame provide some of the most powerful defenses in the game. With Coal Stoaker, you need to dedicate less of your suffixes to resistances, meaning there’s more of them to use for damage. Maximum resistance is incredibly potent, with even as little as +5% Maximum Resistance mitigating around 20% of the elemental damage you take. Lastly, there’s Smith’s Masterwork, the ability to forge yourself a custom chest piece at the cost of some Ascendancy points. How useful this is depends on where Living Weapon, Against the Anvil, and Heat of the Forge fall as you only get 8 Ascendancy points to distribute amongst all the passives. With that said many of the passives including, Dedication to Kitava, Support Straps, Flowing Metal, Molten Symbol, and Kitavan Engraving all have potential.

Lich

A Lich wields forbidden power, even at the cost of her soul. First, there are some fan-favorite nodes from the original Path of Exile in Rupture the Soul and Dominion Over Flesh. Being able to curse enemies to make them explode into piles of loot is always a good time. Soulless Form provides a unique way to solve mana by increasing your maximum life. It also splits damage between your life and energy shield which is useful when you have easy ways to recover both. Eternal Life further enhances this effect, because your life cannot change while you have energy shield any damage split to your life is ignored so long as you have energy shield active. Atziri’s Distain splits damage to your life allowing you to ignore even more damage. Then there’s Necromantic Conduit and Blackened Heart, a way to provide a significant damage buff to yourself or allies, and what better allies exist than the mindless dead bound to your command? Lastly, Crystalline Phylactery, Price of Power, and Eldrich Empowerment offer solid bonuses to a variety of builds.

Note: there is a slight error in the graphic, Blackened Heart should be the node after Necromantic Conduit and Dominion Over Flesh should be the node after Rupture the Soul.

Tactician

The Tactician never works alone. This is a support-focused Ascendancy for the Mercenary class. It provides a variety of bonuses focused on Auras and buffs. A Solid Plan is particularly noteworthy as it’s normally difficult to scale your Spirit without using Sceptres. With Suppressing Fire and Right Where We Want Them, you can Pin foes to prevent them from acting, adding another crowd control effect to your party’s toolkit. Unleash Hell! Is a unique skill that gives you personal artillery, summon them to unleash a barrage of withering fire onto the battlefield.

Azmeri Wisps

With each new league, comes a new league mechanic, and for Dawn of the Hunt it’s Azmeri Wisps. Follow the lights and slay any monsters they empower. Each Wisp enhances the rewards of any monsters it empowers while giving them a variety of lethal bonuses. For example, a Cat Wisp gives empowered monsters Critical Hit Chance, whereas a Sacred Wisp upgrades the monster’s tier, turning Rares into Unique Bosses! Each time you encounter a Wisp it seeks out a Rare or Unique monster to infuse, greatly increasing the creature’s strength and its rewards.

Rogue Exiles

You can encounter Rogue Exiles, NPC invaders who fight like players and even wield powerful items. If you’re able to slay them, you get all the items they’re wearing, but be warned, if they slay you they escape and take their riches with them. Rogue Exiles provide a different kind of challenge since their builds work like a player’s, with a wide variety of skill combinations on offer. These foes tend to be more agile than most bosses, but aren’t as tanky. Keep an eye on their Unique items as these can be extremely valuable, and may make the encounter much more difficult!

Endgame Revamp

Dawn of the Hunt brings sweeping changes to Path of Exile 2’s endgame experience. The goal is to make mapping more exciting by providing players with more random encounters while reducing tedious busy work. You can now use up to 3 tablets in each Tower, this reduces the amount of busy work needed to enhance the nearby maps and maximize your loot. To balance this, fewer Towers spawn and they have been revamped to be more rewarding. Mechanics can spawn in Towers and they are guarded by a Unique Boss.

The Corruption mechanic has also been changed, you now choose between clearing each corrupted map, or rushing to the center to purify the cluster, changing the rewards, and unlocking the new purified map type. You can choose to farm the corrupted zones, slaying additional enemies in hopes of gaining currency and rare items. Alternatively, you could rush to the nexus to purify the zone in hopes of obtaining more Fraturing Orbs. This is a crafting currency that locks an affix on an item with 4 modifiers, making it unmodifiable by any means.

There’s a wealth of content to explore. In addition, Unique Maps present special challenges, each is difficult but rewarding. The Fractured Lake (pictured above) rewards you with exclusive base types that have more Prefixes or Suffixes than are normally possible. A Crystalline Cavern presents you with a room full of Essences to claim. Each one you defeat further empowers the boss, making the challenge at the end both more lethal and rewarding. Or you could explore the Feral Megaliths, a 10-round boss gauntlet that drops tons of loot and exclusive Runes.

Beyond just endgame content, crafting also got numerous changes. You can use Corrupted Essences to craft items with special effects. When encountering Rituals to the King in the Mists you’re now guaranteed an Omen, and Omen rewards are more common. If you explore Expedition you can now use your currencies to Recombinate items, merging 2 bases in hopes of keeping desirable affixes.

Patch Notes

It’s almost easier to talk about what didn’t change than it is to list everything that got tweaked, adjusted, or reworked for Dawn of the Hunt. When GGG said to forget everything you already knew about Path of Exile 2, they weren’t kidding. In particular, outlier builds like Archmage Spark Stormweaver and Attribute Stacking Hand of Wisdom and Action Monk saw heavy nerfs.

If you want to know more about the changes in patch 0.2.0 and have a strong constitution, check out the Patch 0.2.0 Patch Notes.

Path of Exile 2 Beginner’s Guide / Leveling Walkthrough

Whether you’re a veteran looking to improve or a new player trying to get into Path of Exile 2, Maxroll’s Comprehensive League Start Leveling Guide holds your hand with step-by-step instructions throughout the leveling process. This covers an efficient leveling path, how to get good gear, tips to increase your damage and defense, and how to solve common problems.

Maxroll Planner

Maxroll’s PoE2Planner is updated for Dawn of the Hunt and better than ever. You can now import your characters directly into the planner and share your build in just a couple of clicks. The PoE2Planner lets you quickly assemble the passives, items, and skills used in your build. You can also add more details like which bonuses to take from the campaign, outline a skill rotation or link to a custom loot filter on FilterBlade.

Start theorycrafting your own build on the Maxroll PoE2Planner!

On the other hand, if you’re looking for something to play, check out the Maxroll Builds section for planners made by the experts on Maxroll’s Path of Exile 2 team, or browse Community Planners for more builds put together by the community.

Builds

Dawn of the Hunt has brought a huge shakeup to the build meta! The increased difficulty nerfs to meta builds, and buffs to underperformers have resulted in a lot of changes. The Amazon, Lich, and Smith of Kitava have been absolutely dominating the meta during the first few days of the league. Here are a few of the builds being cooked up by the experts at Maxroll.

Amazon

Rake is a travel skill that easily rips through packs of monsters when combined with Stomping Grounds, with this planner from ZiggyD you can unleash carnage across Wraeclast. Rake has great mobility, decent single target damage and satisfying bleed pops thanks to Herald of Blood. As you keep progressing, you can continue scaling your build using Goratha’s endgame Bleed/Rake Amazon.

The Amazon is also adept at using Crossbows, combine Glacial Bolt with Artillery Ballista to clear easily while also doing high single target damage. Because your Ballistae can attack enemies while you’re dodging mechanics this build is easy to use against bosses. Check out this planner from Palsteron on how to build a Crossbow Amazon.

If you’re looking for something different, grab a bow and bring winter to your enemies with Aer0’s Ice Shot Amazon! This build uses Ice Shot to clear and Freezing Salvo to unleash icy devastation on more difficult enemies.

Then there’s the good old explosive Gas Arrow. This was one of the most popular builds for bow leveling at the start of early access and it’s a great way to get your Amazon to maps. Check out Tenkiei’s Explosive Gas Arrow Amazon planner for some inspiration!

Lastly a more endgame build, Crouchung_Tuna’s Lighting Spear Amazon! This build captures the feel of a Diablo 2 Javazon by blasting everything on the screen with lightning. As an endgame build you need to be in maps to start playing it, so use one of the earlier planners through the campaign and then respec to this.

Lich

Chaos DoT, or damage over time skills like Essence Drain and Contagion excel at clearing the screen while providing consistent damage. This makes them the perfect choice to pair with the excellent defenses provided by the Lich Ascendancy. Check out this planner from CaptainLance9 to play your own Chaos DoT Lich.

Why fight alone when you can bring your own personal army to each battle? If that’s your preferred playstyle then HelmBreaker’s Minion Army Lich is the build for you. You get excellent defenses from Eternal Life and new Spectres provide you even more mindlessly loyal dead for your army. If you prefer infernal flame you can play a similar build on Infernalist.

Other Builds

Here are a few more builds on existing ascendancies:

If you’re looking for a hand holdy Mercenary Grenade Leveling Guide. ZiggyD’s planner takes you through the campaign and into early maps.

Stormweaver was one of the most popular builds in 0.1 and if you enjoy freezing your way through the campaign you can do so with this build from ZenM: Frost Bolt Cold Snap Stormweaver Leveling.

Monk is fast and fluid, filling the screen with particle effects while dashing to the next pack to do the same. This build from Milkybk_ helps you find your center as you progress: Invoker Monk Leveling.

The Smith of Kitava is Wraeclast’s ultimate tank, so if you’re looking to play hardcore this is one of your best bets. The Endgame HC Artillery Ballista Smith of Kitava build from Zizaran goes over everything you need to know to play this tanky artillerist.

With that said, Dawn of the Hunt is brand new and there’s still a lot to explore in the buildcrafting space so keep a close eye on Maxroll’s Builds for more ways to play.

On the Hunt

Dawn of the Hunt adds a lot of content and streamlines the mapping experience but the campaign is slower than it was before. The best players are already blasting maps and juicing towers but a lot of people are still making their way through the campaign.

It’s going to take some time for the dust to settle and for the meta to stabilize in Path of Exile 2 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt. If you want to know more about the best builds and most profitable currency strategies keep an eye on Maxroll’s Meta Section. Their Path of Exile 2 team is hard at work writing new Build Guides and sharing their Planners with the community!

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This article was created by IGN Staff with help from the Maxroll Path of Exile 2 Team.