Path Of Exile 2 Carry Run

Infernalist is one of the coolest Ascendancy classes in Path of Exile 2. It allows you to command a demonic army or transform yourself into a fire-wielding demon.

However, in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0, Infernalist is not a particularly popular choice, and the pick rate of Demon Form is even lower. The reason is that this is not an easy build to control. It is extremely dangerous, and a single mistake can cause you to die instantly, leading to a frustrating experience. But at the same time, it is incredibly powerful. As long as you can stay alive, it can melt through almost everything.

Demon Form Witch Mechanics

Demon Form

First, let's talk about the core skill, Demon Form. Its effect is that every second while transformed, you gain one stack of Demonflame state. Each stack of Demonflame grants 3% more Spell Damage. This is an independent damage multiplier, which can greatly increase your overall damage.

In its default state, Demon Form has a maximum limit of 10 Demonflame stacks, meaning it provides 30% more Spell Damage. This may not sound like much, but if you also choose Mastered Darkness, you can remove this limitation and stack Demonflame infinitely.

This means that with 200 stacks of Demonflame, you can easily gain 600% more Spell Damage. Without relying on extreme scaling methods, this level of damage amplification is almost impossible to reach through any other method in the game. In theory, your damage can continue scaling infinitely.

Demonflame

However, this power comes with a serious cost. Every stack of Demonflame causes you to lose life, and the higher the number of stacks, the faster your life drains. If you reach 200 Demonflame stacks without any form of life recovery, you will kill yourself within only a few seconds because of this drawback.

Keep in mind that this life loss cannot be reduced by any defensive mechanic, including Armour, Evasion, Block, Deflection, or Energy Shield. Since you cannot prevent the life drain itself, you must recover life faster than Demonflame can take it away.

Pyromantic Pact

One of the solutions to this problem is Pyromantic Pact passive. It removes your Mana pool completely and replaces it with Infernal Flame.

Unlike normal Mana costs, using skills will fill your Infernal Flame meter. When Infernal Flame bar becomes completely full, you immediately take Fire Damage equal to your maximum Life plus your maximum Energy Shield.

This sounds like a drawback, but everything changes when combined with Recoup mechanic. Recoup collects a portion of Fire Damage you take and converts it into Life Recovery over the following few seconds.

However, this is still not enough. You also need Sacrosanctum Corvus Mantle. This chest armour itself provides 20% of Damage Recouped as Life. It can also gain a Recoup modifier through corruption, further increasing your recovery. In addition, Damage Recouped as Life effect can also recover Energy Shield.

With this setup, as long as you continuously cast skills and fill Infernal Flame bar, the overflow damage will ignite you. Your 75% Fire Resistance reduces three quarters of that damage, while the remaining portion becomes a Life Recoup effect that offsets Demonflame's drawback. Sacrosanctum also restores Energy Shield, helping prevent sudden deaths when you are hit by enemies.

Maximum Mana

This recovery cycle is not easy to build, and there are several traps you need to avoid. One important factor is that Infernal Flame's capacity equals twice your maximum Mana. If your maximum Mana is too high, filling Infernal Flame bar becomes extremely difficult, which breaks the entire cycle.

You need to keep your maximum Mana under control, and ideally it should stay below 700.

Skill Cost

After solving the mana issue, the next problem is how to increase Mana consumption. The key point is that this build does not aim for low costs. Instead, it focuses on extremely high skill costs.

The higher the skill cost, the faster you fill Infernal Flame bar, allowing you to trigger Recoup mechanic more frequently and recover Life.

You can link Despair with Focused Curse Support Gem, which comes with a 120% Skill Cost Multiplier and greatly increases the cost of each cast.

To make Infernal Flame bar smaller and easier to fill, you also have several other methods to reduce its required capacity.

• Heroic Tragedy Timeless Jewel: Converts important passive nodes within its radius into Knightly Tenets, causing Intelligence to no longer provide base Mana and instead granting Evasion Rating.
• Megalomaniac Diamond: Grants Vulgar Methods, which provides a 10% reduction to maximum Mana.
• Melding (Passive): Provides another 10% reduction to maximum Mana.
• Overzealous (Notable Passive): Grants 16% increased Cast Speed and 15% increased Skill Cost.

With all of these combined, a single cast of Despair can almost fill the entire Infernal Flame bar. However, this might require you to invest in these items and unique gems. You can join PoE 1 & 2 currency giveaways in IGGM Facebook Group. If you win, The mirrors can be enough to completely revamp your build.

Demon Form Witch Skills

Active and Support Skills

Core Skills

Doedre's Undoing also needs to be linked with Despair, completely changing how this skill works. Instead of being a normal curse that you directly apply to enemies, it turns Despair into a Cursed Ground effect placed on the ground. Any enemy entering the area will automatically become cursed. You can only have two active cursed areas at the same time.

The limit of only two areas may seem like a weakness, but it is actually the foundation that allows the entire build to function. When linked with Spell Cascade Support, each cast creates three cursed areas.

Whenever you cast a new Despair, the newest cursed area replaces the oldest one. This triggers the effect of Impending Doom Support, which grants Doom Blast. Doom Blast instantly deals Chaos Damage when the curse supported by it expires.

Every new Despair cast replaces an existing cursed area. Interestingly, when a cursed area is overwritten by a new one, it counts as the old curse ending, which activates Impending Doom and creates a massive Chaos explosion.

Doedre's Undoing also spawns Witchtoads on the ground after you cast Despair. They jump toward the nearest enemy and explode on contact, requiring no additional actions from you.

Trickster's Shard is also linked with Despair. It creates up to four clones of yourself, and they repeatedly cast Despair with 50% less damage. This allows you to see your entire screen filled with explosions.

What Should You Pay Attention To?

This build feels extremely satisfying to play, but that experience depends entirely on constant casting. Even when there are no enemies nearby, you still need to keep casting. Otherwise, Demonflame's effect will eventually catch up with you and kill you.

You also need to be extremely careful with maps that have modifiers such as "Players have less Life Recovery" and "Less Cooldown Recovery Speed." These maps are basically forbidden areas for this build because your recovery speed will not be able to keep up, causing you to die.

Demon Form Witch is not suitable for beginners or players who simply want to press a single button and zone out. You need a clear understanding of your actions and capabilities to effectively manage the effects of Demonflame.

It has been exactly two months since the launch of Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0. Have you moved on to the fresher Path of Exile 3.29, or do you plan to keep diving deep into Return of the Ancients? If it's the latter, trying out new builds will add even more fun to your PoE 2 experience!

While many Ascendancy Classes have performed well in Patch 0.5.0, Gemling Legionnaire has become more popular than ever thanks to recent changes, attracting many players to focus on it during Runes of Aldur league.

With that in mind, you might be inclined to craft and play new Gemling Legionnaire builds. Here, based on the current state of PoE 2, we introduce five reliable builds for you:

• Frost Wall Curse Build
• Glacial Lance Build
• Explosive Grenade Build
• Critical Arc Build
• Flicker Strike Build

5. Frost Wall Curse Build

If you prefer building a solid, reliable Gemling Legionnaire character over taking risks, Frost Wall Curse Build is an excellent choice.

This build doesn't rely on raw damage to overwhelm enemies; instead, it controls every battle through Frost Wall, curse effects, Energy Shield bonuses, and multiple defensive mechanisms.

In combat, this build keeps enemies frozen, slowed, or weakened for the majority of the time. Once you master the mechanics, you can easily tackle high-difficulty content.

Furthermore, because Frost Wall Curse Build prioritizes stability over speed, it offers a comfortable and forgiving experience once you reach the endgame.

While Frost Wall Curse Build might not instantly delete top-tier bosses, it maintains superior control during prolonged fights.

It also performs very well during the early-game progression phase if you choose it for your next alt character in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0, as its survivability stems from its mechanics rather than rare unique items.

However, you can also swap gear directly, or buy PoE 2 currency on IGGM to reroll modifiers so that improve the quality of your existing equipment, further enhance the build's damage or defense ability.

All in all, the build's only downsides are lower burst damage and slower clear speeds. But if you don't mind that, it is a very safe and reliable choice.

4. Glacial Lance Build

The strength of this Gemling Legionnaire build lies in its excellent ranged combat capabilities, allowing you to freeze enemies before they can get close.

Its core skill, Glacial Lance, pierces through groups of enemies with powerful cold damage; combined with critical hit bonuses and cold penetration, it remains highly reliable even when facing formidable foes.

Like Frost Wall Curse build, Glacial Lance build has low initial gear requirements, allowing for easy crafting at the start and giving you the flexibility to decide whether to upgrade further based on your needs.

More importantly, the build offers great clear speed, making it ideal for farming PoE 2 currency in maps densely populated with enemies. While its speed may have slight limitations, the overall performance is outstanding.

3. Explosive Grenade Build

This build creates chain explosions during combat, offering not only high lethality but also spectacular visual effects.

This is largely because Explosive Grenade synergizes with Oil Grenade, Gas Grenade, Cluster Grenade, and Artillery Ballista to deal devastating AoE damage, instantly wiping out hordes of enemies.

This stacking grenade strategy remains highly effective even against elite enemies and Uber bosses. Additionally, Explosive Grenade build is capable of effective attacks from long range.

While delivering massive firepower, this Path of Exile 2 build also offers strong defensive capabilities and survivability. Although its raw defense might not match Frost Wall Curse build, it excels due to its superior all-around performance.

2. Critical Arc Build

This is a spell-based Gemling Legionnaire build. Arc serves as a primary damage skill that doesn't require manual casting; instead, critical hits continuously trigger powerful lightning spells, allowing you to deal constant damage while maneuvering.

In addition to Arc, skills like Lightning Warp, Ball Lightning, and Explosive Transmutation are essential; combining them creates an incredibly fluid damage rotation that scales effectively as your gear improves.

By leveraging mechanics such as critical hit chance, cooldown recovery, spell damage, and energy shield, Critical Arc Build boasts an extremely high spell damage ceiling.

If you want the ultimate PoE 2 Gemling Legionnaire spell-casting experience, this is the build to choose.

1. Flicker Strike Build

In fact, this build emerged as a popular choice for Gemling Legionnaire shortly after the launch of Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0, and it remains incredibly powerful two months later.

This build allows you to teleport continuously between enemies while dealing massive critical strike damage at lightning speed; consequently, it excels in close-quarters combat.

Ranked first on our list, this build boasts impressive capabilities in both defense and damage output. The only minor drawback is that it requires rare, high-quality gear and significant upgrades to fully unlock its potential.

If you possess such gear but aren't sure how best to craft it, why not join PoE 1 & 2 currency giveaways in IGGM Facebook Group? You could win a rare Mirror of Kalandra to duplicate your target item for whenever you might need it!

More importantly, Flicker Strike Build doesn't hit a performance ceiling once your gear or other stats reach a certain level. You can continue to enhance the build's performance as you progress through Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0, the growth potential is immense.

Conclusion

These are the five Gemling Legionnaire builds we recommend based on the current Path of Exile 2 game environment. You can choose the one that appeals to you based on its characteristics, or use these ideas as a springboard to craft even more playstyles!