Path of Exile 2: Tactician Mercenary Ascendancy Explained

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

Tactician Overview

Tacticians are a more supportive Ascendancy, offering a ton of support to their Allies through Banners and Crowd Control. They’re also capable of bolstering both Minions and Totems, allowing them to truly command an army.

The Tactician has access to the Supporting Fire skill, which grants them a minion that’s unique to them, similar to the Infernalist’s Hellhound. Unlike other minions, these have built-in scaling based on the Tactician’s Attributes.

Between the use of Banners and being able to easily Pin enemies, the allies of a Tactician will not only be stronger, but also be able to free fire upon enemies that have no chance of retaliating.

A Solid Plan

A Solid Plan makes Persistent Buff Skills reserve 50% less Spirit.

Given that Persistent Buff includes every non-Minion Spirit Gem, there’s a whole host of options here. Though given the Passives that follow after this, it seems to be intended for Banners and other means of boosting our Allies, while helping to keep Spirit Costs low enough to still have an army of minions to follow us into battle.

This Passive is so flexible that it’s likely to end up as a must-have for nearly every Tactician build. Cheaper Meta Skills, Banner, Heralds, and even potent effects like Archmage and Blink are included in what this affects. This is even more important in 0.3.0, where skills like Blink now need to be reserved in both Weapon Sets.

Combined with Suppressing Fire, we’re even able to make use of the Combat Frenzy and Charge Regulation combo with every projectile Skill while still having plenty of room for other buffs we may use.

It will be interesting to see if this effect also applies to the Ancestral Bond Keystone on the Passive Tree and would reduce their Spirit Cost to 50 each instead of 100. Since the Tactician already has some extra support for Totems, it’d be a good synergy.

There’s also the Matsya Unique Quarterstaff that has a very similar Spirit-reducing effect, and depending on how exactly this applies, can very easily open the door to some insane potential, allowing for either extremely low cost or free Buff Reservations. We’d lean towards it reducing the cost to 25% rather than 0, but it’s still a powerful interaction regardless.

Watch How I Do It

Watch How I Do It grants Allies in our Presence added Attack Damage equal to 25% of our Main Hand Weapon’s Damage.

This is incredibly powerful when combined with a weapon that has incredibly high Attack, which most Melee and Ranged weapons will generally have regardless of the build.

It’s hard to say exactly how much damage this can add to another player in party play, but assuming equal damage weapons, it’s effectively a 25% more damage multiplier. Not bad for something that’s more or less free.

We can also apply this to Minions and Totems, which, paired with them already scaling off our weapons as of 0.3.0, means we get to sort of double dip on our Weapon Stats for Totems.

Whoever Pays Best

Whoever Pays Best removes the limit for Banners, allowing all banners to be used at once if desired. Additionally, Banner Skills generate 5 Glory per second.

With the Banner Changes in 0.3.0, all three available Banners are worth using. Every single one received a huge number adjustments, but was made seemingly harder to place reliably.

Assuming Banner-related passives were also adjusted, The Tactician will end up with high uptime on Banners. If not closing the gap with Supports could potentially allow for near-permanent uptime on these powerful buffs.

The Passive Glory Generation not only helps us to use Banners more reliably due to their high Glory cost of 200, but will also prevent the new decay mechanic added to Glory from kicking in as well.

Suppressing Fire

Suppressing Fire increases Immobilization buildup by 40%.

This bonus is quite strong in combination with Right Where We Want Them. This allows for frequent and easy Pins on Enemies, with these pins also acting much like a Stun or Freeze.

Outside of this, this also applies to Electrocution, Freeze, and Heavy Stun buildup, which allows for some flexibility. This can make it pair exceptionally well with the Kitoko’s Current Unique Gloves to take advantage of the Electrocution easier, or most Cold Skills to make great use of the added Freeze Buildup.

Right Where We Want Them

Right Where We Want Them allows all projectiles to build up Pin. Additionally, Pin is enhanced, preventing all enemy actions.

Outside of Melee Skills, the grand majority of skills have projectile components, which adds a lot of extra crowd control that we’d otherwise not have. This has a lot of uses outside of just the pure crowd control aspect as well, such as triggering Combat Frenzy, or the many different support gems that can work with Pin to increase damage.

This also converts Pin to more of a Stun, making a much stronger Crowd Control, particularly against ranged enemies, which would still be able to attack without this upgrade. Preventing enemies from moving or attacking just adds so much safety to a build.

Polish That Gear

Polish That Gear grants 20% of Evasion Rating as Deflection Rating and 100% of Evasion Rating as Ailment Threshold.

With the 0.3.0 Changes to this passive, granting both Deflection Rating and Ailment Threshold for just 2 Ascendancy Points, this is exceptionally strong. While this encourages a High Evasion, or Evasion and Energy Shield Hybrid build over any other options, this passive will likely be mandatory as a 3rd or 4th Ascendancy.

Deflection, much like Spell Suppression of POE1, is a powerful defensive layer, reducing the risk of executing a full Evasion Setup. Any hits we don’t (or can’t evade) will have a very high chance to end up being deflected, resulting in less damage taken overall. This also means less reason to pick up Acrobatics, allowing us to keep our Evasion Rating (and by extension Deflection Rating) high with minimal investment.

Stay Light, Use Cover

Stay Light, Use Cover caps our Evasion Chance to 50% and our Maximum Physical damage Reduction to 50%. In exchange, we defend with 200% of Armour, doubling its effectiveness, and Enemies have an Accuracy penalty applied to them based on the difference.

Defending with 200% of Armour is nice, but ultimately, it will still be likely to struggle to even hit its now 50% Physical Damage Reduction cap. If it ends up getting buffed further, there are far better ways to increase its damage reduction and get value from it without taking a penalty.

The Evasion part of this is a bit more interesting. We’re capped to 50% Chance to Evade, but Ranged enemies have worse Accuracy. This reduced accuracy can partially compensate for the reduced Evade cap, but without heavy investment into effects like Blind to further reduce enemy Accuracy, it will have a harder time keeping up, especially with Melee attacks.

Neither of these effects is worth the Ascendancy, and by all accounts, would be strictly making your character worse at the current time.

Unleash Hell

Unleash Hell grants the Supporting Fire Skill, a unique Minion skill for the Tactician.

This is a special Minion type that doesn’t have a physical presence, but still attacks by raining arrows on nearby enemies. They have the unique property of scaling their Area of Effect based on our Dexterity and their Damage with our Strength, giving them, fairly high damage ceiling in terms of gearing.

The lack of a physical presence also means that they won’t be there to distract enemies from hitting you, but also means their Life and Resistances don’t matter in the slightest.

Before 0.3.0, the damage of this minion was very underwhelming. With a massive increase in base damage and some new support options, it may be a great early damage source. Further testing will be required to determine if it scales into endgame well enough to use beyond that.

Cannons, Ready!

Cannons, Ready! increases the Skill Speed of Totems, but Totems will only attack when we use a Projectile Attack Skill. Additionally, gain +1 to Maximum Summoned Totems.

With the addition of new Totems and reworks to existing Totems in 0.3.0, Cannons, Ready! will be quite the strong option. Mortar Cannons, in particular, will have the most potential, just from the sheer variety of options available.

It remains to be seen how it will interact, but utilizing Cannons, Ready! and Mortar Cannons alongside Rapid Shot may prove to be a powerful synergy. Rapid Shot allows the Mortar Cannons to potentially attack faster, while the Cannons deplete the Heat Buildup of Rapid Shot, allowing it to be used continuously.

Strategic Embankments

Strategic Embankments applies different Auras to our Various totem:

• Ancestral Warrior Totems grant 40% Glory Generation.
• Artillery Ballistae grant 40% Immobilization buildup.
• Dark Effigies grant 40% increased Damage Over Time.
• Mortar Cannons grant 15% of Damage Gained as Extra Fire
• Siege Ballistae grant 50% increased damage against Immobilized enemies.
• Shockwave Totems grant 30% increased Area of Effect.

While all of these auras have their uses, the standouts here are the Ancestral Warrior Totems, Artillery Ballistae, and Siege Ballistae. Not only are the auras on these great, they also now scale with weapon stats. This allows them to be much stronger than their previous iterations

Ancestral Warrior Totems in combination with Banners have the potential to be incredibly strong, assuming we can consistently generate the Endurance Charges needed. Add Sunder into the mix, and there’s high potential for insane damage.

Artillery and Siege Ballistae would work incredibly well in combination with the Tactician’s other passives, allowing for fast Immobilization buildup and a great damage bonus to take advantage of it.