Path of Exile 2 best Warrior build

Looking for the best Warrior build in Path of Exile 2? So you've chosen the massive mace-slamming warrior for your next Path of Exile 2 build; now it's time to get him a proper Warcry and maximise his already impressive area-of-effect damage. With the right loadout, the Warrior reaches a peak damage number that'll make even the toughest bosses shudder with fear.

As one of the best classes for beginners, the Warrior is a relatively straightforward melee fighter with reliable defensive abilities. In this guide, which focuses on the Warbringer Ascendancy, we'll show you the best build for the Warrior in Path of Exile 2 and how to enhance your damage with armour-breaking effects and the best skill and support gems.

Best Warrior build in Path of Exile 2

The best Warrior build in Path of Exile 2 is what we'll call the Armour Break Warbringer build. The idea is to break the opponents' armour, boost your most powerful physical attacks (Hammer and Sunder) with a Warcry, and land extremely heavy-hitting area-of-effect attacks afterwards. This build is especially effective against elite enemies and bosses surrounded by smaller minions.

Although this Warbringer build is incredibly strong, the main downside is its reliance on single bouts of damage. The build's rotation requires you to break the enemy's armour first, then use your Warcry to boost the next attack, and then land your most powerful attacks: 'Sunder' or 'Hammer of the Gods'. Since the latter comes with a lengthy cooldown, you really don't want the Hammer to miss its target, so it's very important to get the timing and positioning right.

Be sure to pick the Warbringer Ascendancy as opposed to Titan, as this Warrior build heavily leans on the 'Anvil's Weight' and 'Imploding Impacts' passives, which allow you to Break Armour equal to 10% of the damage dealt and Break Armour down to less than zero respectively. When assigning points to your passive skill tree, be sure to increase melee damage, physical damage, and strength. Unlock passive nodes that improve the amount of armour you break as well (including 'Reverberating Impact' and 'Cruel Methods'. As for weapons, you'll have to equip a Mace and a Shield for this build - dual-wielding is an option, but I would advise against it since it greatly dimishes your defensiveness.

Warrior Build: Best skills

The Warrior has many impressively damaging skills, excellent armour-breaking abilities, and strong ability buffs. As long as they boost physical damage and focus on armour-breaking, other skills should work quite well with this Path of Exile 2 build, but in my opinion, these are the best options:

Raise Shield

Let's keep this one short and simple; it's super helpful to avoid all incoming blockable damage by raising your shield, especially in the early game when you won't have many defensive abilities. You may drop this ability in favour of dual-wielding when you reach Path of Exile's endgame.

Mace Strike

Use this weapon skill as your go-to attack against weaker enemies and as a means to break enemy armour. Although the Armour Breaker ability may seem more suitable on paper, Mace Strike can also break armour when equipped with the right Support Gem (more on that below) and it doesn't consume mana, making it far more reliable considering the high mana cost and cooldown time found elsewhere in this Warrior build. Don't forget: you need to carry a Mace to unlock this attack!

Hammer of the Gods

Hammer of the Gods will be your most powerful melee attack. It comes with insanely high damage potential, but also a few caveats: Hammer of the Gods is slow, it costs a lot of mana, and it has a cooldown time. It's therefore very important to choose the most advantageous area of impact (shown as a circle on the ground) while accounting for a brief delay after initiation. If a group of enemies comes walking towards you, drop Hammer of the Gods slightly ahead of them.

Seismic Cry

To make the most of your Warrior build, pick a Warcry ability to enhance your next melee attack. Seismic Cry is the best option as it's fully focused on physical damage and you can use it just before triggering Hammer of the Gods, but beware that it only empowers melee slam attacks and comes with a high mana cost - you'll need almost 100 mana to use both skills. If that doesn't work in your rotation, try Infernal Cry instead, which empowers all melee attacks and requires far less mana.

Sunder

This is a perfect skill to quickly clear a group of weaker enemies, as it triggers a wave of spikes that run through your opponents while causing additional shockwaves. The best thing about Sunder, however, is that it'll land a guaranteed critical hit if the target suffers from broken armour.

Scavenged Plating

This persistent buff grants you additional armour based on the enemy armour you've broken, so it's an incredibly handy defensive buff that works well with this Warrior build. Beware that you'll need to reserve 30 Spirit for this buff - if you don't have that yet, see our guide on how to obtain more Spirit.

Warrior build: Best support gems

You can't have the best skills if you don't equip them with the best Support Gems. To boost your abilities further, I recommend the following Support Gems for this Armour Break Warbringer build:

Splinter

This one's important as it breaks the opponent's armour based on a percentage of the physical damage dealt by the attack. Place it on Mace Strike to get a mana-free armour-breaking attack.

Armour Explosion

You can place this Support Gem on an attack to cause fiery explosions whenever that attack breaks an enemy's armour. This works well alongside Mace Strike (or your main armour-breaking ability if you're using something else). Apart from the extra damage, it's super useful to have a visual cue for successful armour breaks.

Heft

This support ability increases an attack's maximum physical damage by 30%. Since Hammer of the Gods is your most powerful physical attack, Heft is a perfect fit.

Brutality

Boosting a skill's physical damage at the cost of chaos and elemental damage, this Support Gem is an obvious choice for the Warrior. You can use it on any of your physical attacks.

Concentrated Effect

This Support Gem decreases the size of an AoE attack in return for better damage. The question is: which skill should we use it on? Since I mainly reserve Hammer of the Gods for the toughest enemies, I consider this a golden combo, but it's also harder to land the Hammer in the right place. If it feels too risky, you can place Concentrated Effect on Sunder instead.

Magnified Effect

As opposed to the previous recommendation, Magnified Effect enlarges an AoE by 40%. Use it on Sunder to make sure you'll hit every armour-broken enemy around you. If you already placed Concentrated Effect on Sunder, you may put the Magnified edition on Hammer of the Gods instead.

Supercritical

This ability reduces critical hit chance by 20% in return for a 100% critical damage bonus, which is absolutely perfect for Sunder. Provided that the enemy's armour is fully broken, Sunder will always land a critical hit, so you'll receive an amazing damage boost without the downsides.

Enraged Warcry

As a melee character, you're likely to get hit and thus build Rage stacks. When placed on Seismic Cry, Enraged Warcry will consume 10 stacks of Rage to further empower the next attack, allowing you to boost Hammer of the Gods even more. It may be more difficult to build Rage if you're a bit too well-versed in blocking damage with your shield (you can place Rage on Mace Strike to remedy this), but if you dare to go the two-handed route, it'll be very easy.

And that concludes this Path of Exile 2 Warrior build. If you're new to the game, you might want to look at our list of things to do first in Path of Exile 2, and make sure you understand the Attribute system that serves as the game's foundation. Don't forget to use the Path of Exile 2 crafting system to get better gear, and use the gemcutting system to obtain new skills.