After a bunch of late nights in Path of Exile 2’s 0.3 patch, I kind of stumbled into a Witch setup that just feels wrong in the best way. Most builds I tried felt like I was running through mud, then this Lightning Warp Blood Mage thing turned the whole game on its head and made my character feel like a living spell. You warp, you land, stuff dies, and your screen turns into a light show. The clever bit is how it plays around costs and sustain, so instead of chugging flasks and staring at an empty mana globe, you are flying around spending life, backed up by heavy regen and recovery that makes it all feel almost free, especially once you can afford better gear and some extra poe 2 currencies to smooth things out.
How The Core Setup Works
The heart of the build is the Blood Mage ascendancy, plus uniques like Atalui's Bloodletting and a chunky life pool. You are basically saying, “forget mana, I will pay with life and heal it back instantly.” With enough regen and life on hit, spamming a movement skill stops being scary. You drop Sigil of Power, start warping nonstop, and a Cast on Critical combo kicks off Ball Lightning all over the place. It looks messy at first, but you very quickly see how safe it feels because your life and ES keep bouncing up. You are not playing a careful dodge-and-weave caster here; you are more like a blinking artillery shell that happens to recover faster than most trash mobs can scratch you.
Links, Gear And Playstyle Rhythm
The 6-link is where this build really clicks. Lightning Warp linked to Magnified Area and Rapid Casting turns the skill from a clunky teleport into a fast, punchy movement loop. You tap or hold the key, blink forward, and things just explode in your wake. Once you’ve got the timing down, it feels less like casting and more like surfing the map. On the trigger side, Ball Lightning with Lifetap and Multishot is the go-to for coverage, because the overlapping hits chew through packs and rares before you fully register what spawned. I ran it with a high-crit wand and Rathpith Globe, and the damage scales almost too well for how little aiming you do. You just keep moving, critting, and watching the arcs do the work.
Bossing, Fights And Practical Results
Where I expected the build to slow down was bossing, but it did not really happen. In the Azmeri Pantheon fights, bosses like Doryani and Count Geonor felt like target dummies because you keep warping in loose circles while Ball Lightning stacks on them. They struggle to pin you down, while your projectiles sit on top of their hitbox and rack up insane DPS. The Uber Arbiter, who usually drags fights out, went down a lot faster than I am used to, and I did not need some complex rotation to get there. You keep Sigil of Power active, drop Mana Tempest when you see a damage window, then just keep warping and let crits handle the rest. It is sweaty the first time, then it becomes almost automatic.
Getting Started And Why It Is Worth It
The tricky bit is the gear ramp. Stuff like Atziri's Acuity or a really strong wand is not going to fall into your lap early on, so the build feels a bit scuffed until you fill in those pieces. Once you do, though, the whole thing changes from “weird meme” to a legit endgame clearer. If grinding that gear sounds painful, a lot of players just pick up extra resources from sites where they can buy poe 2 exalted orbs and skip the slow part, then jump straight into blinking through maps and deleting bosses.
