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Witch
Blood Mage
Flexible Tri-Element Tri-Ailment Blood Mage Starter Setup
WitchBlood MageStarter
Sirgog
Creator
Build Overview
Day 3 Update:
Blood Mage as an entire Ascendancy is underperforming (10 of the top 1000 players by XP). I'm still exploring options here, but it may not perform at a top level unless there's balance changes.
Why Blood Mage?
Firstly, it's just a cool concept.
Next, there's power. The Blood Mage has a pretty bad first Ascendancy node, but you will not stay single-ascended for long. Most of its other options are great.
Once you are double-ascended you should catch up to other builds, then pull ahead by endgame.
This character intentionally remains flexible, as the playerbase does not yet know which are the best skills
Day 1 Notes
This build's first version is being posted for the start of Early Access and as such is untested. It will change as needed.
Ascendancy Notes
Vitality Siphon is likely the best choice, as most deaths early on will not be from one overwhelming hit but a death of a thousand cuts. Life leech is great at preventing that, and 10% is a lot.
There’s also 
Blood Barbs to consider. More damage is always good, and bleed has a little bit of support on the passive tree north of the Witch start. In POE2, bleed appears to work with spells as well as attacks.
Hold off on 
Gore Spike and 
Grasping Wounds for now. Both do powerful things, but they are things that matter much later in the game.
I advise you to take Vitality Siphon and Blood Barbs as your second and third choices, in whatever order suits your needs at the time. Need more damage? Take Barbs. Need more life recovery? Take Vitality Siphon.
By the time you quadruple-ascend, it should be much clearer which skills are best. At that point it’s time to specialize, and likely respec to Vitality Siphon plus Gore Spike and 
Sunder the Flesh
Equipment
Early Gear Note:
Very little has been spoiled about gear. This will be updated once we can work out more about stat priorities.
For now, keep your eye out for a 
Reaping Staff and an 
Offering Wand once you start fighting monsters that are level 36+. These offer interesting spells you can't get anywhere else, spells that with the right support on items may turn out to be very good. Especially if Blood Barbs ends up better than expected.
Most of your character's survivability early on will come from gear. Aspire toward continually improving your elemental resistances and maximum life.
Weapon Stats
Much of your damage will come from your weapon. Wands and caster staves can both roll powerful damage increasing modifiers. Look for the following:
Prefix: +X% increased spell damage
Prefix: Add X% of damage as extra cold, fire or lightning damage.
Prefix: +X% increased (element) damage, matching the type above if possible. (In POE1 this can't roll alongside spell damage, in POE2 we currently believe it can)
Suffix: +X to the level of all spell skills or +X to the level of all (element) spell skills
Suffix: X% increased cast speed.
You don't need all of these at once to start out. Three of the five is a great start, especially if they are at tiers close to your character level.
Other Gear
On all item slots, you will want resistances and life if possible. The only mandatory mod here is movement speed on boots, anything else can be skipped if the other mods are good.
Amulet: Spirit (prefix) if possible, +gem levels (suffix), cast speed (suffix) and life recoup (suffix). Attribute suffixes aren't bad but the amulet is an extremely powerful slot in POE2.
Rings: Life, attributes, resistances, cast speed
Belt: The stats here are hard to value prior to the game starting. +1 or +2 charms appear very, very powerful lategame options. Until then, life and resistances are always good.
Glove: Life, resistances, and at endgame critical hit bonus damage
Helm: Life, resistances and at endgame critical hit chance
Boots: Movement speed is mandatory. Other stats are a luxury.
Shield (if using a wand): Shields with only an Intelligence requirement can roll damaging modifiers for spellcasters. Look for +gem levels, spell critical chance (endgame only), and other spell damage modifiers... and balance these against your desire for defensive mods.
Skill Gems
Punch
Item
Spark
Flame Wall
Frostbolt
Ice Nova
Day 3 Testing Note:
Early on the simple combo of Flame Wall and Spark will be the primary gameplan. Sparks will apply nasty ignites to enemies. You can optionally use Unleash here, I tried it and didn't like it but a lot of people had success with it.
Arctic Armor is the best early reservation, Raging Spirits is fine too. After act 3 I'd use both (completely unlinked). Arctic Armor does a huge amount of backlash damage when you are hit in melee, and often freezes or chills.
Link Flame Wall to Fortress. Other gems are optional if you want them, experiment.
Once Fireball comes online at gem level 9 (very end of Act 2), grab it. It's really good, having decent damage and quite good damage projection. Link it to Scattershot and Unleash.
Don't use Elemental Focus lightly. It's a good gem, for other builds. But we gain too much from incidentally applying ailments.
I'm experimenting with other gems. Ball Lightning is performing adequately (not all that well, just OK), Arc and Orb of Storms have had their uses, and I'm liking Ice Nova and Frostbolt as niche options to land ailments.
Rank 2 Supports Note:
You'll get these in Act 3, make do with anything until then.
Additional Supports:
We don't yet know whether the different types of Jeweler's Orbs that allow exceeding the two support gem limit will be scarce or not (edit: they are scarce and don't drop until Act 3). Assume your gems will be mostly 3 linked.
What About Minions?
Minions appear to reward an all-or-nothing playstyle. If you want to use minions, you should use a scepter. If you use a scepter, you aren't doing much spell damage.
Minions don't play to the strengths of the Blood Mage. They do, however, offer a lot for the Infernalist ascendancy.
Raging Spirits is an exception as it suppresses ES recovery on bosses. This comes up a lot.
Elemental Invocation
Lategame, I want to fit in 
Elemental Invocation . This is a very complex, very powerful and very explosive skill. Slotting this in will transform the build.
Other Lategame Options
Eye of Winter and 
Ball Lightning appear to have a lot of potential for this build.
Archmage is inherently very strong, but will require respeccing a lot on the character.
Elemental Conflux is another alternative, in case Elemental Invocation disappoints. Conflux will provide a lot of power but be unreliable and also will pressure our weapon, which will need to funciton well whichever Conflux choice is up.
If all of the other Spirit options disappoint, 
Blasphemy (which is much weaker than originally revealed) or 
Cast on Critical will be good options to spend this resource.
Passive Tree
main:
122
122
set 1:
20
20
set 2:
20
20
Quick Note On Early Access Day 1:
The planner had a couple of mistakes related to early nodes. We'll fix those with the next tree. The Path of Winter nodes look excellent, but they are datamined incorrectly in this version, and the real nodes aren't worth taking.
Day 3 Note:
Life regeneration has heavily outperformed recoup in testing. Whilst I intend to get some recoup (and have some), dipping into Druid start for some regen% has been great.
Very Important Ascendancy Note:
Spend only ONE point (not the two you've been awarded) when you Ascend around level 23. The small node is good, the large node - Sanguimancy - is actively detrimental early game.
Early game tree:
It's day 1. Skills won’t be balanced.
This rewards the ability to pivot. Our goal is to remain flexible.
We don’t want to commit hard to any one element. Not yet.
Instead, we’ll take tri-element clusters, and generic goodstuff. I’m taking a balance of defense (recoup nodes) and offense (damage).
There’s a number of clusters that reward you for applying ailments and don’t really care which ailments you apply. For example, 
Stormbreaker. We’ll play into that.
Another cluster that is similar is the ‘Echoing’ cluster with 
Echoing Thunder, 
Echoing Frost and 
Echoing Flames. Huge payoffs are available for applying ailments there.
The node Climate Change looks incredibly strong, as a damage multiplier for cold spells. Unless cold spells wind up terrible, this will lead to us speccing harder into them later on.
Later Additions:
There are very strong looking clusters at tree north – the snowflake cold damage cluster with Endless Blizzard (we'll likely take it all), the adjacent lightning cluster with Pure Power and the adjacent critical cluster with 
Controlling Magic. West of the snowflake, there’s a powerhouse defensive cluster as well, with 
Glazed Flesh and 
Enhanced Barrier.
If it turns out that Blood Barbs is one of the best nodes around, we can spec into support for it in the 
Blood Tearing and Shredding Force cluster, as well as the Cut to the Bone cluster. This is where the Offering Wand and Reaping Staff would come in.
I'm only specifying the first few dozen points as everything will change by endgame.
How it Plays
Our goal here is to remain flexible, weaving elemental spells that apply ailments and deal damage - then cash in on that with extra damage.
How it Works
Critical Hits and Ailments
Unlike POE1, elemental ailments are not automatically applied on spell crits.
However, crits and ailments still have significant synergy. Crits do more damage and so apply bigger and more frequent ailments, and there are passive tree clusters encouraging using both.
Elemental Penetration
Ele pen does not reduce enemy resistances below 0 in POE2, another change from POE1.
We will need to test out how necessary penetration feels; there's plenty near us on the tree to spec if it is needed.
Changelog
07-Dec-2024 0145 AEDT: Initial pre-launch post
07-Dec-2024 0235 AEDT: Minor formatting changes, added high level reservation gem notes
07-Dec-2024 0900 AEDT: Clarified some tree issues. To be rectified after testing.
07-Dec-2024 1615 AEDT: Further edits related to early mistakes (datamining errors)
09-Dec-2024 1230 AEDT: Major updates
