Chaos Witch Leveling Build

Build Introduction

The Chaos Witch is one of the best possible leveling builds you can use on the current patch. This build primarily uses Essence Drain and Contagion to wipe out hordes of enemies, along with Dark Effigy and Despair for additional single target.

This Path of Exile 2 leveling guide is viable for league starters and new characters requiring minimal to no gear and no budget whatsoever.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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Ascendancy

Select your first Ascendancy after completing the Trial of the Sekhemas in Act 2. The trial is not difficult, so complete it within the level range of 20-30. During the early access of Path of Exile 2, the Witch can ascend to Blood Mage, Lich, or Infernalist. This choice is permanent and should be made with your endgame build in mind!

Lich

Lich is the new ascendency class added in the Dawn of the Hunt League. For leveling most of our options come with downsides that are difficult to compensate for early game, but we do have a few good options we recommend taking.

Trial 1: Soulless Form – 10% of Damage Taken bypasses energy shield, no inherit mana regeneration, Regenerate mana equal to 6% of maximum life per second. Base mana regeneration in Path of Exile 2 is equal to 4% of your maximum mana per second. So as long as your maximum life is at 66.66…% (repeating) of your maximum mana or greater this is a buff to your mana regen.

Trial 2: Eternal Life – Your life cannot change while you have energy shield. This is a very nice defensive boost and effectively deletes any damage you would take that bypasses your energy shield.

Other choices:

You can allocate Eldrich Empowerment if you play very safe and avoid being hit for 30% more damage at the cost of losing 3% maximum energy shield per cast. However if you lose all your energy shield due to taking damage you will not be able to cast spells until you have at least 3% energy maximum energy shield again so keep that in mind.

Rupture the Soul does not have a downside like other nodes however the explosions can prevent the spreading of your dots via contagion so this is not recommended unless this is bug fixed.

Infernalist

Trial 1: Loyal Hellhound – Socket the loyalty support into this minion to get 10% of damage taken from its life before your own.
Trial 2: Altered Flesh – Aim to cap out mainly your fire resistance along with some chaos resistance during campaign for nice early damage reduction.

Blood Mage

Trial 1: You can ascend to a Blood Mage early, however we do not recommend allocating any ascendency points as the first passive you are required to take is Sanguimancy which is a downside that causes skills to gain a base life cost equal to mana and can be a massive detriment during the early game.

Trial 2: Once you complete your second trial you can then allocate both Sanguimancy and Vitality Siphon. This will cover your life costs most of the time. Keep in mind that if you are using skills with a very high mana cost this can sometimes still not be enough to compensate for your life costs.

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General Leveling Advice

Path of Exile II’s campaign can be quite difficult starting out, but with this build it will be a breeze. The most important thing by far in the early campaign is to CHECK VENDORS FOR GOOD EARLY GEAR. 

Look for the following gear from vendors:

1. Staves, Wands, and Focus with a priority on stats in order of:
   – +# to Level of All Spells or Chaos Spells
   – #% Increased Chaos Damage or Spell damage
2. Any Amulet with +# to Level of All Spell Skills
3. Boots with #% increased movement speed
4. Any gear with Maximum Life, Resistances, or good energy Shield.

Regal Orbs or Orbs of Augmentation can be used on these items that you find as magic. If you cant find pieces from 1 or 2 buy them off the trade site using exalts.

Vendor bad magic or rare items you don’t need for gold, do NOT disenchant anything besides white items with sockets if you’d like.

Try to maintain a level of 2-3 levels below the zone level you are currently in for optimal experience.

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Act I

Use Unearth to clear the first zone and keep it slotted as it will help a lot early on.

Once you enter town for the first time, use your first skill gem on Contagion. This is combined with Unearth to clear your first few zones. Enemies who die while affected by Contagion will leave a corpse that is infected. Unearth can then raise that infected corpse to summon minions who will inflict Contagion on hit. This is a very useful combo early on until we can slot Unleash with Contagion and should be used whenever possible to try to chain contagions between packs.

Pick up Essence Drain with the first Level 3 Skill Gem you get and use it in combination with Contagion to spread Essence Drain to all the mobs.

With the next skill gem you get, we recommend grabbing Bone Cage this is only used temporarily to pin targets and help land Contagion and Essence Drain on the same target if you are getting overwhelmed.

Once you have the above put a shield in your offhand weapon set 2 and pick up Shield Charge. Set it to be used only with weapon set 2 and the rest of your abilities to only weapon set 1. You can use this for additional mobility while traversing zones.

Take Withering Presence as your first spirit gem from the Freythorn zone.

Passive Gems Listed Top-down in order of importance, by the end of act 1 it should look something like this:

Skill Gems	Support Gem 1	Support Gem 2
Essence Drain	Swift Affliction	Zenith For Single Target or Chain for Clear
Contagion	Unleash	Magnified Effect or Intense Agony
Withering Presence	Persistence	–
Bone Cage	–	–
Unearth	–	–
Shield Charge	Martial Tempo	–

Skill Rotation:

1. Cast Contagion
2. Cast Essence Drain making sure to land on at least one of the same targets as Contagion
3. (Optional) Cast Unearth on the corpses to help apply Contagion or cast Bone Cage for Crowd Control.

Passive Tree during Act 1:

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Act 2

Craft Despair with your first Level 9 skill gem and socket it with Decaying Hex.

Craft Dark Effigy with your second Level 9 skill gem and socket it with Withering Touch.

By this point Bone Cage and Unearth should no longer be needed so drop it if you’d like.

Passive Gems Listed Top-down in order of importance:

Skill Gems	Support Gem 1	Support Gem 2	Support Gem 3
Essence Drain	Swift Affliction	Zenith	Chain
Contagion	Unleash	Magnified Effect	Intense Agony
Withering Presence	Persistence	–	–
Despair	Decaying Hex	Heightened Curse	–
Dark Effigy	Withering Touch	Arcane Tempo	–

Cast Despair and Dark Effigy for additional single target against bosses or tanky rare monsters.

Ascend from the trial of sekimas and pick your Ascendency class.

Passive Tree during Act 2:

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Act 3

Level 2 Uncut Support Gems start to drop from monsters in Act 3. Your skill gem setup should look something like this:

Skill Gems	Support Gem 1	Support Gem 2	Support Gem 3
Essence Drain	Swift Affliction	Zenith	Chain for clear or Considered Casting for single target
Contagion	Unleash	Magnified Effect	Intense Agony
Withering Presence	Persistence	–	–
Despair	Decaying Hex	Heightened Curse	–
Dark Effigy	Withering Touch	Arcane Tempo	–
Convalesence	Ingenuity	–
Shield Charge	Martial Tempo	–

Once you take down Ignagduk (The Azak Bog, Act 3) you will receive 30 more Spirit. We don’t have many good options here for spirit gems, but Convalescence is a decent defensive option that we can take. Otherwise, support your Withering Presence with Mysticism and Clarity for some passive bonuses.

Continue the main questline until you reach the Temple of Chaos and complete its trial for 2 additional Ascendancy points.

Passive Tree during and post Act 3:

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Progressing Beyond Act 3

Not much changes past this point. Keep your spell gem levels up prioritizing Essence Drain first and that is pretty much it.

Level 3 Uncut Support Gems start to drop from Level 53 monsters in Cruel Act 2. Progress towards this skill gem setup as your unlock your 4th sockets.

Skill Gems	Support Gem 1	Support Gem 2	Support Gem 3	Support Gem 4
Essence Drain	Swift Affliction	Zenith	Considered Casting	Debilitation
Contagion	Unleash	Magnified Effect	Intense Agony	Chaotic Freeze
Withering Presence	Persistence	Clarity	Mysticism	–
Despair	Decaying Hex	Heightened Curse	Inspiration	–
Dark Effigy	Withering Touch	Arcane Tempo	Overabundance	Controlled Destruction
Convalesence	Ingenuity	Strong Hearted	–	–
Shield Charge	Martial Tempo	–	–	–

Passive Tree at the end of the campaign:

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Rotation

For Bosses or tanky rares Apply Despair and put down two Dark Effigy.

1. Cast Contagion
2. Cast Essence Drain
3. Maintain all your debuffs.
4. Use Convalescence if you are taking damage.

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Gearing Progression

This build equips item upgrades during the campaign according to a stat priority list. Both staves or wands and focus are useable, simply take whatever has the best combination of stats.

Prioritize the following for your Weapon / Offhand / Amulet:

1. Levels of All Spell Skills / All Chaos Spell Skills
2. Increased Chaos / Spell Damage
3. Cast Speed for Comfort

Defensive Gear

Prioritize the following stats on armor and jewelry pieces to improve your tankiness:

1. Energy Shield
2. Maximum Life
3. Resistances

Runes

Socket Runes into your gear to help bring your missing resistances to the base cap of 75%.

You can Salvage gear you would otherwise vendor that has sockets at the Salvage Bench to obtain Artificer’s Orbs to put extra sockets on your gear.

Leveling Uniques

This build is entirely League-Start / no-budget viable. But if you do have extra currency, pick up these uniques for a twink leveling character:

Weapons and Offhands

• Lifesprig Attuned Wand with +3 to the level of all Spell Skills – Be careful to get one with a low level requirement.
• The Wicked Quill Withered Wand – Alternative for Lifespring.
• Deathrattle Twig Focus – Useable from level 1 but worse than a +1 All spells focus. Aim to replace fast.
• Threaded Light Woven Focus – Grants spell damage per spirit. Good if you are using a scepter in main hand.

Boots

• Luminous Pace Straw Sandles – 10% Movement speed Boots useable from level 1.
• Wanderlust Wrapped Sandles – 20% Movement speed Boots useable from level 11.
• Bushwhack Lizardscale Boots – 25% movement speed Boots useable from level 33.

Helm

• Goldrim Felt Cap – Tons of resistances useable from level 10.
• ThrillSteel Spired Greathelm – Grants Onslaught ( movement speed, attack speed, cast speed ) Useable from level 30.

Chest

• Foxshade Quilted Vest – 10% movement speed while on full life. Useable from level 1.
• Sands of Silk Shrouded Vest – Grants the Blink skill for no spirit cost, and additional cooldown recovery rate.

Gloves

• Doedre’s Tenure Stitched Gloves – 100% increased spell damage at the cost of cast speed. Useable at level 16 but falls off as you gain more % increased damage sources.

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Campaign Buffs

During the acts there are 4 quests that activate additional bonuses for your character in acts 2,3,5,6. You can choose the following buffs for the Chaos Dot Witch:

• Valley of the Titans Altar (Act 2,4) – These will depend on how bad ailments are for our characters in 0.2. I recommend starting with the following just to be safe.
  1. 30% increased charm charges gained
  2. 30% increased charm charges gained
• Venom Draught (Act 3,5) – ( I recommend holding off on the first selection until endgame maps and seeing what you want to take then as it cannot be changed later as of the 0.2 patch )
  1. Make your decision based off what you feel like you need after playing endgame
  2. 10% Chaos Resistance

For more details, check the guide on Campaign Difficulties and Permanent Stat Bonuses.

Flasks and Charms

While leveling you will find several flasks and Charms. Upgrade your flasks as you go along and if you fail to find flask upgrades check vendors to buy them with gold.

Modifiers to look for on your flasks and charms:

• Health and Mana Flasks
  • Prefix: Increased Amount Recovered
  • Suffix: # Charges gained per second
• Charm: Stone Charm or Thawing Charm.

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Changelog

April 13th, 2025: Leveling Uniques added
April 5th, 2025: Guide created for Path of Exile II, Early Access