Path Of Exile 2 Accounts

The latest patch for Path of Exile 2, The Last of the Druids, has begun. Do you prefer a familiar class, or are you eager to experience Druid? If you choose the latter, you'll eventually have to choose between Shaman and Oracle again.

Both are Druid Ascendancy classes, but you can only choose one at a time, and you can't change to experience the other one afterward unless you create a new character to continue playing.

To ensure you can progress more smoothly in the game with an Ascendancy class that suits you better, this patch will provide a detailed introduction to the features and gameplay of Shaman.

Shaman Overview

This Ascendancy class further expands upon Druid's ability to deal spell and elemental damage. By combining unique skill sets, it gains more charges and buffs, increasing damage output and skill rotation efficiency.

More specifically, Shaman can accumulate Rage during combat as a power source, then unleash it to amplify elemental damage, sometimes even creating powerful combos to quickly clear hordes of enemies within melee range.

How To Unlock Shaman?

Like other Ascendancy classes, unlocking Shaman requires completing Trial of the Sekhemas in Act 2 and Trial of Chaos in Act 3 to obtain enough points to unlock his unique ability. The specific process is as follows:

Act 2:

• 1. After arriving in hub town, find Traitor's Passage area and enter Trial of the Sekhemas.
• 2. Defeat the boss Balbala the Traitor to obtain a special token.
• 3. Place the token on Relic Altar at the trial entrance to officially begin the trial.
• 4. Upon completion, Ascendancy class mechanic will be unlocked, allowing you to choose one and immediately gain two Ascendancy points 1&2.

Act 3:

• 1. Enter Vaal Jungle and find Temple of Chaos.
• 2. Defeat the boss Xyclucian, the Chimera, to obtain the key item Chimeral Inscribed Ultimatum.
• 3. Use this item to unlock and enter Trial of Chaos. Successfully completing it will grant Ascendancy points 3&4.

While you can also unlock Ascendancy class by defeating the boss in Trial of Chaos, we recommend completing it as early as possible in Act 2. Both trials will also provide additional rewards, including gear, gems, and random types of PoE 2 currency.

It is rumored that a third trial will be added in Act 4, but details about the plan have only been revealed so far. For now, focus on the two existing trials.

Shaman's Unique Abilities

In Path of Exile 2, all basic class skills are used as skill gems (as was the case in the first game), resulting in cross-class skill equipping. However, Ascendancy class passive skills are unique to each class.

Sacred Flow

The passive effect of this skill is that it increases your Spirit by 40 for every empty Charm slot. Therefore, if your builds rely on Spirit consumption, you can selectively equip gear and utilize empty slots to keep your builds running.

Wisdom Of The Maji

Unlocking this node provides additional bonuses to your runes, such as increased damage or critical strike chance. This makes your overall strength even greater after equipping runes to gear.

Druidic Champion And Furious Wellspring

These two skills are discussed together because their effects are strongly correlated.

Every 2 Rage points you accumulate, Druidic Champion increases your spell damage by 1%, while Furious Wellspring restores 6% of your Rage per second while it naturally decays.

Combining these means that Rage is replenished as it is consumed, and the replenishment exceeds the consumption, allowing you to easily craft a Shaman build centered around Rage.

Bringer Of The Apocalypse

This skill, after you've dealt sufficient elemental damage through other attacks, will continue to inflict damage from different natural elements, such as fire or lightning, on enemies, culminating in a final burst to completely eliminate any remaining foes.

How To Choose Gear As A Shaman?

Based on Wisdom of the Maji skill effect, you should first add as many gears as possible that can be inlaid with runes to maximize their bonuses, ideally those with affixes that increase critical hit damage.

Secondly, you can add weapons that utilize Spirit or Rage mechanics, allowing other skills to also function. Of course, don't forget you don't need to fill all your gear slots.

How To Play It In Conjunction With Druid?

While Druid and Shaman skills belong to two separate systems, they are closely intertwined in practice. In human form, Druid primarily deals damage through nature spells, while Shaman skills amplify these damage effects.

If you want to diversify your gameplay, you can transform into an animal. For example, in bear form, you can ram enemies into a volcano created by Volcano skill, inflicting more fire damage; in wyvern form, you can launch aerial attacks.

What Are The Advantages Compared To Oracle?

Of course, each Ascendancy class is unique; none is inherently better than another. The key is how you utilize them.

Shaman excels at providing direct damage bonuses, attacking enemies with instant bursts of elemental damage, while Oracle's gameplay requires prediction and strategic planning in the early stages of combat, but ultimately yields reliable benefits.

Therefore, if you're an impatient player who enjoys a fast-paced, high-intensity playstyle, Shaman is a better fit.

That concludes our introduction to Druid Ascendancy class, Shaman. Based on the information we've provided, you can craft your own Shaman builds to conquer the challenges of the new league! Good luck!

Path of Exile 2's class and skill combinations are incredibly complex, resulting in numerous playstyles. Unfortunately, summoner builds have consistently lacked a place among the top-tier builds.

While it's unclear whether the new Druid class can change this, each league has a dedicated group of players researching minion builds. Below, we'll examine the performance of minion builds in Patch 0.3.0 and the adjustments in Patch 0.4.0 to see which ones will perform best in Fate of the Vaal league.

Tier S

Spectre Builds

Since skills in Path of Exile 2 aren't tied to classes, you can choose either Spectre Infernalist build or Spectre Shaman build.

Of all summoning skills, Spectre performed best in Patch 0.3.0, allowing you to enslave Spectres to fight for you. The strongest Spectre was Frozen Mandibles. Unfortunately, it was removed in Patch 0.4. As compensation, the developers stated they will buff some summon variants.

Therefore, as long as Spectre builds aren't significantly nerfed, you can use Powered Zealot Spectre to clear monsters and single enemies, or Death Knight Spectres to deal with single enemies.

Ascendancy Recommends

If you're only focusing on the early game, Spectre Shaman has a greater advantage because its Sacred Flow talent can provide a large amount of Spirit by sacrificing charm slots. Thanks to the changes in Act 2 quest Valley of Titans, Shaman can obtain a belt that grants +2 charm slots at lower levels, allowing for a large amount of Spirit early on.

Later in the game, you can respec to Oracle, as Oracle talent tree contains many summon-related nodes, providing strong late-game defense or damage.

Alternatively, you can choose the classic Infernalist build from patch 0.3.0, or Ritualist and Lich using Evergrasping Ring. Shaman and Infernalist may perform similarly with a moderate PoE 2 currency investment, but Lich and Oracle are likely the strongest with top-tier gear.

Tame Beast Builds

This build requires you to control Tamed Beast by switching weapons and using Infernal Legion auxiliary gem to deal area-of-effect fire damage.

Patch 0.4.0 did not significantly nerf its damage, and while the reduction in high-density maps may diminish its value for clearing, Tamed Beast builds remain consistently strong in single-target damage and overall performance, its strength proportional to your PoE 2 currency investment.

Ascendancy Recommends

The energy shield nerf in patch 0.4.0 may make Titan Tamed Beast better, but you can also choose to start as Shaman and transition to Oracle later, again due to the summon life and defense nodes included in the talents, and the higher your summons‘ HP, the higher their damage.

Tier A

Skeleton Archer Ritualist Build

This build requires Ritualist to equip Evergrasping Rings, granting summons additional Chaos that also affects enemies within range. It typically requires Chaos Inoculation to mitigate the additional Chaos damage taken.

This build performs exceptionally well with high investment, but it's not a comfortable early-game choice. Upgrading with summons is not recommended without transitional gear; other skills are usually needed for early game progression, followed by a gear swap to reach full potential later.

In Patch 0.4.0, any summoner build relying heavily on Spirits was affected by reduced reservation efficiency and weakened Relics. However, this build, primarily reliant on the ring's damage boost, was relatively less affected.

Tier B

Skeletal Reaver Builds

Skeletal Reavers gain attack speed and damage by stacking rage. Patch 0.4.0 fixed this skill's description; now, its attack speed bonus only applies when they are enrage-enhanced.

The challenge was ensuring Skeletal Reavers survived after enrage was active. Tecrod's Revenge support gem enhancement solved this problem. It allows summons to survive longer after their health reaches 0, increasing this time from 10 seconds to 20 seconds. Dialla's Desire support gem can improve skill quality, further increasing rage effects, which might potentially lead to higher damage.

Ascendancy Recommends

This skill gem can be used by Titans, Ritualists, Shamans, and Liches, but its effectiveness depends on which class allows Skeletal Reavers to stack rage more efficiently.

Unearth Raise Zombie Builds

This build primarily relies on summoned enhanced zombies that consume Power Charge. Its damage bonus has changed from a fixed 100% to a dynamic value that scales with skill level, meaning high-level zombies have significant damage potential.

You can use Unearth to quickly generate summons for clearing maps. When single-target damage is needed, summon 10-12 enhanced zombies for burst damage. This build is completely unaffected by the reduction in reservation efficiency, but it heavily relies on Power Charge.

The best method is to use new Lineage support gems, which generate one Power Charge every 4 seconds. Additionally, Profane Ritual can consume corpses to generate critical strike orbs.

Sacrifice aura can treat permanently resurrectable summons as corpses, consume them with Profane Ritual, and then resurrect them with Skeletal Cleric, allowing you to continuously generate Power Charge.

Ascendancy Recommends

For this build, Ritualist is the best ascendancy choice because it doesn't rely on a lot of spirit and benefits from Evergrasping Rings and Uul-Netol's Embrace. The problem with this build is that it's relatively cumbersome to operate, and the summoned creatures are temporary and cannot exist indefinitely. Furthermore, using Raise Zombie is very mana-intensive, so you need to be mindful of your resource consumption.

The above minion builds are just basic concepts. You can research how to increase minion damage in new leagues, and perhaps you can even create a stronger build.