PoE 2 New Ascendancies Overview: Tactician, Smith of Kitava, and Lich

Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt update revolutionizes character progression with three groundbreaking Ascendancy classes that fundamentally alter build paradigms: The Tactician (Mercenary Ascendancy), The Smith of Kitava (Warrior Ascendancy), and The Lich (Witch Ascendancy). These classes introduce unprecedented strategic depth through specialized mechanics: battlefield coordination, real-time gear enhancement, and forbidden necromantic arts. Whether you seek to amplify team effectiveness, forge an indestructible fortress, or harness chaotic destruction, these Ascendancies redefine what’s possible in Wraeclast. Let’s explore their mechanics, optimal builds, and advanced strategies to dominate the current meta.

Introducing the Three New Ascendancies

PoE 2’s design philosophy emphasizes deeper build customization, and these new Ascendancies exemplify this approach through innovative combat systems. The Tactician revolutionizes party dynamics with tactical positioning and battlefield control. The Smith of Kitava introduces real-time gear modification, creating unprecedented defensive capabilities. The Lich blurs the lines between life and death through chaos manipulation and undead mastery. Each Ascendancy offers distinct progression paths that cater to different playstyles while maintaining competitive viability.

These classes embody unique fantasy archetypes that resonate with different player preferences. The Tactician channels the strategic genius of a battlefield commander, orchestrating victory through precise positioning and tactical advantages. The Smith of Kitava embraces the demonic blacksmith fantasy, transforming ordinary gear into legendary artifacts through infernal craftsmanship. The Lich embodies the immortal necromancer, wielding forbidden knowledge to command death itself. While some players prioritize raw damage output, others focus on survivability, mobility, or support capabilities—these Ascendancies provide specialized tools for every approach.

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The Tactician – Mercenary Ascendancy

Theme & Playstyle

The Tactician embodies the principle that strength lies in coordination. This Mercenary Ascendancy specializes in leading allies and coordinating minions through superior tactical positioning. The class leverages aura optimization, banner deployment, and innovative crowd control through the unique pin mechanic. This playstyle appeals to players who enjoy strategic depth and indirect combat influence, rewarding careful planning and battlefield awareness over raw damage output.

Enemies find themselves systematically neutralized through tactical immobilization, while allies and minions receive substantial damage amplification from your main-hand weapon scaling. Your defensive capabilities scale impressively through balanced armor and evasion investment, creating a resilient frontline presence. While the Tactician may not top damage meters, their true value lies in multiplying party effectiveness, turning good groups into unstoppable forces.

Key Mechanics & Abilities

Auras & Banners:

• A Solid Plan dramatically reduces mana reservation for permanent buffs, enabling unprecedented aura stacking capabilities.

• Whoever Pays Best revolutionizes banner mechanics by allowing simultaneous deployment of multiple banners—a unique advantage no other Ascendancy possesses.

Presence Buff Radius:

• Watch How I Do It expands your buff coverage area while adding significant flat attack damage to nearby allies.

• Allies gain access to a percentage of your weapon’s base damage, substantially boosting both minion and party DPS output.

Pin Ailment:

• Suppressing Fire accumulates pin stacks on targets, and once fully stacked, Right Where We Want Them completely immobilizes enemies, preventing both movement and attacks.

• Rapid-fire projectile builds or ballista totem setups can permanently control even the most resilient boss encounters.

Defensive Prowess:

• Polish That Gear effectively doubles armor’s stun mitigation and evasion’s ailment resistance thresholds.

• Stay Light, Use Cover provides balanced physical damage reduction alongside evasion, both capped at 50% for reliable defensive performance.

Unique Skill – Supporting Fire:

• Unleash Hell! summons spectral archers that provide off-screen artillery support.

• These minions scale with both Strength and Dexterity, creating additional damage sources from unexpected angles.

Popular Tactician Builds

Aura-Stacker Support

• The Tactician can transform into a dedicated support powerhouse, stacking essential auras like Vitality, Clarity, War Banner, and Dread Banner without excessive mana investment.

• This approach dramatically enhances party damage output and survivability, or supercharges personal minion builds like Summon Raging Spirits.

Pinning Projectile “Shotcaller”

• Crossbow and bow specialists exploit Suppressing Fire and Right Where We Want Them to achieve permanent crowd control.

• This build excels during leveling phases, particularly when combined with skills like Siege Cascade or Artillery Ballista.

• While single-target damage may require investment to scale properly, the exceptional safety margin makes this build forgiving for newer players.

Commander of Totems

• Cannons, Ready! increases totem attack speed by 30%, though totems remain synchronized with your attacks.

• An effective strategy involves deploying Artillery Ballista Totems that unleash devastating volleys with each of your attacks.

• This build enables impressive burst damage potential, though it requires consistent attack input to maintain effectiveness.

Tactician Quick-Reference Table

Mastering the Tactician requires understanding positioning fundamentals and timing optimization. The learning curve rewards patient players who develop battlefield awareness and strategic thinking. Common mistakes include neglecting banner placement timing and underestimating the importance of aura efficiency. Advanced players should focus on optimizing pin application speed and maximizing buff coverage area. Frustrated by unreliable gear progression in Path of Exile 2? Our PoE 2 Leveling Gear service provides optimized equipment packages that eliminate tedious farming, accelerating your journey through early content and preparing you for endgame challenges—secure your advantage now.

The Smith of Kitava – Warrior Ascendancy

Theme & Fantasy

This Ascendancy channels the essence of a demonic blacksmith who forges weapons within Kitava’s eternal flames. Each strike imbues equipment with molten power, transforming ordinary gear into extraordinary instruments of destruction. The Smith operates as a self-sufficient powerhouse, prioritizing personal fortification and offensive capability over group support. This fantasy appeals to players who enjoy creating unstoppable juggernauts capable of withstanding immense punishment while delivering devastating counterattacks.

The resulting gameplay experience seamlessly blends defensive resilience with explosive offense. Survive catastrophic blows through enhanced defenses, then retaliate with fiery cascades that incinerate entire enemy formations. Basic white equipment transcends its limitations through specialized ascendancy enhancements, becoming legendary artifacts of immense power. Essentially, the Smith progressively transforms into an impenetrable bastion of destruction.

Unique Mechanics & Abilities

Temper Weapon (Forging Attacks)

• Acquire “Temper Weapon” through Against the Anvil, which charges your weapon by channeling at an anvil, adding explosive fire damage to subsequent attacks.

• Initial implementation felt cumbersome, but recent improvements significantly accelerated charging speed. Proper timing before boss encounters can unleash devastating burst damage windows.

Manifest Weapon (Summoned Copy)

• Living Weapon enables weapon duplication, creating a temporary minion that mirrors your equipped weapon.

• This dual-attack capability provides additional damage output while serving as a tactical distraction for enemy attention.

Fire Spell on Hit

• Heat of the Forge automatically triggers fire spells with each successful hit.

• This mechanic functions similarly to “Cast on Critical” but activates on every hit without requiring critical strikes, making area clearing effortless when combined with high attack speed builds.

Overcapped Resistances

• Coal Stoker and Forged in Flame amplify fire resistance and extend these benefits to cold and lightning elements.

• Strategic fire resistance stacking can push overall elemental resistance to extraordinary levels, potentially achieving 90% across all elements.

• This synergy particularly benefits Righteous Fire builds and other self-damage strategies that require exceptional fire resistance.

Custom Forge-Fused Armor

• Smith’s Masterwork allows dedication of a Normal (white) chest piece to specialized ascendancy modifications.

• This enables stacking multiple powerful modifiers such as maximum fire resistance, life regeneration, or “Armor applies to Chaos damage” transformations.

• While this approach sacrifices traditional chest modifiers, it unlocks unprecedented defensive capabilities that redefine survivability thresholds.

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Smith Strengths & Synergies

Unkillable Defense:

• Exceptional resistance caps combined with substantial life regeneration and optional chaos damage mitigation can render the Smith virtually immortal.

• Hardcore players particularly appreciate the immense safety margin. Endurance charge generation and innate physical damage reduction further enhance defensive capabilities.

Simplified Gear Requirements:

• A single specialized chest piece addresses multiple defensive requirements, freeing up equipment slots for offensive or utility modifications.

• This significantly streamlines early progression by reducing the pressure to acquire perfect resistance rolls across all equipment slots.

Fire Damage Synergy:

• Fire-enhancing skills like Herald of Ash and Infernal Cry synergize perfectly with fire spell procs and Temper Weapon explosions.

• Bone Shatter builds that convert physical damage to fire leverage high sustainability to withstand self-inflicted trauma damage.

Righteous Fire King:

• Many players believe the Smith may become the definitive Righteous Fire ascendancy due to its capacity for achieving extreme fire resistance and regeneration levels.

• This build completely ignores self-burn damage while obliterating enemies with massive burning area-of-effect damage.

Popular Smith Builds

Melee Smash with Trauma Stacks

• Bone Shatter synergizes exceptionally well with Smith’s defensive advantages. While trauma accumulation typically threatens fragile builds, the Smith’s durability neutralizes this danger.

• After accumulating sufficient trauma stacks, damage output increases dramatically. Adding Infernal Cry further enhances effectiveness by coating enemies in combustible ash.

Tanky Block & Explode Warrior

• Some players adopt maximum block configurations, combining them with flat physical damage reduction and relying on spear skills or item-based procs for crowd control.

• This approach sacrifices speed for near-invulnerability, creating a relaxing playstyle perfect for extended gaming sessions.

Artillery Ballista Hybrid

• A minority of players utilize Artillery Ballista while leveraging the Smith’s exceptional defensive capabilities for survival.

• Investing in percentage-based life and Strength modifiers on the custom chest benefits both personal survivability and totem effectiveness.

• While unconventional, this build demonstrates the Smith’s versatility by combining heavy defense with totem-based damage output.

Smith Quick-Reference Table

Players seeking to withstand devastating boss attacks and survive chaotic encounters should strongly consider the Smith of Kitava. The combination of impenetrable defenses and explosive offensive capabilities makes this Ascendancy ideal for defensive-focused players. Common mistakes include improper temper timing and neglecting resistance optimization. Advanced players should focus on maximizing temper uptime and optimizing custom chest modifiers for specific content types. Searching for that elusive Mirror of Kalandra in Path of Exile 2? Our PoE 2 Mirror of Kalandra service accelerates your hunt by providing this valuable currency quickly, enabling immediate access to top-tier crafting opportunities—claim your path to power today.

The Lich – Witch Ascendancy

Theme & Lore

The Lich embraces forbidden necromantic arts, sacrificing portions of their soul to command devastating chaos damage and enhance undead minions. Corpses detonate in explosive cascades, curses weaken entire enemy formations, and the boundaries between life and energy shield blur in unprecedented ways, mirroring the concept of a lich’s phylactery. This dark fantasy appeals to players who revel in commanding undead armies and wielding twisted chaos magic.

While drawing thematic inspiration from classic PoE 1 ascendancies like the Occultist, the Lich introduces revolutionary mechanics centered on life-energy shield interaction and chaos conversion. This versatility enables diverse build approaches: pure spellcasting, minion mastery, or hybrid chaos offense. Players who enjoy complex resource management and spectacular explosive effects naturally gravitate toward the Lich’s intricate gameplay.

Unique Mechanics & Abilities

Soulless Form & Eternal Life (Life-ES Lock)

• Soulless Form eliminates traditional mana regeneration, replacing it with mana regeneration equal to 6% of maximum life per second.

• While 10% of damage bypasses energy shield, Eternal Life renders your life pool immune to damage as long as energy shield remains.

• This creates a state of conditional invulnerability, provided you maintain your energy shield above zero.

Crystalline Phylactery

• Provides an additional jewel socket that doubles the effectiveness of any non-unique jewel.

• Conversely, if your energy shield ever depletes completely, your spell costs increase by 50%.

• This risk-reward mechanism incentivizes maintaining energy shield at all times.

Unholy Might & Chaos Conversion

• Necromantic Conduit activates Unholy Might (converting 30% physical damage to chaos) whenever sufficient mana prevents “Low Mana” status.

• Summoned allies also gain chaos damage bonuses, dramatically enhancing physical-based minion builds.

• Blackened Heart further scales Unholy Might effectiveness based on maximum mana investment.

Curses & Explosions

• Rupture the Soul grants cursed enemies a chance to explode for 25% of maximum life as chaos damage upon death.

• Dominion Over Flesh enables multiple simultaneous curses and can affect Hexproof enemies.

• Combining multiple curses with explosion triggers creates devastating chain reactions that clear entire screens.

Lich Strengths & Synergies

Chaos DoT Specialist:

• Combine Essence Drain with Contagion and Lich passives to eliminate entire enemy packs, then observe bosses rapidly succumb to accumulated chaos damage.

• Maintaining energy shield while channeling or deploying wither totems can significantly increase damage output.

Minion Army Commander:

• The Lich provides minion enhancements similar to traditional Necromancers but with unique chaos conversion, Unholy Might, and extensive curse synergy.

• Raging Spirits and Skeletons receive massive physical-to-chaos damage conversions that bypass conventional armor defenses.

• Exploding corpses and cursed enemies can trigger devastating chain reactions across enemy formations.

Hybrid Playstyles:

• Self-sacrifice spells like Dark Pact align perfectly with the Lich theme, allowing you to sacrifice minions or life while benefiting from chaos scaling.

• The classic strategy of summoning minions, cursing enemies, then unleashing chaos nukes feels perfectly at home in Lich gameplay.

Phylactery Defense:

• Maintaining even minimal energy shield completely protects your life pool from damage.

• Proper gear and passive tree configuration prevents energy shield depletion, transforming you into an undead siege engine that ignores most incoming damage.

Popular Lich Builds

Chaos DoT Lich (Essence Drain/Contagion)

• Amplify chaos damage through passives like Eldritch Empowerment, stacking damage-over-time effects for exceptional boss and map clearing.

• Combine Despair curses with Wither application to maximize enemy vulnerability to chaos damage.

• Many players consider this approach top-tier for damage output, while defensive capabilities remain robust thanks to energy shield life gating.

Skeleton Mage Lich

• Lich passives enhance minion damage through chaos conversion, while curses trigger Rupture explosions for additional clearing power.

• Skeleton Mages deliver rapid projectile attacks that can freeze or chill enemies depending on elemental alignment.

• While boss encounters require strategic minion resummoning, sustained damage remains excellent and normal pack clearing becomes incredibly efficient.

Dark Pact or Hybrid Caster

• Casting Dark Pact on your own skeletons or yourself synergizes perfectly with the Lich kit, combining minion benefits with chaos scaling for massive burst potential.

• While this approach remains underexplored, the theoretical synergy suggests tremendous damage possibilities for experimental players.

Lich Quick-Reference Table

The Lich combines dark aesthetics with revolutionary gameplay mechanics, appealing to players who enjoy complex builds that master curses, minions, and chaos magic to annihilate entire screens. Common mistakes include mismanaging energy shield thresholds and inefficient curse application. Advanced players should focus on optimizing mana regeneration and maximizing explosion chain reactions. Struggling against Path of Exile 2’s most challenging bosses? Our PoE 2 Boss Kill Boost service eliminates these roadblocks quickly, allowing you to focus on enjoying prime loot and endgame progression—take control of your journey now.

Choosing Your Path in PoE 2

Each new Ascendancy offers a distinct approach to conquering Wraeclast:

• The Tactician: Master battlefield control through superior positioning, aura optimization, and innovative pin mechanics that neutralize threats.

• The Smith of Kitava: Forge nearly impenetrable defenses while unleashing devastating fiery explosions that incinerate entire enemy formations.

• The Lich: Command forbidden sorcery and undead legions, creating explosive chain reactions that clear screens and eliminate bosses with overwhelming chaos damage.

The meta continues evolving as players discover innovative build configurations. Early indications suggest all three Ascendancies maintain endgame viability, though they excel in different scenarios. Some players prefer the Lich’s exceptional damage potential, others value the Smith’s unmatched survivability, and those who enjoy group coordination gravitate toward the Tactician’s support capabilities. Experimentation remains essential to finding your perfect match.

This comparative table helps identify your ideal Ascendancy based on playstyle preferences:

During mapping and boss encounters, the Smith withstands devastating attacks, the Lich curses and detonates everything in sight, and the Tactician neutralizes threats while allies and minions overwhelm enemies. This diversity exemplifies why PoE 2’s continuous innovations maintain community engagement. These Ascendancies fundamentally transform traditional damage-focused approaches, offering fresh strategic dimensions.

Final Thoughts

Path of Exile 2 continues pushing build diversity boundaries through complex Ascendancies that revolutionize resource management, gear crafting, and cooperative gameplay. The Tactician, Smith of Kitava, and Lich each embody this design philosophy through unique thematic journeys: commanding battles as a strategic mastermind, forging impenetrable defenses through demonic craftsmanship, or transcending mortality as an immortal spellcaster who manipulates life and death itself.

Tactician redefines group play with innovative crowd control mechanics.
Smith provides unprecedented defensive capabilities perfect for face-tanking encounters.
Lich combines curses, chaos explosions, and undead armies for devastating battlefield control.

Each Ascendancy offers distinct advantages catering to different player preferences. Community response has been overwhelmingly positive, with developers continuously refining mechanics like Temper Weapon charging and pin ailment frequency. These ongoing improvements suggest these Ascendancies will only become more powerful over time. Now presents an ideal opportunity to experiment with these revolutionary classes.

Adventurous exiles should explore these new Ascendancies as soon as possible. The Dawn of the Hunt update introduces fresh content alongside potential free respec opportunities (depending on league implementation), making build experimentation accessible and rewarding. Whether you stand resolute as an indestructible smith, orchestrate victory as a tactical commander, or unleash chaos as an immortal lich, Path of Exile 2 delivers an exceptional gaming experience. May your journey through Wraeclast be prosperous, and may your loot always be exalted!

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