Path of Exile 3.8 Blight: The New Necromancer and Raider Ascendancy

Greetings Exiles, the highly anticipated Path of Exile 3.8 expansion is approaching rapidly! As your trusted gaming resource, we’re excited to provide an in-depth examination of the completely reworked Necromancer Ascendancy class. This comprehensive analysis will help you prepare for the new league meta and optimize your summoner builds effectively.

1. Minion Damage and Skill Duration Enhancements

– 10% increased Skill Effect Duration provides significant boosts to temporary buffs and debuffs

– Minions deal 15% increased Damage, scaling multiplicatively with other damage sources

These foundational bonuses create a powerful baseline for summoner builds. The skill duration increase particularly benefits abilities like Vaal Summon Skeletons and temporary minion buffs, while the damage boost applies to all minion types including zombies, spectres, and golems. Understanding how these modifiers interact with your passive tree and gear selections is crucial for maximizing your damage output throughout the campaign and into endgame content.

2. Mistress of Sacrifice Mechanics

– Your Offering Skills now provide their benefits to your character directly

– Offering effects on your character are reduced by 25% but remain highly valuable

– 30% increased Skill Effect Duration enhances both offering and other temporary effects

– 30% increased Minion Duration significantly extends temporary minion lifespan

The Mistress of Sacrifice node represents one of the most significant changes to Necromancer gameplay. Offering skills like Flesh Offering (attack/cast speed), Bone Offering (block chance), and Spirit Offering (elemental resistances) now provide dual benefits to both your minions and your character. This creates new defensive and offensive possibilities, allowing summoners to benefit directly from skills that previously only affected their minions. The 25% reduced effect on your character still provides substantial bonuses, making this an exceptionally powerful defensive and utility option.

To maximize the potential of these ascendancy changes, focus on specific gear and passive tree optimizations. For your Complete Guide to character building, check our comprehensive resource that covers everything from leveling to endgame optimization.

Common Mistakes to Avoid: Many players underestimate the value of skill effect duration, focusing solely on damage increases. However, duration modifiers can dramatically improve quality of life by reducing the frequency of recasting temporary minions and buffs. Another frequent error is improper offering timing – learning when to deploy each offering type based on combat situations separates average players from experts.

Advanced Optimization: Combine the Mistress of Sacrifice node with increased duration support gems and passive nodes for exceptional effect longevity. The combination of these duration increases can make temporary minions like Vaal Summon Skeletons nearly permanent in many combat scenarios. For specialized Weapons Unlock strategies that complement summoner builds, our weapon guide provides detailed acquisition paths for optimal minion damage weapons.

When planning your passive tree, prioritize minion life and resistance nodes alongside damage increases. Survivability remains the primary challenge for minion builds in high-tier maps and boss encounters. Our Class Guide offers additional insights into how Necromancer compares with other ascendancy options for summoner playstyles.

– Regenerate 8% of maximum Mana over 2 seconds whenever you consume a corpse through skills or effects.

This mechanic provides exceptional sustainability for necromancers who frequently utilize corpse-based abilities. The regeneration occurs gradually rather than instantly, making it ideal for maintaining mana during extended combat encounters where corpse consumption happens regularly.

Advanced players can combine this with skills like Desecrate and Offering spells to create powerful mana regeneration loops that enable continuous spellcasting without relying on mana flasks.

15. Minion Damage Scaling and Aura Amplification

– Your minions deal 15% increased Damage, stacking multiplicatively with other minion damage sources

– Non-Curse Auras from your Skills gain 5% increased effect, enhancing both offensive and defensive auras

This combination creates powerful scaling opportunities where your auras not only protect your minions but also significantly boost their damage output. The aura effect increase applies to popular choices like Hatred, Wrath, and Determination, making your minion army both deadly and resilient.

Common mistake: Players often overlook how aura effect scaling can transform mediocre minion builds into endgame viable setups. Proper gear and passive tree investment can push these bonuses much higher.

16. Commander of Darkness – Comprehensive Aura Benefits

– Auras from your Skills grant 3% increased Cast Speed and Attack Speed to both you and your Allies

– You and Allies affected by your Auras deal 30% increased Damage from all sources

– You and Allies affected by your Auras gain +20% to all Elemental Resistances for enhanced survivability

(Important: Auras can only grant bonuses to attributes they normally affect, so defensive auras won’t provide damage bonuses)

This keystone passive transforms your character into a powerful support presence while maintaining strong personal performance. The elemental resistance bonus is particularly valuable for reaching cap resistances without heavy gear investment.

Advanced strategy: Combine Commander of Darkness with multiple aura reservations and reduced mana reservation nodes to create incredibly powerful party compositions that excel in group content.

Evasion and Frenzy Charge Duration Optimization

While the initial focus is on minion damage and aura effects, don’t neglect your character’s personal defenses. Evasion-based defenses combined with minion blocking can create incredibly tanky necromancer builds.

Frenzy charge generation for minions through specific support gems or unique items can dramatically increase their attack and cast speed, creating exponential damage scaling when combined with aura effects.

For deeper build planning, consult our Class Guide to understand how different ascendancy choices complement these mechanics.

(Onslaught provides a substantial 20% boost to Cast Speed, Attack Speed, and Movement Speed)

Onslaught represents one of Path of Exile’s most valuable temporary buffs, delivering comprehensive speed enhancements across three critical combat dimensions. The standard Onslaught effect accelerates your casting animations, increases how rapidly you can launch attacks, and significantly improves your mobility around the battlefield. Understanding this foundational mechanic is crucial before exploring how Avatar of the Chase amplifies these benefits to extraordinary levels.

12. Avatar of the Chase

This ascendancy node transforms the Raider into an unparalleled speed demon, dramatically enhancing every aspect of Onslaught’s benefits. The 100% increased Onslaught Effect essentially doubles the standard bonuses, pushing your speed enhancements to an impressive 40% increase across all three categories. This makes the Raider one of the fastest ascendancies in the entire game when properly built.

– 100% increased Onslaught Effect

The doubled Onslaught effect means you’re not just slightly faster – you’re operating at nearly twice the speed of characters without these enhancements. This translates to clearer mapping, faster boss kills, and superior positioning in dangerous encounters.

– 30% increased Attack Damage during Onslaught

While Onslaught typically doesn’t provide direct damage increases, Avatar of the Chase breaks this pattern by granting a substantial 30% attack damage bonus. This makes it particularly valuable for attack-based builds that scale both speed and raw damage output.

– During Onslaught, there will be 30% more chance to Evade Melee Attacks.

– During Onslaught, there will be 30% more chance to Evade Projectile Attacks.

The evasion bonuses deserve special attention – these aren’t simple increased evasion chance modifiers but powerful “more” multipliers that scale with your existing evasion rating. This means if you already have 40% chance to evade attacks, these bonuses would push it to 52% against both melee and projectiles, providing comprehensive defensive coverage.

To maximize Avatar of the Chase’s potential, focus on builds that can maintain near-permanent Onslaught uptime. This typically involves using skills that rapidly defeat enemies or specific unique items that grant Onslaught on hit or kill. The node shines brightest when combined with other Raider ascendancy points that enhance phasing or frenzy charge generation.

Consider pairing this ascendancy with our Class Guide for understanding how different class mechanics interact with speed-based builds. The combination of extreme speed and enhanced evasion makes this perfect for hit-and-run tactics where you avoid damage through mobility rather than tanking hits directly.

Weapon selection becomes crucial – prioritize attack speed and elemental damage since the node doesn’t provide physical damage scaling. Bow builds, in particular, benefit enormously from both the projectile evasion and damage bonuses.

Many players underestimate the importance of maintaining consistent Onslaught uptime. If your build can’t reliably keep Onslaught active, you’re losing half the value of this ascendancy node. Ensure you have multiple methods to generate Onslaught, whether through kills, specific skills, or specialized gear.

Another common error is neglecting evasion rating entirely, assuming the “more” multipliers will provide sufficient protection. While powerful, these bonuses still scale with your base evasion, so investing in evasion-focused gear remains essential. Check our Weapons Unlock guide for equipment that synergizes well with evasion-based builds.

For endgame optimization, consider how this node interacts with other speed modifiers. The movement speed bonus stacks additively with other increased movement speed effects, while the attack and cast speed bonuses provide separate multipliers that can create explosive damage output when properly leveraged.

That concludes our deep dive into the Raider’s Avatar of the Chase ascendancy. We’ll be covering Assassin and Saboteur specialties in our upcoming content. Visit MmoGah for additional PoE News updates, and you can also purchase affordable and secure PoE Blight Currency including Exalted Orb and Chaos Orb through our platform.

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