Exiles, do you often like to drive a large number of minions to do things for you and enjoy the fun of defeating bosses from a distance and safely? If you are also such a minions lover, then the build we introduce here today may be very suitable for you!
In this guide, we’re bringing you Skeletal Sniper Infernalist Build, which is by far one of the fastest builds I’ve seen for leveling up in Path of Exile 2. This Sniper can rain down the most disgusting clouds of toxic arrows, which basically explode monsters when anything near them is on fire.
This build is perfect for farming Essences, Strongboxes, and any type of boss in Path of Exile 2, and it is even better for your Waystone progress! What’s more, there are no mandatory unique items required to complete this build, which means that even if your POE 2 Currency budget is not enough, there is no burden to build it.
Build Basics
This build uses Summoned Skeleton Sniper, which fires Gas Arrows at your command! Each of these clouds will instantly explode when an enemy and flames touch them. That’s why we have Flame Wall and Infernal Hound to use.
Skeleton Sniper does much more damage with its Command skill than Skeletal Arsonists. Especially, its single target DPS is perfect for some with technical issues.
Defensively, the build converts 20% of all incoming cold and lightning damage to fire, plus a total of 81% fire resistance, which is great for a setup using Rise of the Phoenix Shield. If you can also cap your chaos resistance, you can take more physical damage as well. It’s worth noting that the other 20% of the damage is taken by Hellhound instead of you, but this must come from hits alone.
This build relies heavily on energy shield, which is currently better than life. Grim Feast is a better version of Life Remnants because you can get double energy shield faster and more reliably when killing monsters.
In addition, you must know the fundamental difference between minion builds in the original and POE 2.
First, minion builds are not spell builds like in the old games, so spell skill modifiers and caster modifiers do not work for minions here. Second, anything that burns counts as ablaze here. Third, rarity greatly improves the quality of loot drops in POE 2, and your minions also get rarity modifiers from your equipment. This means that in POE 2, by increasing rarity, you can get more Exalted Orbs.
Gem Setups
To explain the gem setups, every support and skill in this build has been thoroughly tested for performance and purpose.
For example, this Hellhound has two uses. One is for our own defense, because it takes 20% of the hits for us. Another is to simply ignite all monsters in the area, so that it also applies 24% Fire Exposure to enemies.
Note that we want the ignition, not the flat damage of this minion. As the minion’s health increases, it will deal more ignition damage to nearby enemies. If you are able to unlock its last slot, you can use a support like Fire Mastery to increase the ignition damage.
For our map clearing, we rely on Raging Spirits that are generated when using Flame Wall, and these can kill enemies that are ignited by Hellhound. So we use this setup to have them deal tremendous damage to all ignited enemies.
In practice, you can use Command: Gas Arrow and Flame Wall to kill monsters while keeping yourself safe while slowly walking through narrow corridors. But most of the time, you will only use Flame Wall and Pain Offering heavily in open areas with a few monsters around. Because the former situation is too sudden, you will not be able to react at all! But when you remember it, it is always some insignificant place.
For the last 2 slots, you can use Minion Mastery, Fire Mastery, or Fire Penetration. For taking out bosses and rare monsters, we used this setup with Skeletal Sniper, focusing on its Command skill. But most importantly, you need to understand how this works in practice.
When fighting a boss, you set up 2 Flame Walls around the target location, then activate Pain Offering, which will increase the damage of your minions to tremendous levels. When the boss appears, you apply Flammability to it, and then continue to fire Gas Arrow until he is eliminated.
Hellhound will detonate Gas on contact with the target no matter what. Pain Offering is the most powerful buff to minions in our setup. And the base gem itself will provide our minions with 30% to 50% more damage and faster attack speed. The synergy of these skills allows this build to deal a lot of damage to bosses in a short period of time.
We then use Ablation and Danse Macabre Support to increase its buffs further. Note that the 30% damage increase from these two Support Gems only applies to skills that provide direct damage.
Flame Wall serves two purposes here. One is to generate Raging Spirit, and the other is to enhance arrows from Sniper. Arrows that pass through Flame Wall deal additional fixed fire damage, and they turn from green to red when you notice.
What’s more, this damage is not reduced by support gems with fewer damage modules. You only need to apply Flammability to the most powerful bosses, which will give you another 20%-30% damage. But it’s important not to upgrade Flammability until you have a lot of mana.
There is almost no benefit from gem levels here. All it does is significantly increase your mana cost. So Inspiration comes first, followed by Persistence and Focused Curse. And the other important aura you need to keep is Grim Feast, which is an immense advantage in the era of energy shield OP! Nothing can make the current Bloodmage Ascendancy a joke more than this Support Gem!
Gear Setup
Now comes the second most important part, the gear slots. We can get more minion damage and defense by stacking their gem levels.
Unlike POE 1, they are not spell skills, so we have to pay special attention to the levels of all minion skills. You can get up to 5 in Sceptre, 2 in Helmets, and 3 in Amulets. This is the first thing to pay attention to!
Secondly, you need to stack as much Spirit as possible, whether it is through Sceptre, Amulets, or Body Armor. This is currently the most expensive mod in the game after Chaos Resistance, but you can apply it at a lower cost because our main skill only commands one minion, not all minions at the same time. If you want to increase the attack speed of your Command skill, you have to increase the attack speed of the minions.
Finally, for damage increase, you’d better get this mod, “Allies in Your Presence Deal Additional Flat Fire Damage”. This stacks with the buff they get from Flame Wall. However, the current attribute requirements in POE 2 also require you to invest some Chaos Orbs in your gear to re-roll random modifiers, because even with nodes like Ingenuity, the passive tree is not enough.
In this build, the only unique item we used was Rise of the Phoenix Shield, which synergize with our defensive advantage. If you want to go all out for damage, you can also use Trenchthimbre Spiked Club, which is available from level 16 onwards, but is currently quite expensive to max roll. However, if you have enough currency, feel free.
For the rest of the gear, focus on energy shield, life, and capping your resistances. Don’t forget to continue upgrading your life and mana flasks. If you want to earn more Path of Exile 2 currency, get as many rarity as you can, but don’t go above 150%, because after that the higher the rarity, the less benefit.
Ascendancy Explained
Finally, let’s look at Ascendancy of this build.
The first Ascendancy will give you Hellhound. But the second Ascendancy can only be obtained after you have reached the fire resistance cap and gained some chaos resistance. The third Ascendancy will give you a ton of extra Spirit, thus adding more Skeleton Sniper.
If you manage to get the last Ascendancy Point, you can use it to get more Energy Shield, but at the expense of your life. Unlike POE 1, even if you reduce your max life to 50%, this is not considered low health in POE 2. So I recommend just putting it on the small nodes to increase your max life.
That’s all for this Skeletal Sniper Infernalist Build. Of course, these are not fixed, there are still a few points to invest. However, it is recommended that you still choose to increase Energy Shield as much as possible for the rest of the passive trees. This way, once you start using Pain Offering, the skill effect duration is a highlight of this build!
