Pathfinder Ascendancy Overview

The Pathfinder Ascendancy for the Ranger class focuses on flask manipulation, mobility, and poison damage. The Pathfinder's ability to double the maximum number of poison stacks on an enemy solidifies it as the most powerful class for the poison archetype. Additionally, it has the ability to turn flask charges into damaging concoctions that explode upon impact with terrain or monsters.

Pathfinder Mechanics

Here are some of the key mechanics available to the Pathfinder Ascendancy.

Flaskfinder

• Normally, when you reach full health your Life Flask effect ends. Enduring Elixirs changes this, allowing it to continue until the duration is complete. Combine this with a high recovery Life Flask like Saturated Ultimate Life Flask of the Sylvan to gain a persistent health recovery effect.
• This is most potent when combined with Life Flask nodes such as Hale Traveller and Heavy Drinker.

Noxious Poisons

• Contagious Contamination spreads poisons to nearby enemies. This is similar to the effect from Herald of Plague. It's great for spreading damage in tightly packed groups of enemies but is less effective when enemies spread out due to the limited area of effect.
• You need to take this node to access Overwhelming Toxicity.
• By default, you can inflict 1 poison on an enemy. Several nodes on the tree (Building Toxins, Stacking Toxins), the Comorbidity support and items like Snakebite allow you to increase this limit.
• Keep in mind, most of these effects come with a downside or opportunity cost. For example Comorbidity has 30% less poison duration and therefore requires you to reapply your poisons much more frequently / have a more active playstyle.
• Overwhelming Toxicity doubles the number of poisons you can inflict, in exchange for lowering their duration. So if you could inflict 3 poisons on an enemy before, now you can inflict 6.
• This rewards builds that hit rapidly, allowing them to stack and maintain even more poisons on enemies. However, it does reduce poison duration, and therefore the total damage a poison deals over its duration. This makes it a pretty weak choice for builds that hit hard but don't attack frequently.

Trouble Brewing

• When you allocate Brew Concoction, you gain access to 5 unique Concoction skills each of which is associated with an element and ailment.
  • Bleeding Concoction deals Physical Damage and inflicts bleeding.
  • Explosive Concoction deals Fire Damage, while inflicting ignite and fire exposure.
  • Shattering Concoction deals Cold Damage while inflicting cold exposure, chill, and freeze.
  • Fulminating Concoction deals Lightning Damage while inflicting lightning exposure and shock.
  • Poisonous Concoction deals Chaos Damage and inflicts poison.
• You can use these Concoctions as supporting skills to inflict ailments and exposure on your enemies, but they truly shine when used as the focal point of your build. Because each attack consumes 5 Mana Flask charges you need a way to sustain your Flasks on single target. This can come in the form of a skill like Alchemist's Boon, nodes such as Arcane Alchemy or Charge Gain / Gain Charges / Use Reduced Charge affixes on gear. Most builds use a combination of these, but the more gear you have, and the more damage you do, the less sustain you need.
• Concoctions are unarmed skills, and you need an unarmed weapon set to use them. This makes Concoctions incompatible with Herald Skills which require a martial weapon.
• In addition to their base damage, Concoctions excel at inflicting ailments.

Generic Power

• The Pathfinder Ascendancy offers several generic bonuses. These are rarely the reason to play the Ascendancy over a Deadeye but are a great way to add quality of life to your build after you complete your last Trial of Ascendancy.
• Traveller's Wisdom, combined with the Passive Points before it grants a total of 6 skill points.
• From a buildcrafting perspective, you can treat this as +6 to Character level, allowing you to more easily traverse the Passive Skill tree to pick up additional offensive or defensive bonuses.
• It's difficult to calculate the value of these nodes, for some builds, 6 points can be a huge improvement, like 15% more damage. Whereas other builds run out of relevant passives to allocate, making this node largely irrelevant.
• Relentless Pursuit gives you immunity to all slowing effects. This includes debuffs like Chill and Hinder or Curses like Temporal Chains.
• Running Assault greatly enhances your mobility. This is a more potent version of the Mobility Support gem.
• If you get your Attack / Cast speed high enough you can tap your skill to use it once while on the move without being slowed at all. When you can reach this breakpoint with Running Assault it greatly accelerates your clear speed.
• Practical Remedies is another choose-your-own-bonus type node. It offers protection from the elemental ailments Shock, Freeze, and Ignite. Thawing Campfire is a particularly strong choice here as you cannot act while frozen.
• Sustainable Practices is a defensive node that uniquely synergizes with the Pathfinder's starting location on the passive tree. You have easy access to nodes that increase your Evasion rating making this a great way to get some extra defenses against elemental damage.

The Pathfinder Ascendancy is a unique class focused on flask manipulation and poison damage. By turning flasks into throwable concoctions and utilizing various poison-related bonuses, Pathfinders can create powerful and versatile builds. The Pathfinder's ability to double the maximum number of poison stacks on an enemy solidifies this class as a top choice for poison-based builds. If you want to learn more about what to play on your Stormweaver, check out the Build Meta, peruse our Build Guides, or Browse Maxroll and Community planners!

Credits

Written by: Crouching_Tuna, Tenkiei
Content Reviewed by: Aer0, Zizaran