Path of Exile 2: Pathfinder Ranger Ascendancy Explained

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

Pathfinder Overview

The Pathfinder specializes in the use and recovery of their Flasks as well as brewing potent concoctions and lethal poisons.

Pathfinders can use their Flasks to great effect. Not only can Pathfinders improve how frequently their Flasks can be used but also turn their flasks into deadly weapons that inflict potent Ailements.

Pathfinders are also capable of apply much stronger Poisons, which not only stack but can spread to nearby enemies when defeated. This makes them uniquely suited to building around inflicting Poison.

Enduring Elixirs

Enduring Elixirs allows Life Flasks to continue their effect, even when full Life is reached. However, the Effect of a Life Flask can no longer be queued to keep the flask up seamlessly.

This is a great passive combination with a Flask that grants an Increased Recovery Amount. Unlike POE1, Flask mods that extended the duration of the healing do not exist currently.

Ideally, we avoid using a Flask with an Increased Recovery Rate Affix, as this will mean having to use a Flask more often to keep the healing from it active. This would make a Flask with an Increased Recovery Amount and either Reduced Charges Used or Increased Charges gained the most ideal combo.

Overwhelming Toxicity

Overwhelming Toxicity allows the Pathfinder to apply an additional stack of Poison, at the cost of Poisons having less duration.

This effectively allows our Poison Damage to be doubled. This is a great trade-off for a shorter poison, especially if we can inflict them quickly or apply multiple stronger poisons in a short time.

Combined with Contagious Contamination, we’ll have an easier time stacking strong poisons in packs just by the nature of the proliferation effect. This makes this an excellent choice for Poison Builds.

Acidic Concoction

Grants the Acidic Concoction Skill, which uses Mana Flask Charge to throw an exploding flask, dealing Physical Attack Damage in an AoE. This flask will consume Poison on enemies it hits to create an Acidic Burst, instantly dealing 150% of the remaining poison damage with 30% more AoE per poison on the target. This skill cannot poison.

Acidic Concoction has shifted from applying a strong Poison to instead instantly detonating existing Poisons. This fundamentally changes a Poison build from being a slower damage-over-time Playstyle to more of a buildup and burst setup.

With multiple avenues for strong poisons like Plague Bearer, or quickly stack many poisons for multiple huge AoE bursts with skills like Gas Arrow. This will still be the main skill of many Poison Pathfinder builds,

Fulminating Concoction

Grants the Fulminating Concoction Skill, which uses Mana Flask Charge to throw an exploding flask, dealing Lightning Attack Damage in an AoE and applying shocks with 50% increased Magnitude.

With the shift in Update 0.3.0 to being purely shock-focused and losing the Exposure effect, this can be a good support option for builds that want a powerful shock with low investment.

Without its exposure effect, it’s not quite as strong as it used to be as a main skill, fully relying on Shock to scale its damage. While it will have an easier time scaling shock compared to other skills, it will definitely need to ti keep up with other skills.

Shattering Concoction

Grants the Shattering Concoction Skill, which uses Mana Flask Charge to throw an exploding flask dealing Cold Attack Damage in an AoE and inflicting Elemental Exposure.

Shattering Concoction is very similar to Fulminating Concoction in that while not the greatest damage skill, it’s able to provide a strong debuff for other Elemental Skills, or itself if you want to use it that way.

With 0.3.0, Shattering Concoction is an excellent supportive skill, being able to provide Elemental Exposure. While it may be a bit weaker compared to something like Frost Bomb and restricted to Pathfinder, it can be a more stable option for an Attack Build, being able to scale with attack damage.

Explosive Concoction

Grants the Explosive Concoction Skill, which uses Mana Flask Charge to throw an exploding flask, dealing Fire Attack Damage in an AoE and spawning mini-flasks that spit toward Ignited enemies.

As of 0.3.0, Explosive Concoction is going to be a great way to add some extra burst damage to an Ignite-focused build, similar to Acidic Concoction does for Poison. Without access to damage number just yet, it’s hard to say how well it will perform, but may be worth trying.

This rework makes it an interesting Damage skill on its own. With a secondary skill to ignite or improve its ability to stack Flammability in general, this would probably make Explosive Concoction a very viable skill.

Bleeding Concoction

Grants the Bleeding Concoction Skill, which uses Mana Flask Charge to throw an exploding flask, dealing Physical Attack Damage in an AoE and aggravating Bleeds.

With the 0.3.0 Changes causing this to aggravate Bleeds, rather than having increased Bleed Magnitude, puts this in an interesting position. Compared to other options for Bleed, this can entirely skip out on getting Aggravating Bleeds in any other way.

This allows it to function as a support in Bleed builds, or even lean into Bleed Chance and incision itself, allowing for a huge increase in power.

Path Seeker

Path Seeker grants a choice between the Path of the Warrior and Path of the Sorceress. Each will grant 4 Passive Points, while allowing us to allocate Passives near the Warrior or Sorceress starting point, depending on the choice made.

By default, this is a great passive, replacing the old Traveller’s Wisdom effect with one less Passive Point, unless we also path to the new Traveller’s Wisdom. So this will continue to be near mandatory for those points alone.

The option of being able to start from the Strength (Warrior) or Intelligence (Warrior) starting areas also opens a whole slew of potential builds.

Notable pathing options that are opened up by this are Rage, Totems, Glory, and AoE for Attacks from the Warrior side. This would be particularly powerful with Shapeshifting builds, as many of them make use of Rage or Glory.

On the Sorceress side, we get easy access to more Energy Shield, Spell Damage, Curses, Chaos Damage, and Remnant bonuses. This would allow us to play an Elemental Caster with the benefits of Relentless Pursuit and Running Assault, or even boost a Poison build even more.

Traveller’s Wisdom

Traveler’s Wisdom adds three extra choices to Attribute Nodes. This offers the choices of increased Global Defenses, Damage, or Cost Efficiency.

This is an extremely powerful passive if we can get most of our Attributes from gear, so sacrificing the Suffixes of our Rings and Amulet essentially. Not a huge cost by any means.

Global Defenses is quite powerful, as it means there’s little reason to invest in Armour, Evasion, or Energy Shield nodes elsewhere. We still can for particularly powerful passives like Bestial Skin or Careful Consideration but otherwise this can take care of it.

The Generic Damage bonus is okay, and definitely a good option to squeeze out damage, but a lot of our damage often comes from our Weapon, Gem Levels, and other bonuses. However, since it’s such a generic bonus, it does allow for a lot more flexibility compared to much of the Passive Tree itself, and that’s where its value comes from.

Cost Efficiency isn’t a bad option by any means, as it can help to make many skills more comfortable. It also helps when we use supports like Lifetap, since it’s a generic cost efficiency, and not tied to any particular cost. This also could mean that it’d reduce any potential Rage or Glory costs as well, but that would need to be tested.

Relentless Pursuit

Relentless Pursuit prevents Slows from affecting us.

Ignoring all forms of Slow is a strong defensive effect. Since this broadly applies to all Action Speed Slows, it’s incredibly powerful. This means Slowing Skills, Temporal Bubbles, Chilled Ground, Temporal Chains, and even Freeze are all prevented from taking effect.

This effect, in particular, can synergise with Unique items or support that would reflect Curses onto us, allowing us to use Temporal Chains with them, or anything that reflects Chill. Though Sierran Inheritance would be a poor choice because it’d prevent the reverse chill from also applying.

Running Assault

Running Assault reduces the Movement Speed Penalty by 50% while using skills. Additionally, we cannot be Heavy Stunned while Sprinting.

This is an indirect defensive buff, allowing us to stay more mobile while still dealing damage. It’s also generally great for progressing through Maps and other content quickly.

Since we’re forced to take Relentless Pursuit first, Running Assault is very worth the investment. Combined with the Mobility Support Gem, we can nearly move at normal Speed. This allows skills that normally force this slow, particularly Channeling Skills, to be more practical to use.

With the Addition of preventing Heavy Stun while Sprinting, this opens up Sprinting to be the Movement option of choice for the Pathfinder. Combined with the singular Sprint cluster on the Passive Tree, we can get a ton of Movement Speed for just a few points, if we’re already picking up bonuses in that area.

Sustainable Practices

Sustainable Practices grants 50% of Evasion Rating as Elemental Damage Reduction.

With how high Evasion Rating can get, easily reaching 80% Evade Chance or more in most cases, getting roughly an extra 40% Damage Reduction toward Cold, Fire, and Lightning Damage is quite good.

Stacking this on top of Deflection is going to make the Pathfinder exceptionally durable. This also mitigates any real need to take Acrobatics as well, letting us keep a very high Evasion Rating.