Path of Exile 2: Bloodmage vs Infernal
Time: 2024-12-05 by mmojugg Game: Path of Exile 2 Guide
Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) offers exciting new opportunities for both seasoned veterans and new players alike. One of the key decisions you'll need to make as a Witch character is choosing the right Ascension. Two standout choices are the Bloodmage and Infernal ascendancies. In this guide, we'll break down the differences between these two ascendancies, highlighting their strengths, synergies, and gameplay implications, helping you make an informed decision.
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What Are Ascendancies in PoE 2?
Before we dive into the Bloodmage and Infernal Ascension options, let's briefly explain what ascendancies are in Path of Exile 2. Ascendancy is a powerful subclass system that adds unique skills and enhancements to your base class. These choices define your character's strengths and playstyle, making them a key decision in your PoE journey.
Once you pick an ascendancy, there is currently no way to reset it, which makes it essential to carefully consider your options. With this in mind, let's break down the Bloodmage and Infernal ascendancies to see which one suits your playstyle.
Bloodmage Ascension:
The Bloodmage ascendancy revolves around manipulating life, using it as a resource for power. This ascendancy is perfect for players who like the idea of sacrificing health in exchange for enhanced spellcasting capabilities.
Key Features of the Bloodmage Ascension
1. Life Remnants
Life Remnants are a cornerstone of the Bloodmage ascendancy. These items are spawned upon critical hits or from slain enemies and can be collected to restore life, even above your maximum health. This synergy between critical strikes and life sustain makes the Bloodmage incredibly tanky in both solo and boss encounters.
This ability offers an efficient way to sustain health, even during boss fights where enemies may be scarce. Critical hits will always spawn Life Remnants, ensuring that you never run out of healing opportunities.
2. Vitality Siphon
Another standout feature of the Bloodmage is Vitality Siphon, which lets you leech 10% of your spell damage as life. This makes the ascendancy a great choice for builds focused on spellcasting, providing both offensive power and defensive sustainability.
If you're playing a build that revolves around high spell damage, this passive will keep you alive without the need for constant potion use.
3. Open Source: Infinite Curse Duration
Open Source gives you the ability to cast curses that last indefinitely, unlike regular curses that expire over time. This is incredibly useful when stacking debuffs on enemies.
If you plan to rely heavily on curses for crowd control or damage mitigation, having infinite curse duration can drastically increase your efficiency in fights.
4. Blood Barbs
Blood Barbs enhances physical and elemental damage by contributing to bleeding magnitude. This makes it a versatile choice for hybrid builds that blend damage types.
If you want a more hybrid build that capitalizes on both bleed damage and elemental spells, Blood Barbs will significantly improve your damage output.
5. Gore Spike
The Gore Spike node increases your critical hit damage based on your health pool, stacking up as you increase your maximum life. This works well with the Bloodmage's ability to overflow health using Life Remnants.
As you stack life, your critical hit damage increases, making this an excellent choice for maximizing damage output, especially if you focus on critical strike builds.
6. The Flesh
The Flesh provides a 15% increased critical hit chance for spells, further enhancing the Bloodmage's synergy with critical hits. This node works especially well with Life Remnants, as more critical hits mean more healing opportunities.
This node significantly boosts your spellcasting capabilities, allowing you to crit more often and spawn more Life Remnants.
Bloodmage Pros and Cons
Pros:
Sustainability: Life Remnants ensure you can heal effectively, even in boss fights.
Hybrid Build Flexibility: Vitality Siphon and Blood Barbs make the Bloodmage perfect for hybrid builds.
Curse Mastery: Infinite curse duration makes debuff-heavy builds easier to manage.
Cons:
Life Management: You need to carefully balance your health and Life Remnants to avoid dying too quickly.
Complex Mechanics: Managing Life Remnants and critical hits requires a more active playstyle, which may not be ideal for all players.
Infernal Ascension:
On the other hand, the Infernal ascendancy focuses on transforming your character into a fiery, chaos-infused powerhouse. Infernal Ascension provides a mix of elemental damage, tankiness, and unique mechanics that allow you to play with high-risk, high-reward builds.
Key Features of the Infernal Ascension
1. Altered Flesh
The Altered Flesh node grants you 20% resistance to various elemental damages (fire, lightning, physical) by converting them into chaos damage. This makes your character more resilient, especially against mixed damage types.
This defensive layer can make you tankier in high-damage encounters, especially when facing bosses that use multiple elemental damage types.
2. Demon Form
One of the standout abilities of the Infernal ascendancy is the Demon Form, which transforms you into a demon, greatly boosting your spell power. While in demon form, your life steadily decreases, but the trade-off is massive spell damage scaling and increased cast speed. You'll lose 1% of life per second per Demon Flame while gaining 10% spell damage per Demon Flame.
If you're willing to manage the life drain, this form allows you to deal immense amounts of damage, especially in high-speed boss fights.
3. Master of Darkness
When combined with Demon Form, this node significantly enhances your damage. If you reach the maximum Demon Flame, you gain a 100% increase in spell damage. This makes the Infernal ascendancy an incredibly potent choice for damage-focused builds.
The 100% increased spell damage from Demon Flame creates a devastating burst of power that can decimate enemies quickly.
4. Pyromantic PA
This ability replaces your mana pool with Infernal Flame, which fuels your spells with life and energy shield as fire damage. Managing Infernal Flame adds an extra layer of complexity but can lead to massive power spikes.
This allows you to completely remove mana dependency, opening up new ways to play your character. However, you need to carefully manage life and energy shield to avoid dying.
5. Bringer of Flame
While not at low Infernal Flame, Bringer of Flame boosts your damage by contributing to your ignition chances. This enhances the fire damage you deal, synergizing well with Demon Form and Pyromantic PA.
This increases your overall damage output, especially if you're focusing on fire damage-based builds.
6. Loyal Hellhound
The Loyal Hellhound node summons an infernal hound that takes a portion of incoming damage for you while igniting enemies near it. This provides a unique source of damage mitigation while increasing your overall damage.
Not only does it boost survivability, but the hellhound also ignites enemies, providing more opportunities for damage scaling, especially when paired with Pyromantic PA.
Infernal Pros and Cons
Pros:
Massive Damage Potential: Demon Form and Master of Darkness offer explosive damage scaling.
Unique Mechanics: The Pyromantic PA node and Hellhound offer creative and powerful ways to increase damage.
Tankiness: Altered Flesh and Loyal Hellhound provide excellent defensive layers.
Cons:
Complex Life Management: The Demon Form drains your health, requiring careful management to avoid dying.
Mana-less Gameplay: Pyromantic PA replaces mana with Infernal Flame, which can be difficult to manage without the right setup.
Which Ascension Should You Choose?
Both the Bloodmage and Infernal ascendancies offer exciting potential for Witch builds, but they cater to different playstyles.
Bloodmage is best for:
Players who enjoy a hybrid playstyle, mixing both physical and elemental damage.
Those who want strong life sustain and efficient healing mechanics.
Builds that rely on curse management and debuffs.
Infernal is best for:
Players who enjoy high-risk, high-reward playstyles with massive damage scaling.
Builds that focus heavily on fire and chaos damage.
Those who want to manipulate their health for great rewards through mechanics like Demon Form.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can I change my Ascension after selecting one?
No, once you've selected your Ascension, you cannot change it in PoE 2. This decision is permanent.
2. How do Life Remnants work in Bloodmage?
Life Remnants spawn when you score critical hits or kill enemies, healing you for a portion of your life.
3. What is the best way to manage health in Infernal Ascension?
In Infernal Ascension, you need to manage the life drain from Demon Form while ensuring that your energy shield and life pool are sufficient to survive the drain.
4. Are there any synergies between Bloodmage and other skill gems?
Yes, Bloodmage works well with life-leeching skill gems, increasing the amount of life you can regain from attacks or spells.
5. Which ascendancy is better for beginners?
Bloodmage may be easier for beginners due to its stronger life sustain and less complex mechanics compared to Infernal.
6. Can I use Fire and Chaos damage in a hybrid Bloodmage build?
Yes, Bloodmage supports hybrid builds, and you can combine physical, elemental, and chaos damage effectively, although the focus should primarily be on life sustain and critical strikes.
Choosing between the Bloodmage and Infernal Ascendancies in PoE 2 ultimately depends on your preferred playstyle. If you love managing life, curses, and creating hybrid spellcasting builds, the Bloodmage will provide a strong foundation. However, if you're looking for raw damage potential with fire and chaos manipulation, Infernal Ascension could be the perfect fit.
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