Path of Exile: What Skills and Builds Best Use The Saviour Legion Sword

In Path of Exile, few weapons are as iconic-or as mechanically unique-as The Saviour, a Legion-era unique sword that fundamentally changes how melee combat feels. Rather than simply boosting raw damage, The Saviour introduces a powerful interaction that rewards aggressive, crit-focused playstyles. Understanding which skills and POE orbs builds best leverage its strengths is essential to unlocking its true potential.

What Makes The Saviour Special?

The defining feature of The Saviour is its unique modifier:

"Creates Mirage Warriors on Critical Strike."

When you critically strike, spectral copies of your character-called Mirage Warriors-appear and repeat your attacks against nearby enemies. These mirages use your equipped skills, scale with your damage, and effectively act as temporary autonomous attackers. This turns every critical hit into a damage multiplier, making The Saviour especially potent for builds that can crit consistently and attack rapidly.

Because the mirages only spawn on critical strikes, the sword strongly favors high critical chance, fast-hitting melee builds rather than slow, single-hit slam setups.

Best Skill Types for The Saviour

1. Strike Skills (Top Tier Synergy)

Strike skills are the best overall match for The Saviour. These skills hit frequently, benefit from attack speed, and naturally scale with critical chance-exactly what the sword wants.

Excellent strike skills include:

Flicker Strike - One of the most popular pairings. Flicker Strike's rapid teleporting attacks generate Mirage Warriors constantly, resulting in overwhelming screen-wide damage.

Double Strike - Particularly strong for bossing. Mirage Warriors stack damage quickly on single targets.

Lightning Strike - While technically a strike skill with projectiles, it benefits heavily from mirage duplication, especially in hybrid melee/projectile setups.

Reave - High attack speed and good area coverage allow mirages to clear packs efficiently.

Strike skills also benefit from targeting mechanics that allow Mirage Warriors to spread out, clearing multiple enemies at once.

2. Critical-Based Sword Skills

Any sword skill that scales well with critical strike chance and multiplier is a strong candidate. Since The Saviour itself doesn't provide crit chance, builds must generate it through the passive tree, ascendancy bonuses, and support gems.

Good examples include:

Blade Flurry (non-channel focus builds)

Lacerate (Crit variant)

Cleave (modern crit versions)

The key is hit frequency. The more often you crit, the more Mirage Warriors you summon.

Best Ascendancies to Pair with The Saviour

Champion

Champion is one of the strongest and safest choices. It offers:

High accuracy (important for crit consistency)

Strong impale synergy

Excellent survivability

Champion builds using Flicker Strike or Lightning Strike with The Saviour are extremely popular in high-end mapping.

Slayer

Slayer excels at:

Overleech for sustain

Increased crit scaling

Massive boss damage

Slayer's ability to stay alive while dealing sustained melee damage makes it ideal for Mirage Warrior-focused builds.

Assassin

For pure damage enthusiasts, Assassin provides:

Massive critical strike chance and multiplier

Easy crit cap

Explosive clear speed

While more fragile, Assassin maximizes The Saviour's core mechanic better than almost any other ascendancy.

Builds That Don't Work Well

Slow, heavy-hitting builds such as Earthquake, Ground Slam, or low-crit bleed builds generally perform poorly with The Saviour. These skills don't hit or crit often enough to maintain Mirage Warrior uptime, wasting the sword's strongest mechanic.

Similarly, non-crit or Resolute Technique builds cannot use The Saviour at all, as critical strikes are mandatory.

Conclusion

The Saviour is not just a sword-it's a build-defining weapon that rewards speed, precision, and critical mastery. The best builds revolve around fast-hitting strike skills like Flicker Strike, Double Strike, and Lightning Strike, paired with crit-focused ascendancies such as Champion, Slayer, or Assassin. When used correctly, The Saviour turns every critical hit into a small army, overwhelming enemies through sheer duplication of force.

For players who enjoy high-tempo melee combat and buy POE Exalted Orbs visually spectacular gameplay, The Saviour remains one of Path of Exile's most satisfying and powerful weapons.