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 PoE 2 0.3 builds for fastest leveling in The Third Edict.

PoE 2 0.3 Best Leveling Builds (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. The PoE 2 0.3.0 The Third Edict builds highlighted here for the Rise of the Abyssals League are good 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. Its core mechanic revolves around the combination of Essence Drain and Contagion, which apply chaos damage over time and spread debuffs efficiently across groups of enemies. Recent improvements in patch 0.3 such as increased Contagion quality, expanded target count and improved clear speed. The build’s damage output is consistent from level one through the campaign and into the endgame, requiring minimal changes to gems or gear. 

Main Skills

• Essence Drain with support gems Swift Affliction and Chain for damage and clear speed.

• Contagion is linked with Unleash and Magnified Effect to rapidly spread Essence Drain’s debuff to multiple enemies.

• Other skills like Flame Wall (with Arcane Tempo) and Unearth (with Feeding Frenzy and Minion Instability) add extra damage and survivability early in the campaign.

• The Despair curse reduces enemy chaos resistance more effectively, raising damage output.

• After the first spirit quest, add the Withering Presence aura (with Persistence) to apply the Wither debuff for increased damage.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

The passive skill tree focuses on chaos damage, damage-over-time, and survivability nodes. The Lich ascendancy enhances tankiness and damage, but switching to Blood Mage ascendancy is possible later for better late-game damage scaling.

2. PoE 2 0.3.0 Witch Leveling Build

This PoE 2 The Third Edict Witch build introduces new mechanics around fire-to-chaos conversion and ignite synergy, diverging from the Essence Drain Contagion playstyle. It heavily involves minions and weapon swapping to maximize damage output, combining chaos damage over time with strong minion support for both clearing mobs and boss fights. Weapons like Dark Defiler and Skeletal Warrior Rattling Scepter supply chaos damage bonuses and corpses for minions during boss fights.

Main Skills

• Living Bomb functions as a filler spell, detonating on enemy damage and benefiting from high ignite chance and single-target damage.

• Essence Drain and other chaos spells benefit from weapon swapping to optimize gear and passives for chaos damage.

• Unearth summons powerful minions that leap onto enemies, supported by quality bonuses for speed and aggression.

• New curse setup uses Decaying Hex, Impending Doom, and Enfeeble to create damage bursts through contagion.

• Minions can spread contagion automatically, reducing the need for constant recasting.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

The tree prioritizes minion power, chaos damage, skill effect duration, and minion survivability. The Lich ascendancy grants auras like Unholy Might, boosting chaos damage for both player and minions.

3. PoE 2 0.3.0 Tactician Leveling Build

The Ballista Banner Tactician build provides a dependable option for solo self-found (SSF) players in PoE 2 0.3. It combines ballista totems and banners for effective ranged attacks and buffs throughout the campaign. The build incorporates crowd control and damage-over-time skills to manage groups and bosses safely. Weapon upgrades prioritize high physical damage crossbows, as totem damage depends on weapon stats.

Main Skills

• Ballista Totems become available around level 31 and provide ranged attacks.

• Banners give buffs that increase damage and survivability.

• Early game uses crossbow skills like Fragmentation Rounds (spreads poison and damage) and Contagion (transfers poison effects).

• High Velocity Rounds applies a debuff to enemies, increasing damage from subsequent attacks.

• Movement skill Disengage assists with map navigation and avoiding damage.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

Focus on nodes that increase totem damage, attack speed, poison damage, and survivability. The ascendancy skill Cannons, Ready! grants extra totems but requires attacking to trigger them, useful early on but can be respecced out later. The build transitions from early ranged attacks to primarily relying on totems and banners as ballistas become available.

4. PoE 2 0.3.0 Amazon Leveling Build

Previously known as Weapon Infusion, this Elemental Surge Amazon build focuses on high critical strike chance and elemental damage scaling with strong burst damage potential. Despite nerfs to key ascendancy nodes, it remains effective for leveling and bosses by maintaining high crit chance through passive points and gear. Gaining three surge charges improves charge generation and survivability. The build adapts to ignite changes by focusing more on shock or switching to skills like Incendiary Shot.

Main Skills

• Elemental Surge uses Galvanic Shards ammunition, firing one bolt with multiple fragments for wide damage coverage.

• Shard Scavenger spirit gem refreshes the elemental surge buff continuously, maintaining uptime.

• The build applies shocks, ignites, or freezes depending on skill choices, with Plasma Blast increasing shock damage by 50%.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

The passive tree emphasizes elemental damage, critical strike chance, and charge generation. The build can drop unique amulets in favor of rare amulets with energy shield due to increased surge stacks.

5. PoE 2 0.3.0 Deadeye Leveling Build

The Deadeye Bow build offers rapid clear speed, strong survivability, and ease of gearing. New rune sockets on weapons allow multiple additional arrow runes, causing bow attacks to shoot many more arrows, significantly increasing damage and area of effect. 

Main Skills

• Voltaic Mark and Sniper’s Mark automatically apply marks that increase critical strike chance and attack speed.

• Bow attacks benefit from multiple arrows due to rune sockets.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

Deadeye ascendancy nodes focus on projectile damage, critical strike, and evasion-based defense. The new Deflection mechanic works with evasion to reduce incoming damage.

6. PoE 2 0.3.0 Monk Leveling Build

This Path of Exile 2 Hollow Palm Unarmed Monk build uses the new unarmed keystone to wield quarterstaff skills without weapons. Attack speed scales with evasion rating (gaining speed every 25 evasion) and critical chance improves from energy shield, stacking to create very fast and deadly attacks. The class’s naturally high evasion further enhances movement and attack speed.

Main Skills

• Tempest Flurry and Flicker Strike for fast melee attacks.

• Unarmed keystone enables quarterstaff skills without weapons.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

Focus on evasion, energy shield, attack speed, and critical chance nodes.

7. PoE 2 0.3.0 Warrior Leveling Build

For players who want to start with the Warriors in PoE 2 0.3, this build can help you clear acts and bosses with ease. Smith of Kitava ascendancy is recommended because of their benefits in converting fire resistance to other elemental resistances early on. It focuses on the use of maces, particularly two-handed maces, for higher damage output. While using a shield is an option to gain passive blocking, the build primarily revolves around fast, effective melee attacks and stunning enemies to control mobs and bosses efficiently.

Main Skills

• Rolling Slam features a two-stage attack: a smaller smash that stuns and knocks enemies back, followed by a larger slam. You can hold the input to change the attack direction mid-animation and cancel it with a dodge roll for mobility. This skill is excellent for area damage and building up the stun meter on bosses, allowing you to deal significantly increased damage when they become stunned.

• Boneshatter is a mace strike skill that instantly heavy stuns enemies primed for stun, indicated by a visual glow. Boneshatter creates a shockwave that deals additional damage, making it especially effective against bosses and tougher enemies. After defeating The Rust King in Act 1, you unlock Infernal Cry, which empowers your next attack based on the number of enemies nearby, enabling devastating one-shot combos on bosses.

• For basic attacks, Mace Strike is a reliable, mana-free option that can be enhanced with fire damage or attack speed support gems. As you progress, you also gain access to Perfect Strike, a charged hammer attack that converts damage to fire and ignites enemies, delivering massive damage when timed perfectly. 

• Support gems such as Overpower increase stun efficiency for Rolling Slam, while Martial Tempo boosts attack speed across your skills. For Bone Shatter, Impact Shockwave raises damage against stunned foes. Other support gems like Fire Infusion and Concentrated Effect add fire damage and increase damage concentration, respectively. You can even use some of these support gems interchangeably on multiple skills.

• The build also utilizes Spirit Gems like Herald of Ash, which adds fire damage and causes enemies to explode on death, clearing groups quickly. Later, Overwhelming Presence enhances your ability to stun and burn enemies, further amplifying damage.

Leveling Path and Passive Tree

• Act 1: Focus on investing passive points into melee damage and fire damage nodes to strengthen your core skills like Rolling Slam and Boneshatter. Prioritize unlocking critical nodes that increase ignite chance and burn damage by the end of the act to maximize fire-based damage. Complete key quests to gain strength and passive points, allowing you to reach the outer areas of the passive tree with powerful melee and elemental nodes. Defeating The Rust King unlocks Infernal Cry, which significantly boosts your attack power later in the act.

• Act 2: Allocate strength points to access the outer circles of the passive tree where more potent melee damage and survivability nodes reside. Emphasize health and elemental resistance nodes to improve durability against tougher enemies. Complete the Trial of the Sekhemas for additional passive points and ascendancy options that enhance your stun and fire damage capabilities. Continue upgrading your weapons and gear, focusing on two-handed maces to maintain strong damage output throughout the act.

• Act 3: Shift your focus to converting all damage to fire, improving synergy with ignite and burn effects for higher damage potential. Invest in defensive passive nodes that boost life, resistances, and stun recovery to increase survivability during harder encounters. Craft three-link skill gems to enhance your main skills with powerful support gems, significantly increasing damage and utility. Balance offensive and defensive stats carefully to prepare for challenging bosses and map content, ensuring smooth progression through the act.