Path of Exile 2: Best Keystone Passives Guide

Ben Author

Created - 03.12.2024 Updated - 07.12.2024

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Path of Exile 2 seemingly follows in the footsteps of its predecessor when it comes to complexity. Although GGG has done an admirable job of making the sequel more accessible to new players, the passive skill tree in this game is still quite daunting with over 1,500 passives to choose from!

Fortunately, we at RPGStash will provide you with key information so that you understand the different mechanics of the game! That said, in this article, we will explore the best keystone passives in PoE 2!

What Are Keystones?

Keystone passives (or just “keystones") are passive skills in Path of Exile 2 that can be considered “build-enabling” due to their effects. Without allocating at least one of these passive skills, some PoE 2 builds won’t work!

Having said that, passive skills in the game are classified into three major categories: Minor, Notable, and Keystone passives. Minor passive skills are those small nodes that connect to the much bigger ones. They are weaker in terms of the bonuses they provide but are essential in helping you connect to the better nodes on the tree.

Notable passive skills, on the other hand, have a much larger icon and provide you with better bonuses. These nodes offer the same type of benefits to the minor passives that precede them, albeit with an additional effect.

For instance, the notable passive skill “Polymathy” grants 10% increased attributes, which is the same in scope as the minor attribute node before it.

So, what about keystone passives? You can easily tell them apart by their large icons and intricate border designs. They are not incorporated into clusters like the minor nodes and notable passive skills do, allowing you to save on passive skill points when taking them.

What makes PoE 2 keystone passive skills incredibly powerful are the bonuses they provide. Most of them are so unique that you cannot find them anywhere else on the passive tree.

Keep in mind that, unlike the notable passive skills, keystones cannot be instilled in your amulet in Path of Exile 2. Furthermore, you cannot have different keystones on weapon swap. Dual specialization only enables you to take minor and notable passive nodes.

Best Keystone Passive Skills in PoE 2

There are numerous keystones you can take in this game. But, we will only highlight the ones we think are the best keystone passives in Path of Exile 2. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

Giant’s Blood

Location: Lower-left portion from the STR starting position on the passive tree.

If you decide to play the Titan ascendancy class in Path of Exile 2, then you might want to consider getting Giant’s Blood. This keystone passive enables you to wield a couple of two-handed weapons, particularly swords, maces, and axes.

Because of its effects, it has the potential to create completely broken melee builds in PoE 2. This is because two-handed weapons, by nature, allow you to deal huge amounts of damage. To make the Giant’s Blood keystone count, you should consider crafting endgame weapons.

The only thing that you have to worry about here is the insane attributes required for you to wield two heavy weapons at the same time. To address this, you have to create an attribute-stacking build that focuses on STR (considering the keystone’s position on the passive skill tree).

Chaos Inoculation

Location: Upper right side of the passive tree.

Chaos Inoculation works similarly to its Path of Exile 1 counterpart, which is probably why its position in the tree is also the same in PoE2. When you take “CI,” your maximum HP is just one point. In exchange, you become completely immune to chaos damage! And by the way, this effect applies to both hits and damage over time mechanics.

Now, you are probably asking how you could prevent yourself from dying, seeing that you only have one HP left. Well, your survivability heavily relies upon energy shield and other defensive mechanics like Active Block or Dodge Roll.

Despite having the same effects as that of the original game, Chaos Inoculation actually makes you immune to bleeding in Path of Exile 2 as well. The reason behind this is that hits that would otherwise inflict bleed have to deal damage to life in order for the ailment to be applied. And because you have plenty of energy shield at your disposal, the said defensive layer absorbs the hit, thus preventing you from getting the physical damage ailment.

If you decide to take this keystone, make sure that your gear is composed of pieces that provide energy shield in some capacity.

Mind Over Matter

Location: Upper-left side of the tree.

Have you played PoE 1 before? If so, Mind Over Matter should be quite familiar to you. This keystone passive still has the same name in the sequel, though it has a much better effect when it comes to improving survivability.

You see, this Path of Exile 2 keystone now makes Mana take all damage compared to a measly 40% in the original game. In other words, whenever you are hit by the enemy, the damage is taken from mana. Furthermore, life is reduced only when your mana pool is completely depleted.

Before you rejoice, however, Mind Over Matter now has a downside, and a pretty big one at that. Your mana recovery rate is essentially cut in half, so mana sustain could be an issue if you are not properly geared. Additionally, the disadvantage of MoM applies to all forms of mana recovery, including passive regeneration, mana leech, and mana recovery from flasks.

To resolve that, you not only have to possess an insanely large mana pool, but you also need to invest in more mana leech/recovery from gear and passive skills.

Mind Over Matter is quite useful for spellcasters like the Witch and the Sorceress, which is just appropriate given that these PoE 2 classes are not usually known for their great survivability compared to others.

Iron Reflexes

Location: Bottom part of the passive tree.

Do you want to greatly increase your armor value so that damage from hits becomes almost negligible? If you choose the Warrior or the Mercenary as your starter class in Path of Exile 2 Early Access, then perhaps you can spare a skill point to take Iron Reflexes.

Iron Reflexes is a keystone passive that works in the same way as its PoE 1 counterpart. It converts evasion from all sources—may it be from gear, accessories, and passive skills—to armor.

The main appeal of this keystone passive in the original game is to gain access to spell suppression, which is a defensive layer that cuts spell damage in half. Spell suppression, in case you don’t know, can only be acquired from evasion-based gear.

Although spell suppression is still not available in the game at the time of writing, it is possible that GGG will add it to PoE2 at some point. If that is the case, we will see a lot of people taking Iron Reflexes without a doubt!

Zealot’s Oath

Location: Upper-left side of the passive tree.

Easily reachable by PoE 2 classes that start from the STR-INT position, the current iteration of Zealot’s Oath is so much better than the original.

For the uninitiated, the old Zealot’s Oath used to make life regeneration apply to energy shield in the past. Although this was useful, the fact that you couldn’t regenerate life through normal means makes this keystone fitting only to niche builds.

Fast forward to today and you have a more superior version of Zealot’s Oath. Now, life recovery from regeneration is still there, so the effect of this keystone only kicks in when your life is full.

Despite not being able to recharge energy shield, the fact that you can lean on life recovery to top it up is incredibly powerful. That’s why you need to invest in life regeneration and life leech if you are going to take this keystone passive.

In addition, Zealot’s Oath is theoretically powerful when paired with Eternal Youth—another passive skill that we will discuss later in this Path of Exile 2 keystone passives guide.

Acrobatics

Location: Far right side of the passive tree.

We see Acrobatics as a great one for PoE 2 builds that are created solely for the purpose of fighting bosses. This keystone is quite accessible for classes that begin at the DEX and DEX-INT locations on the passive tree.

So, why did we say that Acrobatics is an amazing node for boss killers? The Dodge Roll allows you to completely avoid damage from hits and projectiles. But, the problem with this mechanic is that you are still susceptible to powerful slams, which the bosses in the game often do.

With Acrobatics allocated, you can evade all hits at the cost of having a 50% less evasion rating. Despite the keystone’s usefulness in these situations, its downside is quite brutal, which is why we don’t recommend it for mapping builds.

If you really want the defensive power that Acrobatics provides, then you should utilize the Dodge Roll quite frequently as well.

Resolute Technique

Location: Left side of the tree near the Warrior starting zone.

It is absolutely necessary to cap your accuracy in Path of Exile 2. This is because not being able to hit the enemy is an actual decrease in your overall DPS. Although sacrificing a few mod slots on your gear to reach a 100% chance to hit is a common practice, taking Resolute Technique is a viable alternative to achieve that.

Resolute Technique is the same in both name and function as its PoE 1 counterpart. We recommend that you take this while you are still leveling up since critical strike is really only worth it on endgame builds anyway. You can remove the Resolute Technique just by going to “The Hooded One” in town for some PoE 2 Currency.

Thanks to this keystone, you can focus on getting more damage-boosting modifiers instead of accuracy, allowing you to kill monsters more quickly.

Whispers of Doom

Location: Top portion of the passive tree.

If you have played this game’s highly successful predecessor, you are probably confused as to why we are talking about Whispers of Doom in a guide that specifically talks about keystone passives in Path of Exile 2. Well, that is because it is no longer a notable passive skill as GGG decided to make it a bonafide keystone in the sequel!

Now, there are a couple of noteworthy changes from the original, so listen carefully. Besides the fact that it is now a keystone passive, Whispers of Doom comes with an apparent downside, where the activation delay of curses is doubled. What does this mean?

In PoE 2, curses that you manually cast yourself have a short delay before enemies feel their effects. To circumvent this, you can utilize “Blasphemy” or some “Curse on Hit” mechanics.

Blasphemy is a meta-skill that allows you to link curse spells to it. These curses are then transformed into auras. As a result, you simply run around the map, and monsters in range will be cursed in the process.

Despite the seeming disadvantage that this keystone now possesses, Whispers of Doom is still essential for most PoE2 builds because of the many curse spells available in the game.

Heartstopper

Location: Right side of the passive tree, near the DEX classes starting point.

Being a player of the original game, you might think that the Trickster ascendancy class has returned in PoE2. But, that is only because this next keystone passive skill bears the same name as one of its ascendancy nodes.

Heartstopper rewards those who have a more active playstyle by making them take significantly less damage from damage over time effects. This incentivizes you to move in and out of dangerous areas as quickly as you can.

You might find this quite useful if you are playing the Deadeye or the Pathfinder. If you have the skill points to spare, you can even allocate this when using the new Mercenary class as well!

Pain Attunement

Location: Far left side of the passive tree. Easily accessible by STR and STR-INT classes.

Pain Attunement is an incredible keystone passive meant for Path of Exile 2 builds that have a very high chance to land critical hits. When allocated, this passive skill grants a 30% more critical damage bonus when on low life. However, this also reduces your crit damage by the same amount when your HP is above 70%.

In order to get the most out of Pain Attunement, you have to utilize mechanics that would bring your maximum life down to a considerably low level. At the time of making this guide, we still do not know if Petrified Blood will be in the sequel or not.

But if GGG is adding it as part of the game, you could somehow incorporate that into your list of ongoing buffs to take advantage of the 30% critical damage bonus this keystone provides.

By the way, you are considered in “low life” if your HP goes at or below 30%. This is a bit of an adjustment given that the original game considered you as such if you are below 50% of your maximum life.

Unwavering Stance

Location: Lower left side of the STR starting position, though much nearer than Giant’s Blood.

Before we talk about this next PoE2 keystone passive skill, it is important to define the “stun threshold” first. The stun threshold is calculated based on a percentage of your maximum life. To put it simply, if you receive enough damage from the enemy’s assault, you will be stunned after some time.

That said, Unwavering Stance effectively doubles your stun threshold, making you less likely to get stunned. This is even more so when you are playing a life-stacking build in Path of Exile 2!

Do keep in mind that this keystone passive has a very huge trade-off in that you can no longer use the Dodge Roll when it’s allocated. Therefore, Unwavering Stance is more suited for melee builds, particularly those with relatively large health pools and insane armor.

Evasion-based classes like the Ranger and Mercenary, on the other hand, might want to stay away from Unwavering Stance.

Elemental Equilibrium

Location: Bottom-right side of the passive tree.

It seems that GGG really wants you to make good use of the new dual specialization feature in PoE 2, especially if you want to take Elemental Equilibrium as part of your build.

In case you are new to this game, elemental exposure reduces the enemy’s resistance to a specific element. For instance, fire exposure reduces the fire resistance of affected targets by a considerable percentage.

That said, Elemental Equilibrium enables you to inflict elemental exposure but not with the particular element associated with your attack’s damage type. If you want to inflict lightning exposure, for example, you have to hit enemies with an attack that deals fire damage instead.

We believe that the effects of this keystone passive, as well as how they are applied, are intentional. This encourages you to do weapon swapping and take full advantage of Elemental Equilibrium.

It is important to note that you can only apply elemental exposure if you “hit” the enemy. In other words, you cannot inflict the exposure debuff through damage over time mechanics.

Glancing Blows

Location: Situated at the bottom half of the passive tree, specifically at the lower right.

Active Block is a new mechanic in PoE 2 that allows you to manually block attacks via the new “Raise Shield” skill. There is one problem with it, though, in that this skill is only available on STR-based shields. What if your build requires you to use a Spirit Shield for more intelligence and ES? How do you block attacks, then?

Luckily, Glancing Blows is there to save you! This keystone in Path of Exile 2 effectively doubles your block chance, allowing you to passively block more often. The trade-off is that you take 50% damage from blocked hits instead of nothing, but that is perfectly fine.

Although you still need to invest in modifiers that improve block chance even with this keystone allocated, you only need a few to attain the block cap thanks to Glancing Blows.

Eldritch Battery

Location: The top portion of the passive tree, similar to its location in PoE.

Eldritch Battery is a rather popular keystone back in the original game. It was utilized to make energy shield protect mana instead of life. This also allowed you to spend ES when using skills, which was great if you had trouble sustaining mana.

Well, even though this keystone has the same name, its effect is now vastly different in the sequel. As you can see in the image above, Eldritch Battery converts all of your energy shield to mana. For this reason, this keystone passive is quite appealing for mana-stacking builds in Path of Exile 2!

In addition, Eldritch Battery works really well with Mind Over Matter. If you can recall, MoM makes mana take all damage first before life is reduced. For this reason, getting Eldritch Battery should be considered if Mind Over Matter is allocated on your passive tree as well.

It should also go without saying that your gear should be composed of pieces that have energy shield as their main defensive layer. This is to further increase the amount of mana you gain from the conversion.

Vaal Pact

Location: The bottom left side of the passive tree.

Early on, you do not have access to gear that would enable you to clear maps in several minutes. However, once you’ve decked out your character with some pretty awesome items, you could take advantage of Vaal Pact to greatly improve their chances of survival.

Vaal Pact has a pretty useful effect of making recovery from life leech instant. As long as your character hits hard and fast, they are unlikely to die in most circumstances.

If you are new to Path of Exile 2, you might want to get acquainted with the game first before taking Vaal Pact. This is because this keystone prevents you from using your Life Flask.

Aside from that, Vaal Pact is only ever useful when you consistently attack enemies. After all, you cannot leech life from your foes if you’re not hitting them, right?

Eternal Youth

Location: Upper-right side of the tree, easily accessible to classes that begin from the DEX-INT starting location.

Eternal Youth is incredibly strong for Path of Exile 2 builds that rely on energy shield as their main defensive layer. The passive ES regeneration applies to life recharge, while life recovery provided by your flasks restores energy shield when this keystone is taken.

The best way to utilize your Life Flask if you have Eternal Youth is to use it before your energy shield reaches zero. This is to ensure that your HP is recovered to the maximum. It may take some time to get used to this style of play, but it will pay off!

In case you’re not aware, energy shield recharge has a four-second delay in PoE 2. This means that your ES only starts recharging after a brief period of not taking damage. This delay can be shortened by taking the appropriate passive nodes on the tree. The question is: are you willing to spend some points to get them?

Anyway, Monks, with their fast attacks and impressive martial arts abilities, may find Eternal Youth helpful in keeping themselves from dying at an inopportune time.

Avatar of Fire

Location: Leftmost portion from the STR starting area on the passive skill tree.

There were PoE builds that relied on damage conversion to convert 100% of physical damage to a specific element. Well, the same thing goes for Path of Exile 2, except that damage conversion is a lot more accessible now than it was in the past.

Avatar of Fire is one such keystone passive that perfectly exemplifies that. It converts most of your physical damage to fire damage. It also prevents you from dealing other types of damage except for fire.

Depending on what PoE 2 build you have, you might still need to address the remaining 25% physical damage somehow. Perhaps, sacrificing a modifier on one of your pieces of gear will suffice.

Final Thoughts

Keystone passive skills in PoE 2 are quite powerful because they can give you access to certain mechanics that are not available through other means.

We find Giant’s Blood, Chaos Inoculation, and Mind Over Matter to be the top three keystones in Path of Exile 2, primarily because of the benefits they provide.

Titan players will love Giant’s Blood because it allows them to dual-wield weapons that would normally require two hands to use. Not only are these weapons capable of dishing out unspeakable amounts of pain, but the keystone itself does not have a damage penalty, which is borderline overpowered in our opinion.

Chaos Inoculation is similar to its PoE 1 counterpart; not that it’s a bad thing. In fact, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! That is probably the philosophy that GGG had when they copied this keystone to the sequel.

And then you have Mind Over Matter. Sorceresses and Witches will find this very useful in helping them survive the later acts. But more importantly, if this is paired with Eldritch Battery, classes that typically die after receiving a huge hit could withstand the punishment and live on!

There you have it! We hope that you’ve found our Path of Exile 2 keystone passives guide useful. As PoE 2 Early Access is fast approaching, which of these keystones are you going to allocate? Share your thoughts in the comments!