PoE 2 0.3.0 Best Leveling Builds for Different Classes (Rise of the Abyssals League)

Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict brings a ton of new skills and keystone passives, which will influence how your character plays and progress. To get a smooth and enjoyable leveling and farming experience, this article introduces several S-tier Rise of the Abyssals league starter builds for fast PoE 2 0.3.0 leveling.

PoE 2 0.3.0 Best Leveling Builds for Different Classes (Rise of the Abyssals League)

Leveling in Path of Exile 2 is a careful balance of progressing through the campaign efficiently while steadily improving your gear, skills, and survivability. Since you start fresh each league without powerful items, it’s important to know when and where to pick up key upgrades like movement speed boots, better flasks, and stronger weapons, which greatly help your speed and survival. Following a clear path through quests and hidden caches ensures you gain useful passive skill points and permanent buffs that make leveling smoother. These PoE 2 0.3.0 The Third Edict builds are easier for leveling because they don’t require complex mechanics and can clear mobs quickly while staying safe. Choosing a build that uses skills available early and scales well with simple gear often makes your journey faster and less frustrating. 

1. PoE 2 0.3.0 Lich Leveling Build

The first leveling build for Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.3 is going to be the Essence Drain Contagion Chaos DoT Lich, which is an excellent choice for new and returning players starting the Rise of the Abyssals league. This build centers around the synergy between Essence Drain (ED) and Contagion skills, which deal damage over time (DoT) with chaos damage. It’s straightforward to set up and play, and perfect for beginners. One of the main reasons this build shines in the 0.3 is its consistency from level one all the way through the campaign and into endgame mapping. The core skill setup remains stable throughout, so you don’t have to change your gems or gear constantly. It spreads the Essence Drain debuff to many enemies using Contagion, which then applies sustained chaos damage. This makes clearing groups of monsters very efficient and smooth. Thanks to recent buffs in patch 0.3, the build became even stronger. For example, raising the quality of the Contagion skill gem now increases the number of targets it can affect, which greatly improves clear speed. Additionally, the Despair curse, essential for boosting chaos damage, now reduces enemy chaos resistance more effectively, adding to damage output. Another significant upgrade comes from the Withered Wand weapon base, which applies the Withered debuff through Chaos Bolt attacks, improving single-target damage, a traditional weak spot for DoT builds.

Lich is highly recommended for a tanky build. This helps in surviving tougher bosses and dangerous maps. While the build’s damage scales well enough for early and mid-game content, it does have a damage ceiling in the late game. You can easily switch to a different ascendancy, like Blood Mage, for better damage scaling in high-end content.

When it comes to the skill setup for the campaign, link Contagion with support gems like Unleash and Magnified Effect to spread Essence Drain rapidly. Essence Drain is supported by Swift Affliction and Chain for efficient damage and clear. Utility spells like Flame Wall (with Arcane Tempo) and Unearth (with Feeding Frenzy and Minion Instability) provide extra damage and survivability early on. After completing the first spirit quest, the Withering Presence aura with Persistence is added to apply the Wither debuff for even more damage.

The gameplay is very simple: cast Contagion to spread the Essence Drain debuff on groups of monsters, then refresh Essence Drain on a few targets. The damage-over-time effect spreads naturally, meaning you don’t have to constantly recast everything. 

2. PoE 2 0.3.0 Witch Leveling Build

The Chaos Witch build for Path of Exile 2 The Third Edict introduces exciting new ways to do chaos damage, shaking up the popular Essence Drain Contagion playstyle with fresh mechanics and strategies. Thanks to the addition of a new keystone called Blackflame Covenant, all fire spell damage now converts to chaos damage, and any ignite caused by those spells also deals chaos damage.

One of the most notable new skills is Living Bomb, which used to be limited to special weapons but is now part of the skill tree, replacing Solar Orb. Living Bomb no longer detonates over time but instead explodes when the enemy takes damage from another source. It is perfect for synergy with the build’s many damage-over-time effects. This means you can spam Living Bomb as a filler spell, benefiting from high ignite chance and good single-target damage, even without perfect gear. The build also strongly focuses on a good use of weapon swapping, a system in Path of Exile 2 that allows you to change your equipped weapons automatically when casting different skills. This means you can maximize your damage output by tailoring your passive skill points and gear to specific spells. For example, when casting Unearth, your weapon swap grants extra physical and minion damage, boosting your minions’ power significantly. When returning to casting Essence Drain and other chaos spells, the weapon swap switches you back to gear and passives optimized for spell damage and chaos damage, maintaining high DPS without compromise.

Minions play a huge role here. The Unearth skill summons powerful minions that leap onto enemies and deal massive damage. Thanks to new quality bonuses, these minions move faster and attack more aggressively than before. When large enemies die, they create multiple bone constructs, multiplying your minion army and increasing your damage output. Plus, minions can spread your contagion debuff, automatically infecting new targets and reducing your need to constantly recast spells.

The build’s curse setup is also very effective. Using Decaying Hex combined with Impending Doom and Enfeeble, you create devastating chains of curses that spread through contagion and explode for huge damage bursts. The synergy between curses, minions, and chaos damage over time makes this build incredibly powerful in both clearing groups of monsters and dealing with bosses.

Throughout leveling, the build prioritizes grabbing nodes that increase minion power, chaos damage, and skill effect duration, which especially benefits Unearth minions by extending their life and improving their damage. The build also incorporates minion survivability nodes, ensuring your summoned minions don’t die prematurely, even against poison-heavy enemies. Using the Lich ascendancy will provide strong buffs to both you and your minions, such as the Unholy Might aura that boosts chaos damage.

In terms of gear, the build benefits from weapons like the Dark Defiler and Skeletal Warrior Rattling Scepter, which boost chaos damage and provide endless corpses for Unearth minions during boss fights. This lets you maintain a large number of minions without running out of resources, a crucial factor in surviving tough encounters.

3. PoE 2 0.3.0 Tactician Leveling Build

The Ballista Banner Tactician build in Path of Exile 2 0.3 is a strong and reliable choice, especially for players starting the new league solo self-found (SSF). This build focuses on using ballista totems combined with banners to clear enemies efficiently throughout the campaign and beyond. Banners provide buffs that enhance your damage and survivability, while ballista totems offer strong ranged attacks that help you stay safe by attacking enemies from afar. Additionally, the build uses skills like Glacial Bolt and Gas Grenade to add crowd control and damage-over-time effects, making it easier to handle tougher packs and bosses. It’s designed with the campaign’s structure in mind, where players have to progress solo through four acts, with ballista becoming available around level 31 in Act 4.

A unique aspect of this build is how it handles the Tactician ascendancy and the skill Cannons, Ready!, which grants extra totems but requires you to attack to trigger your totems’ attacks. While this can feel a bit clunky in the late game when fast movement is needed, it’s very useful early on because it boosts your damage and totem uptime. Once you have enough damage, you can respec out of Cannons, Ready! to simplify playstyle and rely more on totems and banners working on their own.

One key strength of this build is its adaptability during leveling. Since ballista totems aren’t available until later, the early game relies on crossbow skills like Fragmentation Rounds and Contagion for area damage. Fragmentation Rounds help spread poison and damage across groups of enemies, while Contagion transfers poison effects to multiple foes, allowing you to clear mobs quickly without attacking every target individually. For single-target damage, the build uses High Velocity Round (HVR), which applies a debuff on enemies so that your following attacks do more damage. This combination keeps the gameplay smooth and effective from early levels.

Gear is important for this attack-based build, especially your weapon. Since totems now use your weapon stats, having a powerful crossbow strongly influences your damage output. Upgrade your weapons regularly during the campaign and aim for bases with high physical damage early on. Also, picking up useful movement skills like Disengage helps you avoid dangerous situations and move quickly through maps.

4. PoE 2 0.3.0 Burning Slash Build

The Burning Slash build is a strong and popular Path of Exile 2 0.3 league starter. With simplicity and improved quality of life, it is fun and easy to play while delivering solid damage. One major upgrade is how Whirling Slash now avoids getting stuck on tiny obstacles, allowing smoother movement and faster clearing without annoying interruptions.  The build works by using Whirling Slash to rapidly move around while constantly applying Incinerate for consistent fire damage over time. The burning rounds created can be consumed strategically to maximize damage output. Despite changes to ignite mechanics, like needing 100% flammability before ignites apply, the build's high damage and stacking burning rounds ensure these requirements are met almost instantly. The passive skill tree offers options like a new Resolute Technique keystone that doubles accuracy and allows more defensive gear choices, improving survivability without sacrificing damage. Plus, the increased accuracy gained per level lets you boost attack speed through Falcon Dive, which makes your character fast and agile. 

It also uses Incinerate, a skill that was recently reworked: it no longer has a direct mana cost but requires mana spent to gain fuel, which can be managed easily with potions and curse applications before fights. Importantly, Incinerate now deals more damage thanks to increased flat damage and stacking burning rounds that boost damage by up to 360%. This skill synergy means you can quickly set enemies on fire and keep them burning intensely.

5. PoE 2 0.3.0 Elemental Surge Amazon Leveling Build

The Weapon Infusion build, renamed Elemental Surge, is another top contender for PoE 2 patch 0.3, known for its high critical strike potential and strong elemental damage scaling. Although the Amazon crit ascendancy node was nerfed from 25% to 15%, this doesn’t significantly affect the build because reaching near 100% crit chance is still easy with skill tree points, jewels, and support gems. This means you retain high burst damage, which is essential for both clearing and bosses.

One of the biggest buffs for this build is gaining three surges (up from two), which increases charge generation, letting you drop the unique amulet previously needed and switch to a rare amulet with energy shield for better defense. This change makes the build tankier and more comfortable to play. The build revolves around using Galvanic Shards ammunition, which now fires only one bolt but with more fragments, up to ten with quality, allowing massive damage output if you maintain permanent buffs. The key to this is the Shard Scavenger spirit gem, which refreshes your elemental surge buff continuously, so you never lose uptime or waste charges.

The gameplay involves maintaining this buff and using elemental damage to apply shocks, ignites, or freezes, depending on your setup. For example, pairing with the new Plasma Blast skill increases shock magnitude by 50%, enabling easy 100% shock on enemies and significant damage spikes. While some ignite mechanics changed, the build can adapt by focusing more on shock or switching to skills like Incendiary Shot if needed. This flexibility, combined with the strong elemental scaling and crit chance, makes the Elemental Surge build a powerful choice for leveling and endgame content.

6. PoE 2 0.3.0 Deadeye Bow Leveling Build

The Deadeye Bow Build is expected to be one of the most popular and powerful choices at the start of the 0.3 league with fast clear speed, good survivability, and ease of gearing. Deadeye is a class that specializes in bows and projectiles, and it’s famous for its speed and high damage output. One major reason this build is so strong is thanks to new rune sockets on weapons that let you add multiple additional arrow runes, meaning your bow attacks shoot many more arrows than before. This greatly boosts your damage and area of effect, making clearing groups of enemies fast and fun.

The build uses skills like Voltaic Mark and Sniper’s Mark, which automatically apply multiple marks on enemies, increasing your critical strike chance and attack speed. This marking system works perfectly with Deadeye’s ascendancy nodes to keep your damage consistently high. Defensively, Deadeye now benefits from a new mechanic called Deflection, which works well with evasion and helps you avoid a large amount of damage, making the build tankier and safer for leveling. 

7. PoE 2 0.3.0 Hollow Palm Unarmed Monk Leveling Build

The Hollow Palm Unarmed build is an exciting new option that takes advantage of unarmed attacks combined with quarterstaff skills. This build is unique because it lets you fight without traditional weapons, using your fists and staff moves to deal fast and powerful damage. The new unarmed keystone lets you use quarterstaff skills while unarmed, opening up some very fast and fluid combat styles like Tempest Flurry and Flicker Strike that can shred enemies quickly.

One of the most amazing things about this build is its scaling: you gain more attack speed for every 25 evasion on your gear and extra base critical chance from energy shield, which can stack up to make your attacks incredibly fast and deadly. Combined with the naturally high evasion of the class, this means you’ll be moving and attacking faster than most builds.