Warbringer Sunder Totems Endgame Build

Build Introduction

With the sweeping balance changes to every system coming in Patch 0.2, it is nearly impossible for us to have confidence in existing, well tested guides. While we will do our best to get these updated as soon as possible, their current state may leave them unusable. Make sure to regularly check back to see if any changes have been made.

This is a very tanky build, quite affordable, and comes with solid DPS. It is 100% beginner-friendly and it simply smashes! This build is an all rounder that can do Waystone 15 and 16 maps with ease. If you invest more currency into it, you’ll be able to farm even tougher bosses (like King of the Mists and Olroth up to difficulty +4), and it can even farm Simulacrums +4 once maxed!

The Warbringer ascendancy provides significantly higher levels of defense compared to a Titan. Our block is greatly empowered by the Turtle Charm ascendancy node, allowing us to block many more types of attacks. Additionally, our totems absorb 20% of the incoming damage we receive from hits.

While both Titan and Warbringer are viable for totem builds, the latter is much tankier and safer to play, making it ideal for new players and casuals. The build offers great defensive capabilities while still maintaining high damage. The Warbringer Sunder Totems setup is an excellent choice for mapping. This has been my main build in Path of Exile 2 since the early access launch. Excluding the Arbiter of Ash, I have completed all available content with it, and I have plenty of videos on my channel to showcase the power of this simple build.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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Video Guide

If you’d like to follow this build as a League Starter, you can use the video provided here to do so!

Build Mechanics

This is a totem-based build. We place totems that target and kill enemies for us. We also don’t need to worry about Mana since we are using the Blood Magic Keystone. For this build we scale our damage greatly via gem levels.

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Skill Rotation

The skill rotation is pretty straightforward. You place the totems and run in circles until everything dies. For harder enemies, you can add the Orb of Storms setup to the mix for more damage and life regeneration.

1. Ancestral Warrior Totem
2. Orb of Storms

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Gameplay Tips

For general mapping, try to spread the totems. Don’t summon them in the same place, as this will help with clearing speed.

Always stay on the move while your totems attack. Moving around is a natural defense. This is a good practice that can help with maps that have deadly modifiers.

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Skill and Support Gems

Our build revolves around the Ancestral Warrior Totem supported with Sunder. Additionally, we will use Orb of Storms in order to trigger Font of Blood and Font of Rage ( that will give us Rage generation and extra Life Regeneration ). Leap Slam will be used to cross ridges and impossible terrain. Additionally you can add Shield Charge for faster map navigation. Everything else is automated. The fewer buttons we have to press, the better

The following Support Gems are listed in order of socket priority for each Skill.

Skill Gems	Support 1	Support 2	Support 3	Support 4	Support 5
Ancestral Warrior Totem	Sunder	Brutality	Heavy Swing	Heft	Upheaval
Orb of Storms	Font of Blood	Font of Rage	Persistence	Arcane Tempo	–
Leap Slam	Holy Descent	–	–	–	–
Shield Charge	Ingenuity	–	–	–	–
Ancestral Spirits	Meat Shield	Culling Strike	Blind	Minion Mastery	–

Adding Upheaval Will greatly improve your map clear speed.

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Spirit Gems

The Spirit Gem setup requires x total Spirit. Completing the first and second bosses in Normal and Cruel difficulty in the campaign rewards 100 base Spirit. Obtain the remaining 60 Spirit from a Body Armor and/or Amulet.

Spirit Gems	Support 1	Support 2	Support 3	Support 4	Support 5
Time of Need	Fast Forward	Herbalism	–	–	–
Blasphemy	Enfeeble	Magnified Effect	Ritualistic Curse	–	–

You can get INT from your rare items and from the small attribute nodes from the Skill Tree. Additionally, applying 20x quality on Blasphemy will allow you to include Herbalism in your setup.

Ascendancy

Warbringer is a tanky ascendancy class, and also has good synergy with our totems here. The most impactful nodes are Wooden Wall, redirecting 20% of damage taken from hits to nearby totems and Turtle Charm, greatly enhancing our block. This allows you to block more stuff, and is far superior to the regular block.

The ascendancies should be unlocked in this order:

• Answered Call
• Wooden Wall
• Renly’s Training
• Turtle Charm

Try to unlock these ascendancy nodes as soon as possible; especially Wooden Wall and Turtle Charm!

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Passive Skill Tree and Path of Building

Sadly, the ‘Path of Building’ program for PoE 2 doesn’t allow us to import any characters yet. Because of that, I am sharing just the Skill Tree. Once they add the character import feature, I will update this PoB link.

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Gear

The preferred gear for the “Build” is listed below with affixes ranked in order of importance. Prioritize gear with the correct base stats and beneficial explicit affixes.

Equipment Slot and Base Stats	Affixes	Notes
Helmet (Armour OR Armour/Evasion)	1. Maximum Life 2. Resistances 3. Strength	For the rare items, prioritize those with high life, strength, resistances, and, if possible, life regeneration. If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket.
Body Armor (“Expert Steel Plate” – rare base)	1. Maximum Life 2. Increased Armour 3. Resistances 4. Strength	The body armor must be an “EXPERT STEEL PLATE” base. This base provides significant life regeneration, which is essential for this build. Aim for one with high life and armor above 1000. If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket.
Gloves (Armour OR Armour/Evasion)	1. +2 to Level of all Melee Skills 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistances 4. Strength	Since we scale damage drastically via gem levels it’s important to get gloves with “+2 to Level of all Melee Skills”. If you decide to go for corruption, look for “+1 to Level of all Melee Skills” or an extra socket
Boots (Armour OR Armour/Evasion)	1. Movement Speed 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistances 4. Strength	For the rare items we prioritize those with high life, strength, resistances, and, if possible, life regeneration. If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket
Main Hand (One-Handed Mace / OR Two-Handed Mace with “Giant’s Blood” Keystone)	1. +# to Level of all Melee Skills 2. Strength	For the weapon, we only care about this modifier: “+# to level of all melee skills.” On one-handed weapons, this modifier can roll up to +5, while on two- handed weapons, it can roll up to +7. ( allocate Giant’s Blood Keystone if you decide to go for a two-handed mace ) – the weapon’s damage gets ignored. All that you care are the gem levels, and if its possible, extra Strength If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket
Shield (“Rise of the Phoenix” – Unique)		For the “Rise of the Phoenix” shield, try to get one with the following corruptions: “Life gained on block” or “2 sockets” ( You will socket 2x Rebirth runes ).
Amulet (“Idol of Uldurn” – Unique )		For the amulet, instill “Flashy Deflection” (a cheap instilment that will help cap your block chance more easily). Remember to apply 20x “Flesh Catalysts” to it. The best in slot instilment is “Parrying Motion” ( is not budget ) Flashy Deflection -> Greed, Guilt, Greed Parrying Motion -> Ire, Fear, Ire
Rings	1. Maximum Life 2. Adds # to # Physical Damage to Attacks 3. Resistances 4. Strength	For the rare items we prioritize those with high life, strength, resistances, and, if possible, life regeneration. Know that flat physical Damage to Attacks works with our totems! Remember to apply calatysts on your rings to further boost your stats.
Belt	1. Maximum Life 2. Resistances 3. Strength 4. +# Charm Slots	For the rare items we prioritize those with high life, strength, resistances, and, if possible, life regeneration. Having additional Charm Slots is also nice, but not needed

For the sockets, use “Rebirth Rune” (Regenerate 0.3% of life per second), “Soul Core of Jiquani” (2% Increased Maximum Life) or “Soul Core of Tacati” (7% to Chaos Resistance) depending on what you need.

Jewels

For the jewels look for block chance, increased life regen, totem damage, melee damage, attack damage, increased global physical damage. The Most important mods being %Block Chance and %Increased Life Regeneration Rate. We will use these rare jewels to cap our block chance.

To simplify things for you, we’ve made a trade link search filter here for the ideal jewel. Here is another trade link for budget. Remember that you’ll want to upgrade these later as you farm more currency!

Venom Draughts

+25% increased Stun Threshold

+10% Chaos Resistance

Since Time of Need helps us with the Elemental Ailment removal and because we don’t use mana in our build, for the first Vial Quest our best pick will be “25% increased Stun Threshold”.

For the second Vial, choose “10% Chaos Resistance” since this is a precious stat for the build.

Miscellaneous Items

Some players like to weapon swap to 2x two-handed maces for a total of +14 melee skill gems, which gives a massive DPS boost for your totems. We do not recommend doing this, especially if you are new to the game and want to play relaxed! When weapon swapping, you become vulnerable and can die quite easily. Do it at your own risk!

You can also use a rare amulet with “+3 to Level of All Melee Skills”, but make sure it has great modifiers; otherwise, the ‘Idol of Uldurn‘ amulet will remain the better choice! Using the unique amulet grants you +1 extra totem and 1 more Ancestral Spirit (which is better for safer mapping). Four totems cover more area and clear the maps faster! Unless the rare amulet has some incredible modifiers, it’s best to stick with the ‘Idol of Uldurn’ unique amulet. In reality, the damage difference is not that significant because having one additional totem will compensate the absence of +3 melee skill gems.

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Flasks and Charms

• Life: Ultimate Life Flask
• Mana: We don’t care about the mana flask since we are using the Blood Magic Keystone
• Charms: Thawing Charm (Mandatory)

If you have more charm slots, you can add a Silver Charm and Grounding Charm.

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Maximizing Build Potential

In it, I explain the best upgrades a player can make. I discuss the Olroth’s Resolve Flask, Megalomaniac Jewel, Svalinn Shield, Prism of Belief Jewel, Resolute Technique Keystone, the DPS tooltip, the weapon, and more! I need to stress that these are not mandatory upgrades, but rather ideas you can consider for later! The core build is very affordable!

Common Mistakes

• The player forgets to level up their main skill gems. The player forgets to upgrade their items. The player doesn’t use jeweller’s orbs in order to add more support gems to their main skill (most common issue).
• The player hasn’t unlocked their ascendancy points. The player has taken the wrong ascendancy class!
• The player forgot to allocate “Resolute Technique” Keystone, a big DPS loss!
• (For the Endgame Phase) The player doesn’t have their Fire, Cold, and Lightning resistances capped! These should always be at 75% for the endgame. Additionally, aim for a good Chaos Resistance too (mostly for Waystones 12-16).
• The player forgets to complete all the campaign side-quests! They give 24 Passive Tree nodes, Free Resistances, and Spirit up to 100. This is a very common issue! Be careful.
• For Waystones 14, 15, and 16 you will want to have above 3k life, above 400 life regen per second, all 4x Trials unlocked (8 Ascendancy Points) and physical damage reduction around 50%. This should be more than enough for lazy and stress-free gameplay.

Waystone Modifiers You Should Avoid

Listed below are Waystone Modifiers that you should avoid. If you really want to run maps with these mods, you should play very defensively and carefully!

• Players have 60% less Recovery Rate of Life and Energy Shield.
• Monster Damage Penetrates 25% Elemental Resistances.
• -15% maximum Player Resistances.
• Monsters have 400% increased Critical Hit Chance and +45% to Monster Critical Damage Bonus.
• Monsters deal 40% of Damage as Extra Chaos. (If you have Chaos Resistance 75% you are fine!)

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Changelog

April 3rd, 2025: Build Guide Video added and updated for Patch 0.2, Dawn of the Hunt.
March 28th, 2025: Guide created for Path of Exile II, Early Access.