[PoE 2] - Patch 0.5.5 BUILD IS DONE! - Gameplay Showcase & Explaining My Latest Upgrades

Overview

Poeguy007’s final 0.5.5 setup is a Cluster Grenade ballista-totem Mercenary that trades button-mashing for raw throughput. Totems do the aiming: you drop a ballista roughly once per second, they fire cluster grenades into whatever is on screen, and the pack evaporates before you have to think about positioning. The creator runs it at level 97 with the full Atlas tree unlocked and describes it as a lazy, controller-friendly build with no mana management at all.

The defensive half is what makes it stand out. Rage is stacked as a defensive stat — maximum rage feeds increased armour through the tree — and the build face-tanks Bodak slams and Raven Lord telegraphs during the showcase. Fully-rolled map modifiers, including reduced player resistances and ignite ground, are run without reading them.

The guide ships in two tiers. A cheap league-start version is explicitly playable under one Divine, and a max version layered on top once currency exists. This video documents the transition between the two.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Effectively a one-button build — cluster grenade totems handle clear and single target, everything else is situational
• No mana management whatsoever, and no targeting required
• Genuinely tanky rather than glass — high armour scaled off maximum rage, plus Spirit of the Bear for a large damage-taken reduction
• Runs fully-juiced maps with every modifier rolled without needing to filter rolls
• Functional at very low budget; the creator ran the same core under one Divine on day one
• Controller-friendly because the rotation is a single repeated cast

Cons

• Gear-gated at the top end — the max version wants a Fireflower with +4 fire skills, a body armour around 2,000 armour with 30+ spirit, and the Grenadier anointment
• Grenade cooldown recovery is a trap stat here; it does nothing for the totem version, so several tree nodes have to be unlearned on the transition
• Weapon-slot order matters: leaving the crossbow in slot one silently loses a large chunk of damage once Rigwald’s Ferocity is socketed
• Simulacrum is fiddly to set up in PoE 2 and the creator abandoned the attempt on camera

Key Skills

• Cluster Grenade — the entire damage output; wants level 21 and a +2/+3 Prism of Beliefs jewel
• Mortar Cannon — the totem vessel, levelled to 20 for totem durability
• Eternal Rage — spirit gem that pins rage at maximum so the armour scaling never drops off
• Leap Slam — pure traversal, kept on a spare mace in the swap slot
• Jade Shield / Volt Grenade — situational guard and a shock application for the hardest bosses

Gear & Anointments

Crossbow build, so the weapon carries the build: physical damage, +3 to +5 projectile gem levels, and crucially +2 to maximum summoned ballista totems. The body armour should be an Ornate Plate for the life-regeneration implicit, targeting roughly 2,000 armour and at least 30 spirit so Eternal Rage fits. Helmet wants 800+ armour with a Soul Core of Ferocity for maximum rage; an uncorrupted exceptional base plus a Raven Touch Shard opens a second anointment later.

Grenadier is the mandatory amulet anointment on the max version, paired with a +4 Fireflower. Molten One’s Gift matters because the ascendancy’s free armour break then applies to fire damage. Kitava’s/Kadigan’s Epiphany gloves add a socketed rare jewel, and a Blood Magic timeless jewel converts several tree nodes into armour-per-maximum-rage.

Endgame Notes

The showcase covers Arbiter of Divinity, Bodak and Raven Lord, plus fully-juiced tainted ritual maps — the creator’s preferred currency farm, and how he found a Mageblood on a second map. Ritual tribute scales as you progress the Nameless chain, ending around 40k per map.

Credits & Source

Build credited to Poeguy007. See the source video for the full build’s gameplay footage + voice commentary: [PoE 2] - Patch 0.5.5 BUILD IS DONE! - Gameplay Showcase & Explaining My Latest Upgrades.