While the new Ascendancy Class in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0 has captured the majority of players’ attention, the older Ascendancy classes that have been improved by recent changes should not be overlooked, especially Gemling Legionnaire!
For the past few leagues, this class has been largely neglected due to its somewhat lackluster gameplay. However, Return of the Ancients has revitalized Gemling Legionnaire playstyle!
Anticipating that these changes might reignite your interest in this Ascendancy, POECurrency.com has compiled a comprehensive guide to help you maximize your Gemling Legionnaire experience in Patch 0.5.0 by effectively utilizing skill gem quality stats.
Gemling Legionnaire in 0.5.0
The core mechanic of this Ascendancy involves equipping skill gems directly onto your character to activate their effects; consequently, you can significantly boost your character’s overall power by enhancing the quality stats of your gems.
Building upon this foundation, Patch 0.5.0 begins by removing Crystalline Potential Notable Passive Skill, replacing it with two new passive skills: Essence of Virtue and Advanced Thaumaturgy.
When active, Essence of Virtue grants you a protective barrier that accumulates various types of gemstones over time to serve as a defensive shield. If you are struck by an attack, you will randomly lose one of these accumulated gemstones.
Advanced Thaumaturgy, on the other hand, grants additional special effects to your socketed skills, with the specific effects determined by the quality stats of the skill gems currently slotted into your gear.
For Gemling Legionnaire, the impact of gem attributes varies: in some instances, the attribute bonuses they confer can fundamentally transform the entire approach to crafting your character build.
Furthermore, it is crucial not to overlook the fact that while skill gems are pivotal to a Gemling Legionnaire’s power level, crafting a truly complete and effective build remains impossible without the right gear and its associated affixes.
Therefore, while you are farming for gems and gear, don’t forget to buy cheap POE 2 currency on POECurrency.com whenever your crafting needs arise can accelerate your gear progression, allowing you to focus your time and energy on exploring the full depth of the gameplay experience.
How to increase skill gem quality?
Typically, you can increase a skill gem’s quality by up to 20% by consuming a specific item known as a Gemcutter’s Prism. Subsequently, if you corrupt the skill gem, its quality can be further increased to 23%.
Furthermore, Gemling Legionnaire anointed passive contains three minor nodes. If you allocate all three of these minor nodes, you will grant an additional 6% quality bonus to all of your skills.
Although each individual node provides only a 2% bonus, considering how difficult it is to obtain additional quality bonuses for skill gems through other means, this actually represents a quite substantial overall boost.
Next, consider adding Dialla’s Desire Lineage Support Gem, which grants a 5% quality bonus to the skill it supports.
Although this gem was nerfed in Patch 0.5.0 (previously providing a 10% quality bonus), it remains an exceptionally powerful Support Gem.
However, due to its rarity, there is significant market demand for this gem, and it is notoriously difficult to acquire through farming alone; therefore, if you aim to achieve the absolute maximum potential for your skill gems, you must stockpile sufficient PoE2 currency for sale to facilitate trading.
Regarding your amulet, you can also utilize Abyss crafting mechanic to obtain a specific suffix that grants a 3% to 5% quality bonus to all skills.
Which skills are worth adding?
First up is Walking Calamity. This skill allows you to transform into a massive bear, after which a dense shower of meteors rains down all around you.
This meteor shower consists of a multitude of smaller meteors and a few larger ones; the larger meteors deal truly devastating damage, and if you further increase the gem’s level, the damage ceiling will climb even higher.
To successfully cast this skill, you must first accumulate Rage to charge it up. Once your Rage reaches its maximum capacity, any excess Rage is automatically converted into stacks of Glory. Once you have accumulated a sufficient amount of Glory, you can unleash Walking Calamity.
Simply by roaming through a map, you can instantly obliterate all surrounding enemies with Walking Calamity. This proves to be an incredibly practical method for boosting the efficiency of your PoE 2 currency farming.
Furthermore, if you can boost the stat that increases the chance of not consuming Glory stacks, specifically by stacking relevant affixes, you can even achieve continuous casting of this skill, thereby unleashing truly astonishing combat power.
The second key skill is Hammer of the Gods. It, too, features a mechanism whereby, through quality enhancements, it can be cast without consuming Glory. In other words, it also has the potential to be spammed repeatedly.
Although this skill cannot generate Glory through its own usage, a feat achievable only via heavy strike, unlocking Glorious Anticipation passive node effectively compensates for this limitation.
Once this node is active, for every rare or unique monster present in your vicinity, your skills will generate 1 point of Glory every 2 seconds.
Next up is Spark skill. For every 5% increase in its quality, it fires one additional projectile.
By combining this specific skill attribute with the inherent bonuses provided by Gemling Legionnaire, you will be able to fire an additional 5 projectiles, above and beyond the 9 projectiles already provided by a Level 20 gem.
Moreover, the inherent stat on this skill that boosts projectile speed is exceptionally potent, as projectile speed is, in itself, a critical attribute for Spark skill.
In summary, provided you master the use of skill gems and Ascendancy abilities, Gemling Legionnaire is indeed a build worth trying out in Path of Exile 2 Return of the Ancients. If you’re interested, go ahead and create a character for it right now!