Minion Disciple of Varashta Leveling Guide

Build Introduction

If you’ve been looking for a fresh, powerful way to level with minions through the campaign and like the idea of leveraging powerful immortal Djinn, this is the guide for you! You will summon hordes of temporary minions, while casting powerful chaos fire spells!

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 Sorceress can ascend as a Chronomancer, Stormweaver or Disciple of Varashta. For this build you are leveraging the specific bonuses from Djinns, so you must ascend as a Disciple of Varashta.

1. Barya of Kelari and Barya of Ruzhan: Taking these two nodes will provide a number of powerful benefits. Firstly, the Barya of Ruzhan comes with an automatically triggered attack that applies Exposure. The Barya of Kelari gives you a short cooldown, high damage ability that applies critical weakness that you can choose to use but are not required to. Also, by taking both of these Djinn you get two additional permanent, immortal, unique minions that will help with scaling through certain passives on the skill tree and support gems you will use a little later on.
2. Barya of Navira and Kelari’s Deception: These nodes will grant an additional Djinn minion for the reasons listed above, as well as a new Command skill Kelari’s Deception. This ability hits hard, applies Critical Weakness, and has a short cooldown with multiple uses. By using all three charges one after the other, you can deal incredibly high burst damage on demand to tough targets.
3. The Fourth Teaching: Lowers the base recharge delay on Energy Shield recharge, allowing to start recharging significantly faster. This will be incredibly potent in endgame builds when paired with passives on the tree and the Chaos Inoculation keystone passive.
4. Sacred Rituals: Some additional physical mitigation, particularly against smaller hits while mapping, is a solid choice. In the late game you will likely swap this for Baryanic Leylines to leverage powerful Time-lost Jewels, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.

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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. During Acts 1 and 2 only – Wand with
   – + Level of all Fire Spells/all Spell Skills
   – % increased Spell Damage/Fire Spell Damage
2. Scepters with a priority on stats in order of:
   – + Level of all Minion Skills
   – % increased Minion Damage
   – + Added Attack Damage (any type provides significant power
3. Any Amulet or Helm with +# to Level of All Minion Skills
4. Any Body Armour with +# Spirit
5. Boots with #% increased movement speed
6. 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 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.

A few notes about leveling skill gems:

• Around Gem Level 13 you will want to stop leveling up Fireball and Living Bomb as at this point they are doing very little damage compared to your minions, and leveling them will only increase mana costs. They are simply used to generate your temporary minions.
• When choosing what Skeletal Minions to level with spare Uncut Gems, it is only worth leveling them if it will result in a reduction to their Spirit Cost. The primary reason we run them is to scale the benefits of the Muster support gem.
• Your Djinn Skills gain additional support gem sockets based on the current Skill Gem level. This means with some lucky gear drops with + Level of All Minion Skills you may get access to additional support gem sockets early.

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Act I Notes

During the earliest stages of Act 1 you will be utilising Unearth and whatever basic ability you have from your Wand to deal damage until you get access to 2x Level 3 Uncut Skill Gems. You can pick up Skeletal Sniper Minions with a spare Uncut Skill gem in the first few zones to help a little with damage.

After killing The Rust King in The Red Vale you get your first Level 3 Uncut Skill Gem which you will use to cut Fireball and use this as your primary damage tool. As soon as you get your second Uncut Skill Gem and cut Living Bomb you are online and ready to decimate!

After defeating the King in the Mists you will get your first Uncut Spirit Gem, cutting a Raging Spirits gem. Now whenever you cast fire spells you will summon temporary minions which will help with single target damage.

Rotation:

• Cast Living Bomb twice
• Cast Fireball
• Watch the world Burn

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Act 2 Notes

In Act 2 you will ascend for the first time in Trial of the Sekhemas. Here you will gain access to 2 of the 3 available Djinns providing you with additional automated damage sources and increasing the number of permanent minions you have summoned. This will become important later on. When you have a spare Uncut Skill Gem make sure you cut an Elemental Weakness curse to be used on tough enemies.

• Upon completing the Trial of the Sekhemas, you will ascend as a Disciple of Varashta and assign Barya of Kelari and Barya of Ruzhan.

You will be taking Blackflame Covenant in Act 2. This makes all Fire Spells you cast purple, which is cool, but Chaos Damage comes with the benefit of dealing double damage against monsters with Energy Shield. As an added perk, Chaos Resistance is usually an enemy’s weakest resistance, making it superior to the normal fire variants.

In Act 2 you will start utilizing Living Lightning on your Fireball to generate even more minions, however it is important that you have some source of added lightning damage to spells. This could be a prefix on your wand “Gain % damage as extra lightning damage” or you can socket any Storm Rune into your wand.

Remember to continue checking the Skill Planner tool above for Support Gems you should add to the new skills you gain.

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Act 3 Notes

In Act 3 your Support Gem options open up a very powerful scaling tool, and you will find yourself cutting several Muster Support Gems. This provides a 7% More Damage multiplier for each different permanent minion you currently have summoned, and each of the three Djinns from your ascendancy do count towards this limit. In combination with Skeletal Warrior Minions from a Rattling Sceptre, a Skeletal Sniper Minion, and possibly a Wolf Pack if you have a little extra Spirit, Muster will grant any minion it is socketed into a whopping 42% MORE damage. And this number will only continue to increase as you gain more Spirit and add additional Skeletal Minions later on.

Note: Gigantic Following on the Passive tree provides more damage than 3x additional unique summoned minions for the purposes of Muster support. It should be assigned early for this reason.

• Upon completing the Temple of Chaos for 2 additional Ascendancy points you will assign Barya of Navira and Kelari’s Deception. Navira is an additional permanent minion to boost the effect of your Muster support, and comes with a default command skill you can use as a defensive tool although it is not a requirement to use. Experiment with this extra button and decide if you’d like to use it.
• Kelari’s Deception is a powerful nuking spell with three charges and a fairly short cooldown, dealing significant physical damage in an Area of Effect around your mouse cursor. Consecutive uses of the Command will grant it more damage for each use while Kelari is still summoned. You will use this by dumping all three charges as quickly as possible on difficult enemies.

Your rotation for the rest of the game wont really change. When clearing simply follow the 2-1 cast pattern of 2x Living Bomb followed by 1x Fireball. If you encounter a tough enemy, cast Elemental Weakness and dump 3 charges of Kelari, the Tainted Sands Deception command skill.

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Act 4 and the Interludes

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 as this is an important statistic for scaling your damage by adding additional Skeletal Minions to boost Muster support.

As you gain additional Spirit from Sceptre upgrades, Spirit on Amulets or Body armour continue to fill your skill gem slots with additional unique Skeletal Minions, only summoning one of each to boost the power of your Muster.

At this point start paying close attention to Rare gear that drops and is available on Traders in town. You will want to start chasing gear with better defenses, and keep an eye out for the powerful mods found in the Gearing Progression section below

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Rotation

For general clearing:

• Cast 2x Living Bomb
• Cast 1x Fireball
• Repeat
• Use Kelari’s Deception x3 on tougher Rare monsters

Boss rotation:

• Cast Elemental Weakness (and refresh when duration expires)
• Cast 2x Living Bomb
• Cast 1x Fireball
• When you have three Charges on Kelari’s Deception dump all charges
• 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

Offensive Gear

Prioritize the following stats to improve your offensive power:

1. During Acts 1 and 2 only – Wand with
   – + Level of all Fire Spells/all Spell Skills
   – % increased Spell Damage/Fire Spell Damage
2. Levels of All Minion Skills on Scepter, Helm and Amulet
3. % increased Minion Damage on Scepter
4. Increases to Spirit on Scepter, Amulet and Body Armour

Defensive Gear

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

1. Maximum Life
2. Resistances
3. Energy Shield

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 and Offhands

• Trenchtimbre – Some early Minion Skill levels for your main hand in combination with a sceptre, at the cost of some defensive strength. Should probably only be used after Act 2 when your minions start doing the majority of your damage

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

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 Disciple of Varashta:

• 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 16th, 2025: Guide published