Path of Exile 2: Witchhunter Mercenary Ascendancy Explained

This guide focuses on the Witchhunter Ascendancy for the Mercenary, covering their Unique Skills and Skill Interactions.

Witchhunter Overview

The Witchhunter specializes in dealing high burst damage and mitigating Elemental Damage, making them an excellent choice for Boss Hunting.

Witchhunters can opt to make use of their Concentration effect, granting enemies a secondary debuff that scales in intensity as they take damage. Sorcery Ward is a unique defensive skill and a strong consideration against foes that deal high Elemental Damage.

Witchhunters also benefit from access to both Culling Strike and Decimating Strike, allowing them to instantly deal large amounts of damage at the start and end of an encounter. This contributes to well to Bossing, Clearing, and Party Play.

Weapon Master

Weapon Master converts 100 Skill Points into 100 Weapon Set Skill Points. This does not grant additional Skill points but allows longer pathing for weapon swaps.

As of update 0.3.0 when this became 100 Weapon Set passives, this effectively allows a Witchhunter to run two entirely different builds if they wanted. This has a high degree of flexibility and minimal drawbacks. It doesn’t offer any raw power, but does allow

The biggest drawback is that to use Keystone passives, they need to be allocated without Weapon Set passives. This greatly limits build potential if a Keystone Passive is located further away, as it results it less points being able to be splint into different builds. Avoiding them is generally the better option to keep the build flexible.

Pitiless Killer

Pitiless Killer grants Culling Strike to all damage dealt by a Witchhunter.

With its changes in POE2, Culling Strike is more effective at taking down weaker enemies as the changes cull Rare and Unique enemies at a much lower value. It helps the Witchhunter speed up their clearing power.

It also can make them exceptional in party play, letting them more effectively Cull enemies for their group. This works extremely well in combination with their high AoE skills like Cluster Grenade.

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

Judge, Jury, and Executioner grants the Witchhunter Decimating Strike, dealing a significant chunk of any enemy health when hitting a target on Full Life. Its value is random, but still very impactful.

Decimating Strike contributes to the Witchhunter’s capable bossing, allowing them to take a significant portion of a Boss’s Life off immediately. Combined with the Concentration mechanic provided by Witchbane, they will quickly max out the benefits of No Mercy for high, consistent damage for the rest of the fight.

Witchbane

Witchbane enables the Concentration Mechanic of the Witchhunter, giving enemies a secondary stagger meter that reduces their Cooldown Recovery Rate by up to 50%.

Witchbane by itself is okay, as it adds another defensive layer against enemies that frequently use skills. It’s a much better pickup when combined with No Mercy for the extra damage.

No Mercy

No Mercy grants a damage buff that increases as an enemy’s concentration break, providing Witchhunters with a much-needed consistent damage bonus.

Combined with Judge, Jury, and Executioner; No Mercy can almost immediately break an enemy’s Concentration and helps Witchhunter maintain consistent damage, so long as they keep constant pressure on an enemy.

No Mercy is great for Bossing. Even with how mechanic-heavy some bosses are, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to hit the boss to prevent them from recovering Concentration.

Obsessive Rituals

Obsessive Rituals grants the Sorcery Ward Skill, protecting us from elemental damage based on our total Armour and Evasion. However, our Armour and Evasion are reduced by 35%.

Since Sorcery Ward’s Cooldown cannot be altered beyond granting it additional Levels, effects that grant additional Levels provide the greatest benefit. While these effects can be harder to obtain for some builds, they can be well worth it, allowing more uptime and quicker refreshing of the Sorcery Ward.

Sorcery Ward also benefits from effects that Increase Evasion and Armour, like Wind Dancer and Scavenged Plating. Combining these effects with Sorcery Ward can greatly boost the value it provides. Just keep in mind that if these buffs fall off, they will impact Sorcery Ward’s strength if inactive when Sorcery Ward recharges.

As of Update 0.3.0, changes to our Armour and Evasion no longer start or reset the recharge timer for our Sorcery Ward. It’s best to make sure it refreshes while both values are as high as possible.

Ceremonial Ablution

Ceremonial Ablution Makes Sorcery Ward better, reducing its cooldown and increasing scaling potential.

If a Witchhunter is using Sorcery Ward, they’ll want to take this as well. It makes Sorcery Ward a more potent defensive layer while also making it far more reliable. It’s not entirely necessary in the late game, where it’s easier to stack the Defenses up to make it harder to break at all.

Even in that case, Ceremonial Ablution is still a massive increase in how much damage it absorbs. This makes it nearly unavoidable not to take this alongside Obsessive Rituals.

This unfortunately means that Sorcery Ward has too high an opportunity cost for all but the hardest bosses, where the defenses can help far more.

Zealous Inquisition

Zealous Inquisition grants a chance to make enemies explode when defeated, dealing their Maximum Life in an area around them as Physical Damage. The Chance to trigger is doubled for Undead and Demons.

Zealous Inquisition is another of the Witchhunter’s clearing tools. Combined with Culling Strike, this can lead to chain reactions of explosions, though they’re not incredibly common due to the low explosion chance.