All the New Ascendancy Classes in PoE 2 Dawn of the Hunt

There are 12 planned classes for Path of Exile 2, each having three ascendancies. Since the early access launch, we only had six classes with two ascendancies each.

Throughout early access, we’ll slowly get more and more classes and ascendancies, and PoE 2’s Dawn of the Hunt has five new ascendancies introduced, and here are all of them.

PoE 2 Dawn of the Hunt’s New Ascendancy Classes

Warrior’s Smith of Kitava

The Smith of Kitava ascendancy class revolves around getting stat “padding” through its body armor piece. It has a unique node called “Smith’s Masterwork” that doesn’t require a passive skill to allocate.

The node lets players choose from massive buffs such as Kitavan Engraving (15% increased maximum life) or even increasing any elemental resistance by a whopping +75%. However, you can only use normal body armor, which could play an interesting role with the new unique item, the Tabula Rasa.

The Forged in Flame gives the Smith of Kitava a sturdy foundation in the endgame since it allows your maximum cold and lightning resistance caps to be the same as your fire resistance cap. You can focus on increasing your fire resistance cap, making it one of the most durable ascendancy classes in the game.

Related: What is Solo Self-Found in Path of Exile 2?

Mercenary’s Tactician

The Tactician seems to be a support class, which could be because of its increased effects for banner skills and persistent buffs with fewer reservation nodes. However, the Tactician could also use totem builds, which would get all these buffs from the ascendancy.

Cannons, Ready! could have some interesting mechanics. It gives your totems 30% more skill speed at the cost of the totems, only firing when you use skills.

The Mercenary class has been one of the untouched classes in PoE 2 Dawn of the Hunt’s massive nerfs, so it could also be a good beginner build since tried and tested Mercenary builds since the early access should still perform well for the class.

Witch’s Lich

The Lich class could be the most popular ascendancy for the season because of Unholy Might shenanigans. Unholy Might is a returning buff from PoE 1, which grants 30% of all damage as extra chaos damage, essentially increasing your damage by 30%, but it is even better because it’s chaos damage.

Combined with the Blackened Heart, which increases the buff’s magnitude through your maximum mana, we have a strong endgame build. Most players are looking into building the Lich for the potential minion builds because of the Vis Mortis and Blackened Heart combination. However, it could still be challenging to pull off because of the minions’ survivability state in the patch.

Apart from potential minion builds, the Lich also has potential in curse-type builds, making it a popular ascendancy choice in Dawn of the Hunt.

Huntress’s Amazon

The Amazon is one of the new Huntress classes’ ascendancy. It exploits weakness and uses a spear and shield for a melee and ranged hybrid playstyle.

However, because of its strong ascendancy nodes, most players use the Amazon to build popular bow and crossbow skills. Critical Strike, Predatory Instinct, In for the Kill, and Penetrate all contribute to more damage by exploiting weaknesses, providing accuracy ratings and critical strike chance, and giving skill and movement speed bonuses.

The ascendancy class has become a hybrid for popular elemental builds, which utilize all these stats in the endgame.

Huntress’s Ritualist

The Ritualist is almost the exact opposite of the Amazon ascendancy class. The class opens up unique builds with the Blood Boil and Ritual Sacrifice skills from the Corrupted Lifeforce and As the Whispers Ask ascendancy nodes.

You are using sacrifices to get buffs from slain monsters, which can be random but powerful when you get the proper buff. Some unique build mechanics could come from Mystic Attunement, Unfurled Finger, and Intricate Sigils ascendancy nodes.

The class can get an extra ring slot and increase the bonuses from those equipped accessories with these ascendancy passive nodes. It could be an expensive endgame build down the line because of the number of stats you can exploit from the accessory slots, especially if you get an amazing Ingenuity Belt.