Warbringer Grenade Ballista Totems Endgame Build

Build Introduction

This is a fairly tanky build, quite affordable, and comes with solid DPS. It’s also a one-button build, doesn’t need mana management, and is very fun to play. It is 100% beginner-friendly, and it simply smashes! This build is an all-rounder that can do all the content inside 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 the maximum difficulty).

Even for ballistas, the Warbringer ascendancy provides significantly higher defenses compared to, let’s say, a Tactician. While both Tactician and Warbringer are viable for ballista builds, the latter is much tankier and safer to play, making it ideal for new players and casuals. The build offers decent defensive capabilities while still maintaining high damage. On top of that, there’s no need to perform any combos: it’s simply a pure one-button build.

This build changed significantly in Patch 0.3.0. Click here to see the full breakdown of the changes.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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Gameplay Showcase (what to expect from this build)

If you’d like to follow this build as a League Starter, click HERE. Good Luck!

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 physical damage and 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, we will add Voltaic Grenade setup to the mix for more damage. Voltaic Grenade applies Shock to bosses, increasing their damage taken

1. Mortar Cannon
2. Voltaic Grenade (only for hard bosses)

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Gameplay Tips

For general mapping, try to spread out the totems. Avoid summoning them in the same spot, as this improves clear speed and helps them survive.

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 very deadly modifiers.

For fast map clearing, try dropping a totem every half second while moving. This makes a big difference in clearing monsters quickly! We’ll be placing them rapidly anyway, thanks to the high totem placement speed from the Skill Tree.

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Skill and Support Gems

Our build revolves around the Mortar Cannon, supported with Cluster Grenade. Make sure to level up and quality both of these gems.

[READ!] For the Rigwald’s Ferocity Support Gem, you will need to put your weapon in Weapon Slot II! If you put your weapon in Weapon Slot I, you will receive a significant damage penalty. Be very careful with this!

Voltaic Grenade will be used only for hard bosses. Voltaic Grenade applies Shock to bosses, increasing their damage taken.

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

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Spirit Gems

The Spirit Gem setup requires 100 total Spirit. Completing the campaign rewards 100 base Spirit.

Time of Need is a powerful aura that will periodically heal you as well as remove ailments and curses. This is especially good for waystones that have curse modifiers!

Ascendancy

Warbringer is a tanky ascendancy class, and also has good synergy with our ballista totems here. The most impactful nodes are Wooden Wall, redirecting 20% of damage taken from hits to nearby totems and Answered Call, which will grant us Ancestral Spirits and +1 Extra Totem.

The ascendancies should be unlocked in this order:

1. Answered Call
2. Wooden Wall
3. Jade Heritage
4. Anvil’s Weight

Try to unlock these ascendancy nodes as soon as possible; they give us a lot of power!

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Passive Skill Tree and Path of Building

To make things easier to follow, I’ve split the build into two setups. First, there’s the Normal Build, which is an excellent Waystone 15/16 mapper that can handle all map-related content with ease while being very tanky. Then, there’s the Maxed Build, which is perfect for players who like to mid-mx. Know that the Maxed setup is not cheap! Only the normal setup is affordable.

When it comes to node allocation, remember that the Skill Tree is flexible. The only mandatory nodes are “Artillery Strike” and the “Blood Magic” Keystone.

For the “Gem Enthusiast” notable, you need a total of 10 red and 10 green Support Gems across your gem setups to gain the 5% increased maximum life and 5% increased movement speed bonuses. You can use random gems to meet this requirement.

A.Normal Version:

**POB link for the normal version of the build HERE. Remember that the “PoB Community Fork” program for Path of Exile 2 still needs some work. It might not track everything properly.

B.Maxed Version:

**POB link for the maxed version of the build HERE. Remember that the “PoB Community Fork” program for Path of Exile 2 still needs some work. It might not track everything properly.

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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.

A.Normal Version:

Equipment Slot and Base Stats	Affixes	Notes
Helmet (Armour)	1. Maximum Life 2. Resistances 3. “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage”	For the rare armour items, prioritize those with high life, resistances, and, if possible: “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage” If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket.
Body Armor (“Ornate Plate” – rare base)	1. Maximum Life 2. Increased Armour 3. Resistances 4. “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage”	The body armor must be an “ORNATE PLATE” base. This base provides significant life regeneration, which is essential for the laziness of this build. Aim for one with high life and armor above 1000 too. If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket.
Gloves (Armour)	1. adds # Physical damage to Attacks 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistances 4. “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage”	For the rare armour items, prioritize those with high life, resistances, and, if possible: “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage” If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket.
Boots (Armour)	1. Movement Speed 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistances 4. “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage”	For the rare armour items, prioritize those with high life, resistances, and, if possible: “+#% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage” If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket
Weapon (CANNONADE CROSSBOW or SIEGE CROSSBOW)	1. A lot of physical damage DPS 2. +1 extra ballista totem (Optional) 3. +6 to level of all attack skills (Optional)	For the weapon, we need a Crossbow with the following implicit: “Grenade Skills fire an Additional Projectile.” (The more grenades we shoot, the more damage we do). In addition to the implicit you will also want a lot of physical damage. – Later, for maxing you will want one with these modifiers: +1 to maximum number of summoned ballista totems” & “+6 to level of all attack skills” If you decide to go for corruption, look for an extra socket
Amulet (“Idol of Uldurn” – Unique )		For the amulet, instill/anoint “Volatile Grenades” (a cheap instilment that will make the grenades detonate faster). Remember to apply 20x “Flesh Catalysts” to it. Volatile Grenades -> Paranoia, Ire, Despair
Rings	1. Maximum Life 2. Adds # to # Physical Damage to Attacks 3. Resistances	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. +# Charm Slots

B.Maxed Version:

Equipment Slot and Base Stats	Affixes	Notes
Helmet Armour (“Constricting Command” – Unique)		This Helmet will give us a lot of damage! Make sure to buy one with “Require 5 Fewer Enemies to be Surrounded”. You need it with 5!

For your rares, you want Armour base items. If you have multiple hybrid pieces (Armour / Evasion), then you can allocate the Iron Reflexes Keystone that will turn all Evasion into Armour. Sometimes getting hybrid bases is cheaper, but you should avoid Energy Shield bases since we don’t get any benefit out of that!

For the armor sockets, use “Soul Core of Jiquani” (3% Increased Maximum Life if socketed inside the body armour) or “Soul Core of Tacati” (11% to Chaos Resistance), depending on what you need.

For the weapon sockets, use “Greater Iron Rune” (boosts the Physical Damage).

Jewels

For jewels, look for modifiers such as: increased fire damage, increased attack damage, totem damage, elemental damage, increased life regeneration, increased armour, and increased skill effect duration. These all appear on the Ruby Jewel.

Campaign Buffs

During the acts, there are some quests that activate additional bonuses for your character:

• Valley of the Titans (Act 2)
  • 30% Increased Charm Charges Gained.
• Venom Draught (Act 3)
  • Stun Threshold. 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”.
• Tattoos (Act 4)
  • All Blank Tattoos should be elemental resistance.
• Qimah Pillars (Interlude)
  • Your choice, these can be changed whenever.

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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), Grounding Charm (removes Shock), Amethyst Charm (helps us with Chaos resistance).

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Common Mistakes

• The player forgets to level up their main skill gems. You need to level up both Mortar Cannon and Cluster Grenade! 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!
• (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. Around 50% Chaos Resistance is more than enough for this build.
• 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 2700 life, above 100 life regen per second for the normal version, all 4x Trials unlocked (8 Ascendancy Points), and physical damage reduction around 60%. This should be more than enough for lazy and stress-free gameplay. Learn to press Encase in Jade skill too when needed.

Waystone Modifiers You Should Avoid

This build can do all the Waystone modifiers, but you should play more carefully when you see the following modifiers:

• 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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[NEW!] Patch 0.3.0 Changes

• Moved from Shockwave totems to Mortar Cannons.
• Warbringer’s ascendancy node “Answered Call” got buffed. We now get +1 extra totems and the minions are stronger.
• Stacks of Jade granted by the Jade Heritage Notable Passive Skill are no longer lost when taking Physical Damage from a Hit.

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Changelog

• September 6th, 2025:
  • Ancestral Minions will now apply Fire Exposure (added three new support gems in this regard).
  • Swapped Oil Grenade for Voltaic Grenade. Fire Exposure will now come from the Ancestral Minions instead.
  • Removed Rapid Shot.
• September 5th, 2025: Added the Maxed version of the build.
• September 4th, 2025: Build Guide was updated for Patch 0.3, The Third Edict.
• April 18th, 2025: The “Maximizing Build Potential” section has been updated.
• April 17th, 2025: Second/Alternative Option for Spirit Gems added.
• April 11th, 2025: Updated Skill Tree allocation order.
• April 9th, 2025: Added Patch 0.2.0 changes and how to get a Beast companion.
• April 8th, 2025: Full POB added.
• 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.