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PoE 2 Build

0.4 ICY SHOT Deadeye Leveling

Ranger

Deadeye

Creator

0.4 TLotD

By Medieval Marty

Updated on Dec 11, 2025

Dec 11, 2025

Build Overview

Deadeye is still one of the fastest and most powerful ascendancies in 0.4, and ice abilities had not only a huge buff, but some nice changes making more powerful and faster to level with this league. Additionally with the new Vall mechanic this build works perfectly with tight rooms and bossing compared to a full lightning aoe build.

By combining Ice Shot with Ice-Tipped Arrows we have insane amounts of damage. Throw in the super powered Freezing Salvo, this build destroys everything in the campaign.

Buffs and Nerfs in S4:

One of our biggest damage pumpers had an absolutely wild last minute buff, buffing the damage, duration AND cooldown. So lock in with this one, it'll gonna pump.

Deadeye had a slight nerf this season, by losing Wind Ward, however this doesn't impact much atall in a leveling build, as we can easily build around it, while still taking advantage of all the damage and speed deadeye gives us.

Strengths and Weaknesses

S Tier Ascendancy This League
FASTEST Movement Speed
HUGE damage
FREEZE makes leveling a joke

Squishy

Build Variants

Early (Act 1)

Early (Act 2-3)

Final Leveling Build

Endgame build

Once we hit Acts 2 and 3 we start to unlock better support gems, and we get some of our more powerful abilities such as Ice Shot, letting spec fully into Ice.

Equipment

Early (Act 1)

Early (Act 2-3)

Final Leveling Build

Endgame build

Set 1

Set 2

Equipment Priority

Focus on items that give you more damage as a priority:
Bow, quiver, gloves, rings.

And look for the following:

Added cold damage
Added pyhiscal damage
levels to projectile skills

Skill Gems

Early (Act 1)

Early (Act 2-3)

Final Leveling Build

Endgame build

Support Gem Requirements:

Str 20

Dex 45

Int 45

Expand all

Ice Shot

Freezing Salvo

Ice-Tipped Arrows

Frost Bomb

Herald of Ice

Snipe

Barrage

Combat Frenzy

Gem Priority

+19

With the way the new support gems work, they come in tiers, such as:
Rapid Attacks I
Rapid Attacks II
Rapid Attacks III
I'd suggest upgrading these as soon as possible to the rank 2 as they give massive upgrades to your damage, but be careful as the final version rank 3, can sometimes come with downsides, so should be avoided.

Spirit Gem Priority:

(Act 2) Switch to Herald of Ice as soon as you unlock Ice shot

(Act 3) once you hit 60 spirit - Grab Combat Frenzyto start generating frenzy charges

(Interlude 3rd zone) once you hit the 100 frenzy unlock go for Wind Dancer

Passive Tree

Early (Act 1)

Early (Act 2-3)

Final Leveling Build

Endgame build

main:

123

set 1:

set 2:

How it Plays

This is a deadeye icy shot leveling build. Due to not unlocking Ice Shot shot until we have a level 9 skill gem. We start out with lightning and ice, and slowly move over to more and more ice damage we unlock the new and better abilities.

How it Works

We open up with Freezing Salvo for massive AoE damage. Then we pop Ice-Tipped Arrows and pump enemies with Ice Shot. This create a ton of AoE and single target damage that freezes everything. If you have a frozen elite enemy, pop snip for insane amounts of single target damage.

We also have Frost Bomb - this gives us a lot of damage while leveling and applies Cold Exposure.

Herald of Ice gives us tons of AoE ice damage everytime we shatter an enemy, and we use Freezing Salvo on cooldown as it wrecks everything this league.