How to Use Elemental Invocation to Enhance Your POE 2 Build

Path of Exile 2 (POE 2) promises to build upon the deep, intricate systems that have made its predecessor one of the most celebrated action RPGs of all time. One of the most exciting new features in POE 2 is the Elemental Invocation mechanic, which allows players to amplify their elemental damage in creative ways. If you're looking to enhance your POE 2 build, Elemental Invocation could be just the tool you need to gain a significant edge. This article will guide you through understanding, implementing, and optimizing Elemental Invocation for maximum impact.

Understanding Elemental Invocation

Elemental Invocation is a new mechanic in POE 2 that enhances your character's elemental abilities. As the name suggests, it is a power granted to players who focus on one or more of the elemental elements: Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos. This system can drastically increase the potency of elemental-based skills, creating synergies that empower your playstyle.

The key feature of Elemental Invocation lies in the way it interacts with the existing skill gems, items, and passives within the game. By invoking the powers of the elements, you gain the ability to tailor your build around specific elemental effects that deal massive damage to enemies, inflict debuffs, or create elemental procs for additional effects.

Each element offers its own unique set of advantages and challenges, making it important to understand how to tailor your build to exploit the strengths of your chosen invocation.

The Elemental Categories

Fire Invocation: This type enhances all fire-based skills, including attacks, spells, and auras. Fire Invocation tends to focus on high damage output with burn effects, creating a steady damage-over-time (DoT) cycle that gradually decimates enemies.

Cold Invocation: Cold builds often rely on freezing or chilling enemies, slowing down enemy movement and providing crowd control. Elemental Invocation's Cold variant enhances these abilities while boosting damage for those that use freeze or chill as part of their strategy.

Lightning Invocation: Lightning skills excel in dealing with groups of enemies due to their ability to chain attacks or hit multiple targets. By invoking the power of Lightning, players can increase their ability to inflict shock, increase attack speed, or even create powerful area-of-effect (AoE) damage bursts.

Chaos Invocation: Chaos is often considered one of the most unpredictable and powerful elements in POE. By invoking Chaos, you gain an extra layer of flexibility, as Chaos-based skills can bypass elemental resistances, making them effective even against highly resistant enemies.

How to Implement Elemental Invocation in Your Build

When implementing Elemental Invocation in your build, you need to carefully choose your approach based on your desired playstyle and the type of content you plan to tackle in POE 2. Here's how you can strategically use the mechanic to build a solid, powerful character:

1. Choosing the Right Element for Your Build

The first step in optimizing Elemental Invocation is selecting which elemental focus best suits your build. Each element has different synergies with skill gems, passive trees, and gear.

Fire-based builds are ideal for players who want massive direct damage and steady burn effects. Fire skills also pair well with physical damage to ignite enemies.

Cold-based builds are excellent for players who focus on crowd control and slowing enemies down while also benefiting from increased cold damage.

Lightning-based builds work well for those who want fast-paced action and the ability to deal with large packs of enemies with chaining effects.

Chaos-based builds work best for those who want to break through resistances and deal sustained damage with versatile effects.

Understanding which type of Elemental Invocation will provide the most significant benefits to your build is crucial for success.

2. Combining Elemental Invocation with Passive Tree Modifications

Once you've chosen your elemental focus, the next step is to select the passive nodes on the skill tree that complement your build. Elemental Invocation opens up a whole new avenue of potential nodes that boost elemental damage. The best way to take advantage of this mechanic is to identify nodes that increase your elemental damage, critical strike chance, or area damage based on the chosen element.

For example:

Fire-based nodes will provide bonuses to burning damage, elemental damage, and increased area-of-effect (AoE) for fire spells.

Cold-based nodes will add to your freeze/chill effects, as well as boost damage with increased cold damage and cold resistance penetration.

Lightning-based nodes could increase shock effects, lightning damage, and attack speed.

The passive tree has been designed to encourage diverse builds, so take your time to find the best nodes that synergize with Elemental Invocation for your selected element.

3. Gear and Itemization for Elemental Invocation Builds

Gear plays an important role in enhancing the power of Elemental Invocation. You'll need to look for items that not only increase your elemental damage but also boost the effects specific to your chosen element. Here's how to approach it:

Weapon Affixes: Certain weapons provide additional elemental damage boosts. For instance, Fire-based weapons often have modifiers that add extra burn or fire damage, while Lightning-based weapons may increase shock effects or area-of-effect (AoE) damage.

Elemental Damage Rings: You can also look for rings and amulets that offer elemental resistances and flat elemental damage bonuses. These will help maximize your damage output with Elemental Invocation.

Unique Items: Many unique items in POE 2 will work well with Elemental Invocation builds, such as those that increase elemental penetration or provide buffs to elemental damage. Keep an eye out for these unique pieces to optimize your setup.

Skill Gems: Certain skill gems that pair well with Elemental Invocation can further enhance your build. Fireball, Freezing Pulse, and Arc are all excellent choices depending on which element you're invoking. Additionally, support gems that add increased elemental damage or boost AoE will complement your elemental focus.

4. Currency Management for Optimizing Your Build

As with all builds in POE 2, optimizing your Elemental Invocation build may require significant investment in both items and upgrades. It's essential to manage your POE 2 Currency wisely so that you can acquire the necessary items and upgrade your gear. Trading for powerful elemental-based items or buying specific Orbs that enhance your elemental damage will give you a considerable advantage.

5. Using Elemental Invocation to Enhance Survivability

While Elemental Invocation excels in damage dealing, you'll also need to ensure that your build is robust enough to handle the toughest challenges POE 2 throws at you. One way to achieve this is by combining your elemental focus with defensive mechanics, such as elemental resistances, life leech, or even flask effects that mitigate elemental damage taken.

For instance:

Fire Builds can consider using flasks that offer fire resistance or ignite immunity.

Cold Builds can use flasks that grant freeze immunity, making them resilient to crowd control.

Lightning Builds might benefit from flask effects that grant shock immunity or movement speed, giving them more mobility and survivability.

Being able to use Elemental Invocation and simultaneously manage your defenses will ensure that you remain durable in even the most intense encounters.

At some point, you might find yourself needing to buy POE 2 Orbs to further refine your equipment, whether it's using them to craft specific affixes on your gear or re-rolling items to better suit your Elemental Invocation setup. Utilizing the currency system efficiently can save you time and increase the strength of your build exponentially.

Conclusion

Elemental Invocation provides one of the most exciting ways to enhance your build in POE 2. By strategically choosing your focus-be it Fire, Cold, Lightning, or Chaos-you can shape your character into an elemental powerhouse that excels at high damage output, crowd control, or penetration. By carefully selecting the right gear, skill gems, and passive nodes, you can optimize your build to be both effective and fun to play.