Path of Exile 2 Passive Skill Tree guide: How to plan out your build

The Passive Skill Tree in Path of Exile 2 is pretty much the lifeblood of the game, providing the most player power and progression. The Skill Tree is paramount towards creating a proper build and is chock full of stats and mechanics that keep the RPG feeling fresh, no matter what build or class one is playing.

Path of Exile 2, like Path of Exile before it, possesses an imposing Passive Skill Tree, which has well over a thousand nodes and Notables to allocate. Navigating it is a chore if you don't know what you're looking for.

This guide gives you an idea of how to map out your build on the Path of Exile 2 Passive Skill Tree, navigate it efficiently, and use Keystones and Dual Specialisations.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect the writer's opinions

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How to navigate your Passive Skill Tree in Path of Exile 2

When you are faced with around 1500 points in Path of Exile 2, navigating the labyrinthine maze can be a daunting task. Fortunately, there is a search function that will dictate any and every possible choice and highlight it for you. For example, typing 'Bleeding' in the search bar will highlight all of the Bleeding-related nodes in flashing colors.

Highlight the Bleed nodes in white (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

An important aspect of navigating the Passive Skill Tree is figuring out the optimal route from one Passive Notable to another. Passive Notables are medium-sized nodes, such as Bloodletting in the image above. They provide a significant amount of offense and defensive boosts and help in shaping a build's identity.

The smaller nodes are called travel nodes, as they are stepping stones towards allocating the Passive Notables. Despite this, travel nodes, especially ones that grant Attributes, are absolutely crucial for building a good Passive Skill Tree. Attributes are necessary not only for equipping gems and armor pieces but also to increase the gem limit for that specific character.

Small travel nodes can also provide excellent bonuses, such as Electrocution chance and Freeze buildup. These stats are absolutely paramount for ailment buildup and inflicting special ailments such as Aggravated Bleeding.

Beyond the offensive power, Passive Skill Tree nodes also provide a hefty amount of defensive power. Be it the Damage Recouped as Life near the Sorceress/Witch section or the Damage Leeched as Life for melee classes, defensive layers are as important as damage nodes. These nodes can provide the necessary defensive layers to survive the Trials of the Sekhemas and endgame encounters.

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Why Keystone passives are important in Path of Exile 2

Break your back and the enemies too (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

Keystones, by the metric of size, are the largest nodes on the Path of Exile 2 Passive Skill Tree and likewise provide the largest bonuses. On the flip side, every Keystone passive has a significant downside that has to be taken into account during build crafting. However, Keystone passives such as Giant's Blood enable different playstyles with the sheer power of their upsides.

Keystone passives can be used in tandem and often have interactions where they augment each other or inadvertently negate each other. Players stacking Mana into their builds will most likely want to use Eldritch Battery to turn their Energy Shield into additional Mana. Furthermore, they will want to use Mind over Matter to bolster their defenses with the additional Mana.

What players will want to avoid is using Chaos Inoculation, or CI as it is known within the community, with the build. CI reduces all life to 1 but makes the player immune to Chaos damage. While Chaos damage immunity is good, having 1 life and no energy shield is a questionable choice.

Keystone choices can make or break builds, so it is highly advised to research before investing into a build without gauging the pros and cons.

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How does Dual Specialisation work in Path of Exile 2 and when should you use it?

Dual Specialisation is a new feature in Path of Exile 2, one that uses the weapon swap mechanic to introduce greater build variety. Grinding Gear Games noted that players were overwhelmingly ignoring the second weapon set in Path of Exile and decided to bake it into a new gameplay feature altogether.

How the Dual Specialisation points in respect to the different weapons, notice the top right corner (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

To begin using Dual Specialisation, players must first equip two weapons in both of their weapon slots. They can be the same weapon base types or completely separate weapons altogether. For example, you can equip a Gelid Staff as your weapon set 1 and have a Quarterstaff as your weapon set 2. These weapon sets will have their distinct skill setups, one players can edit as they wish.

As you tread The Hunting Grounds beyond The Cemetary of the Eternals, you will encounter the Crowbell optional boss. Killing this enemy will grant you the Book of Specialisation, the first of many. Consuming this book will grant you two Weapon Specialisation points, which can be spent on the Passive Skill tree separately.

To allocate the points, click on the arrow on the top-right corner of the Passive Skill Trees indicating the separate weapon sets. You can also hold down Shift and click on the passive nodes to allocate those for the second weapon set. The choices will be distinguished by separate hues on the Passive Skill Tree and will take effect with weapon swap.

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When should you weapon swap?

Stormweaver gets massive utility from Dual Specialisation (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

The answer to this question comes down to the player. You must decide to swap your weapons and use the appropriate skills to deal with the situation at hand. However, we can point at likely scenarios where weapon swap can come in handy.

For example, a common usage for weapon swap is from Sorceress casting multi-elemental spells, where the fire skills are supported by a fire damage-based staff, while the lightning spells are boosted by the other staff.

Another instance is when you use a Mace & Shield and Two-handed Mace combo, where using the Raise Shield skill while holding the two-hander will instantly switch to the Mace and Shield.

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Truth be told, there is a right way to make a build in Path of Exile 2, and then there's an optimized way of creating it. While the optimized route might be more suitable for min-maxing the gameplay, the right way can easily be more fun to experiment with. Thus, it is imperative to try out different combos.

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