poe 3.25 Leveling a Lightning Strike Warden: Tips and Transition

For leveling a Lightning Strike Warden, prioritize new content, use Havoc's setup, and consider early lightning strike transition.

### Path of Exile: Lightning Strike Warden Leveling Guide
* ⚔️  Pon discusses the Lightning Strike Warden build, emphasizing its **novelty and suitability for players seeking new content exploration**.
* 🏹  The leveling process is inspired by Havoc, with adjustments made to suit Pon's playstyle and **newer players**.
* 🎮  The early leveling setup includes **Galvanic Arrow, Rain of Arrows, and Ballista**, with a focus on **added damage and attack speed**.
* 💪  Important passive tree nodes include **Precise Technique**, **Point Blank**, and **Elemental Overload** for **damage scaling**.
* 🔒  Defensive options like **Barkskin and Life nodes** are prioritized early on, with a gradual transition to **Lightning Strike in the late game**.
* 🌩️  The Lightning Strike transition involves **respeccing into crit nodes**, adjusting skill gems, and optimizing the passive tree for **crit and attack speed**.
* 🧠  Pon provides insights on **gear choices**, **aura management**, and **skill gem setups** throughout the leveling process.
* 📈  The guide offers a comprehensive roadmap from early levels to endgame, focusing on both **damage output** and **survivability**.

### Path of Exile: Lightning Strike Warden Build Guide
* ⚔️  Lightning Strike is still a strong skill choice for the Warden build, especially in the early stages where **flat damage is crucial**.
* 🛡️  The guide recommends using a shield over dual-wielding for **better survivability** and **easier resistance capping**.
* 🦾  Key claw notes for the build include **Claws of the Magpie**, **Claw of the Hawk**, and **Life Raker** for **life gain on hit**.
* 🔮  The build utilizes the **40% increased effect of Elusive**, a powerful buff that synergizes well with Nightblade support.
* 🌟  To maximize Lightning Strike's effectiveness, the build requires **multi-shot and Pierce support**, with at least **3-5 pierces recommended for endgame content**.
* 💎  The guide suggests obtaining a **20% quality Lightning Strike gem** through the Merciless Lab and corrupting it with a Vaal Orb to potentially upgrade it to **Vaal Lightning Strike**.
* 📊  Leveling tips include **constantly upgrading your bow**, considering the **Dead Eye ascendancy for early speed**, and using **Blacksmith's Whetstones for early weapon quality boosts**.
* 🎮  For league start preparation, the guide recommends farming the Merciless Lab for the **20% quality Lightning Strike gem** and potentially **valuable corrupted gems**.

hey guys, Pon here. Today, let's talk about leveling a Lightning Strike Warden. Now, right at the start, I'm going to knock one thing out because I got asked this a lot on stream. There's a lot of people doing Lightning Strike right now, and there's a lot of cool versions out there. I've looked at them on stream. There are several ascendancies out there that people want to play, which is Slayer, Deadeye, and Jugg. There's also some other ones like, for example, Berserker, but those are the ones I've seen advocated for the most, and people ask me, Pal, should I play those or should I play Warden? And my answer would be, if that is your question, then you should probably not play Warden, because the reason I want to play Warden is because it's new content, right? So it's like something new I can try out. If this question even comes into your mind, you probably don't have that mindset, and you just want something safer, right? Which I totally understand. You can still play

Wen later in the league, you can wait until I try it out and maybe make a video about it, which I will, by the way. There is no reason for you to do that then if you don't want that kind of exploration or whatever. There's no reason to, um, there's no, no reason to play a question mark ascendency if you don't care about the like Nuance of playing something new. So, if that is you, I would highly seek out one of those other content creators that will be making guides about this. But yeah, with that out of the way, I'll quickly talk to you guys about today's sponsor, which is Bev, which I have in the video. And then after that, we can go into the leveling part. Whatev is a learning platform for backend developers. Their selling proposition is basically that they want to teach you stuff in more of a gamified version to make that learning process more enjoyable and more engaging. They also have more of a learning by doing approach instead of teaching your own.

only theoreticals, which means actually writing code, and you'll be learning about Python and Go programming languages. They even have stuff like levels, achievements, and quests that you can fulfill with a 30-day no-questions-asked refund policy. As well as that, they have free demos everywhere, so you don't have to purchase before trying. If you're interested in that, you can use my code palon down below in the description. I'll also put it in the top comment for 25% off your first purchase, which can be one year or one month. With that said, sponsor segment end. Let's get back into the video. So this leveling is highly, highly inspired by Havoc, who has been doing an absolute great job for the community, testing several leveling setups over the last few years. If you haven't subscribed to him yet, I don't know where you're living, on the rock or something, but holy like, there is so much you can learn from him. I will link his run of especially this down below in the description. Now I did make some changes, so it's not exactly

his, so it's not his fault if anything goes wrong. That's not what I'm saying. I just really want you to understand how good of a Content you can expect there and how much you can learn, especially as a new player. And everything I changed here is basically just to accommodate my play style, to accommodate the way I like it, and I think to accommodate maybe some of the people who are newer to the game. In general, I would say there's a lot of speed options that I don't take. A good example of that would be the banded reward in act two. I will be going for AA, which gives you res, but there are a lot of people who will want to go criton for the 8% movement speed. Those are the kind of things I mean, and this will manifest itself in some other small choices along the way. In general, the way we're going to level from Level 1 to 11 is pretty straightforward. We're going to go galvanic Arrow plus trapal ballista and

then we're also going to have a Mana Force setup with burning arrow and puncture. Now, if you're socket starved, the most important thing early is that you get your galvanic Arrow up with Mirage Archer faster attacks will be kind of like the third thing trapal ballista get some flat damage or and then Foster attacks. I know a lot of people who put Pierce on this really depends on how you like to play if you like to actually clear with the ballistas instead of just putting them down on single Target I guess I'm going to put it here just as an option but in general I very much prefer to just go full damage then we have the Mona Forge setup which you can basically do whatever you want but burning arrow is very strong I think puncture is very strong galvano a second Galvan is also very strong you can't really do too much wrong with this. I also have a precision and this totally depends and we're basically going to talk about that once we're at precise technique but the level

of this depends completely on a few factors, and then we have blink arrow with frost blink. The dash is basically at level four because you don't get the blink Arrow until Level 10. Now just to be clear, for frost blink, you will need Primal spirit because Frost blink actually needs intelligence, but this also depends on whether you are actually going to find anything with intelligence. If you already found something, then you can actually go here last if you want to do. Remember though that these um 5% flask effect also give you extra movement speed, so that's it's very little at the start, but it's still something. At the end of act one, you will get access to our second setup, which is going to revolve around uh rain of arrows. Rain of arrows is one of the most fun and cozy bow skills to level with, simply because you don't need additional arrows to make it work. You don't really need to aim it. It is an AOE. It doesn't scale with additional arrows, but that is a good thing early. What I personally

supported with is Foster attacks Mirage Archer, and once you can added cold damage, you can also interchange the faster attack with added cold. This mainly depends on how good your weapon is, but I would personally always go for faster attacks earlier, even if it's a little less damage, simply because it's going to feel so much better. Now, there is also train, which you can use. The only problem with that is there is a lot of upkeep with Trinity, where whenever you swap your gear around, you might have to adjust. So, if you're not into that, then I would personally not use it. I will still keep it here simply in case you have a blue socket, right, and you don't have four greens, obviously can happen, right? So, in that case, probably try and get Trinity to work. After that, we have personally, I still like arly ballista. I know a lot of people have opted out of it. I just, I think it's great. You go a Ballista fastra Tex. If you don't Foster attacks, it's going to feel awful to play.

with this is mainly to put down in bosses. There's not really much more to it. Then one source of flat damage is probably going to be added Co damage, and then Le damage with attacks. You can also put call here. It just depends. For example, if you have a three-link, call's value goes up because relatively to your main setup or your Mana Force setup, the ballista is going to do less damage. Then I have a Mana Force setup here with burning Arrow, frenzy, and LIF tab. I'm going to be completely honest with you. When it comes to Mona Forge setups, I have not been trying it too much in the last few days. The game has been crashing on me constantly. I don't know if anybody else has tried it. It was kind of a little bit of a freak show there. I hope it's not going to be up for release. But if you want to experiment around, I know people are using galvanic Arrow. They're using multiple setups. It just completely depends on how much

sockets you have. I put this one in here so you remember to do it, especially if you have access to a red sockets for LIF, but that is up to you. In terms of auras, you just have to remember one thing, and that is that you need 10% of your reservation for bark skin, which we're going to go into very early. It is a very strong defensive option, especially early. What you're going to do is early, you're going to go Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder, and then later you are actually going to opt out of Herald of Thunder, and you're going to go Haste. Now, this together with bark skin will put a strain onto your reservation, so you will have to take this cluster right here, which is in the PO. We're going to talk about the passive threee in a second, but just so you know, that's what I swap to. If you're not comfortable, you can also go with Grace, but I would say with going for a defensive Mastery early, you should be fine. We're also going AO once again.

so we're going to get R, but if you really want to, if you're fine with being a little bit slower, I guess you can also go Grace. And then at the end here, we have the same thing again, Blink ER and faster attacks. I should actually include Frost blink. The only thing is you should not level this too much because the strain on your int is going to become quite crazy. Then let's go over passive tree. So after act one, you're going to go down here and you're going to grab precise technique. Now I personally like to grab one with nature before that just so have a little bit extra fire R before we go into Val ruins. That's just my personal take there. That is not something most people do just so you know precise technique. Now the way this works is 40% more attack damage if your accuracy rating is higher than maximum life. The way you can check that is actually in game. For example, on this latest test run that I'm currently doing, I have guys can see that.

1,547 life, and I can check here. I can go to rain of arrows, and if you look, I actually have 2,134 accuracy, and that's because we also invest into accuracy and all that good stuff, right? But this means that the 40% more damage is up. If this was lower than my maximum life, I would get nothing. This is something you should keep in mind. Usually, if you follow this leveling path, it's not going to happen to you. However, they did increase the life roles on items in general. I don't know how that's going to work out early game 'cause I haven't seen it yet, but there might be a situation where you get so much HP, or you get lucky drops that maybe your life is over. So, whenever you get a huge life increase, or you're wearing Coral Rings or anything like that, you should be thinking about this, and if you think this is not worth the hassle, it definitely is. 40% more damage is ridiculous. There is no excuse not to take it this early and never deal crits.

doesn't do anything now. In case you're wondering, we are not going any elements early, so we don't need to crit in general. And later, we're going to get 20% flat chin right here. So for leveling, those nodes are less relevant. That's why we're opting for bark skin first to be a lot tankier. This is also what lets us kind of use haste. With that said, right after precise Technique, we take Far Side. This accidentally gives us a lot of accuracy, but we would take this cluster anyways because it's just really, really good. Now, this moner here, you don't have to take immediately. It completely depends on how much life you have, but at any point, you can take this masterer and get a ton of extra flat accuracy depending on how much green sockets you have on your bow. Then going into act three, the only thing you're going to do is first up, you're going to go down and grab leader of the pack plus the reservation Mastery. This is going to make it so you

can actually use taste so you should take it first. Uh, the reservation Mastery is basically going to mean you get 24% increased damage because you have bark skin one Herald and haste. At this point, 24% increase damage for one point is crazy. Then you get graceful assault, which just gives you Onslaught and armor evasion rating, which you're going to have some random on your gear. And right after that, you go up and you actually grab Quick Step, the movement speed. Right here, if you don't want to do that, that's also fine because you will get more powerful if you don't spend those points. But in general, it's a very feels good thing, and I personally really like heart of Oak, not just for the extra life. At this point, we have like no increased Max life, but I love it because it has a chance to avoid being stunned. And until you get to your first Pantheon where you get kind of a semi-stun avoidance, heart of Oak is just so comfy. Going into act four, the first thing I want to mention is once

again here's where we take bark skin. Bark skin is a defensive aura that gives you flat physical damage taken from attacks minus. Which means that usually in campaign physical attacks can be quite hard. Think about Ras, think about all those things jumping at you, most of those are to a big part physical damage, especially before Maps where stuff gets converted to Ellie or physical as extra Ellie right now. There's a lot of raw physical damage which is why this is going to feel very great. Now the reason it's going to be good is so you build up your bark stacks and you lose them if you get hit. Not all of them but just one if you have been hit recently. So yes you're not going to have Grace or anything. I don't think it's going to be necessary. You can if you want to be overly tanky but I still think this going to work out because you're going to need a lot of green sockets so all your gear is just going to have random evasion roles in general and also do

note that you can now use armor scraps way earlier to actually get a little bit of extra evasion. Cuz now, if you apply armor scraps on a very low-level item, you're probably going to get 18 to 20 quality right away. So that's my reasoning for going this first. Also, there's not really much else to take with. I might need my words and you might get a really early tincture for some reason and you can go in during suffusion. Maybe right, I might even my words, but I just don't know at this point. Now, the next thing we're going to go for is point blank. This just deals a ton of damage straight up. It's 30% more damage the way you're going to play it. You're not far shot here, you're not dead eye, so point blank is just basically built into it. And just remember that you want to stand near your enemies when that happens, which is another upside of having bark skin early. After that, you want to PA down and you want to grab

this Elemental cluster very important. Here is you already want to take the left side, which gives you extra chance to freeze, shock, and ignite. Remember, we're not critting during campaign, so later when you take off of Winter, the small chance to freeze here, plus the 20% here is actually a big deal. And then you take the elemental Mastery, which is a huge damage increase, round about 25 to 30% more damage straight up. All right, so now we have our biggest power spikes, which is point blank, precise technique, and the AL Mastery. We got everything in between. What's next? First up is at this point, we get a lot of Life per levels, and we have to realize that precise technique might fall off, so we will in the future actually have to think about that. But before that, you definitely want to get some Mona Le. At this point, you deal enough damage that 0.4% Mona Le will sustain you quite a bit. It won't be perfect, and this single note here will be Respec later in actually quite a bit.

but it is better than nothing. For sure we path up, and now we're going into act six, which is going to see us taking this cluster right away. So the attack cost across the board has been going up. It actually costs a ton of mana, and with as much reservation as we're going to have with haste, with a Herald, and with bark skin, you will want to have reduced Mana cost. You get 15% here, 8% here, and I think you're also going to grab the 12%. Now, this is a little bit of a flex slot. If you feel like you don't need it, you're fine pressing your Mana floss, maybe even have two Mana floss. It's fine, but just know that it's there if you need it. 12% Mana reservation efficiency is going to help a lot. You have more of a Mana pool, which means your Mana FL is going to feel way better. And then we grab Acuity. This is basically going to ensure that we are going to have enough accuracy to not overtake life, and we're

also going to have thick skin here just to get a little bit of very efficient life. 15% for two points as well as that we're grabbing herbalism. So all of this life and we're trying to offset with the accuracy because the accuracy has to be higher and this accuracy. Mastery once again is a flex slot depending on what your gear is. If you don't need it you don't need it. It's always going to be there. Then we go into act seven and all that's really happening here is we are going to get master Fletcher. You might be wondering additional arrows doesn't scale R of arrows. It's still worth it for your Mona Forge setup and for your ballista. And don't forget the small notes. Here have attack speed which is going to make your build just feel way better. After that we're going to do the same but we're going to go up. We're going to grab multi-shot another additional projectile some attack speed on the way and uh then we're going to basically prep slowly but surely into.

the transition to lightning strike, but that is not right now. Now I'm going to say this right now: you can transition early, but I would not personally recommend it. More on the lightning strike thingy later, but if you're experienced, I mean you can go lightning strike as soon as level 12 or something, you'll be fine, but it's anything but safe. I currently cannot test it out because obviously lightning strike is missing like half of its damage, but yeah, it's going to be something I might test up. So once we're up here, we're going to grab Clever Thief, and at this point, you can actually respec this mod. Leech note: this gives us life leech on top of the mana leech, so just very efficient points. Also, the small point here is just straight up life and mana on hit. After that, in Act Nine, we are just going to grab Blood Drinker. Very efficient, the life on kill is going to feel super nice, and then we're going to set up for Forces of Nature, and then in Act 10.

we're also going to grab Revenge of the Hunted. You can also do it the other way around if you feel squishy, and if you have enough accuracy to support precise technique. Now for your second ascendency, you are going to take Al of Winter right here, and this is going to be nowhere like it's going to be an end game because at this point all you have is 30% chance to freeze. Right, you have this right here, and you have these two points so it's not going to be the same. It's only 30% for Hoarfrost on hit, and the freezes are not going to be as consistent, but it's still the best we got right now, and we want to get to Avatar of the Wets, which is going to be our big steroid. So in general, in terms of power spikes, it's not going to, I don't think it's going to be huge, but I might be wrong on that. I think it's going to be very huge later though, so yeah, that is basically the run. Now let's

talk about how you Respec into lightning strike. Now, the lightning strike transition first up on the passive tree looks like this crit Respec. So, what's happening right here is we are removing all this bow stuff projectile-based. Point Blank this all does not concern us anymore. We are now trying to get first up crit so we can actually apply our ailments. At this point, we do not have enough attack speed or ailment chance or crit chance to even apply enough of a spring. Stacks we're going to get like shocks here or there that are going to be like 10-12%. But we cannot really make use of spring at this point. So off of winter is going to get a lot better for this Respec though. And we're also going to get Avatar of the Wilds, which is going to be a huge damage steroid. Make sure that at any point you have all three damage types so that you can actually also apply stuff like I don't know ignite right any fire damage rooll it.

doesn't matter how small applies ignite also. Don't forget that those ailments that can be applied with your damage will be applied 100%. They always apply while you have Avatar of the Wilds up. So even though your crit might be scuffed, your ailment chance is scuffed while you have this up. You will Perma freeze basically anything on screen. So whenever you have like an expedition up or there's like a legion, if you want to be defensive, make sure that you also understand this is not just offensive. It's also going to make your freeze quite a bit more. So pretty straightforward. We're going to get as much crit chance as we can. Obviously crit mold along the way is going to do a big deal as well because it also increases your damage. Obviously is not just for ailment. Corner prey right here. This gets better the more attack speed you have obviously but I am trying to very much Target that. But basically the idea is you have 20% chance to bleed and once enemies are bleeding, which is up for like 4 seconds.

so once you bleed them, it's always going to be up. You get a huge amount of crit chance. It's just, it's too good not to take, even though it's conditional. The faster you hit, the more non-conditional it is, because you do get, like I said, the 20% chance to bleed here. After that, what you're trying, what you're going to do for sure, and that's super important, is you're going to respect the projectile damage nodes into attack speed. We are not a dead eye, you have to remember that. We don't get any attack speed steroid from our ascendancy. If you want the build to feel good and eventually get multi-strike to work, you need all the attack speed you can do. Not respect these into here or anything. You don't want the P damage because it only works for the projectile part of lightning strike, not the melee part, but you just want to keep those forever, like very, very long. Let's just say, do this. Just do this. Okay, now we're going to miss a reservation.

cluster down here, which means we're going to go into the better Charisma because we're now paying differently, right? And we're also going to get the a% damage per buff back, and that's going to fix our reservation. Do note, though, that if your reservation feels scuffed and I misjudged the impact the increased Mana is going to have, you can also replace Wrath for Herald of Thunder. You're going to deal less damage, but you're still going to get a little bit of flat, but not all of it. Also remember that if you're struggling with int at this point and you don't have any on gear, you can always go Anger if you want to because at this point we don't necessarily need the lightning damage yet because we're only going to get off of spring once we are in Uber lab. So until then, you probably want to have it figured out, but it's not super important. You will also see that we're not using determination, and that's for a few reasons, mostly because I think going into white and yellow.

map spark skin is still going to be quite strong. It will maybe be respect later CU it just doesn't do anything at some point. But right now, I think it's still going to hold up and you just simply need the flat damage. And Grace is better also you do not have perseverance at this point so the armor doesn't Grant you any extra damage which is also kind of scuffed. Other than that, we'll be taking all the claw notes we can get which is going to be claws of the macpie, claw of the hawk, and even life raker at this point. Every life get on hit you can get is huge which is also why we're taking this claw Mastery. I personally would not recommend dual wielding but you can if you really want to. In that case, I would also take Twin teros down here. I think that Shield is overall going to feel better. It's going to be easier to cap your resz. Same goes for a life breaker because you want a second claw masterer and it gives good attack.

speed going to make the build feel better. Once again, these will be specked out later, but right now before we have a cluster Jewel and stuff, it's very nice. Here we take the 40% increased effect of elusive. So, the deal with elusive is that we get it for free from night blade. This is one of the strongest supports in the game, and you can only use it if you're using claws or daggers. So, while yes, theoretically you can also use daggers, claws have life gain on hit implicit, which is a game-changer at this point. So, this plus whatever is going to be on the implicit on the claw is going to make such a huge, huge difference. So, that's all I got for there. Now, for lightning strike to work, we need two things. We need multi-shot, the attack Mastery that gives one additional hit, and we need Pierce. At the start, I think three pierces are totally fine in endgame. Maybe you want to get to four, five depending on what content you're running.

you do not know why this additional strike is important. I would definitely check out my main guide video where I go over how lightning strike hits twice. This is mandatory, and as always, you have the attribute notes here to adjust however you need to. Also, at this point, we did resp Primal Spirit, but it's no biggie if you really want to. You can keep it just for the 20 strength and int if you can't get it on gear elsewhere. Now going into my more final po, let's see where exactly I am going here. Let's actually go into early game where I don't have a cluster Jewel just yet. From here on out, you want to slowly but surely get your spell suppression up, either from gear, but you definitely want to get inveterate. This completely depends on how tanky you like to be, but your very first thing you want to get is the dagger Mastery here. If you're confused why dagger Mastery when we're claw, that's just because of this Mastery.

Mastery is global, not just while you have daggers. It gives you 40 crit multi while you have a skill supported by Nightblade, and this scales with the elusive effect from the Claw Mastery. Right here, and this whole transition part here will be the hardest for basically everybody because I couldn't test it, so I can't really give you a good um transition thing at all. One thing I will say is inertia gives you a ton of strength, but it also does sacrifice your dexterity. So, for example here, you can see you kind of have to figure out three dexterity. If you unsocket it, you'll see all the dex is coming back, but now you need strength. This is a very nice tool to get strength without having to get it on gear, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You'll have to adjust that on your own. Other than that, this evasion Master is so got them strong 15% spell suppress for a point, but you have to make sure that your gear actually has any sort of

evasion doesn't matter, whether it's actually evasion or armor or not, but it's very much strong perseverance. It is a tier four unique. It is very common to get, but if it is something that a lot of people want, it could still cost you like up to 10 to 20 chaos. But once you have this determination, it gets very strong. And then you can kind of go Grace determination. And when it comes to your wrath, you can now put that on a race Spectre with a guardian's blessing. If you don't know how this works, once again, I will link Ziggy's video down below in the description on how to set this up. Personally, I don't know if they changed it, if they made it more clunky. In general, I thought it was fine during Affliction league, but honestly getting a full damage Aura is going to be worth so much depending on when you can get it. It could be later, right? Maybe they made it super rare. I don't know at this point. You also want instant leech. Um, you will

have a lot of Life gain on hit, you will still feel this. It's basically just like a little bit extra Life Hit. It's not super mandatory like in some other builds. And then another thing I did here is at this point, you're going to have Uber lab and you want to Respec this small note here from freeze chance to shock chance. I think you won't have full crit at this point, so chance to shock is still valuable until you do, a little more valuable than chance to freeze even. So you can stack up o of spring, and at this point, you should be looking very critically at everything that gives you attack speed, even if PO says attack speed is worse than increased damage. Attack speed feels good, is more shock, which is also more damage. It's also more hor Frost, so you can get better freezes. Other than that, we have some other stuff like just generic life nodes you can take whenever you feel like you're comfortable with them, even these hanging noes right here, you're not going to be

ailment avoid. You're actually going to take the pantheon to be freeze immune, which is super important. Solve the Brank King. If you're not freeze immune, uh, you're going to feel the pain. Other than that, you have another crit note here, which is lethality. Super super strong, which I actually seem to have forgotten in the other. I'm going to edit it. It's fine. And trench can help. I don't take this in end game, but if you need it to be spell suppress, Capp super helpful. Also, remember that early there is lucky spell suppress. If you're between 50 and 70 spell suppress, this one point is incredibly incredibly valuable. These points are just Flex Points. They're there if you need it. Once you have a let's, for example, say in mid game, once you have a lethal Pride at some point, you can spec into these, but you probably want to get your cluster Jewel up ASAP. And then there's also these Mark noes, especially if you feel like you need the single Target. You want frenzy Chargers.

on single Target super strong. You want extra damage take Mark the pre as for skill gems. You want a lightning strike with 20 quality. Nothing else has to have any quantity. You're going to do it at a Merk laap a little bit more on that later trust me. 20 quality gives you another projectile. It's going to change the way it's going to feel from four to five. It's not going to do this weird V shape. It's actually going going to Target where you wanted to and viting strike is just such a huge power boost early just trust me on that. You want to get it one that later Trinity support or added lightning damage support depends on how good your weapons are. The worse your weapons the better added lightning damage is and the other way around. You also have to make Trinity work so these are both blue so you have to kind of interchange that multi strike that is up to you as well whenever you feel like your attack speed is ready whenever it feels good. You want to have this before.

Uber lab for sure because once you have o of spring, you need as many hits as possible to shock stack, and night blade and the returning projectiles are pretty much non-negotiable. You can negotiate with returning Pro versus something else if you don't have the colors. Maybe it's not going to help you too much on single. To you're going to see right, you're going to see night blade is mandatory though. There's no way around it at this point. Like I said, we have Grace and Raph. That is what we're going to have, and determination is going to be later once we have perseverance if you need to because of in problems. You go anger steel skin with automation. You can also put this on cast image taken. I feel like it's pretty cozy on Automation in general assassin's Mark Mark on hit. This going to give you extra crit so you can actually apply your freezes on single Target. Precision with arrogance, we just respect out of a ton of accuracy, and I cannot expect you to have that on gear right now. So even though you're going to

give up. I don't know like a tenth of your HP. I feel like it's worth it if you don't need it for accuracy. You can wait for this later. Whirling blades. Now if you have a four-link for it, great. Whirling blades fost attacks momentum. Life tap is super good, and it's going to feel really good. If you only have a three-link, I would highly recommend still having life tap. With the increase of Mana cost, you don't want to ever be in a situation where your Mana is out. Because if you don't have anything to hit and you can't Mona Le off of anything, it's going to feel awful. And then you have to like go off of your movement speed, which we don't scale into really, uh, it's going to be awful momentum. If you have a four-link, this is just an extra 20% attack speed. When it comes to Shield charge, this is a question as old as Humanity. Do you want to go Shield charge? Do you want to go whirling blades? I personally really

like whirling blades but especially sure if you have really bad attack speed try out Shield charge. It's going to feel better on low attack speed. Whirling blades is going to feel better on high attack speed. And then we have blood Rage, which I kind of forgot in the other setups. I also have to add it in. I don't know how I forgot about that, but blood rage is just there to give you extra attack speed and frenzy charges while you're mapping and stuff like that. So now let's quickly go over how you will get a balling with 20 coal. Now, in order to have the best possible experience with lightning strike, I really do feel like you should be farming this. You don't have to, but I will be doing it. If you don't want to, you just want to progress, I mean, you can be my guest. Vol strike is great, five projectiles instead of four is huge. So this is how I'm going to do it. You level as many lightning strikes in your off hand as possible now.

you can just buy them for act one wender. I think it goes up to like level 12 or something. But do remember that attack skills now scale with levels so it's going to be like buying a low-level gem on your spellcaster. You're going to be missing like 30-40% of your damage so you should probably level these in your off hand. They're green gems, they're cheap so just buy them as soon as you can. That has to be prepped early obviously. Now you want to run Labs until you get 20% quality on a lightning strike gem. So in merciless there is a thing here where you can hit uh percentage quality to a gem from 4 to 15. This is usually a brick for most people cuz they're looking for their transfigure gem. They're going to be sitting there for hours. Hopefully we won't but we'll see. We want this option. We want to get quality and basically what's going to happen is until we get to 20% quality we're going to um apply.

it to a lightning strike gem. A normal lightning strike gem. And then we're going to corrupt it with a vol orb. You maybe found one or two already, or you can buy them for very cheap. They're usually super cheap on day one, and you pray for the one in 4 chance. It's a 1 in 4 or to get your lightning strike to a v lightning strike, which I I can't type apparently. If you get unlucky, unfortunate, but there is one thing here, so you have to repeat this until you in. There's one thing though that makes this fun in Mercel's lab, and that is that you can actually hit transfigure gems and sell it to other people. The fact that we don't need a transfigure gem means that if we hit the jackpot that people are usually farming for, it's like a one in 10 or something to hit a targeted transfigure gem. So not the random one of the same color, you want the one that's the same version, and then if you have that, you can if you have it, you have to.

prep this before you can use something like an ice Nova or Elemental hit, or holy Relic, and have a chance at a huge payoff. And if you sell that in the first five to six hours, it's usually not worth that much, but they go up like crazy if you know the meta. If you know what's going on, you can take any of those gems depending on how many people are going to play it. They're going to want it, they're going to pay raw chaos for it, and with chaos, you can either buy gcps, or you can already buy your gear like you could be buying a five-link before you even, or maybe even a six-link before you even, a Maps, maybe a tabby, right, who knows depending on how lucky you get. But that is basically the payoff for us doing this. Once again, is it anti-fun? Not for me. I like to start out strong in maps. I did heist in the past, so for me, spending like half an hour to potentially even two hours in lab is not

that big of a deal, especially if I know the layout. But even if you don't want to go for the corruption, just trust me that you still want the 20 call. So at least run a few laps, get the 20 call, and move on. It's going to feel a lot better. V Lightning Strike though is a big Power Spike, so you should be looking to get it as soon as possible. All right, next let's go over leveling tips. I have more tips up here that you should know about. I'm probably going to make a whole video about this right before the leak starts again. Mistakes to avoid. You guys know the drill, but leveling-related, the most important thing is upgrade your bow constantly. Whenever you see a rare bow on the ground, click that Scroll of Wisdom on it and see what's happening. Like you can trust the tooltip to an extent. It's not perfect. You can just put on the bow, see if you get more or less damage. Hover over the tooltip right here, right you go right here.

you see 3,192 uh you go here. You're like 94. Not so good, not so good. Abort right. That's basically what you do. If you're confident, you can go dead ey into Gathering wins. So some very experienced players are going to go for dead first, and they are going to respect later. Totally fine. I want to commit to Warden from the get-go, but if you want to be super efficient, you can do this. You go dead ey, you go Gathering WIS. You do whatever you want here because it's going to give you more speed early, and then later they're going to re back. This is risky if you don't know what you're doing because gold might not be as easy to come by as you want to even though you can resp technically. So I'll just put it in here. It is an option. Then use blacksmith wet Stones early. Blacksmith wetstones can now apply up to 20% quality depending on the item level. So if you get a good Fizz weapon maybe

even just a little bit of a Fizz roll finding a blacksmith Wet Stone on a weapon that you keep for like 10 levels might increase your damage by quite a bit. You don't have to be stingy. There's I think no recipe that we really need it for. You can always sell it for four Scrolls if you really need to though. So the next thing is when it comes to Bandits, I would definitely lean on AA. It's 15% ores now. You get a passive point and 15 ores in instead of whatever crit multi crap it gave before. So lra in my opinion is the best one but if you're confident to then just go for movement speed right sure AA. I will not resp even in end game just so you know. 15 ores for point is super premium. There is a vendor called Fus in the new league mechanic. He's going to be in this tavern thingy and he will give you base types for gold. No idea if that's going to be good. No idea if that's going to be

something you want to spend your gold on, but it's going to be there, and it might be, but it for all we know cuz we already know what for example rag does on leag Star. Then there's also new Secrets during the campaign, as you guys know there's weird occurrences during the campaign now where you get like a ton of flasks, or you get to corrupt something, there's going to be new ones, they said so, and we don't know what it is, but just keep your eyes peeled on that, usually they're worth doing now le damage to attacks on jewelry is incredibly strong so if you for example look right here you will get a jewelry that sometimes has an open prefix and if that is the case what you can do, I mean this is not the best example there is a prefix open here so I'm just going to do it for the funsies but the thing you're going to lack the most early on is going to be flat damage and down here you can see there is a early game option you will

want any Le damage here H it costs you four orbit of transmutations, but if you have that, and if you have a jewelry part that you know you're going to keep for a while, that is very much worth it. That can be upwards of 10 to 15% more damage. Also, do not forget in Act to the Golden Hand Quest is now something you should actually do. I actually didn't do it here, but that is the quest where uh you usually would only get regret points. That one got reworked. It's the one down here, which you now want to do, um, or I guess through sacred ground. Yeah, you want to actually do this because you get a passive Point. That's all there is to it. They took the one passive from the bandits, put it here. Do it now. Another thing that I just yed from Havoc last second is in Chambers of sin, there is a corruption chamber. It's one of these secrets right. If you see that one, it's kind of like a V platform that you can

click on put it on your rain of arrows, and you will have a 50% chance to get Val rain of arrows. And if you get Val R of arrows, big damage increase. Also, one more thing, if Warden turns out to be really bad, Deadeye is still there. Deadeye lightning strike has been played for Millennia. Right, this is a known build, so our fallback plan is still going to be there. Dei is still going to be there. Yeah, so for people who are concerned, I mean, I guess maybe that helps. Then let's talk about leveling uniques other than stuff that is always good like Goldrim, Tabula Rasa, all the GG stuff. You can also find some really strong ones. The first one is actually a unique that you can get with a vendor recipe. To do that, you need a Sharktooth Arrow quiver that has no Rarity, just normal, right? It's this one. It's this one right here. If you look right here, this is how it looks like. You'll find plenty of them. Just

keep one of them in your inventory or somewhere. Then you need an Onyx Emulate that needs to be rare. You can just throw any random Essence on it. It does not matter. You need a rain of arrows with 1% quality at least, which you're going to get from your first lab. So you can go for, I don't know, Lottery and try to hit some Transfigure gems, but usually they're not worth anything on day one. They're like between one and three chaos. I would personally go for this because this quiver is going to be your best in slot quiver probably until Maps. It's incredible. And then you also need an Orb of Chance, which is a little bit more random, but if you see how this goes. So right here I'm going to make my ulet rare real quickly, and then you can see what happens. Boom, boom, boom, boom. There it is, hares, and you will get life on hit. You will get a ton of attributes. This will help you across the board. And also the rain of arrows quality you need.

don't need to farm normal app for it. It is guaranteed to be in your options always. And then we have three more that I want to shout out. The first one is actually let's start with the craziest one, prism weave. It gives you so much flat damage res increased damage. It is like the best leveling item if you can get your hands on these. These are usually cost a few Chaos on day one, and that's for a reason. These are super super common, but everybody wants them. Every single attack-based build gets completely carried by this until Maps. So if you find it or you can get your hands on it, it's ridiculous. K Ward also very common. Usually you can get it for between one to two chaos. You should be looking into whether you can afford a prison weave though, but Curry Ward is still there. It's movement speed, its strength. It feels good, right? Very strong. And wake of Destruction is quite good as well. It secures you 15% movement speed. It's level 28, so at some point you might

want to replace it to get more move speed, but it does have a wrapped on of increased lightning damage, one to 120. That is just very strong, but yeah, that's about it. Do note that the leveling and the mid-game to end-game pobs are going to be separate, just so nobody gets confused with loadouts just yet. I'll have to look into that a little bit later, but yeah, I hope you guys have a good leak start, whether you play Warden or not. I hope I can just be a good guinea pig here for everybody else to kind of see how good Warden is actually going to be. You guys are going to play your safe League starters, that's all fine. I just want to see how this one works. I'm actually super, super stoked, but with that being said, like we have more videos coming. I have an endgame guide that's still going to come out, and I'll make a video about what mistakes to avoid when you're playing lightning strike or warden in general. Um, yeah, all

on that see you soon and since I still another a slogan see you next time. [Music]

[PoE 3.25] Lightning Strike Warden Leveling Guide (Rain of Arrows until merclab)

Palsteron

Leveling a Lightning Strike Warden: Tips and Advice

Consider other ascendancies like Slayer, Deadeye, or Juggernaut if you're not interested in exploring new content with Warden.

The leveling process is inspired by Havoc and involves using Galvanic Arrow, Trap Ballista, Rain of Arrows, and other specific setups.

Prioritize getting Galvanic Arrow with Mirage Archer and consider using Rain of Arrows for a fun and easy leveling experience in the early stages.

Recommended Gear and Skills for a Powerful Path of Exile Archer Build

Faster Attacks is recommended early on for a better playing experience, even if it means slightly less damage.

Trinity can be useful but requires a lot of upkeep, so it's optional to use.

Early Ballista is still favored by many for putting out damage, especially in boss fights.

The build suggests using added cold damage and le damage with attacks, with the option to add cold to a three-link setup.

The Mana Forge setup with Burning Arrow, Frenzy, and LIF tab is also recommended, offering flexibility depending on available sockets.

The recommended auras include Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder (early on, then later opting for Haste), and possibly Grace for a more defensive approach.

The build also incorporates Blink Arrow and Faster Attacks, with the option to use Frost Blink sparingly to avoid high intelligence requirements.

Building a Powerful Character in Path of Exile

Investing in bark skin for increased damage and flat physical damage reduction is crucial, especially in the early stages of the game.

Prioritizing point blank for a significant damage boost and taking the Elemental cluster for extra chance to freeze, shock, and ignite is essential.

Managing mana cost through reduced mana reservation efficiency and acquiring accuracy are vital for sustaining and enhancing the character's performance.

Path of Exile: Lightning Strike Transition Guide

You can transition to Lightning Strike early, but it's not recommended for inexperienced players due to the missing damage.

Respec to prioritize crit and ailments, and focus on getting Avatar of the Wilds for a damage boost.

Replace projectile damage nodes with attack speed and adjust reservation clusters for better mana management.

Consider using Herald of Thunder if struggling with mana, and you can opt for Anger if intelligence is a problem.

Building a Strong Spark Skin Character in Path of Exile

Spark skin is currently a strong choice, especially with flat damage and Grace.

Claws of the Magpie, Claw of the Hawk, and Life Raker are recommended for life gain on hit.

The build benefits from the elusive effect and requires multi-shot, attack mastery, and pierce for Lightning Strike to work effectively.

Transitioning to the late game involves focusing on spell suppression, dagger mastery, and strength adjustments, while prioritizing evasion and obtaining Perseverance for a strong defense.

Additionally, incorporating instant leech, shock chance, and prioritizing attack speed can significantly improve the build's performance.

Tips for Optimizing Your Lightning Strike Build

Having freeze immunity is crucial for the Pantheon when using the Lightning Strike build.

Lethality and Trench are important for the build, especially in the mid to late game.

Acquiring a Lightning Strike gem with 20% quality and using Whirling Blades for high attack speed can significantly enhance the build's performance.

Tips for Enhancing Your Lightning Strike Gem in Path of Exile

Corrupting a lightning strike gem with a vol orb has a 1 in 4 chance to turn it into a v lightning strike, which can be profitable to sell.

Running laps in Mercel's lab to hit transfigure gems can also result in a valuable payoff when sold early in the game.

Acquiring the v lightning strike gem early on is a significant power spike and can greatly benefit your gameplay.

Tips for Path of Exile: Warden Build and Leveling Uniques

Using the Golden Hand Quest in Act 2 and the Chambers of Sin corruption chamber can provide valuable benefits for the Warden build.

The Sharktooth Arrow quiver vendor recipe is a great way to obtain a powerful unique for leveling.

Leveling uniques like Prism Weave, Kikazaru, and Wake of Destruction can greatly enhance the Warden's performance and are worth investing in.