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PoE 2 Build

Screen Shatter Glacial Bolt Witchhunter

Mercenary

Witchhunter

Creator

BigDucks

By Big Ducks

Updated on Dec 20, 2024

Dec 20, 2024

Build Overview

REMEMBER THAT WE ARE IN EARLY ACCESS

Things will break, new strategies will be found, things will be buffed and nerfed. I will do my best to update this guide as new tech is found and things are buffed/nerfed/changed.

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Glacial Bolt is a Crossbow skill that creates Ice Crystal walls that damage enemies when they are destroyed, either by large enemies walking through them, or when Fragmentation Rounds hit them. We scale Area of Effect to get screenwide explosions and overlaps.

These Ice Crystals also keep us safe as they hold enemies back and block projectiles while we prep our Fragmentation Rounds and allow us to safely and quickly move through zones and fight tough rare enemies.

Once you get into Endgame Bossing and T15 maps + Atlas Boss Levels you need more single target, we accomplish this with Shockburst Rounds. This skill requires the enemy to have a lightning ailment and we accomplish this with Plasma Blast + Stormfire and Flame Wall (more info below).

To keep ourselves safe we use a combination of Evasion, Armour, and Sorcery Ward to provide a large elemental damage barrier. This combined with Freeze and Ice Crystals blocking projectiles keeps us overall quite protected.

Equipment

Set 1

Set 2

All items above are just meant to be basic examples, follow the notes to gear.

Gearing is quite difficult at this point in Path of Exile 2. Highly suggest doing the best you can and focusing on these particular stats:

Weapons:

Low Reload Time Crossbow Base
Physical Damage % / Added
Attack Speed
Elemental Damage, Crit, Accuracy, Gem Levels are all bonuses.

Sockets:

% Physical Damage

Body Armour + Jewelry:

Evasion / Armour Base
Evasion / Armour %Inc or Added
Life
Resistances (To Cap of 75%)
Attributes
Rarity

NOTE: If taking Leather Bound Gauntlets on the passive tree use pure Armour Gloves.

Sockets

Resistances (To Cap of 75%) Chaos is Good here
% Arm/Eva
Life

Charms:

I personally use a Thawing Charm as there are a ton of dangerous enemies that freeze. If you have additional charm slots consider Amethyst Charm, Grounding Charm, or Golden Charm

Optional Uniques:

Cloak of Flame - If you are dying to large physical boss abilities this is an optional piece of gear that can give you a larger health pool against physical because of the interaction with Sorcery Ward. I don't really suggest this for normal content, at the high end a very good rare is better.

Crafting:

Pick up the following bases:

Expert Armour/Evasion
- Body Armour
- Helmet
- Boots
Expert Armour
- Gloves
Expert Crossbows
- Anything that isn't Dyad Crossbow or Bombard Crossbow
Jewelry
- Resists
- Stats
- Spirit

When Crafting do the following, start in the instructions depending on what stage the item you picked up is at

Use an Orb of Transmutation to make it Blue and then an Orb of Augmentation to give it a 2nd modifier.
If the item has 2 acceptable modifiers or 1 VERY good modifier use a Regal Orb to give it a 3rd modifier.
If the 3rd modifier is good, consider using Exalts to finish the item. If you get even 1 bad mod from Exalts, consider stopping before you waste currency.
Knowing when to stop is a very hard skill to establish, you will get better at it over time.

Tips:

Don't skip out on Rarity in Softcore, it will make gearing and finding items a lot easier.

Make sure you are scrapping socketed items you find on the ground to make Artificer Orbs, and socketing your gear. It will help immensely.

Don't ignore attributes on gear, they are very important for scaling up to better items and using all your skills.

Skill Gems

Support Gem Requirements:

Str 35

Dex 50

Int 65

Glacial Bolt

Fragmentation Rounds

Shockburst Rounds

Plasma Blast

Flame Wall

Conductivity

Emergency Reload

Wind Dancer

Herald of Ice

Sorcery Ward

NOTE: If running a weapon swap for your single target you will need to use the 2nd Crossbow Shot ability that is assigned to your offhand weapon to use your lightning abilities. I personally only use them for Bosses and just swap my left click right before fighting them.

NOTE: Level up your gems as much as you can with the stats you have. Attributes are tough to get in Path of Exile 2, you will need some on gear. Adjust the points on the tree to fit your needs.

Mapping Skills:

Glacial Bolt - Weapon Set 1 - Used to Freeze Enemies and create Ice Crystal walls. (Quality is important here)

Fragmentation Rounds - Weapon Set 1 - Used to explode Ice Crystals and to consume Freeze for burst damage while clearing (Quality is important here)

Bossing Skills:

Shockburst Rounds - Weapon Set 2 - Used for heavy single target damage, requires a Shock or Electrocute on the enemy to do full damage.

Plasma Blast - Weapon Set 2 - Used to apply a shock to bosses, Stormfire support makes it so that as long as we maintain an Ignite on the boss, the shock will never expire. (Quality is important here)

Flame Wall - Used to maintain an ignite on bosses.

Conductivity - Extra damage for bosses.

Emergency Reload - Use on Shockburst Rounds when facing a boss as the clip empties for a significant damage boost.

Auras:

Wind Dancer - Provides massive Evasion and knocks back enemies that make it into melee. (Quality is important here)

Herald of Ice - Gives us extra damage while clearing.

Sorcery Ward - Provides us a healthy barrier for Elemental Damage at the cost of our Evasion / Armour.

Passive Tree

main:

122

set 1:

set 2:

Ascendancy:

Witchbane - Makes bosses and difficult enemies significantly easier, reducing how frequently they use abilities both gives you more time to DPS and less chances of getting hit by slams.

Obsessive Rituals - Grants us Sorcery Ward, a very powerful barrier skill that sacrifices a portion of our Evasion and Armour for a large Elemental Damage shield.

Ceremonial Ablution - Further enhances our Sorcery Ward

No Mercy - Bonus damage against targets that have broken concentration.

While leveling you can take Pitiless Killer and Judge, Jury, and Executioner if you like and then swap them once you start having difficulty surviving.

The ascendancy points are listed in order that I would take them.

Weapon Set Skills:

I highly suggest that you obtain a second Crossbow to use in your offhand, an easy way to do this is just keep your old one when you get an upgrade.

If you do not have access to a 2nd crossbow simply do not use weapon set passives and take the points on the weapon set 1. You will do less damage this way on single target.

Remember that different Weapon Sets use different Crossbow Shot skills to fire your ammo, you will need to swap before bosses.

Leveling

Immediately head towards Instant Reload and then fill in nodes as you need them for damage and defenses.
A good path would be:
Instant Reload -> Battle-hardened -> Overwhelm wheel -> Unexpected Finesse -> Authority wheel -> Catapult and then fill in the rest of the tree.

Use Fragmentation Rounds as your main DPS source and Permafrost Bolts for freeze until you get Glacial Bolt. If crossbows feel too bad early try out Bows until you obtain Glacial Bolt.

How it Plays

Clearing

Place Glacial Bolt Ice Crystal walls in front of or slightly behind enemies. Large enemies will automatically pop the walls causing massive damage.
Use Fragmentation Rounds to explode the Ice Crystals and consume Freeze on enemies.
Some enemy types will be completely immune to freeze and also too large to be stopped by Ice Crystals, these enemies are rare but can cause problems. If they are heavily armoured use Fragmentation Rounds to break their armour, or try leading them to other enemies to chain explosions off of. If they are white mobs I generally just run past them as Glacial Bolt seems to bug when fighting these mob types.

Bossing Before Endgame

If the boss is large and moves frequently:

Spam Glacial Bolt to create Ice Crystal Walls for the boss to explode as they move.
Use Fragmentation Rounds to consume Freeze and explode additional walls if they stop moving

If the boss is small or does not move rotate between these abilities:

Use your full clip of Glacial Bolt to create as many Ice Crystal Walls around the target as you can. (Quality on the gem gives 1-2 additional ammo)
Use to explode the Ice Crystal Walls and consume Freeze.

Bossing At Endgame (T15+)

Swap to your 2nd Weapon Crossbow Shot.
Charge your Plasma Blast while the boss is doing their opening animation. Fire once they are moving to apply shock.
Use Flame Wall to keep the shock on them permanently.
Debuff with Conductivity on very hard bosses.
Fire Shockburst Rounds until the boss is dead.
Use Emergency Reload to do extra damage as your Shockburst Rounds clip is empty.

If the boss goes immune or you drop shock from missing/forgetting Flame Wall , start from the Plasma Blast step. Try to time your shot for when the boss is doing a long animation or just after they did a dangerous ability and you have a free moment.

How it Works

General Tips:

Ice Crystals generated by Glacial Bolt will overwrite each other if you cast them in the same place, try placing them separated from each other to get more AoE coverage.

Plasma Blast can be difficult to channel on bosses, try channeling it before the boss is active to get a free cast off early on.

Avoid maps with significant generic damage mods like Critical Strike and Generic Monster damage etc. These mods apply to physical damage which is the builds greatest weakness. Elemental Ailment Threshold increase on monsters can also be problematic as you won't be able to freeze/shock as easily.

Dyad Crossbow bases are very bad as they have an insanely long reload time and +1 bolt does nothing for us.

Use https://poe2filter.com until filterblade is ready for PoE2. I use these settings https://i.imgur.com/YZETK4J.png