With a new league recently released for Path of Exile, many newer players are jumping into the game for the first time. They are immediately met with a large range of skills, passives, and gearing lingo that makes the game stand apart from similar games like Diablo or Grim Dawn.
The best way to learn Path of Exile is to break it down into smaller chunks and learn things one at a time. Skills are one of the easiest mechanics to learn, requiring a socket in your armor with a matching color to fit. While there are over 100 skill gems in the game, a few stand above the rest. Here are the 10 best skills you should be using in Path of Exile.
Updated January 15th, 2021 by Charles Burgar: A lot has changed for Path of Exile over the last year. Besides the introduction of new leagues, entire skill archetypes have been introduced. Most skills have also seen major rebalances. Needless to say, this list needed an update. We have updated this article to reflect these changes and provide some more accurate entries. This list was updated during patch 3.13.
10 Vaal Double Strike
Double Strike is one of the most boring and generic attacks in Path of Exile from a conceptual standpoint. This skill simply makes you strike at an enemy target twice per swing.
It deals great damage on its own, but Double Strike has a Vaal variant that is truly incredible. Vaal Double Strike will make a clone of your character when you hit a target, replicating your current weapons, gear, and buffs. You can make two clones this way at a time, allowing you to triple your damage output at will for the next six seconds. For clearing large groups of enemies, this is a great ability. For killing bosses, this is one of the best skills in the game for attack-based melee builds. This gem can single-handedly fix single-target DPS issues any build has.
9 Herald Of Ash
This skill does not deal any damage in-of itself, acting more as a buff for yourself than a main ability. Don't let that fool you on how powerful this skill is, however.
Herald of Ash grants you 15% of your physical damage as extra fire damage, granting a massive amount of bonus damage for most attack-based builds. It also scales fire damage from spells in case you aren't using melee. The best part of Herald of Ash is its on-kill effect. When an enemy dies while this is active, they explode, dealing overkill damage to everyone in the radius. If your build does a lot of damage but has lackluster clearing potential, this herald can single-handedly fix that.
8 Auras
Due to the sheer strength of aura skills, we had to include them as an archetype rather than pick a single one. Auras grant passive benefits to your character at the cost of your usable mana.
Some notable aura gems include:
- Hatred: Converts 25% of physical damage to cold. You also deal 18% more cold damage.
- Vitality: For a flat mana cost, you can regenerate up to 247 life per second. This is absurdly strong on Righteous Fire builds.
- Purity auras: Dedicated elemental purities grant maximum elemental resistances, allowing you to take up mitigate up to 90% of elemental damage instead of 75%.
- Discipline: Provides a flat boost to your Energy Shield. For builds utilizing Chaos Innocluation, this is a must-have.
To make auras even stronger, consider grabbing aura effect Cluster Jewels and reduce mana reserved modifiers on gear. While aurastacking was substantially nerfed in patch 3.13, auras themselves are still a fantastic way to buff any build you're playing.
7 Toxic Rain
Bow characters are usually one of the worst league-starter builders in Path of Exile due to gearing issues and a lack of life nodes on the right side of the passive tree.
Gearing is not a concern with Toxic Rain. As long as you have a bow with some sort of chaos or poison damage scaling, Toxic Rain becomes one of the game's best bow skills. Launching toxic arrows into the sky, this skill releases spores on impact, each dealing substantial chaos damage over time. Ascendancies like Pathfinder or Trickster can take this to a whole other level with their amplified damage-over-time notables and the Pathfinder's potent poison proliferation ability. Deadeye builds can also use multiple Mirage Archers to increase their single-target damage substantially.
6 Cyclone
No melee skill is quite as easy to use as Cyclone. Your character will spin their weapons while moving in a given direction. The skill has everything you'd want for a melee build: high damage, mobility, and plenty of ways to scale its damage.
Cyclone can even be used to start devastating Cast on Critical Strike combinations such as Discharge. As long as you have a decent weapon, Cyclone is nothing short of a top-tier melee skill.
5 Essence Drain And Contagion
Make no mistake; this entry is discussing two skills instead of one. The reason for this is the functionality of either skill does not reach its full potential without the other, making both of these skills near mandatory to use together.
Essence Drain fires a chaos orb that deals a massive amount of damage over time in a large area. Contagion will then deal its own damage over time in a much larger radius, which can then spread the effect of both itself and Essence Drain if an enemy dies. In basic terms, casting both together can clear dozens of enemies instantly. This can get even crazier when the likes of the Occultist are considered, capable of making enemies explode on death, dealing a quarter of their health pool as chaos damage in a small area. Sadly, this spell combination struggles to kill bosses without substantial gear investment.
4 Arc
Ever since the Archmage Support Gem was introduced to Path of Exile, Arc has seen a massive surge in popularity. This skill is straightforward, causing your character to fire an arc of lightning that chains between targets.
The brilliance of Arc is its simplicity. A new player can grab this skill and use it to great effect. Crafty players can find ways to scale Arc's damage to ludicrous levels by using the Archmage Support Gem and scaling mana. Alternatively, you can turn Arc into a deployable mine.
Arc can reach absurd levels of damage if you support it with the High-Impact Mine Support Gem. If you can get a few gems linked with Arc mines, it can one-shot nearly every boss in the campaign. It is the defacto speedrunning skill with good reason.
3 Raise Spectre
Despite the wide range of nerfs Spectres received in 3.13, they still remain as one of the best skills in the game. As long as you scale your Spectre's health somewhat, you have an unstoppable army of ghosts.
Raise Spectre allows you to reanimate any non-boss enemy as a personal summon. With how powerful some enemies have been in recent leagues, Spectre builds can turn those tough enemies into devastating allies. The likes of Solar Guards, Slave Drivers, and Baranite Preachers can trivialize most encounters.
2 Steelskin
Steelskin is a guard skill that grants a flat amount of bonus health for a short time. This health pool takes 75% of all incoming damage, making it absurdly strong when used against tough enemies.
Better yet, Steelskin is an instant-cast spell. You can bind Steelskin to your movement input to automatically activate it as you run. This makes Steelskin grant a 75% damage resistance buff every three seconds. Every build in Path of Exile can use this gem to great effect.
1 Movement Skills
Utility skills are oftentimes better than adding more damage to a build. The likes of guard and aura skills can make any build viable in low-tier maps. Likewise, movement skills substantially increase your character's clear speed and survivability.
With how many areas Path of Exile has that contain unpassable terrain by normal means, a movement skill to cross those gaps is a must. Fortunately, there are quite a few options:
- Flame Dash: Arguably the best movement skill. It crosses impassable terrain, has three charges, and has a short cooldown.
- Dash: A Dexterity-focused version of Flame Dash. Use the Second Wind Support Gem to give Dash a second charge.
- Leap Slam: Allows melee characters to cross gaps in the environment. With enough attack speed, Leap Slam can let you traverse entire zones in seconds.
No matter the movement skill you pick, you will have a new means of dodging enemy attacks and navigating through large maps. Every build you make should have a movement skill.