POECurrency.com Analysis: Why Does Bonestorm Crit Blood Mage Build Stand Out In Path Of Exile 2?

Since the release of Path of Exile 2 Dawn Of The Hunt League, the new Huntress has been the focus of many players, but more than a month has passed, and the popularity of this new class has finally returned to calm. At the same time, some classes that have performed well over time have quietly topped the ladder leaderboards, and they are Deadeye and Blood Mage. So what secrets do these two hide that make them stand out?

To be honest, it is not surprising that Deadeye is soaring in popularity at the moment, because it benefits a lot from the current Lightning Spear, not only converting 80% of physical damage into lightning damage, but also increasing your Shock chance by 100%.

In contrast, the current high popularity of Blood Mage is very strange. Almost all old players know that since the release of POE 2, the appearance rate of the main skills used by Blood Mage players has always been at the bottom, so this is undoubtedly an unpopular choice.

But all this is because of a recent popular build: Bonestorm Crit Blood Mage, which is not only easy to operate, but also has excellent monster clearing and boss capabilities, and is very durable, making it the first choice for many players who have just entered the game. Not to mention that over time, we can continue to buy POE 2 Currency to optimize this build and give full play to its maximum potential.

Here, we will analyze this top-ranked Bonestorm Crit Blood Mage and introduce its mechanics in detail.

Ascendancy Skill Nodes

Before discussing the build mechanics, let’s first understand Ascendancy of Blood Mage.

In addition to the mandatory Sanguimancy that converts mana consumption into health, other Ascendancy nodes are mainly divided into three categories:

• Critical Strike: +15% spell base critical strike chance; increase critical strike multiplier; critical strike ignores monster armor.
• Life: Provide additional maximum Life based on Energy Shield of the chest armor; 25% of the hit damage will be received after 4 seconds; convert spell damage to life leech.
• Curse: Your Curse has an infinite duration; cursed enemies take increased bleeding damage.

Bonestorm

You might notice something strange here, why does the crit of this Ascendancy ignore monster armor? This sounds more like Ascendancy for Assassin class. But does a caster class like Blood Mage really care about monster armor?

In fact, it has to do with the core skill of this build: Bonestorm. Bonestorm is an AOE physical spell that not only has a powerful penetrating explosion effect, but also has a high crit rate, high attack frequency and high physical damage, which perfectly complements Critical Hits ignore Enemy Monster Armors node.

It is worth noting that the base crit rate of Bonestorm is exactly 15%, which means that you don’t even need to choose another Ascendancy node with +15% base crit rate of spells.

Critical Focus vs Life Focus

Because of the limited number of Ascendancy points, Bonestorm Blood Mage has developed two branches: crit focus (maximum damage) and life focus (balanced survivability). But this doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice all defense to choose the crit path.

Now, let’s take a look at Life Remnants skill granted by the mandatory Sanguimancy Ascendancy. Once you kill an enemy or deal a critical hit, it will generate Blood Orbs, which can restore life even more than the maximum life. However, you must actively move to collect these Blood Orbs.

In the late game, when skill damage is high, this healing effect is insignificant compared to spell leech. This creates a real high-risk, high-reward play style. Therefore, choosing the crit path or the life path depends on your personal preference.

Budget

Next, let’s take a look at the full set of equipment for this character. We calculated that its total equipment cost is about 38.4 POE 2 Divine Orbs.

According to statistics, the median build equipment cost of all ladder players is about 7-8 Divine Orbs, and most players at level 90 and above have equipment costs of about 20 Divines. Obviously, the cost required for this build is still relatively high.

Since we are following a life-centric build path here, with gear that emphasizes extremely high energy shields, health, and resistances, we get such a strong effective health.

However, if you choose the crit path and sacrifice defense for pure high-risk damage output, your costs will be significantly reduced. Taking all these factors into consideration, we can actually use this build when the budget is not abundant in the early stage, depending on which path you prefer. But like we said before, if you really want to ensure that you have high survivability in combat, then choosing to buy POE 2 currency in exchange for gear with higher resistance is a must.

Pros And Cons

Now, for the pros and cons of this build, I just want to say that its actual stats are really strong! Not only does it have 247,669 DPS, but the effective health is also 20,180, which is very good even in the entire ladder leaderboard. Bonestorm Blood Mage has a strong AOE attack and penetration ability, which significantly improves the efficiency of map clearing.

However, since Bonestorm is a channeled skill, as the skill level and the number of support gems increase, a lot of life is consumed during the channeling process. And when your casting speed is insufficient or life is insufficient, it is difficult to accumulate 20 Bone Spikes.

In addition, although its AOE range is relatively wide, if you miss the attack, all the life consumed will be wasted, and you may be in danger due to continuous channeling. Therefore, it is not recommended for players with poor operation to use this equipment.

Overall, how do you think this Bonestorm Crit Blood Mage performs? Which path will you choose to focus on? No matter which version you choose, the excellent damage output and survivability will make you shine!