Rage is one of those mechanics you'll feel before you fully understand it. Your hits just start landing harder, and suddenly bosses that used to drag on melt a bit quicker, especially if you've already been farming PoE 2 Currency to tighten up your build. Under the hood it's simple: each stack gives you 1% more Attack Damage, and the usual cap sits at 30, so keeping it topped off is basically walking around with a chunky "more" multiplier stapled to your character.
Rage isn't only for melee
A lot of players see "Rage" and assume it's a pure slam-and-shout stat. That's the trap. Most generators are melee-flavoured, sure, but the payoff is broad: it scales all Attack Damage. That includes projectiles. That includes bows. If your build is attack-based and you can solve the generation problem, Rage is still doing the same job. And yeah, it can feel weird at first—like you're bending the system—but it's legit, and it opens up some really fun setups.
How you actually build stacks
The common mod is "Gain X Rage on Melee Hit," and it works, but it won't let you turbo-stack just because you're attacking fast. There's an internal cooldown, so you can only gain Rage this way once every 0.5 seconds. You'll notice it the moment you try to ramp on trash mobs and the stacks crawl up. Warcries and other non-hit sources can smooth this out since they don't run into that same timing limit, which matters a ton in short burst windows or in fights where you're forced off target.
Keeping Rage up when fights get messy
Rage doesn't expire like a normal timed buff. It decays. If you haven't gained Rage or taken damage for 4 seconds, you start losing 5 stacks per second, and it's brutal during boss phases where you're dodging, waiting, or repositioning. This is where a lot of builds quietly fall apart: you're "doing mechanics," your Rage drains, and your damage drops right when you need it. Passives that delay the start of Rage loss, plus gear or effects that stop the loss entirely, can turn Rage from a flaky bonus into something you can rely on.
Scaling and spending without sabotaging yourself
Once you start investing into increased Rage Effect, the math gets spicy. A big chunk of effect (say, around 59%) makes 30 stacks feel closer to the high 40s in "more damage" terms, and it also boosts any extra per-Rage perks you've picked up, like defensive stats. The catch is spenders: plenty of skills chew through Rage in chunks, often 10 stacks at a time, so your build has to earn stacks fast enough to keep the engine running. If you're trying to gear up for that kind of loop, it helps to shop smart and fill the gaps quickly—whether that's grabbing a missing item base or topping off crafting resources—so using a reliable marketplace like U4GM can save you a lot of dead time mid-progress.
