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.

Contagious Contamination

Contagious Contamination spreads the strongest Poison inflicted on an enemy when it is defeated to all other enemies within 1.5 meters.

Most of the skills that naturally inflict the Poison Ailment are AoE, but this still can help those skills by transferring poison stacks throughout a pack. This cna be useful to help clear packs a bit faster without having the need for multiple casts.

Where this passive shines though is by pairing it with a skill that doesn’t Poison naturally, but instead one that deals high damage and is linked to Envenom Support. This grants it a chance to poison and the high damage will scale the damage of the Poison, allowing it to spread through a pack with ease.

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.

Traveller’s Wisdom

Traveler’s Wisdom grants us five additional Passive Skill Points.

More Passive Skill Points are rarely a bad thing in Path of Exile, the same is also true in Path of Exile 2. It’s a great way to get more flexibility or power into a build.

Depending on our build, this could do very little or a lot for us. It’s not enough to reach a whole new area of the Passive tree, but will let us pick up an additional cluster of passives we want along our already path.

Relentless Pursuit

Relentless Pursuit prevents Slows from affecting us.

Ignoring all forms of Slow is a strong defensive effect. Allowing us to keep moving so long as we don’t get afflicted with Crowd Control effects that prevent movement altogether is just incredibly useful.

Being able to maintain higher speeds helps to not only avoid more attacks, but to also get through content faster. This results in both faster and safer progression in general, so long as we’re willing to give up the more offensive options.

Running Assault

Running Assault reduces the Movement Speed Penalty by 50% while using skills.

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.

Practical Remedies

Practical Remedies is a multi-choice Ascendancy that allows us to gain immunity to one of the following Ailments: Freeze, Ignite, or Shock.

While not an insane Ascendancy skill, being able to have full immunity to an Ailment can be incredibly powerful in the right situations.

Thawing Campfire’s Freeze Immunity is generally the strongest option here, as Freeze is not only a fairly common Ailment, but one that can very easily be applied to a Ranger and get them killed just as easily.

Dousing Vial’s Ignite Immunity is more likely to see its use come from builds made to fight the Arbiter of Ash, or other bosses that deal high Fire Damage. Surviving a hit is one thing, but the heavy Ignite that often comes with it is just as likely to be lethal. Stopping Ignite in particular can also be useful for Energy Shield Builds relying on Recharge

Shock is in a similar boat to Ignite, being more niche to specific situations and bosses. Shock isn’t super hard to deal with, as it’s only a moderate increase in damage taken. However, when it’s unavoidable or being applied frequently, this can have its use.

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.