Path of Exile 2 Mercenary build and class guide

What is the best Path of Exile 2 Mercenary build? The Mercenary takes advantage of the new moving while attacking combat mechanic and leans into a range of powerful skills that make this class feel more like a shooter, and less like a ranger.

If you’re just starting out in Path of Exile 2 but are having trouble choosing which class to pick, you might want to consider the Mercenary. They use a crossbow, and unlike the Ranger‘s bow, crossbows fire instantly instead of needing to be drawn back. We’ve gone through all the weapons and ammo types we’ve seen to create a promising PoE 2 build for the Mercenary.

Path of Exile 2 Mercenary overview

The Mercenary’s main weapon is the crossbow, and there are several styles of crossbows you can equip that are designed to feel like traditional guns, including sniper rifles, shotguns, and assault rifles. You’re also able to switch between two crossbows, allowing you to hold different ammo types and attachments for deadly combinations.

Grinding Gear Games designed the Mercenary for the crossbow to feel like a gun and the abilities to pack a punch, focusing on large damage dealing blows and armor piercing shots.

There are two Ascendancies for the Path of Exile 2 Mercenary:

• The Witchhunter: With extra magic defense, and the ability to break their enemy’s concentration, the Witchhunter is perfect for taking down opposing magic users.
• The Gemling Legionnaire: A gem-augmented human, the Gemling Legionnaire can use more skills than any other class, and gains power with skill use.

All Path of Exile 2 Mercenary skills

The Mercenary focuses on high damage shots, but has many crowd control skills, with the added benefit of equipping two crossbows to set up and execute combinations. Each crossbow responds differently depending on the ammo you use, including armor piercing ammo, incendiary ammo, and permafrost ammo.

All Path of Exile 2 Mercenary active skills

All Path of Exile 2 Mercenary persistent Spirit buffs

Best Path of Exile 2 Mercenary build

The best mid-game Mercenary build is:

• Key skills: Armour Piercing Rounds, Fragmentation Rounds, Permafrost Bolts, Incendiary Shot, Ripwire Ballista, Emergency Reload, Cluster Grenade
• Key persistent Spirit buffs: Shard Scavenger, Overwhelming Presence, Attrition
• Key passives: Remorseless, Instant Reload, Advanced Munitions, Sand in the Eyes, Reusable Ammunition
• Ascendancy: The Witchhunter

Key skills

Before reaching the Cruel difficulty, skills like Armour Piercing Rounds, Permafrost Bolts, and Incendiary Shot are great to rely on as you can almost always target the weakness of an enemy. Typically, you’ll want to use Permafrost Bolts into Fragmentation Rounds, which combines well with Shard Scavenger to keep your crossbow reloaded.

When playing on Cruel difficulty, however, you’re going to want defensive skills, which is where the Ripwire Ballista Totem comes in. This totem will help you pin down enemies to keep them from reaching you, in addition to Emergency Reload to buff up your elemental or armor-piercing rounds. Cluster Grenade is also just too good at clearing weak mobs to leave out as well.

Key persistent Spirit buffs

Shard Scavenger is the best persistent buff to take with the Mercenary as it greatly increases the number of shots you can get out with your crossbows when consuming freeze or breaking an enemy’s armor. You will have to rely on Support Gems to trigger this effect more often.

Next up, Overwhelming Presence and Attrition are also good choices. The former simply makes it easier to Freeze or Ignite enemies, while the latter grants you more damage the longer you face difficult foes. As a class that requires a lot of kiting, you’ll be spending more time than others fighting foes.

Key passives

Similar to the Sorceress, we highly recommend choosing Raging Spirits as your first Spirit skill as its useful throughout your entire run, including during the endgame content. This skill summons fiery heads that increase the damage of your fire skills.

The best way to navigate the Mercenary passive tree is to hit notables like Remorseless and Instant Reload that buff your crossbow reload speed or damage output. From there, you’re going to want to work your way up to Advanced Munitions to ensure you’re inflicting ailments on enemies, then move to Advanced Munitions for an attack speed buff and the chance to blind enemies with every attack. Afterward, you’ll want to close out by filling up the nodes around Reusable Ammunition.

Don’t neglect to take some armor and evasive buffs along the way, as you aren’t always going to be able to dodge your way out of getting hit. Some nodes around the Thrill of Battle notable provide decent buffs, as well as more attack speed.

Ascendancy

We lean toward the Witchhunter Ascendancy for the Mercenary because it’s easier to understand for new and returning players. The Gemling Legionnaire, on the other hand, is primed for thousands of hours of experimentation to find the proper build. Simply put, you have a chance to cause enemies to instantly explode or to sap 30% of their total health immediately. Furthermore, you have a chance to break your foes out of lengthy spell animations, avoiding heavy hits coming your way.

Now you’re caught up on the Mercenary class in Path of Exile 2, check out our guide to the Path of Exile 2 Witch class and best build for something completely different. We also have a Path of Exile 2 classes guide if you want to know about each class the game has to offer.