Best Mercenary build in Path of Exile 2

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(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Path of Exile 2 Merc build - Witch Hunter

Jump to:Key skillsPassive treeAscendancyGear and stats

One of the bestPath of Exile 2Mercenary buildsat the moment is undoubtedly the Witch Hunter Grenadier, focusing on the Merc’s powerful damage-dealing grenade abilities and the Witch Hunter Ascendancy which has a variety of tools for dealing with tough bosses and rare enemies.

The Witchbane and No Mercy skills, for example, break boss Concentration, allowing you to deal 30% more damage to them and lengthen their ability cooldowns. The real crux of this build lies in two abilities; Explosive Grenade and Explosive Shot, with the latter letting you detonate the former. Anyone who’s played Merc knows that fuse length on grenades is their primary disadvantage, so this helps them instantly explode.

While there are other endgame builds for Merc, using Galvanic Shards if you dislike grenades, for instance, this one is definitely the best at quickly clearing screens of enemies and making speedy progress.

Path of Exile 2 Sorceress build: Making magicPath of Exile 2 Monk build: Flow like waterPath of Exile 2 Warrior build: Shock and awePath of Exile 2 Witch build: Summoned army

Path of Exile 2 Sorceress buildPath of Exile 2 Monk buildPath of Exile 2 Warrior buildPath of Exile 2 Witch build

Path of Exile 2 Sorceress build: Making magicPath of Exile 2 Monk build: Flow like waterPath of Exile 2 Warrior build: Shock and awePath of Exile 2 Witch build: Summoned army

Witch Hunter Grenadier

POE2 - The Best Mercenary Leveling and Endgame Build - YouTubeWatch On

POE2 - The Best Mercenary Leveling and Endgame Build - YouTube

If you want an in-depth video guide to the build, Lucky Ghost runs through everything you need above. Otherwise, here’s a run through of what to use:

Key skills

As mentioned, the key interaction in this build is using Explosive Shot to detonate the high-damage Explosive Grenades you fire. Below is each skill and the recommended support gems:

Explosive Grenade

Explosive Shot

As mentioned in the video above, Explosive Shot is your detonator and way to finish off enemies that are close to death following a grenade barrage. Martial Tempo and Nimble Reload will ensure it’s always ready to quickly fire off, while Inevitable Critical and Ignition will help it hit a little harder.

Herald of Ash

Attrition

This is a good skill for bosses and rares since it gives you 1% more damage against rare and unique enemies for every two seconds you’re in their presence, up to 53%. You’ll also get Culling Strike against rares and uniques as an added bonus. As Lucky Ghost also points out, Spirit cost for Herald of Ash is high at later levels, so you might consider using Herald of Ash while clearing, and then switching to Attrition. Either that, or find gear that provides the additional Spirit you need, such as an amulet.

Passive tree

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

PoE 2 mercenary burning a monster

If you skip to the “skill tree explained” section of the video above, you can see a full overview of the passive skill tree. That said, I wouldn’t recommend every node that Lucky Ghost uses, and there are a few extras you can pick up to enhance your grenades further.

Generally, this skill tree is about enhancing your grenades via area of effect, area damage, and grenade-buffing nodes, while also boosting attack speed for your Explosive Shot, as well as armour and evasion for survivability.

This is slightly different from the skill tree Lucky Ghost recommends, mainly in that it doesn’t take Iron Reflexes so you retain evasion for enemy ranged attacks, plus it grabs those extra grenade damage nodes next to Instant Reload, and Incendiary next to Smoke Inhalation. As long as you’re buffing grenades and AoE damage and attack speed, you’ll be pretty strong no matter what.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyPassivesSkillDescriptionRemorseless15% increased projectile damage, 30% increased stun buildup against enemies within two metres, +5 strength and dexterityHeavy Ammunition8% reduced attack speed, 40% increased projectile damage, 40% increased projectile stun buildupRicochet15% increased projectile damage, projectiles have a 10% chance to chain an additional timeFeel No Pain20% increased armour and evasion rating, 20% increased stun thresholdBattle-HardenedHits against you have 20% reduced critical damage bonus, 20% increased armour and evasion rating, +5 to strength and dexterityMass HysteriaAllies in your presence have 6% increased attack speed, 6% increased attack speedDevastation15% increased attack area damage, 15% increased area of effect for attacksRelentless15% increased armour, regenerate 0.5 life per second, +10 to strengthSturdy Metal80% increased armour from equipped body armourPolished Iron25% increased armour, 50% base armour from equipment also added to stun thresholdBlade CatcherDefend with 200% of armour against critical hits, +15 to strengthColossal Weapon15% increased area of effect for attacks, +10 to strengthOverwhelm5% reduced attack speed, 20% increased stun buildup, 40% increased damage with two-handed weaponsCluster Bombs50% increased grenade fuse duration, grenade skills fire an additional projectileGrenadierGrenade skills have +1 cooldown useAdrenaline Rush4% increased movement speed if you’ve killed recently, 8% increased attack speed if you’ve played recentlyInstant Reload40% increased crossbow reload speed (grab the grenade damage perks)Sand in the Eyes10% increased attack speed, 15% chance to blind enemies on hits with attacksRepeating ExplosivesGrenades have a 15% chance to activate a second timeGiantslayer25% increased damage with hits against rare and unique enemies, 20% increased accuracy against rare and unique enemies, 20% increased chance to inflict ailments against rare and unique enemiesAuthority20% increased area of effect for attacks, 10% increased cooldown recovery rateCrushing Judgment25% increased armour break duration, 25% increased attack area damageSmoke InhalationDamage penetrates 15% fire resistance, 15% increased duration of damaging ailments on enemiesIncendiary30% increased chance to ignite, 30% increased damage with hits against burning enemies

Swipe to scroll horizontally

PassivesSkillDescriptionRemorseless15% increased projectile damage, 30% increased stun buildup against enemies within two metres, +5 strength and dexterityHeavy Ammunition8% reduced attack speed, 40% increased projectile damage, 40% increased projectile stun buildupRicochet15% increased projectile damage, projectiles have a 10% chance to chain an additional timeFeel No Pain20% increased armour and evasion rating, 20% increased stun thresholdBattle-HardenedHits against you have 20% reduced critical damage bonus, 20% increased armour and evasion rating, +5 to strength and dexterityMass HysteriaAllies in your presence have 6% increased attack speed, 6% increased attack speedDevastation15% increased attack area damage, 15% increased area of effect for attacksRelentless15% increased armour, regenerate 0.5 life per second, +10 to strengthSturdy Metal80% increased armour from equipped body armourPolished Iron25% increased armour, 50% base armour from equipment also added to stun thresholdBlade CatcherDefend with 200% of armour against critical hits, +15 to strengthColossal Weapon15% increased area of effect for attacks, +10 to strengthOverwhelm5% reduced attack speed, 20% increased stun buildup, 40% increased damage with two-handed weaponsCluster Bombs50% increased grenade fuse duration, grenade skills fire an additional projectileGrenadierGrenade skills have +1 cooldown useAdrenaline Rush4% increased movement speed if you’ve killed recently, 8% increased attack speed if you’ve played recentlyInstant Reload40% increased crossbow reload speed (grab the grenade damage perks)Sand in the Eyes10% increased attack speed, 15% chance to blind enemies on hits with attacksRepeating ExplosivesGrenades have a 15% chance to activate a second timeGiantslayer25% increased damage with hits against rare and unique enemies, 20% increased accuracy against rare and unique enemies, 20% increased chance to inflict ailments against rare and unique enemiesAuthority20% increased area of effect for attacks, 10% increased cooldown recovery rateCrushing Judgment25% increased armour break duration, 25% increased attack area damageSmoke InhalationDamage penetrates 15% fire resistance, 15% increased duration of damaging ailments on enemiesIncendiary30% increased chance to ignite, 30% increased damage with hits against burning enemies

Ascendancy

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Path of Exile 2 Merc build - Witch Hunter

You’ll want to choose Witch Hunter for your Ascendancy. The two most important skills to grab are No Mercy and Zealous Inquisition, heading up the central path and the right path respectively. This will give you a significant advantage against bosses with the former, while the latter provides an additional layer to your kills with exploding enemies.

Since No Mercy is more important than Zealous Inquisition, you could also swap it out for Judge, Jury, and Executioner—the path to the left of No Mercy—to get extra damage against low life enemies, plus Culling Strike and Decimating Strike, effectively reducing enemy life threshold.

Gear and stat priorities

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

PoE 2 Mercenary build - Standing by a campfire

Swipe to scroll horizontallyModifiers to look out forCrossbowAdds physical damage / % increased physical damageBody Armour+ to armour / + to evasion / % increased armour and evasion rating / % to resistancesGloves+ to armour / + to evasion rating / % increased armour and evasion / % increased attack speedBoots% increased movement speed / + to armour / + to evasion rating / % to resistancesRings% to resistances / % increased fire damageAmulet+ to Spirit / + to armour / % to resistances / + to level of all projectile skills

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Modifiers to look out forCrossbowAdds physical damage / % increased physical damageBody Armour+ to armour / + to evasion / % increased armour and evasion rating / % to resistancesGloves+ to armour / + to evasion rating / % increased armour and evasion / % increased attack speedBoots% increased movement speed / + to armour / + to evasion rating / % to resistancesRings% to resistances / % increased fire damageAmulet+ to Spirit / + to armour / % to resistances / + to level of all projectile skills

Crossbows are relatively simple weapons—you basically want thebiggest damage number you can get through physical damage modifiersand Iron Runes, then your preferred archetype for its secondary ability. In this case, that’s theBombard Crossbowas it launches an extra grenade when you fire them, which is a big chunk of extra DPS.

As Lucky Ghost notes, however, the Bombard Crossbow has lower base damage than the Construct Crossbow, so you might be better off damage-wise with one of those based on modifiers and what you find.

For the rest of your gear,maxing out resistancesat 75is important to offset the debuff and survive in maps—extra max life on your armour will also help. You’ll primarily want armour and evasion gear to cover multiple bases, especially as you’ll need high strength anyway to run Herald of Ash. Lucky Ghost also recommendsincreased fire damage, since it makes a big difference to your grenades, plus anyone who’s played PoE 2 for any length of time knowsmovement speed on bootsis a must have.

Lastly, I’d recommend gettingSpirit on your amuletif possible for those persistent buffs and slotting support gems into them.

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Witch Hunter Grenadier#

Key skills#

Explosive Grenade#

Explosive Shot#

Herald of Ash#

Attrition#

Passive tree#

Ascendancy#

Gear and stat priorities#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Witch Hunter Grenadier

Key skills

Explosive Grenade

Explosive Shot

Herald of Ash

Attrition

Passive tree

Ascendancy

Gear and stat priorities

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals