Top Critical Strike Occultist Builds for Path of Exile 2
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When it comes to critical strike builds in Path of Exile 2, the Occultist offers a unique twist that blends powerful spellcasting with devastating curses. Occultists have access to potent damage-dealing and defensive abilities that revolve around chaos and cold damage, making them a great choice for players who love a versatile and high-damage build with U4GM strong survivability. In this article, we will explore why the Occultist stands out as one of the best choices for critical strike casting builds in Path of Exile 2 (0.4).
Occultist Strengths for Critical Strikes
The Occultist excels in dealing both chaos and cold damage. The ascendancy's synergy with critical strikes revolves around enhancing the effectiveness of cold and chaos damage, while also providing boosts to crit chance, crit multi, and additional elemental and chaos damage. One of the core reasons the Occultist shines as a critical strike build is the ascendancy node Forbidden Power, which grants increased power charges and allows the Occultist to reach high levels of damage scaling with critical hits.
Additionally, the Occultist’s ability to apply Profane Bloom allows you to trigger explosive damage on critical hits, which not only increases your single-target damage but also clears packs of enemies with ease. The chaos-oriented mechanics also open up access to passive skill trees and items that amplify chaos damage, making for a highly flexible and powerful build.
Popular Skills for Occultist Critical Strike Builds
Occultist critical strike builds often gravitate toward Freezing Pulse, Vortex, Bane, and Essence Drain. These skills, while not necessarily the highest damage output spells at face value, work synergistically with the Occultist’s ascendancy nodes to deal immense critical damage. Freezing Pulse, for example, is an excellent choice for critical strike builds because it fires multiple projectiles and scales extremely well with critical chance and multiplier, allowing you to freeze and deal substantial cold damage on critical hits.
Vortex is another popular choice, particularly for players who enjoy the combination of cold damage and area-of-effect spells. The added critical hit chance from the Occultist’s ascendancy can make Vortex devastating in both maps and boss fights, especially when combined with cold crit multi mods on gear.
Defenses and Survivability
What sets the Occultist apart from other critical strike casters is its ability to defend itself with Energy Shield mechanics. Occultists typically focus on ES as their primary form of defense, and they gain substantial energy shield bonuses through ascendancy nodes like Forbidden Power and Forbidden Flame. This makes the Occultist a resilient caster that can withstand both damage and curse mechanics while still maintaining a high level of damage output.
Moreover, the Occultist’s ability to apply curses like Enfeeble and Temporal Chains to reduce the damage output of enemies enhances its overall survivability in both solo and party play.
Conclusion
The Occultist is an exceptional choice for critical strike casting builds in Path of Exile 2 (0.4), especially for players looking to incorporate chaos and cold damage into their arsenal. With powerful ascendancy nodes, high scalability of damage, and strong defensive mechanics, the Occultist is an incredibly flexible and effective class that can both dish out huge amounts of damage and survive tough encounters. If you enjoy strategic curse application and powerful critical strikes, the Occultist is a must-try.