One of the best Path of Exile 2 Mercenary builds at the moment is undoubtedly the Witch Hunter Grenadier, focusing on the Merc's powerful damage-dealing grenade abilities and the Witch Hunter Ascendancy which has a variety of tools for dealing with tough bosses and rare enemies.
The Witchbane and No Mercy skills, for example, break boss Concentration, allowing you to deal 30% more damage to them and lengthen their ability cooldowns. The real crux of this build lies in two abilities; Explosive Grenade and Explosive Shot, with the latter letting you detonate the former. Anyone who's played Merc knows that fuse length on grenades is their primary disadvantage, so this helps them instantly explode.
While there are other endgame builds for Merc, using Galvanic Shards if you dislike grenades, for instance, this one is definitely the best at quickly clearing screens of enemies and making speedy progress.
Witch Hunter Grenadier
If you want an in-depth video guide to the build, Lucky Ghost runs through everything you need above. Otherwise, here's a run through of what to use:
Key skills
As mentioned, the key interaction in this build is using Explosive Shot to detonate the high-damage Explosive Grenades you fire. Below is each skill and the recommended support gems:
Explosive Grenade
- Fire Infusion: Attacks gain 25% of damage as extra fire damage
- Magnified Effect: Supported skills have 40% more increased area of effect
- Scattershot: Supported skills fire two additional projectiles
- Primal Armament: Supported skills deal 25% more elemental damage
- Concentrated Effect: Supported skills deal 40% more area damage
All of these skills effectively buff grenade damage. Fire Infusion and Primal Armament offer a straightforward boost, while Scattershot increases the number of projectiles you fire. Though it also reduces damage by 20%, these additional grenades provide a damage increase overall. Magnified Effect and Concentrated Effect also work well together, since the former compensates for the latter's 50% area of effect reduction, meaning you get a 40% area damage increase, while only losing 10% AoE in exchange.
Explosive Shot
- Martial Tempo: Supported skills have 25% more attack speed
- Nimble Reload: Supported skills have 60% increased crossbow reload speed
- Inevitable Critical: Supported skills gains 25% increased critical hit chance every second, up to 100%
- Ignition: Supported skills have 100% more chance to ignite
As mentioned in the video above, Explosive Shot is your detonator and way to finish off enemies that are close to death following a grenade barrage. Martial Tempo and Nimble Reload will ensure it's always ready to quickly fire off, while Inevitable Critical and Ignition will help it hit a little harder.
Herald of Ash
This persistent buff skill will be familiar to anyone who's played Merc—enemies you overkill explode and spread ignite to other nearby enemies. It's a good source of extra damage, especially early on, but as Lucky Ghost recommends, you can use it with Cannibalism to recover 4% life every time you get a kill while it's active.
Attrition
This is a good skill for bosses and rares since it gives you 1% more damage against rare and unique enemies for every two seconds you're in their presence, up to 53%. You'll also get Culling Strike against rares and uniques as an added bonus. As Lucky Ghost also points out, Spirit cost for Herald of Ash is high at later levels, so you might consider using Herald of Ash while clearing, and then switching to Attrition. Either that, or find gear that provides the additional Spirit you need, such as an amulet.
Passive tree
If you skip to the "skill tree explained" section of the video above, you can see a full overview of the passive skill tree. That said, I wouldn't recommend every node that Lucky Ghost uses, and there are a few extras you can pick up to enhance your grenades further.
Generally, this skill tree is about enhancing your grenades via area of effect, area damage, and grenade-buffing nodes, while also boosting attack speed for your Explosive Shot, as well as armour and evasion for survivability.
All the nodes are listed below in the table, but here's your step by step route:
- Head down the right side taking Remorseless, Feel No Pain, and Ricochet, then dip right into the Ranger tree to grab Heavy Ammunition. You could also grab some extra movement speed here later if you want.
- Continue left to take Battle-Hardened, Mass Hysteria, and Devastation. Everything further left beyond these nodes is survivability-based, such as Blade Catcher and Polished Iron, so you might want to build damage first by continuing on the Merc tree.
- Head down the stat-nodes to the left of Battle-Hardened to take Colossal Weapon, Overwhelm, then straight down the middle, grabbing Cluster Bombs and Grenadier on the left, and Adrenaline Rush and Instant Reload on the right. Also grab the two 12% increased grenade damage nodes just to the right of that one.
- Now go straight down to the bottom, tracking right to grab Repeating Explosives , Sand in the Eyes, and Giantslayer, and to the left, Authority, Crushing Judgement, and Smoke Inhalation. You could also grab Incendiary just next to it if you want buffed damage against burning enemies.
This is slightly different from the skill tree Lucky Ghost recommends, mainly in that it doesn't take Iron Reflexes so you retain evasion for enemy ranged attacks, plus it grabs those extra grenade damage nodes next to Instant Reload, and Incendiary next to Smoke Inhalation. As long as you're buffing grenades and AoE damage and attack speed, you'll be pretty strong no matter what.
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
| Remorseless | 15% increased projectile damage, 30% increased stun buildup against enemies within two metres, +5 strength and dexterity |
| Heavy Ammunition | 8% reduced attack speed, 40% increased projectile damage, 40% increased projectile stun buildup |
| Ricochet | 15% increased projectile damage, projectiles have a 10% chance to chain an additional time |
| Feel No Pain | 20% increased armour and evasion rating, 20% increased stun threshold |
| Battle-Hardened | Hits against you have 20% reduced critical damage bonus, 20% increased armour and evasion rating, +5 to strength and dexterity |
| Mass Hysteria | Allies in your presence have 6% increased attack speed, 6% increased attack speed |
| Devastation | 15% increased attack area damage, 15% increased area of effect for attacks |
| Relentless | 15% increased armour, regenerate 0.5 life per second, +10 to strength |
| Sturdy Metal | 80% increased armour from equipped body armour |
| Polished Iron | 25% increased armour, 50% base armour from equipment also added to stun threshold |
| Blade Catcher | Defend with 200% of armour against critical hits, +15 to strength |
| Colossal Weapon | 15% increased area of effect for attacks, +10 to strength |
| Overwhelm | 5% reduced attack speed, 20% increased stun buildup, 40% increased damage with two-handed weapons |
| Cluster Bombs | 50% increased grenade fuse duration, grenade skills fire an additional projectile |
| Grenadier | Grenade skills have +1 cooldown use |
| Adrenaline Rush | 4% increased movement speed if you've killed recently, 8% increased attack speed if you've played recently |
| Instant Reload | 40% increased crossbow reload speed (grab the grenade damage perks) |
| Sand in the Eyes | 10% increased attack speed, 15% chance to blind enemies on hits with attacks |
| Repeating Explosives | Grenades have a 15% chance to activate a second time |
| Giantslayer | 25% increased damage with hits against rare and unique enemies, 20% increased accuracy against rare and unique enemies, 20% increased chance to inflict ailments against rare and unique enemies |
| Authority | 20% increased area of effect for attacks, 10% increased cooldown recovery rate |
| Crushing Judgment | 25% increased armour break duration, 25% increased attack area damage |
| Smoke Inhalation | Damage penetrates 15% fire resistance, 15% increased duration of damaging ailments on enemies |
| Incendiary | 30% increased chance to ignite, 30% increased damage with hits against burning enemies |
Ascendancy
You'll want to choose Witch Hunter for your Ascendancy. The two most important skills to grab are No Mercy and Zealous Inquisition, heading up the central path and the right path respectively. This will give you a significant advantage against bosses with the former, while the latter provides an additional layer to your kills with exploding enemies.
Since No Mercy is more important than Zealous Inquisition, you could also swap it out for Judge, Jury, and Executioner—the path to the left of No Mercy—to get extra damage against low life enemies, plus Culling Strike and Decimating Strike, effectively reducing enemy life threshold.
Gear and stat priorities
| Crossbow | Adds physical damage / % increased physical damage |
| Body Armour | + to armour / + to evasion / % increased armour and evasion rating / % to resistances |
| Gloves | + to armour / + to evasion rating / % increased armour and evasion / % increased attack speed |
| Boots | % increased movement speed / + to armour / + to evasion rating / % to resistances |
| Rings | % to resistances / % increased fire damage |
| Amulet | + to Spirit / + to armour / % to resistances / + to level of all projectile skills |
Crossbows are relatively simple weapons—you basically want the biggest damage number you can get through physical damage modifiers and Iron Runes, then your preferred archetype for its secondary ability. In this case, that's the Bombard Crossbow as it launches an extra grenade when you fire them, which is a big chunk of extra DPS.
As Lucky Ghost notes, however, the Bombard Crossbow has lower base damage than the Construct Crossbow, so you might be better off damage-wise with one of those based on modifiers and what you find.
For the rest of your gear, maxing out resistances at 75 is important to offset the debuff and survive in maps—extra max life on your armour will also help. You'll primarily want armour and evasion gear to cover multiple bases, especially as you'll need high strength anyway to run Herald of Ash. Lucky Ghost also recommends increased fire damage, since it makes a big difference to your grenades, plus anyone who's played PoE 2 for any length of time knows movement speed on boots is a must have.
Lastly, I'd recommend getting Spirit on your amulet if possible for those persistent buffs and slotting support gems into them.
