Hey, what is up guys? JTX here! Today I'm going to be going over my build plans for the PoE2 Early Access, starting in

approximately 12 hours from now. You probably know me as the bleed bow guy from all my PoE1 content, and I'm trying to

take that tradition into Path of Exile 2, seeing if we can start up with a bleed crossbow or bleed bow build. It's been

confirmed that, uh, bleed is still in the game, obviously, in Path of Exile 2. And during the Early Access, doing some of

the testing, people were saying bleed was actually quite strong; that it had to be nerfed a couple of times by GGG. I have high

expectations that bleed can still be very strong in Path of Exile 2 in the Early

Access. We don't have all the classes unlocked yet. I suspect that the best class will probably still be Gladiator

or Slayer, but they're not available as the Duelist is not available yet. In this case, the two classes that I see that

have the highest potential in the Early Access would be, first, the Witch Hunter, and second, the Blood Mage. So I'll

quickly talk about, uh, the Witch Hunter, which is probably the class I will be starting, and the order of ascendancies that

I'd probably go on this class on day one. Obviously, though, this is still very, very early, and everything's subject to change,

but just based off the initial information that we've been given, I've tried to cook up a little bit of a build

template/SLG guide that you guys can follow if you are interested in starting a bleed bow. Uh, obviously I'll be streaming

this on my Twitch channel at JTX, so you guys can kind of check in on how the

build's doing. If it's awful, then you'll see it too. Uh, hopefully it's not too bad.

And hopefully we can make it work. The Witch Hunter has some pretty interesting synergy with, um, becoming a boss killer with how Concentration and, um, the Decimating Strike works. Uh, some of the things won't work really well with bleed bow because we're not a really hit-based build; we're going for DoTs, right? So stuff like, uh, Witch Bane and No Mercy...

that's going to be pretty hard to take advantage of because we don't really care about having a really high, um, hit. We only care about doing the DoT portion of our damage. So noting that the most likely nodes we'll be taking would be...

Zeis' Inquisition. Number eight: so chance to explode, amazing, um, doubled against undead and demons. So that's going to be probably really nice for just mapping and clearing in general. Probably one of the first we'll be taking during the act...

so we can start clearing things really quickly. The second and third nodes we'll be taking are Pious Killer and Judge, Jury, and Executioner. So we get Calling Strike, Decimating Strike respectively. These have some interesting synergies, uh...

I think it'll be pretty interesting to play around with because there are so many bosses to kind of kill throughout the acts, and also killing bosses seems to be a big aspect of the Path of Exile 2 campaign. So having these nodes early will make...

our lives a little bit easier, at least for some of the phases that we can just kind of chunk the boss down, either at the start and at the end. Maybe it's not as good as you get into maps; we're not sure yet, but I think two and three seem to be the logical next choices. So Pious Killer and Judge, Jury, Executioner, and then...

our final one: take Weapon Master. Um, I think Weapon Master has really high potential for us to kind of swap between...

different weapons, cuz I think that's really what they're trying to push. Uh, so potentially you could have a crossbow

and a regular bow, and you swap between them. And having those extra passive points allow you to be more flexible in

how you build out your weapon. If you weren't taking Weapon Master and you were taking, um, P. Killer Juggernaut,

Executioner, you could go for Obsessive Rituals. So this is number six and seven. So you take Obsessive Rituals and then

you take Ceremonial Ablution. So this gives you a massive life reward, kind of similar to how Elementalist Argus

works right now. I believe it just blocks a big portion of your damage while sacrificing your armor and evasion

rating for it. I think this is a really good defensive ascendancy node. Potentially, I could see myself picking

this up if things get very hairy in, uh, higher-tier content, or things that are very "rippy." I could potentially respec into

a more defensive ascendancy node, but early on I think I'll be sticking with the pure damage route. And then once we start

figuring out, you know, how brutal some of the campaign is, then we'll probably be adjusting our ascendancy. But those are the

ascendancy plans for the Witch Hunter. I'll talk about the Blood Mage as well. Uh, you can't really talk about bleed without

talking about the Blood Mage itself. Uh, the main reason is because the "Sign of Blood" node is pretty interesting now.

The note says here, "Gain 10% of damage as actually physical damage." So all of your damage is added up and you get an extra 10%

as physical damage, which should be pretty insane. And Elemental damage also contributes to bleeding magnitude. This is actually really, really interesting,

because generally bleeding in Path of Exile is only relevant to the physical damage of the hit. So Elemental damage

didn't really interact with bleed in Path of Exile 1. This allows for interesting potential in PoE2 because there's a lot

more sources of elemental damage in the game than pure physical damage, so this could be a way that you could scale a

build using elemental damage, uh, and then really ramping up your bleed damage by scaling elemental damage. The new term

here is magnitude. Uh, this wasn't in Path of Exile 1, and I believe what magnitude means is essentially the effect of your

bleed, and I'm sure "effect magnitude" probably means the effect of the element for other things. Having a higher

magnitude just means you're going to be applying a higher ailment on an enemy. Now we have the bleeding definition here

in Path of Exile 2, so bleeding is still an ailment: physical damage over time, 5 seconds by default. It bypasses energy

shields if you are playing bleed at all. Um, aggravate is the key to dealing insane damage. By default, if a target isn't

moving with bleeding, then they're taking the base damage. If they do start moving, then they start taking more damage; in

this case, they take an extra 100% damage if the target is moving, so pretty much double damage. Or you can aggravate the

bleed so even if they're not moving, they still take double damage from bleed. So aggravating targets, uh, with bleed is

very, very important. Back to the Blood Mage ascendancy; uh, if you were to try Blood Mage, you have to take, uh, number

one, obviously, which is Sanguimancy: so skills gain a base life cost equal to base mana cost. Uh, then you would go for

Blood Bombs to allow yourself to do extra physical damage. After that, you've got a couple of choices here. I believe

some of the really good choices here would be stuff like Grasping Wounds. Uh, this literally works the same as how

Progenesis now works so a quarter of the damage you take is prevented and then it's distributed over 4 seconds.

Instead, uh, it's really good for making you tanky. The other one is Crimson Power: so gain energy shield from

AIP body armor as extra maximum life. But with XL1, you can get a lot more energy shield on a piece of armor than you can

life, so this could be a really powerful way of scaling a huge amount of life by going for energy shield on your armor.

These two nodes are pretty damn good for tanking your character up. We don't care too much about the critical damage part

of bleed, potentially. If there's Perfect Agony or some way of scaling uh crit into DoT multi, potentially that could be

interesting, but Gore can't up the flesh; that's not something we're too interested in as a bleed bow build.

Vitality Siphon, spell damage, just life; not something we're interested in either. Potentially the other one is open source.

I haven't really seen a good curse yet for bleed bow, so I think the way you would go is Sanguine Blood, Bob's

Grasping Wounds, and Crimson Power. If you wanted to play Bleed Bow on a Blood Mage, I'll quickly talk about some of the

skills as well that are available that we know so far in the Early Access. Uh, so you can see here we have the tried and

true Rain of Arrows. Obviously, this is one of my favorite skills of all time, especially for when I was leveling Bleed

a long couple leagues ago, until Split Arrow kind of became uh the king of clear. Rain of Arrows always has a special place in

my heart for how nice it is to play. And for the other gems that have been confirmed so far, so we have Brutality,

which kind of functions the same way: more damage, more physical damage you deal; no chaos, no elemental. Uh, Deep Cut.

More effect of bleeding from supported skills; less damage with hits. This seems like a pretty damn powerful support gem.

Uh, essentially, I would assume it doubles the effect of bleed once you level it up to 20, and it reduces the hit damage

on-hit damage of your bleed, which is pretty normal in D-based builds. Uh, chain... this is relevant if you're using

something that's not Rain of Arrows. I thought I'd just keep it in here to let people know that Chain still exists as a

support link for clearing. If Split Arrow is still in the game, then uh, Chain is your best friend here. And then bleed

chance; getting bleed chance will be the main name of the game for a bleed bow build, making sure you cap out your

chance to 100%, so you're not losing any damage on missed hits. Other skills that I've seen that could be pretty decent is

High Velocity Round. So this is a really, really high-hitting skill; um, potentially this could be your single-target

initiator for a fight, and then you have your clear skill like Rain of Arrows or Split Arrow. How Path of Exile 2 works is

you can only have one support gem of each kind. So if you want this to be your single-target, then you would put all

your single-target gems here; so probably Brutality, Deep Cuts, um, Bleed Hands potentially. And then your clear skill

like Rain of Arrows would be your utility links. As I mentioned before, Aggravate is very, very important for bleed, and we

have a support gem called Rupture. Uh, support skills aggravate bleeding on hitting heavily stunned enemies. We're

going to have to hit an enemy with a stun, and then this support gem aggravates the bleed on enemies. Uh, if

you aggravate a bleed, it aggravates all the bleeds on the target, so it doesn't just aggravate the bleed of the skills.

linked to uh, you aggravate everything on it. So ideally, you want to hit it with a really high bleed, and then you aggravate

it with um, this gem here. So we've linked this to a flash grenade launcher, so this is a 1,000% more stun buildup rupture

combos with that pretty nicely on hitting heavily stunned enemies. So this could be like your utilities, so the

combo would be: you hit an enemy with your high-velocity round or your single-target skill, and then you use your flash

grenade launcher to stun them, and then to aggravate the bleeds on them. I can see that being a reliable way of

aggravating bleeds on an enemy. I'm sure there's other ways that will exist in the tree or other gear, but that's one of

the better ways to do it now with the information we know. I've also included Tornado Shot here as another potential

clear skill, or a skill for us to use with a bow. Obviously, we'll have to see what skills kind of reign supreme after

the first day. We'll test out all the different bow skills and see which feels really good for bleed bow. These

are just the initial thoughts that I have for some of the gems. And the good news is it seems like we still have a

lot of the bleed bow support gems in the game, so we're looking pretty good for the league start. Jumping into the skill

tree now, you'll be pleased to note that there are still bleed nodes on the tree, thank God. They seem to be in the

starting area for the Witch Hunter, which seems to be down to the bottom of the tree. So we have, not like Bloodletting,

and uh, if you look on the side here, Bleeding Out. We don't care too much about Internal Bleeding, cuz I don't

think we'll be empowering attacks. If you were interested in the skill tree, you're probably pathing down towards these

Notables first, then also looking for crossbow and bow nodes that give you generic damage on the way down in the

tree. Also, you can pick up armor and evasion rating because it can combo pretty well with the mercenary ascendancy

that gives source reward. Also notably, we want to be prioritizing Resolute Technique. Uh, we don't care about crit at

[PoE 2] My PoE 2 Starter Build - Bleed Bow Witch Hunter

[PoE 2] My PoE 2 Starter Build - Bleed Bow Witch Hunter