Passive Skill Tree as of Version 1.0.0
Every character in Path of Exile has access to the passive skill tree [1]. The Passive Skill 'Tree' is a large network of passive Buffs and raw Attributes increases for your character. All classes are on the same tree, but start in different places. When you level up or complete certain quests, you gain one skill point. You can use that point to activate a node, but you must be connected to that node. This is how the character's passive 'path' is formed.
While the passive tree (sometimes referred to in-game as the Skilldrasil or Skill Web) may seem complicated, it actually only has two parts. It can be thought of as a map, with suburbs and roads.
The clusters of related passive nodes that boost a specific area (Swords, Hammers, Archery, Fire Damage, Evasion, and so on) are like suburbs. These will form the bulk of your character's build. The pathways between these clusters, comprised entirely of nodes that give +10 to a certain Attributes, are like roads. Some of these roads can cover a great distance much quicker than if you detour through the suburbs: what may look like a short path with passive boosts could in fact be much longer than taking the +10 to attribute path.
You can see what these attributes do by pressing 'c' in-game and hovering your mouse over each of the three. Anything the attributes don't do, such as increase ranged damage or attack speed, will likely be handled by passive nodes on the skill 'tree'.
Layout
- The tree can be divided into three primary Sectors of equal size, one third of the relatively circular tree, surrounding a central wheel. They are the North or Blue sector, the Southwest or Red sector and the Southeast or Green sector.
- The North or Blue sector is also known as the Magic sector; passives there boost Int, elemental damage, Energy Shield, wand damage, minion stats, etc...everything related to magic, and the skills normally found on Blue gems.
- The Southwest or Red sector is also known as the Melee sector; passives there boost Strength, Armor, physical damage and nearly every known aspect of melee combat, as well as all skills normally found on Red gems.
- The Southeast or Green sector is also known as the Ranged sector; passives there boost ranged projectile damage, Evasion, most known aspects of ranged combat and all skills normally found on Green gems.
- As you move to the borders between sectors the passive skills available there become more hybridized between the two.
- When you start a new game, each character starts at the border of the inner wheel of the tree at a different location; the Witch for example starts at the due-north border of the inner wheel, smack in the middle of the Blue sector showing her preference for magic. If you look on the Main Page of this wiki at the wheel of character images, they are laid out showing which position they start in and therefore their preferred method of combat; the Marauder starts in the middle of the Red sector showing a preference for melee combat and the Ranger starts in the middle of the Green sector for ranged combat, with the other characters starting in a position to put them in more of a hybrid role to start.
- Although you'll have to burn a few skill points to do this, there is nothing stopping you from choosing passives to quickly get you into a different sector than your character started out with to, for example, make a melee-combat Witch, given that there are no set equipment limits on which character can equip what other than what their passive stats allow. However, also keep in mind that the campaign quests that give skill gems as rewards give gems related to the natural preference of that character, i.e. the Witch will usually only see magic-type gems. So even though making a non-standard character is possible it really isn't recommended other than for show.
Making builds
There is also an offline-ish skill-tree that can be downloaded from the forums, which allows players to refine their intended builds more easily. This program needs internet access to download the skill tree from pathofexile.com, but you only need to do this once (and whenever the skill tree is changed by patches).
Passive Nodes
Basic Passives
Значимые умения
For a list of all notables, see Category:Notable passive skills.
Notable passives can also be found on the pages of the stats they affect:
- Accuracy
- Attack Speed
- Area of Effect
- Armour
- Axes
- Block Chance
- Bows
- Buffs
- Cast Speed
- Charges
- Claws
- Cold Damage
- Critical Strike
- Critical Strike for Spells
- Curses
- Daggers
- Dual Wielding
- Fire Damage
- Elemental Damage
- Energy Shield
- Evasion
- Flasks
- Life
- Lightning Damage
- Maces
- Mana
- Minions
- Movement Speed
- One-Handed Melee Weapons
- Melee Physical Damage
- Projectiles
- Scepters
- Mines
- Resistances
- Shields
- Skill Duration
- Spell Damage
- Status Ailments
- Staves
- Stun
- Swords
- Totems
- Traps
- Two-Handed Melee Weapons
- Wands
Keystone Passives
- Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics
- Ancestral Bond
- Avatar of Fire
- Blood Magic
- Chaos Inoculation
- Conduit
- Eldritch Battery
- Elemental Equilibrium
- Ghost Reaver
- Iron Grip
- Iron Reflexes
- Necromantic Aegis
- Ondar's Guile
- Pain Attunement
- Point Blank
- Mind over Matter
- Minion Instability
- Resolute Technique
- Unwavering Stance
- Vaal Pact
- Zealot's Oath