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PoE 2 Build

Detonate Dead Blood Mage

Witch

Blood Mage

Verified

Featured

End Game

By imexile

Updated on Dec 22, 2024

Dec 22, 2024

Build Overview

Here we are again... new Path of Exile game and Detonate Dead is good again.

This build has been growing in popularity as people realize how TANKY Blood Mage can get while utilizing its ascendancy and Grim Feast to have a very large ES/Life pool. This build also has high single target damage and excels in breach/ritual.

My friend Jacob has been playing this and suggested it to me and I was going to play it in Hardcore but unfortunately died before getting to experiment much, however I still wanted to share it as I think its a solid build.

This is an Endgame build for people past the campaign, for leveling I would suggest utilizing Raging Spirits, Unearth, Skeletal Arsonist and using Detonate Dead on corpses your minions kill. Leveling for Blood Mage can be quite rough, I suggest skipping normal lab for quite awhile. Enfolding Dawn and Oaksworn are AMAZING leveling uniques. (spirit = more minions).

I will say the build can be a bit clunky as you are relying on your minions being alive as well as moving them around through the map to detonate them, occasionally running out. Check out the video linked to see the build.

Equipment

Set 1

Set 2

You can corrupt Enezun's Charge in order to get higher chance to not consume corpses. This stat is very important in helping us maintain smooth gameplay, so try to look to get this corrupted mod when you can.

Stats to look for on sceptre:

+levels to minion gems
minion life
spirit,
Malice implicit ideally

Stats to look for on amulet:

+levels to minion gems
life,
energy shield mods
resistances
crit

Stats for rest of items:

life
resistances
energy shield
movement speed on boots
cast speed on rings
remember that STR = life if you have extra affix space

We need a lot of INT to be able to use a high level Skeletal Brute so keep that in mind.

You need enough spirit to run 3 brutes 1 cleric + auras ideally. Can move up to 4 brutes or 2 clerics if you have extra spirit.

Skill Gems

Support Gem Requirements:

Str 30

Dex 10

Int 65

Malice

Life Remnants

Detonate Dead

Volatile Dead

Skeletal Brute

Soul Offering

Skeletal Cleric

Vulnerability

Grim Feast

Sacrifice

THE Volatile Dead GEM IS A Detonate Dead GEM(I cant put two of the same gem). We use one setup for ST and one for clearing.

Keep Detonate Dead at gem level 7 and Vulnerability also low level so it doesn't cost so much mana.

Why do we leave Detonate Dead at low level?

We are scaling the physical explosion portion of the skill, and not the flat fire damage that it deals. This part does not scale with gem level, allowing us to leave it at a low level.

Passive Tree

main:

122

set 1:

set 2:

Tree is generally just prioritizing all the %increased minion life that exists on the skill tree as well as %increased chance to not consume corpses Meat Recycling.

For other offensive points, we scale crit and physical damage as the explosion of Detonate Dead is physical damage.

For defense, we are speccing into a lot of Energy Shield, especially Melding which works well for us since our Detonate Dead costs very little mana due to it being level 7.

To help us clear we also make use of some AoE nodes on Repulsion and Reverberation.

Optional: Using two different weapon sets, one with AoE spec'd for map clear and one without it for single target. Requires having two weapon setups.

Atlas Tree

Highly suggest speccing into rare monsters while mapping, the rest is up to you. This build excels at doing ritual/expedition/breach in my opinion.

How it Plays

Move around the map whilst controlling your minions with the "Direct Minion" keybind and use Detonate Dead on them. For general map clear you can blow up the corpses of the monsters you kill.

Try to keep up Soul Offering especially when fighting tanky rares or bosses.