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An Overview of the Passive Skill Tree Mechanism in Path of Exile 2, Understanding How to Add Points Effortlessly

An Overview of the Passive Skill Tree Mechanism in Path of Exile 2, Understanding How to Add Points Effortlessly

2025-05-26
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In Path of Exile 2, the Passive Skill Tree provides a variety of options for adding points, which can be used to enhance everything you build. Most of the affixes in the Passive Skill Tree are general affixes that increase damage, and a few will provide unique bonuses on the final core talents. The exact passive skills available at the starting position of the Passive Skill Tree vary depending on your starting profession. From the starting position, you can traverse the entire Passive Skill Tree, and all professions are the same tree, which provides a lot of customization possibilities in the construction.

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Passive Skill Tree Infrastructure

The Passive Skill Tree of Path of Exile 2 is class-specific. Each profession has its own exclusive starting point and route. The talents of different professions are no longer interoperable. The overall structure is more linear + branching, which is suitable for novices to get started, while also retaining the fun and depth of building BD.

1. The nodes of the Passive Skill Tree are divided into four categories

  • Basic nodes include +% attributes, damage, resistance, life, strength, agility, etc.
  • Small talents provide small bonuses, such as increased fire damage
  • Core talents generally appear at the end of a series of small talents and provide more substantial bonuses, such as a high increase in lightning damage, etc.
  • Cornerstone talents are unique passive skills, usually the core mechanism of construction, with powerful effects. For example, energy shields no longer protect life, but increase spell damage significantly.

2. Talent point composition

There are a total of 123 talent points, 99 points from level 1 to level 100, and 24 set points are obtained from the plot.

We know that the Passive Skill Tree is exclusive to a profession, so you need to clarify the profession BD you are playing, and choose the support node according to the skill matching mechanism. For example, if you want to play a frost spell BD and go for a frost arrow spell bow, you can enter from the bow route and cooperate with talents such as [Projectile] and [Frost] to support.


Know the Underlying Logic of Building a Passive Skill Tree

  • Number of attacks per unit time, attack speed, casting speed, cooldown recovery, and additional projectiles
  • Damage bonus (% damage).
  • Penetrate enemy resistance/armor.
  • The benefits of evenly distributing these three types of talent points are the highest. We cannot blindly stack a single talent point, such as only pursuing damage bonus, while ignoring attack speed, reducing monster resistance, etc. will result in reduced benefits.


Build a Passive Skill Tree Based on Professional BD Skills

For example, what we need to build now is a piercing bow Amazon.

Amazon's core skills are: piercing arrow rain or multiple arrows, auxiliary (bleeding, suppression, penetration, attack enhancement).

The direction of adding points to the Passive Skill Tree can be added from the following aspects:

  • Physical damage bonus.
  • Attack Shooting speed.
  • Number of arrows/Number of penetration layers.
  • Critical hit chance/Critical hit damage.
  • Bleeding chance and bleeding bonus.
  • Additional damage node for bleeding enemies.

General suggestions:

It is recommended to develop radially from the starting point of the profession to the surrounding areas, keep the path compact, and focus on the output/survival axis.


Notes on Adding Points to Weapon Suit Talents

You can see the weapon suit points in the talent point panel in the upper right corner. You can choose 2 sets of weapon suits to add points. If the first set of weapon suits is red, then the second set is green. The points of the two sets will only consume the talent points of one set. Note that the two weapon routes can only be selected separately. In addition, if the weapon set route encounters a jewelry slot, it will not be able to light up, and it is also troublesome to reset it. You can avoid this problem.


Recommended Route Construction Process (For Novices)

  1. Confirm the profession → For example, choose Witch or Monk.
  2. Confirm the main skill → For example, Ice Nova, Earthshatter, Lightning Spear.
  3. Check the skill tags → such as Spell, Cold, AOE, Critical Hit.
  4. Find the matching tag route in the Passive Skill Tree.
  5. Prioritize the core output node, then click on survival (blood/shield/resistance).
  6. Finally, consider the "gain node" such as attack speed, movement speed, resource recovery, etc.


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