Discover a comprehensive guide about Witch Class in Path of Exile 2 including skills and how to play as Witch Class.
Path of Exile 2 has received an initial release on December 6, 2024. The full-release schedule is still TBA, but the developers have confirmed that we will be getting 6 out of the 12 planned Classes in the Early Access itself. Grinding Gear Games has already decided which ones we will see in the Early Access. Witch is a strong DPS Class that includes Spirit, summons, and Ascendancy Classes. Unfortunately, the Classes in Path of Exile 2 are gender-locked, meaning you cannot choose the gender of a specific Class as it is predetermined. Explore the Witch Class in Path of Exile 2 and see how she redefines summoner gameplay!
Witch Class Overview in Path of Exile 2
The necromantic Witch Class in Path of Exile is the perfect Class for you. The Witch is designed to be the ultimate summoner. While some Classes can have access to a few minions, the Witch dominates in commanding large diverse armies. She has unique mechanics that allow for seamless summoning and advanced minion customization. The Scepter is the primary weapon that grants you, minions, like Warriors while also generating a resource called spirit.
The spirit bar displayed above your mana is key to your summoning abilities. Use spirit to tailor your army’s composition on the skill screen. The Witch deploys chaos-based spells that inflict damage over time and weaken enemies. Infernalist is the Witch Class specialized ascendancy which focuses on harnessing hellfire and demonic powers. Minions also revive upon death automatically and you can issue a command to control minion behavior and send them to certain locations or targets.
Key Features and Mechanics of Witch Class
The Witch Class in Path of Exile specializes in occult magic, utilizing skills that summon an undead army or deal chaos damage with contagion and poisons. The Witch can summon Skeletal Warriors, Skeletal Mages, Zombies, and other undead creatures. The Spirit determines the number and strength of minions you can summon. Contagion and Essence Drain are the skills that can apply continuous damage to enemies and spread effects to close enemies.
Apply curses to weaken foes, enabling you to increase survivability and damage output. The Witch can merge minion support and deadly spells to modify their approach in fights. Blood Mage and Infernalist are the two different Witch’s specializations that let you tackle enemies often more easily. Blood Mage focuses on improving minions, mainly their durability and capabilities while Infernalist uses fire and demonic powers. Summon more powerful enemies and enhance the spirit pool as you progress.
How to play as Witch Class in Path of Exile 2
Summon skills like Summon Zombies and Raise Skeletons to build your undead army. Essence Drain is used for early crowd control and damage over time. Increase minion health and damage by allocating skill points. While you learn the game mechanics, minions can carry you through the initial stages. Stay at a safe distance while your minions are handling the fights. Use the curse spells and ranged chaos to weaken enemies.
Use Support Gems to upgrade minions’ skills that enhance their damage output and survivability. You can summon more minions by investing additional in passives to increase spirit. Get access to summons like Golems and Skeletal Mages for additional utility. Combine Contagion with curses to multiply their effects. Equip gears that boost minions’ stats and chaos damage.
Gears with affixes +Minion Attack and +Minion Gems can enhance Chaos damage and cast speed. Aim for spells like Chaos Magic that deal damage over time and expand to nearby enemies. Use chaos DoT spells and curses to take down bosses while minions are busy handling aggro.
Witch Class Skills
The Witch Class uses a Scepter for summoning in Path of Exile 2. Utilize your mana to cast spells to aid skeletal troops, become a damage dealer character, and expand corruption. Here’s the list of all active skills for the Witch Class in Path of Exile 2.
- Contagion- Deals 1.8 base chaos damage per second. Spell damage modifiers also apply to debuff damage over time. Increasing damage by 100% for each debuff transmitted, up to a maximum of 300%. Debuff lasts for 5 seconds. The infection radius is 1.7 meters.
- Unearth- Raises spikes of bone from the earth in front of you, damaging enemies. The bones of corpses in the area are ripped out and reassembled into short-lived bone construct minions that fight for you. Deals 4 to 6 physical damage. Limit 8 bone constructs. Bone construct duration is 12 seconds. The cone length is 6 meters.
- Pain Offering- Impales a skeleton on a bone spike to empower nearby, minions into a frenzy as long as the spike remains, causing them to use skills more quickly. Aura grants minions a 30% increased attack and cast speed. Aura grants minions 38% more damage.
- Essene Drain- Fires a projectile that applies chaos damage over item debuff when it hits.
- Profane Ritual- Consumes a corpse to create a Power Charge, empowering spells. It becomes a super variant when a power charge is used to summon it.
- Bone Storm- Call forth bone shards and throw them at your enemy. The bone shards explode when power charges.
Path of Exile 2 Witch Summons
Witch can summon the following types of mobs:
- Skeletal Warrior- Summons reviving skeletal warriors. +2% to all elemental resistances.
- Skeletal Cleric- Summons reviving Skeletal Clerics that heal other minions and revive fallen skeletons. Minions from this skill have +12% to all elemental resistances.
- Skeletal Arsonist- Summons bomb-throwing, reviving Skeletal Arsonist that can detonate other minions on command.
- Skeletal Frost Mage- Summons reviving Skeletal Frost Mages that can freeze themselves on command to slow nearby enemies. Minions from this skill have +4% to all elemental resistances.
- Skeletal Storm Mage- Summons reviving Skeletal Storm Mage that can call down a lightning storm on dead skeletons on command.
- Skeletal Reaver- Summons aggressive, reviving Skeletal reavers that can enrage on command.
Witch Skill Gems
Each skill has a capacity for three different support gems. The gems match the corresponding color on the skill and further empower the skills. You can swap them to other skills as long as color matches when required. The gems provide advantages and act as buffs to create stronger effects. Here are all the Skill Gems in our A Comprehensive Guide About the Witch Class in Path of Exile 2 that are not directly tied to Witch but mostly Witch builds will be using these to empower their skills.
- Hexblast- Detonates curses on enemies in an area, causing explosions of chaos damage but removing the curse. Deal 101 to 188 chaos damage. Maximum 9 explosions. The base explosion radius is 1.6 meters. The base wave radius is 2.8 meters.
- Detonate Dead- Causes a Corpse to violently explode, damaging surrounding enemies.
- Dark Effigy- Raises a totem that bombards enemies afflicted by chaos damage over time debuffs.
- Vulnerability- Curses all targets in an area after a short delay, reducing their armour.
- Enfeeble- Curses all enemies in an area after a short duration, causing them to deal less damage. Cursed unique enemies deal 16% less damage. Cursed normal, magic, or rare enemies deal 21% less damage. The curse duration is 8.4 seconds and the curse radius is 2 meters.
- Despair- Curses all targets in an area after a short delay, lowering their chaos resistance.
- Bone Offering- Impales a skeleton on a bone spike to shield your minions while the spike remains. The shield absorbs all damage from the next hit each minions take, then explodes.
- Power Offering- Impales a skeleton on a bone spike, extracting a power charge unless the spike is destroyed. The power Offering spike limit is 10. The spike duration is 3.8 seconds.
Witch Class Ascendancies
Ascendancies are the specializations for your character, granting you additional options to customize them to your playstyle. Path of Exile has three Ascendancy Classes for every Class. At the beginning of the game, only two will be available per Class. As you progress you will unlock powerful ascendancy options to refine further and enhance your build.
Blood Mage looks like a great option for any crit-based caster build. They enhance their survivability by an energy shield based on their maximum life from her spell damage. The biggest issue is solving regeneration, especially for skills with high mana and life cost. There’s also a huge chance that Blood Mage passes can improve minion damage. They also enhance their critical damage based on their maximum life. Blood Mages offer a percentage of their health and mana in exchange for the boosts they gain.
Infernalist summon a hellhound that deals fire damage and sucks a percentage of the damage they take. Ignite enemies by turning her mana into an infernal flame. The infernal flames in POE2 overflow because they cast additional skills. They can turn into a demon form to enhance their damage and gain quick movement speed but take more damage as well.
Blood Mage
- Sanguimancy- This passive skill gives you the chance to drop life remnants when killing monsters and remnants recover life when picked. With that passive, all Witch skills will gain a base life cost equal to the base mana cost which is a downside. The main idea here is that cost will be mitigated by other passives down the path and also by life remnants that we can pick to regain our life.
- Vitality Siphon- This passive skill gives you 10% of all spell damage leeched as life for only 2 points. It looks like a good choice for all spell-related Blood Mages because, without it, it will be very hard if not impossible to get spell life leach. It can also work pretty well combined with such nodes as Voracious node. This makes 20% of Leach instant or Vall pact keystone which makes all your life leach instant.
- Gore Spike- It gives a 1% increased critical damage bonus per 20 life and it’s a very strong option to utilize. Just with 2,000 Life, you will already have a 200% increased critical bonus and 2,000 is a pretty small number even if we don’t have a lot of life in the passive tree.
- Crimson Power- Gain energy shield from equipped body armour as extra maximum life. This one is very simple but feels very strong, and combines pretty well with Gore Spike. However, to reach this passive you will need to spend 4 points and take 1 unrevealed passive.
Infernalist
- Domenic Possession- It grants Witch a Demon form, increasing your damage and cast speed. You can also receive damage over time while you are in this form and will transform back if your life reaches 1. This looks like a high-risk / high-reward skill, that can make you significantly stronger but deal damage to you.
- Loyal Hellhound- It summons a minion that can burn enemies and take 20% of the damage that your character will receive. Loyal Hellhound looks like a Guardian minion from POE 1.
- Pyromantic Pact- Maximum Mana is replaced by Maximum Infernal Frame. Gain Infernal Flame instead of spending Mana for Skill costs. Take maximum Life and Energy Shield as Fire Damage when the Infernal Flame reaches maximum. Lose all Infernal Flame on reaching maximum Infernal Flame. 10% of Infernal Flame lost per second if none was gained in the past 2 seconds.
- Bringer of Flame- While not on Low Infernal Flame, all Damage from you and your Minions contributes to Ignite Chance and Magnitude. That node just makes Pyromantic Pact a stronger option, it looks like an absolute must-have for all ignite-related builds. However, if you don’t play ignite or fire characters in general, then Bringer of Flame is not a good option.
Infernalist vs Blood Mage Ascendancies
Blood Mage looks like a better choice for crit related build and will probably be one of the tankiest casters out there. Infernal on the other hand is more damage over time oriented and has school bonuses for ignite and minions, making it more versatile. The demonic form is an absolute win or absolute loss based on number and can work for you if you like to play risky. Both Ascendancies don’t work well for Arch Mage.
FAQs A Comprehensive Guide about Witch Class in Path of Exile 2
Q1: Is Witch a Good Class in Path of Exile 2?
Witch is the best DPS Class in Path of Exile because it offers unique mechanics that allow for seamless summoning and advanced minion customization.
Q2: Should you choose Witch Class in Path of Exile 2?
Witch is one of the best Classes at the early access because it can occult magic, utilizing skills that summon an undead army or deal chaos damage with contagion and poisons. Blood Mage focuses on life stacking and heavy hitting while Infernalist is more minion and damage over time (particularly ignite) oriented.
Q3: What Gender is the Witch Class in Path of Exile 2?
The Witch Class is a female character by default in Path of Exile but the gender choice does not affect gameplay mechanics or Class capabilities.
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