
Exiles, have you found the best build for your play style in Path of Exile 2? If you haven’t, then check out this super build, especially for some players who want to challenge group monsters and Uber bosses, this build is definitely for you!
This is Rapid Shot Pathfinder! This build is not only very fun but also works well overall. More importantly, it requires less than 1 Divine Orb overall equipment investment, which is completely affordable even for some players with very tight budgets.
Although you don’t invest much, it doesn’t mean it’s not powerful. It can still easily clear Tier 15 maps and knock down large groups of monsters in seconds, and some enemies will even die before they enter the screen. Its single target damage is outrageous. Even when facing some rare creatures, you can kill them as quickly as killing ordinary monsters.
Build Basics
The general idea behind Rapid Shot Pathfinder build is to take advantage of Rapid Shot’s high fire rate, build up to a faster attack speed, and scale the damage with “Add Damage to Attacks” stat. While adding some lightning damage to a slow Mace attack doesn’t do much, when you’re attacking 25 times a second, it can really add up.
It scales mostly with elemental damage and lightning, which helps with clear speed, and it can trigger and consume Herald of Thunder charges very quickly. You can imagine that every shocked enemy death gives you 3 charges to consume, and then Rapid Shot immediately uses those charges to deal high damage and AOE damage to a single target, and this keeps happening with every shocked enemy death. So you’re just constantly dealing with these events.
Cons
The biggest weakness of Rapid Shot is that it makes you move very slowly, and it does a lot of damage over time by constantly shooting, so if you often have to stop and run between teams, it will greatly affect your gameplay experience.
That’s why we chose Pathfinder. Its Running Assault greatly reduces this drawback, and with Mobility Support Gem, you can move at almost normal speed. Of course, if you buy POE 2 Currency a lot in advance, equipping Unique Boots with top movement speed stats can also solve this problem for you.
In addition to this, Skill Speed node also directly increases our Rapid Shot attack speed. Relentless Pursuit is also valuable for keeping us from being slowed down, because it’s really annoying to always stop shooting, so anything that allows us to keep moving and not have to dodge roll all the time is an immense help.
Gameplay
For the general gameplay of this build, we want to suppress Rapid Shot as much as possible, which generates a lot of heat, which in turn generates additional fire damage. Especially at rank 19 and 24 stacks of heat, it reaches a huge 168% additional fire damage. It’s worth noting that the initial DPS of this build is 20k, and when it reaches maximum heat, it grows to 53k.
We also have this very powerful Support Gem, Fresh Clip, which gives us 1% more damage for every bolt reload we’ve had in the last 6 seconds. Normally, it only takes a little over 3 seconds to run out of ammo, so a single reload gives us about an 86% damage buff. What’s more, this gem gives “more” damage, not “increase”, meaning it’s multiplicative. This is very beneficial, and we can even reach over 145k DPS after a few reloads.
Additionally, we have Premeditation Support Gem, which gives another 15% “more” damage to Rapid Shot. We can use this at the end of a clip to reload immediately, saving reload time and giving more damage.
Martial Tempo gives us 25% more attack speed, which is multiplicative with all the other attack speeds we’re stacking. And Primal Armament gives us 25% more elemental damage to our weapons, which is very useful with the added fire damage and lightning damage we’re stacking elsewhere.
You may have noticed a pattern of stacking multiplicative damage, which is why Rapid Shot is so good in the late game. And we can also complete Rapid Shot with Mobility Support, which allows us to move faster while channeling it.
Note that Fresh Clip and Martial Tempo feel absolutely necessary, but it’s also worth trying Auto Reload, which reloads when heavy stun, and Ruthless, which makes every 5 shots deal 500% stun. This means you’ll be constantly stunning enemies and constantly reloading, so you almost never have to stop shooting. Imagine how exciting it would be to ruthlessly strafing enemies across the map and harvesting tons of POE 2 orbs and loot!
Although this will take a toll on your damage and mobility, it does feel great on easier maps, so it may be more feasible if you have another gem slot.
Gear Set Up
Next, let’s take a quick look at the gear for this build.
First, to get the most out of Voltaic Mark, we prepared two sets of weapons and picked up a bunch of mark clusters. But currently the weapon that switches this skill seems to have a problem. You can only get Nova if you have the weapon equipped when it explodes. Only if this problem is fixed or changed, the second set of weapons will make more sense.
However, to round it out, we have Wind Dancer for more defense, Overwhelming Presence for more shock and stun, and Accuracy Support.
There is also Ripwire Ballista, which is almost purely for acting as a tank and interruption against bosses and group events. It has Font of Rage for more multiplicative damage.
Finally, there is Voltaic Grenade, which you can use to help your old bow with AOE and group attacks. But if the bow you are using now does not have additional Grenade, pressing it almost feels not worth it, so I prefer to use Voltaic Mark. However, as long as you have a rare Bombard Crossbow, the extra value it brings to you will definitely surprise you. Of course, if you are willing to buy POE 2 Exalted Orbs to add additional affixes to it, it can give you a huge damage boost.
Grenade has a fairly long cast time though, which works great in combination with Voltaic Mark for group attack scenarios or when you’re stunned and can’t properly channel Rapid Shot. What’s more, the heat generated by Rapid Shot also adds fire damage to Grenade, so we have some great synergy there.
That’s a quick overview of Rapid Shot Pathfinder build so far, it’s not the final version and you can tweak it to your play style. But regardless, whether you want to improve your aiming skills or want to kill Uber bosses with one shot, this build will bring you more results than you can imagine!