Path of Exile 2: Warbringer Warrior Ascendancy Explained

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

Warbringer Overview

The Warbringer is an Ascendancy focused on Totems and Warcries, opening them to unique build options.

Warbringers can break an enemy’s armor with all Hits and reduce it below zero, making them capable of dealing high Physical Damage. This means they can use most Attack Skills to great effect, particularly Slam Skills, which Warcries can empower.

Warbringers can also summon an Ancestral Spirit alongside their Totems. The Spirits create additional Minions to fight alongside us and help protect the Totems.

Anvil’s Weight

Anvil’s Weight Breaks Armour equal to a portion of all Hit Damage dealt.

This opens the Armour Break mechanic up to all skills, which has a lot of potential to be very strong. Whether we use faster skills to break it quickly or slower skills to take off chunks of armor at a time, it will make an impact.

The only time this wouldn’t be a good option is if we’re focused on Elemental Damage instead. This is because Armour only applies Physical Damage Reduction, and would be unaffected by the Armour Break.

Imploding Impacts

Imploding Impacts allows Armour Break to give enemies Negative Armour.

Much like Exposure reducing Elemental Resistances into negative values, Imploding Impacts does the same for Armour Break to Physical Damage Reduction. When we make proper use of this mechanic, we’ll be able to deal heavy Physical Damage.

With this effect being capped at an armour value of negative

Jade Heritage

Jade Heritage grants the Encased in Jade Skill, granting Guard that increases based on the number of Jade stacks and our Maximum Life.

With this effect granting Guard, Encased in Jade is an exceptionally good panic button. This may allow its effect to scale based on other modifiers, as the effect is not tied to a unique buff as of Update 0.2.0.

However, scaling based on our Maximum Life also means that this effect will be less beneficial to any Energy Shield-based builds with the Warbringer. While Energy Shield is fairly uncommon on Warriors outside the use of the Heroic Tragedy Unique Jewel, it’s still worth mentioning.

Answered Call

Answered Call grants the Ancestral Spirits Skill, which is triggered each time the Warbringer summons a Totem. Additionally, gain +1 Maximum Summoned Totems.

Ancestral Spirits are additional Minions that will provide additional damage and protection for our Totems. Like any granted skill, these can be modified to be very effective minions. The 0.3.0 Update minion changes remove any need to give them accuracy.

There are four variations of minions summoned by this skill, each with unique effects: Jadecasters, Jade Hulks, Warhorns, and Spirit Turtles.

• Jadecaster will deal damage and Pin Enemies.
• Jade Hulks cast a Damage-increasing Warcry in addition to attacks with increased Stun.
• Warhorns grant a buff that grants Rage on Hit and Skill Speed for a duration.
• Spirit Turtles have an aura that grants increased Defenses and Block Chance.

Unlike other minions, these are tied to the duration of our Totems. This means that we’ll need to keep our Totems alive to maximize the duration of these minions. This does allow us to set a Totem that’s solely meant to debuff in some way, with the Ancestral Spirits being the real DPS.

As of Update 0.3.0, Ancestral Spirits now scale their Attack Speed based on the Warbringer’s Dexterity, and the AoE of most Spirits has been increased.

Wooden Wall

Wooden Wall redirects some of the damage we take to our Nearest Totem, acting as a form of mitigation.

While this pseudo-mitigation only works for us, it’s not the worst effect out there. The main problem with it is having to invest in making our Totems far bulkier to survive any of this redirected damage.

While this probably does have its uses, forcing the need for Totems to survive is ultimately what makes this a lesser option. The deeper into the endgame we get, the harder the hits will be, which means this just gets worse over time without any investment.

Even going as far as to invest in it means spending Passives Point and Affixes on things we wouldn’t normally need or take. This can result in a much weaker build as a result.

Renly’s Training

Renly’s Training increases the Base Block Chance of all Shields to 35%, regardless of its Base Block Chance.

Renly’s Training is particularly good for allowing us to easily cap our Block Chance at its maximum value. This is a great passive to take for early defensive power, at least for builds that want to run a Shield at all.

Requiring a Shield does however, limits access and use of a Two-Handed Weapon. This isn’t a big deal for most builds, but Two-handed Weapons do get significantly stronger Affixes on them that can make them better options for many builds.

Turtle Charm

Turtle Charm allows 30% of damage from Block Hits to bypass Block; in exchange, our Maximum Block Chance is increased to 75%.

With the changes to Block in 0.3.0, this is the only consistent way to have a maximum Block Chance of 75%, as the default is now 50%. This keeps this a very strong defensive layer overall.

With the specific wording of “Maximum Block Chance is 75%”, this implies that any effects that would otherwise reduce our Block Chance, our Maximum Block Chance is fixed at that value. This would mean the downside of the Svalinn Unique Shield would be negated, granting a very powerful synergy.

Warcaller’s Bellow

Warcaller’s Bellow explodes corpses in range when we use a Warcry, dealing a portion of the enemy’s Maximum Life as a Physical Damage explosion. Additionally, Warcries no longer have a cooldown.

This Explosion is terrific when paired with effects like Anvil’s Weight. This causes a Warcry to effectively Break Armour and empower a Slam skill at the same time for devastating damage.

It will also help by improving overall DPS against tougher mobs that won’t go down in a single hit, allowing any minions alongside a Rare or adds summoned by a Boss to be used against them.

As of Update 0.3.0, this Passive has gained the “Warcries have no Cooldown” effect that previously required 2 additional points to take Greatwolf’s Howl in addition to this. This makes the node significantly stronger and provides a lot of power to Warcries overall.