Witch Minion Leveling Build

Build Introduction

The Minion Witch is a powerful and comfortable way to level, with many options for endgame build opportunities later on in your journey. If you’ve been looking for a reliable way to get through POE2’s campaign, then this is the perfect place to be.

This guide is a collaborative effort from Ghazzy and Lollash. If you have any questions or want to check out some live gameplay, you can find Ghazzy here and Lollash here.

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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Video Guide

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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 guide will focus on the Infernalist and Lich options.

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.
Trial 3: Beidat’s Will – Once you have a decent Energy Shield pool and a good amount of life, this will dramatically increase your Spirit.
Trial 4: Beidat’s Hand – This will convert more life away into energy shield when your gear quality approaches the endgame setup.

Lich

Trial 1: Soulless Form – This node will fix your mana, making it incredibly easy to manage and making your second ascendancy choice easier to manage.
Trial 2: Necromantic Conduit – This will dramatically boost the damage of you and your minions, as long as you have more than 35% of your mana.
Trial 3/4: Rupture the Soul/Crystalline Phylactery – This is a bit of personal preference. If you curse regularly while clearing then Rupture the Soul is a useful tool, but Crystalline Phylactery can give you more raw power if you have a good quality jewel with multiple useful affixes.

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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. Scepters with a priority on stats in order of:
   – + Level of all Minion Skills
   – % increased Spirit
2. Any Amulet or Helm with +# to Level of All Minion Skills
3. Any Body Armour with +# Spirit
4. Boots with #% increased movement speed
5. 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 can’t find pieces from bullets 1 or 2, buy them off the trade site using Exalted Orbs.

Vendor bad magic or rare items you don’t need for gold, do NOT disenchant anything besides white items with sockets or quality. It is always worth Identifying rare items, even if you have to buy a Scroll of Wisdom during Act 1, as Rare items will always gain more value from being identified than a Scroll of Wisdom costs.

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Leveling Passive Tree

The Passive Tree below can be followed all the way through the campaign and into the endgame for a generically useful approach. Due to a limitation of the tool, the Ascendancy information shown is only for the Infernalist, but details about the Lich and its choices can be found earlier in the guide, and in the Act Notes below.

NOTE: The tree goes to 116 points, which is well beyond the end of the campaign based on our current endgame builds. This is a generic approach to a pure Energy Shield-based defense, and may be different from trees used in Endgame Guides.

Skill Gems

Listed below are all Skill Gems that should be used during the leveling process. There may be a slight variation depending on which Act you’re currently progressing. Notes for each Act will be listed below the Skill Gem tool.

During the first 3 Acts, you will be focusing on using Essence Drain, Contagion, Skeletal Sniper Minions, and Unearth to deal your damage. Upon reaching Utzaal in Act 3, you can bind a grenade-throwing “Vaal Guard” to a Spectre gem and swap to using those as your primary damage source. The most important thing is to have as many Vaal Guards summoned as you can, but try to squeeze one Skeletal Storm Mage if Spirit allows.

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Act I Notes

In Act 1, you will start by using Unearth, Contagion, and Skeletal Sniper Minion until you get access to Level 3 Skill Gems. Then you will pick up Essence Drain. Getting Fire Attunement supporting your Skeletal Sniper Minions will allow their auto attacks to automatically detonate their gas clouds on tough enemies which will result in significant additional burst damage. At this stage, we don’t recommend using any Spirit for non-minion-related purposes.

For your minion composition, have 2 Skeletal Warriors, and invest all remaining Spirit into Skeletal Snipers.

Rotation:

• Cast Contagion.
• Cast Essence Drain at targets affected by Contagion.
• Cast your Command: Gas Arrow from your Skeletal Sniper Minions on tough enemies
• Cast Unearth over any corpse (your own skeleton corpses included) to summon more minions!

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Act 2 Notes

In Act 2, you will continue to fill out your existing skills as you find more Uncut Support Gems. You will want to cut a Vulnerability, which you can use on bosses to lower their armour more quickly. If you have extra Uncut Skill Gems, grab a Pain Offering.

Grab a Voltaic Mark skill gem when you have a spare Level 7 Uncut Skill Gem. This will likely require you to have some travel nodes on the passive tree swapped to Dexterity.

NOTE: Do not level Voltaic Mark. Leave it at level 7. The relevant bonuses (shock magnitude, chance to shock, the ability to have Mark for Death support socketed) do not scale with gem level.

• Upon completing the Trial of the Sekhemas, you will ascend as either:
  • Infernalist and get access to your Infernal Hound, or
  • Lich and have a much easier time managing Mana.

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Act 3 Notes

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

• Infernalist – Your Altered Flesh node can be dangerous to take if you have no Chaos Resistance on your gear and as such it may be worth waiting until you have at least 10% before assigning these points.
• Lich – Necromantic Conduit provides a significant damage bonus to you and all minions within your presence range. Stay close to your minions to get the most out of this node. Also, with the additional Chaos damage you gain from your ascendancy, swapping to a Despair curse is more valuable to you and should be done once you have completed your Trial of Chaos and have a spare Level 9 Uncut Skill Gem

Continue to fill out your support gems, and when you reach the Utzaal zone, make sure you Bind a grenade-throwing Vaal Guard to a Bind Spectre gem. You can swap to them immediately, or after the end of Act 3. We recommend swapping if you can have 4 Spectres active at a time, ideally with 1
Skeletal Storm Mage Minion for shocking the enemy.

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Act 4 and the Interludes

At the beginning of Act 4 if you have not done so already, you should swap over to using Vaal Guard spectres, which requires some changes to your skill gem setup. Make sure you check the planner above to make sure you have the correct gem setups. From this point on, it is simply a matter of progressing, improving your gear, adding more Vaal Guards whenever your Spirit total increases, and completing the campaign.

When you reach the interlude Acts, you should complete the 3rd Interlude first because Lythara the Wayward Spear in the Kriar Village rewards you with 40 additional Spirit.

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Rotation

For Bosses or tanky Rares, apply Voltaic Mark, your Curse (Vulnerability for Infernalist, Despair for Lich) and keep Pain Offering active.

1. Cast Unearth over enemy corpses or your own permanent Minion’s corpses, and whenever its safe to deal direct damage
2. Cast Pain Offering to buff the damage of all minions by Sacrificing one of your Warriors
3. Maintain your debuffs, dodge large attacks and let your minions do their job

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Gearing Progression

This build equips item upgrades during the campaign according to a stat priority list. You will want to use a Scepter and Shield if possible, or a Wand and Scepter for higher damage at the cost of survivability. Make sure you regularly check the vendors for any Level of All Minion Skills, and utilize the gambling vendor to help look for

Offensive Gear

Prioritize the following stats to improve your offensive power:

1. Levels of All Minion Skills on Scepter, Helm and Amulet
2. Increases to Spirit on Scepter, Amulet and Body Armour
3. Level of All Physical/Chaos Spell Skills if you choose to use a wand and sceptre (before act 4)

Defensive Gear

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

1. Maximum Life
2. Resistances
3. Energy Shield

Runes

Socket Runes into your gear to help bring your missing resistances to the base cap of 75%, or to help with meeting attribute requirements.

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. This will allow you to frequently use these orbs to add sockets to your best gear pieces, and socket more resistances to make the campaign even easier!

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

• Carrion Call – A very powerful minion buffing shield, which comes at the cost of some personal defensive power
• Trenchtimbre – Some early Minion Skill levels for your main hand in combination with a sceptre, at the cost of some defensive strength.

Boots

• Bones of Ullr – Helps with getting extra minions earlier, comes with some movement speed. Also used right through to the endgame, so can be quite pricey.

Helm

• Goldrim Felt Cap – Tons of resistances usable from level 10. Likely worse than a decent rare with + level of all Minion Skills

Chest

• Enfolding Dawn – Tons of Spirit for extra minions much earlier, at the cost of slightly more difficult mana management

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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 Infernalist:

• Valley of the Titans Altar (Act 2)
  1. 30% increased charm charges gained
• Venom Draught (Act 3)
  1. 25% increased Mana Regeneration Rate
• Eye of Hinekora (Act 4)
  • Resistances from all 3 Tattoos
• Solitary Confinement (Act 4)
  • % increased recovery from Mana Flasks
• Qimah Pillars
  • These can be changed at will, so you can choose Resistances to help early and later swap to global defenses, movement speed, etc.

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, Thawing Charm, Staunching Charm

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Changelog

September 20th, 2025: Slight restructure, added Fire Attunement cloud explosion tech
September 11th, 2025: Significant changes to Skill, Tree and Act sections to account for multiple Ascendancies
September 3rd, 2025: Added Act 4 and Interlude quest rewards, minor readability changes
September 1st, 2025: Added in-site Skill Planner, adjusted tree, readability pass
August 31st, 2025: Added in-site tree, adjusted skill and support gems, added after Act 3 notes
August 30th, 2025: First pass on guide for .3.0 – WIP
April 5th, 2025: Guide created for Path of Exile II, Early Access