[POE 2 0.55] Cluster Grenade Mortar Cannon Gemling. The Smoothest League Starter I Have Ever Played

Overview

Mortar Cannon paired with Cluster Grenade turns the Mercenary’s crossbow into a deploy-and-move totem build. Ballistas are planted, they fire overlapping grenade volleys that shotgun into packs, and the character keeps walking. The creator ran it from level one to the mid-seventies without a single stall point, and calls it the smoothest league start they have played in Path of Exile 2.

The appeal is how little the build asks for. It leans on Gemling Legionnaire’s gem flexibility rather than on any specific unique, and the showcase footage is run on a level 59 campaign crossbow still clearing tier 6 maps comfortably. That gap between gear quality and actual performance is the strongest argument for it as a fresh-league opener — the damage floor is high enough that upgrades feel optional rather than mandatory.

Levelling does not use the cluster grenade setup at all. From act one through roughly level 52 the character plays a dual-weapon-set crossbow shot loop — Permafrost Bolts on one set to freeze, Fragmentation Rounds on the other to detonate the frozen packs. The swap into the ballista/cluster-grenade endgame shell happens afterwards, and Gemling’s respec-friendly nature makes that transition painless.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Playable from level one with no gear prerequisites — a genuine start-to-maps single character
• Extremely cheap; the creator is still clearing on a campaign-tier crossbow deep into maps
• Deploy-and-move gameplay: place ballistas, keep running, let them work
• Overlapping grenades shotgun, so single-target damage is far better than a clear-focused totem build usually gets
• Gemling Legionnaire leaves several endgame routes open (evasion, life, CI, Headhunter, Mageblood) rather than locking a path

Cons

• The particle load is genuinely heavy — the creator had to update GPU drivers, and warns of lag as the build scales
• The showcase stops at tier 6 maps and level 75; deep endgame performance is projected, not demonstrated
• The build is substantially someone else’s design (Lazy Exile’s one-button ballista cluster grenade setup) — the creator credits this openly
• Levelling uses a completely different skill setup, so there are two setups to learn

Key Skills

• Cluster Grenade — the payoff skill; overlapping grenade volleys that shotgun on dense packs and on bosses
• Mortar Cannon — the ballista/totem platform that fires the grenades while you reposition
• Permafrost Bolts — levelling half of the dual-weapon-set loop, freezes packs
• Fragmentation Rounds — levelling detonator, explodes the frozen packs from the second weapon set

Gear & Anointments

Crossbow is the only slot that really matters — raw weapon DPS drives the ballistas directly, and the creator notes an upgrade from ~316 to ~340 DPS alongside quality and an extra socket is the single biggest jump available. Everything else is generic rare gear chasing life, resistances and attributes. No unique items are required at any point. Late-game direction is deliberately left open: the creator floats evasion, life, Chaos Inoculation with Ghastly jewels, Headhunter or Mageblood as separate endgame identities rather than one prescribed path. Specific late uniques should be confirmed against the source video.

Credits & Source

Build credited to Travic, who in turn credits the original one-button ballista cluster grenade design to Lazy Exile. See the source video for the full build’s gameplay footage + voice commentary: [POE 2 0.55] Cluster Grenade Mortar Cannon Gemling. The Smoothest League Starter I Have Ever Played.