Path of Exile 2: How To Play Druid 

Best put on those sweaters, folks, because it’s cold outside, and it’s about to get a whole lot colder!

With the most recent patch of Path of Exile 2, we got a whole host of changes, from new ascendancies, new league mechanics, and most importantly, a whole new character, with 2 powerful ascendancies to boot!

Today, we’re going to be looking at the druid, and even more specifically, at the Wolf transformation and how to get the most out of these brand new skills. So buckle up and pay attention, this build isn’t for the faint of heart!

Skill Gems and Combo Rotation

The Druid is a pretty heavily based combo character, meaning that you need to use a lot of skills in conjunction with each other for massive damage. Here’s our main attack Rotation:

1. Pounce: Firstly, equip your Pounce Skill with Freezing Mark, which is a skill gem, not a support gem. When you pounce on a target, the mark will be applied.
2. Lunar Assault: Next, use your Lunar Assault to build up freeze on your target and deal a good chunk of damage.
3. Arctic Howl: Once that threshold reaches 70% freeze, use your howl to immediately freeze them and gain a buff to your cold damage.
4. Shred: As soon as they’re frozen, you can now use your basic Wolf skill, shred, to spawn a bunch of Ice Fragments around your frozen target. These fragments will explode, dealing cold area damage.
5. Cross Slash: Finally, once you’ve used at least one full attack chain of Shred, use Cross Slash to bring every single fragment underneath the target and cause them to explode at the same time, dealing devastating damage. When done right, your Freezing Mark should proc at the same time the fragments detonate.

Ok, now breathe out. I know, it’s a pretty long rotation, and if you’re like me, playing builds like Ice Strike Invoker, this may be a bit foreign to you. But you get used to it, trust me.

Now, if you want to make this rotation even better, you’re going to want to equip your character with some abilities to make the combo stronger. 

The more attack speed you have, for example, the more ice fragments you can shred off of your opponent, and the more damage you can deal with Cross Slash.

• Lunar Blessing: This is going to be the main buff that you’ll want to keep up 100% of the time. This will give you bonus cold damage and call down Moonbeams to damage everything around you. Lunar Blessing will stay activated the more Rage you sacrifice, so you want as much Rage as possible all the time.
• Savage Fury: This is a Spirit gem that builds up the more attacks you perform on your enemies. When it reaches 100%, you can activate it to gain Onslaught, which grants a significant increase in attack speed.
• Herald of Ice: This is pretty standard for any cold build. Whenever you shatter an enemy, it deals cold damage to those around it. Simple enough.
• Eternal Rage: This constantly builds up rage, meaning you can use your Lunar Blessing more reliably.

When you just want to take out big groups of enemies, instead of bosses, simply use your buffs and attack with Lunar Assault.

Support Gems

Now, the Support Gems that you’re going to socket can vary from player to player; this is just a rough guide for some gems which are particularly useful for the Druid Wolf Build.

Pounce: Freezing Mark, Cold Attunement, Ice Bite

Lunar Assault: Magnified Area, Ancestral Call, Elemental Armament

Arctic Howl: Raging Cry, Deep Freeze, Cold Exposure

Shred: Long Fuse, Rapid Attacks, Concentrated Area

Cross Slash: Cold Attunement, Concentrated Area, Close Combat

Lunar Blessing: Cool-down Recovery, Second Wind, Prolonged Duration

Savage Fury: Prolonged Duration

Herald of Ice: Magnified Area, Cold Attunement, Frozen Spite

Eternal Rage: Cannibalism

Don’t be afraid to adjust these slightly. Different combinations can result in more damage or more survivability, depending on how you prefer playing.

Ascendancy and Skill Tree

You’re going to want to pick Oracle as your Ascendancy, as the benefits it provides to this class are pretty incredible. Unseen Paths provides you with tree nodes unavailable to other classes, while Forced Outcome provides you with Guaranteed Critical Hits, which is amazing, as we want as many crit nodes as possible.

Because of this, it’s better to focus on crit damage instead of crit chance, as that isn’t going to matter as much with Forced Outcome. Check out the Tree above for a sensible path. This can be changed if you want to anoint something like Overwhelming Strike, giving you passive points to allocate somewhere else.

Rage isn’t as important early on in the run; however, when you unlock Lunar Blessing, it’s good to be able to generate as much rage as possible.

Weapon, Armour and Jewelery

Finally, we come to another incredibly important component of the build. However, it can be pretty tricky to understand how this works, so let’s go through each piece and the best bonuses that you should look for:

• Weapon: High Physical and Flat Cold Damage. Also good here are +Melee Skill levels and Attack Speed
• Chest Armour: A mix of high armour and energy shield. Look for elemental resistances and defence buffs
• Helmet: Same again, focus on armour and energy shield, with +max life or Strength
• Gloves: Like with the weapon, try and get +Melee skill levels here, with added physical or cold damage
• Boots: Movement speed is critical, with extra elemental resistances to fill in your gaps
• Belt: Resistances and life are a nice bonus here
• Rings: If you want, you can use 1 ring for getting flat damage bonuses and the other for life and elemental resistances if you still need it. Leeching damage as mana will also help you sustain longer in maps
• Amulet: Here, you can look for stats, spirit, or more resistances. Anoint something like Overwhelming Strike later on and switch up your passive tree.

If you’re simply going through the levelling process, you can use uniques like Polcirkeln, Wanderlust, Foxshade and Horns of Bynden to get through the campaign. The further you get through mapping, the quicker these items will fall off.

Now that you have all the materials, nothing is stopping you from getting out there and trying the build for yourself. Good luck with your maps, Exiles!