Grinding Gear Games has revealed all 12 Ascendancy Classes you can unlock in Path of Exile 2 during early access. That’s two each for the six base classes you can pick from, including the Sorceress, Warrior, Ranger, Witch, Mercenary, and Monk.
More will inevitably arrive as Path of Exile 2 develops, but this is the batch to expect during the early access phase. Let’s take a closer look at the Path of Exile 2 Ascendancy Classes in detail.
The Sorceress
Stormweaver
The Stormweaver helps you double down on The Sorceress’s elemental damage. You gain a new skill, Elemental Storm, which provides massive AoE Fire, Cold, or Lightning damage when your spells critically hit.
The remainder of the abilities help boost your Cold and Lightning debuff effects, Shock and Chill, boost your cast speed and mana regeneration rate, and grant you an energy shield.
If you fancy playing as a veritable elementalist, pick the Stormweaver.
Chronomancer
Grinding Gear Games really has crafted a time-bending wizard with the Chronomancer. This class resets cooldowns with wild abandon and freezes enemies in their tracks.
The Temporal Rift skill allows you to go so far as to reverse time, teleporting to a previous location with your life, mana, and energy shield back to their values when you were last there.
You can boost your cast speed, slow enemies, and reverse damage taken so it heals you instead. It looks set to be a very fun class indeed.
The Warrior
Titan
The Titan features a nice combination of utility skills, which boost your equipped body armour stats, grant you 20 additional inventory slots, and increase your life.
In terms of damage, there’s a real focus on boosting slam skills. Not only do these gain a chance to cause Aftershocks, but get ancestrally boosted, providing 20% higher damage and AoE every second slam.
The real meat of this build comes from your hits though, which are upgraded to ‘Crushing Blows’. These help ‘Heavy Stun’ enemies, immobilising them. You then punish them further with a 40% damage increase against them.
Warbringer
The Warbringer is a specialist in breaking armour – so much so that you can reduce it below 0 to deal even more damage.
When not ravaging armour, the Warbringer can turn into a jade statue to absorb all damage, or summon ancestral spirits to fight for them. You can place totems around the battlefield that summon these minions, who can even take damage for you.
The remainder of the Warbringer’s skills allow you to block damage even while your shield is raised, and buff your warcrys to deal damage and ignore cooldowns.
The Ranger
Deadeye
Deadeye does what it says on the tin, removing the accuracy penalty you usually have at a distance. In fact, staying at a distance is more rewarding to this class as you can deal an additional 20% damage if your shots travel more than 7 metres.
You also have the option gain this damage boost up close though, so it’s very dependent on how you choose to play.
Either way, you will benefit from improved frenzy charges. Whenever you gain these, you have a 30% chance to gain the maximum number. The skill benefit for consuming them also has a 50% chance to double.
Rounding out the class, there’s plenty of utility. Your skills gain an additional projectile, you can apply an extra mark, and you gain a defensive buff in the form of Tailwind.
Pathfinder
The Pathfinder is pretty much an alchemist, with most of its passives focusing on improving potions and poisons.
You gain 50% more flask charges and don’t lose life flask effects when unreserved life is filled.
Your poisons also spread to other enemies upon death, and you can inflict double the usual number.
Heck, you can even brew your own explosives, which inflict a variety of effects on your enemies.
The Witch
Blood Mage
As the name suggests, the Blood Mage messes with their own life force in exchange for greater power.
In practice, that means an additional life cost whenever you cast a skill, which boosts your spell damage. To offset this, enemies you kill or critically hit can spawn a life remnant. Pick this up, and it can heal you as well as overflow your life bar.
This boosted life leads to higher critical damage bonus, which synergises nicely with your boosted critical hit chance passive.
Rounding out the class, your curses are infinite, you take 25% of damage over time, rather than immediately, and your energy shield becomes extra life.
It’s high risk, high reward.
Infernalist
The Infernalist specialises in shapeshifting – into a demon, specifically, which has dramatically higher spell power than your human form. This uses your life force to sustain itself, meaning you revert to human when your life reaches 1.
To help mitigate this, you can ‘reserve’ a portion of your life force, which provides you with a series of buffs. This primarily boosts your spirit, mana, and energy shield.
You even got a pet in the form of an Infernal Hound. This will fight alongside you, and takes 20% of the damage you take for you.
The Mercenary
Witchhunter
The Witchhunter cuts through health like a farmer does wheat. You gain two health-shattering abilities: Decimating Strike, which instantly removes 5-30% of an enemy’s life, and Culling Strike. This instantly kills enemies if their health is at 5-30%, depending on the enemy type.
You can also devastate enemy cooldown recovery rates by reducing their concentration, dealing 30% more damage when enemies are affected by it.
Against powerful enemies, you can tear down their armour with ‘Sorcery Ward’, and even gain a chance for enemies to explode on death.
The Witchhunter looks set to be one of the finest damage dealers in the Path of Exile 2.
Gemling Legionnaire
The Gemling Legionnaire is all about boosting the passive effects of your equipment. You can equip two of the same support gem in different skills and gain elemental resistance based on the number of gems socketed.
It’s also much easier to meet gem requirements, as they draw from your highest attribute. You also gain double the intelligence, strength, and dexterity bonuses.
The Gemling Legionnaire also boosts skills considerably. You gain +10% Quality and +1 level, and they cost 30% less. You also gain three additional skill slots.
The Monk
Invoker
The Invoker boosts its spirit based on your body armour, and trades evasion for a straight up physical damage reduction.
You also gain a Meditate skill, which allows you to overcharge your energy shield, or recharge it if it’s running low.
The Invoker is also a bit of an elemental beast, with a higher chance to create chilled or shocked ground. Your Unbound Avatar skill, meanwhile, boosts your elemental power when you inflict elemental ailments.
Acolyte of Chayula
The Acolyte of Chayula is a master of chaos, gaining a boost to chaos resistance and damage. You also gain an instantaneous mana leech, which recovers your energy shield.
You gain access to a new buff, Flame of Chayula, which grants you with extra life, mana, and a chaos damage buff when you collect coloured flames near you.
If you like playing classes with a dark theme, check out the Acolyte of Chayula.
You can learn more about the Path of Exile 2 Ascendancy Classes on Steam.
