The grim landscape of Path of Exile 2 is the perfect place for the forbidden magic the Witch is known for.
Spells take many forms in Path of Exile 2. While we have elemental-oriented magic like the one used by the Sorceress, there are less conventional – and yet extremely powerful types at your disposal in the game.
If you’re more interested in controlling decaying corpses and cursing enemies, the Witch is for you. Learn all you need about this powerful class with this guide, in which you will find a complete explanation of the best Witch build, as well as how to play Witch, the best skills, and pieces of equipment to use.
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How to play Witch in Path of Exile 2
Witch is a magic user that can fight from long distances like the Sorceress. The similarities end there though. Unlike the latter, the Witch’s magic is focused on controlling minions and using curses to debuff or cause damage over time. Instead of bursting enemies with a couple of spells, the Witch overwhelms enemies with multiple sources of damage.
The Witch’s kit comes with interesting and fun tools to use, but for this build, we will rely heavily on using skeletons and their abilities while we curse enemies to make them weaker. There are two different types of minions in the game. Some are invoked by using specific skills, like Unearth, costing you Mana, and they don’t last long. The second type is the different skeletons you can summon and unlock with Uncut Skill Gems. These are the permanent type and, even though having them with you costs no mana, each costs you a certain amount of Spirit.
In early levels, you should always keep in mind that the Witch is a squishy class and completely dependent on their minions to fight enemies. The best approach is to get a safe distance from enemies, cast spells like Contagion and let your minions do the frontline. Your priority is to spread Contagion soon and use Unearth so you can constantly invoke the small minions to help your main group. When they die, be sure to kite enemies while you wait for your skeleton soldiers to resurrect.
Our main source of damage is going to be the Skeletal Sniper’s Gas Arrow. You can command them to shoot these and with the right Support Skills, like Magnified Effect and Scattershot, the poisonous cloud covers larger areas. In addition, the Archers deal lots of damage just by themselves, so they are a solid bet. During battles, we want to send these arrows as soon as they are out of cooldown. In the meantime, use other spells to keep enemies taking damage or invoke more minions with Unearth if there are any corpses in the area. This is the main gameplay loop for this build and, as you get stronger skills, there will be more filler abilities, stronger curses like Profane Ritual or buffs such as Bone Offering, to be used while enemies suffocate with poisonous gas.
Path of Exile 2 Best Witch skills
The Witch has a kit with three groups of abilities. We have the skeleton skills, the debuff/damage-over-time skills, and the bone skills. It’s easy to understand how useful some of them are, but you can’t equip all abilities. For this build, as explained before, our goal is to unlock the Skeletal Snipers and keep them upgraded as soon as possible.
As you level up, you will unlock other minions which you might want to replace the Snipers for depending on the situation. Skeletal Arsonist is a great early minion to have with you. But, regardless of the scenario, among the initial skills, you want to always have Unearth with you. Most boss battles have minion phases, giving you the chance to summon a small army to fight for you and make the encounter way easier.
With a Level 3 gem, you should consider picking Bone Cage since it is really useful from the beginning to the middle of the game. The Witch has no escape abilities and, if you find yourself surrounded without minions, you will be in trouble. This ability allows you to create bone spikes around you, making it the perfect response for close combat. Because Bone Cage can pin enemies, immobilizing them for a few seconds, it gives you the window to run away from trouble.
You should consider getting Flame Wall to use when you replace the Skeletal Snipers for the Arsonists to combo. Another great spell to have is Bonestorm, a powerful charging ability that you can use instead of Contagion or other fillers while your minions are holding enemies away from you.
As you acquire higher-level Uncut Skill Gems, prioritize leveling up your minion skills. Then, go for the new spells you’re most interested in.
Path of Exile 2 Best Witch Passive skills
Turning a fragile Witch into a powerful commander of a skeleton army goes beyond simply finding good gear. It’s using the labyrinthian passive skill tree that you can personalize and make playing the character feel the way you want. This build allows you to experiment with different passive skills that might be more to your liking. However, there are some nodes that you must be sure to unlock.
The most important for this build is to invest points on Minion nodes, especially the ones that increase their damage. Again, if enemies are dead, you are out of risk. You find a good number of nodes that increase Minion damage right at the beginning of the tree. Use the search bar on the Passive Skill Tree menu to look for more.
From the path you will make as you traverse the skill tree looking for nodes which increase the damage of your minions, you can consider unlocking some nodes that might give you more resistance against certain elements or increase your minions life. It might depend on what you feel is needed. And if you think there are better nodes to spend these points on later, you just need to get them back. Remember that you can always respec your character, so if you don’t like the result, you just need to refund the points.
Path of Exile 2 Best Witch weapon
Even though your strongest weapons as the Witch are the Minions you invoke, this class still requires a wand and a sceptre with good stats to make it work. Since you can start working on this build from the beginning of the game, you will inevitably need to find new and stronger ones. So, instead of naming the weapons you need, we will list the important suffixes they should have.
You should always look for sceptres that have the highest Spirit value and the Skeletal Warrior Minion ability. This allows you to focus on spending all your Spirit points on other types of minions. Besides, high-level sceptres come with high-level Skeletal Warriors, so you won’t have to spend Skill Gems to upgrade them.
For both wands and sceptres, you want to use the ones with raises the level of all Minion skills. It might not sound too powerful, but this suffix allows you to summon more minions! If you can’t find a weapon with this roll, don’t worry. Focus on using the ones that increase your Life or recover a little bit when you kill an enemy.
Path of Exile 2 Best Witch armor
No skeleton warrior or nefarious curse can make the Witch resistant to too much damage. But you must have a good armor set that enhances the class’s damage so there is no enemy alive to become a threat.
Armor is not meant for a Witch, so you want to equip the pieces of equipment with the highest Energy Shield value you have. This is the most basic stat in your armor but you want to keep it updated for the content you’re currently running. With that out of the way, we can get more specific. You want to look for Armor Chests and Amulets that increase Spirit, probably the most important attribute for a Witch.
Next, a good – but considerably rare – suffix to have in your gear is the one that raises All Minion skills. Whenever you upgrade a Minion skill, its Spirit cost lowers, allowing you to put more minions on the field. Pieces which increase Maximum Life are also really good for the Witch.
Path of Exile 2 Best Witch accessories
While determining which accessories to use is a considerably situational decision to make in Path of Exile 2, the Witch can benefit a lot from them, especially amulets. Finding the right ones is not easy, so keep the same strategy of looking for good suffixes instead of specific items.
In general, you want to look for accessories that raise your Life and damage. Now, more specifically, amulets are great for this build – or any other Witch build you might want to play with – because they may increase your Spirit value. This suffix is fairly rare so you might depend a little bit on luck, but once you come across one of these, take it and do not stop using.
In case you find a Emerald Ring or any other with increased Chaos Damage, it might a good idea to equip them. Although you stop depending on spells of this element later in the game, you might want some extra damage to go through the initial acts in the game.
Good luck playing as a Witch in Path of Exile 2!
