Werewolf Oracle Leveling Build

Build Introduction

If you are looking for an active, highly mobile pack leader style werewolf build that leaps into the fray while your wolf minions tear their way through monsters, then this is the guide you are looking for! This Path of Exile 2 leveling guide is viable for league starters and new characters requiring minimal to no gear and no budget whatsoever.

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.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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Video Guide – COMING SOON

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Ascendancy

Select your first Ascendancy after completing the Trial of the Sekhemas in Act 2. For this Guide, we will focus on the Oracle to enable a powerful hybrid playstyle.

1. The Unseen Path – This is the core feature of playing an Oracle, and will allow you to allocate new passive points on the passive tree (designated by blue travel lines) that are completely unavailable to other Ascendancies. These nodes, on average, are much stronger than regular passive points and have some potent unique effects you will be leveraging for this build.
2. Entwined Realities – This allows you to allocate passives on the passive tree in a radius around any Keystone passive you assign. In combination with The Unseen Path, you can take a lot of very powerful nodes without having to travel to them.
3. The Lesser Harm – A powerful defensive tool, making all damage rolled against you, and all critical chance rolls against you, “Unlucky“. Unlucky means the roll will be made twice, and the worst result will be taken. This makes you take, on average, 17% less damage from all sources, and makes you significantly less likely to be critically hit. It also has an even larger impact against sources of lightning damage as these have wider roll ranges.
4. Two Small Passives – As the other tools available are relatively low impact or low usefulness for the build, we simply take two Small Passive Nodes to increase our freeze build up, and Life and Mana Regeneration rates.

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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. 

During the early Acts, your spells will be doing an appreciable amount of damage, and as such using a Wand and Sceptre combo to scale both Minion and Fire/Spell Damage will lead to the smoothest leveling experience.

Look for the following gear from vendors:

1. Talisman with high DPS.
2. Rings and Gloves with flat Added Damage to Attacks.
3. Gear with + Level of all Melee, Attack or Minion Skills. Can be found on a variety of slots.
4. Boots with #% increased movement speed.
5. Any gear with Maximum Life or Resistances.

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 early mapping, but you will need to decide on an Endgame guide to follow at that time. Currently we are testing multiple potential endgame viable playstyles and when guides become available we will link to them here.

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.

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Act I Notes

During the earliest stages of leveling you will be using Shred and Lunar Assault as your bread and butter skills. Lunar Assault allows you to quickly and effectively freeze packs, and following up with Shred combo will do high single target DPS, and cause small Ice Fragments to fly behind the enemy. These Fragments will detonate after a few seconds dealing area damage around them.

After defeating the Rust King in The Red Vale, you will gain access to the powerful Werewolf skill Pounce. This skill functions as a dash, a minion summoning skill, an AoE nuke, and a damage amplifier through Predators Mark which is automatically triggered on enemies. This will be the core skill the build functions around later in the game. For now, use it to engage enemy packs, dealing high damage and summoning wolves on Marked enemies you kill.

After defeating The Executioner in Ogham Village, you can return to town and get a Level 5 Uncut Skill Gem and acquire Arctic Howl. This skill can be used when an enemy is “Primed” for freeze, which for bosses is at 70% freeze build up, or on frozen enemies to provide a powerful damage boost to your next few attacks, and a large damage boost to your minions as well.

When you kill The King in the Mists in Freythorn you will add Herald of Ice.

When fighting Bosses, after they have been Crowd Controlled by an effect such as Freeze or Stun they become highly resistant to any further Crowd Control build up for a few seconds. During this window you should just continue to apply damage with your Shred while dodging their attacks until the resistance window is over.

Rotation:

• Pounce on to the enemies to apply Predators Mark and deal burst damage
• Lunar Assault until an enemy is Primed for freeze (or frozen when clearing)
• Arctic Howl to freeze the enemy and gain the buff effect
• If the enemy is a Boss or Rare, Shred until they unfreeze and exit their resistance window
• If clearing, continue to Lunar Assault

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Act 2 Notes

In Act 2 you will gain access to the Trial of the Sekhemas after traveling through the Traitors Passage. While this build is Melee, it does very well early on in the trial due to its consistent freezing and high damage output. You should complete this when it becomes available.

At this stage you will be doing a small respec, taking points out of some of the normal passives and instead taking more powerful Oracle nodes thanks to the The Unseen Path, your first Ascendancy.

Around the middle of the Act you will find Level 7 Uncut Skill Gems and will be adding Cross Slash to your kit. This ability is a high damage, X-shaped Area of Effect ability with a couple of extra interesting mechanics.

First, it can be used on a Marked target (such as from Pounce‘s Predators Mark) to trigger the Mark. This allows us to resummon any wolves that die during boss fights. Second, if there are any Ice Fragments (such as from Shred being used on a Frozen target) it will “fling” these fragments towards the center of the X shaped area and cause them to detonate immediately on contact with an enemy.

With the addition of Cross Slash your rotation changes slightly.

Rotation:

• Pounce on to the enemies to apply Predators Mark and deal burst damage.
• Lunar Assault until an enemy is Primed for freeze, or frozen when clearing.
• Pounce again to refresh/reapply your Predators Mark.
• Arctic Howl to freeze the enemy and gain the buff effect.
• If the enemy is a Boss or Rare:
  • Shred until they unfreeze and exit their resistance window or reach low HP.
  • Cross Slash to fling all the Ice Fragments around.
• If clearing :
  • Continue to Lunar Assault.

Towards the end of this Act pay close attention to any Sceptres that drop, identifying them to look for a useful one. You will be equipping one in early Act 3.

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Act 3 Notes

Near the beginning of Act 3 you will allocate the Lord of the Wilds keystone which allows you to equip a Sceptre in your offhand. Sceptres provide powerful bonuses to nearby allies, and Shrine Sceptres specifically allow you to socket Persistent Support Gems without having to pay a Spirit Cost. Keep an eye out for any Shrine Sceptre with strong offensive affixes (Such as + Level of All Minion Skills, Nearby Allies deal % increased damage, Nearby Allies have Added Attack Damage etc) and equip it once you take this Keystone.

In Act 3 you will gain access to the Trial of Chaos which will allow you to Ascend for the second time. This trial can be VERY difficult, or quite easy, depending on the modifiers you roll and the random boss at the end. As your passive tree doesn’t require access to Entwined Realities immediately, we recommend that you avoid attempting this until the end of the Act.

During Act 3 you wont get any new Skills, but your Support Gems have a lot of potential upgrades. Make sure you check the Skill Planner above to make sure you are swapping out/upgrading your Support Gems.

Towards the end of Act 3 your Shred will automatically gain an additional Support Socket at Level 40. Dont forget to add its third support gem, Rending Apex, as this is a powerful tool for boosting the damage of your wolves.

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Act 4 and the Interludes

At Level 50 you will be able to cut the final Skill of the build, Lunar Blessing. This skill is an incredibly potent buff granting a large amount of damage as added cold to you and any wolf minions you have, and will cause any attack hit to summon a barrage of Moonbeams that will strike nearby enemies. This ability spends all accumulated Rage to increase its duration and comes with a long cooldown, but its utility as a Rage Generator, Mana Leeching tool and damage/crowd control effect continues to be very important all the way into the very latest stages of endgame.

Once you have access to Market Trade in Act 4 there is a powerful Lineage gem for this build, Bhatair’s Vengeance. This gem only drops in the endgame, but if they are available and cheap you should pick one up as soon as possible.

By this stage of the game you go from a rotation-based playstyle to a resource management commander based playstyle. Maintaining uptime on your Lunar Blessing, Arctic Howl, Bhatair’s Vengeance Buff, and re-summoning any lost wolves while managing your Rage will become your focus. Below you will find some tips on utilizing all your tools to maximum effect.

Resource and Cooldown Management Tips

• Lunar Blessing spends all your Rage to increase its duration, but the power of its buff is not dependent on how much Rage is spent. You can use this right at the beginning of a zone, or at the start of a Boss fight, to gain the buff to help start snowballing, and it will come off cooldown shortly after the buff expires, even if you spend very little or no Rage when casting it.
• Because Lunar Blessing wants to spend Rage, if you are ever moving between packs, waiting for league mechanics or story animations, etc, and your Rage begins to decay, you can cast it to spend all that Rage and refresh the buff with a long duration instead of wasting your Rage.
• Arctic Howl can be used on Frozen enemies and will still grant its buff effect, or can be used on primed enemies to instantly freeze them. If you find yourself unable to consistently hit primed enemies, do not be afraid to use it on enemies that are already frozen.
• Arctic Howl with Raging Cry generates a large amount of rage if it hits more enemies or more powerful enemies.
• If all or most of your wolves die suddenly, stop focusing on maintaining your buffs and use the combination of Pounce (to apply Predators Mark) and then Cross Slash (to consume the Mark and resummon your wolves).

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Rotation

For general clearing:

• Pounce into the enemies.
• Lunar Assault until something is Frozen or Primed for Freeze.
• Arctic Howl to freeze enemies, generate rage and buff you and your allies.
• Use Lunar Blessing whenever your Rage is full and it expires, or your Rage starts decaying and you have nothing nearby to attack.
• Continue to Lunar Assault anything that isn’t frozen already until your cooldowns become available.
• If there are dangerous Rare monsters that are frozen you can Shred to Armour Break and increase your single target damage.

Boss rotation:

• Cast Lunar Blessing as you enter the arena or right before the boss spawns depending on your rage value.
• Pounce onto the boss.
• Lunar Assault until the boss is Primed for Freeze.
• Arctic Howl to fill up your Rage and Freeze the boss.
• Shred until the boss is unfrozen or dead.
• Use Cross Slash for a final Burst before you Pounce back in and repeat.

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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 Wand and Scepter for high 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 the following affixes.

Offensive Gear

Prioritize the following stats to improve your offensive power:

1. + Level of Melee Skills (Talisman, Amulet, Gloves)
2. + Level of Minion Skills (Helmet, Amulet, Sceptre)
3. Allies in your presence deal % increased damage (Sceptre)
4. Allies in your Presence have % increased Attack Speed

Defensive Gear

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

1. Maximum Life
2. Resistances
3. Armour

Augments

Socket Runes, Soul Cores and Idols 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

• Hysseg’s Claw – If you find one of these early it is very powerful, and should replace your wolfpack as your companion. Throw in supports from the Recommended list.

Body Armour

• Pariah’s Embrace – Provides a reasonable amount of Spirit, helps with Mana costs and is generally useful on a lot of characters

Helm

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

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Campaign Buffs

• Valley of the Titans Altar (Act 2)
  • 30% increased charm charges gained
• Venom Draught (Act 3)
  • 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

December 26th, 2025: Guide published