Best New Support Gems in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt
09.04.2025 - 16:01:19
Game Guides , Path of Exile 2
Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt introduced over 100 support gems and some of them are pretty interesting! In this article, we will go over some of the best new support gems that you can use on your next build.
Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt introduced over 100 support gems and some of them are pretty interesting! Before we dive into individual gems, if you haven’t already, check out New Skills in PoE 2 Patch 0.2.0 Revealed — it lays out all the new skills that these support gems are meant to complement and gives context to how patch 0.2.0 expands build options.
Best New Support Gems in PoE 2 Patch 0.2.0
We will group the support gems based on their color so that you will have a much easier time reading what you want. Let’s begin with the red support gems, shall we?
Best Red Support Gems
Ancestral Call
There are plenty of new strike skills in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt, one of them is the new Whirling Slash from using spears. That said, Ancestral Call is a pretty awesome support gem to use for strike skills because it enables such abilities to hit two additional times.
Ancestral Call is not only limited to strike skills, though, as it can also be used by slams. Socketing Ancestral Call into Stampede or Hammer of the Gods, for example, will increase the area of effect of these skills by 20%, thus hitting more monsters on the screen!
Defy
The term “surrounded” is a new condition added as part of Patch 0.2.0. Basically, you are considered as being surrounded when you have at least five enemies within three meters of you.
That said, Defy makes it so that the supported skill deals the highest amount of damage every time it is used. This is due to the game’s “Lucky” mechanic, where the highest of two rolls [of anything] is always applied.
You can use Defy on pretty much any attack skill in the game, but it might be best for skills that deal AoE damage. Skills like Earthshatter, Stampede, and Whirling Slash come to mind.
Desperation
Another support gem that requires you to be surrounded, Desperation allows you to use supported skills even though you do not have sufficient mana to cast them. This is quite helpful when you have items with the “+ to Level of Skills” modifier. That is because the higher the level of your skill is, the steeper the mana cost.
For instance, a high physical damage mace with +7 to All Melee Skills would make Hammer of the Gods hit like a truck. However, its mana cost greatly increases because of that, especially when you factor in the cost multipliers of each support gem you use for HoTG.
So, having Desperation does help in situations where there are more than five monsters within close proximity.
Direstrike
Direstrike is a support gem that is socketed to your persistent auras like Herald of Ice, Wind Dancer, or Ghost Dance, among others. What it does is it gives you a hefty damage boost when your HP drops below 35% of your maximum.
Socketing Direstrike to any of your auras is actually a no-brainer as any attack-based build should benefit from it. However, it does require an additional 20 Spirit to activate. You can read our Complete Guide to Get More Spirit in Path of Exile 2 [0.2.0] to learn how to get more of this resource.
Expedite
Grenade skills in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt have relatively long cooldowns, which is why it is best that you do something about it to make it feel less clunky. One way you can improve grenades is by using the new Expedite support gem.
Expedite significantly lowers the amount of time needed for grenades to detonate. This is especially useful if you want to go for a PoE 2 build that uses Explosive Grenade as the main skill.
You can also use Expedite on Detonating Arrow, as well as the new Explosive Spear.
First Blood
Bleeding is a rather powerful ailment in Patch 0.2.0. In fact, new Huntress builds typically go for Rake early on to deal with the monsters in the campaign. Having said that, First Blood almost always inflicts bleeding on the initial hit, especially if the enemy you are attacking is still at full life.
Take note that bleeding is a physical damage ailment, so you have to make sure that you still have some of your physical damage left and is not converted to any other damage type just yet. You could equip gloves with “Physical Damage to Attacks” to resolve the issue.
Greatwood
This next support gem is a promising one, particularly for those who love playing totem builds in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt. Greatwood essentially limits you to placing only one totem at a time. However, any modifiers that you take (either on the passive tree or elsewhere) that increase your totem limit will provide more benefits to your totem skill.
Totem builds that use the Warbringer, Titan, or even the new Tactician ascendancy class, can find great use of this support gem. That is because they can easily get at least two more summoned totems by allocating the aptly named Watchtowers and Ancestral Artifice notable passive skills.
Incision
Incision is a nice complementary support gem for First Blood. While First Blood can already make enemies bleed, Incision is more consistent as it does not have any conditions you have to meet in order for it to work.
What this particular support gem does is it inflicts Incision when you use a supported attack skill. Incision, in this context, is a debuff that would make the affected target more susceptible to bleeding with your subsequent attack hits.
If you are playing the Huntress in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt, Whirling Slash and Rapid Assault can certainly benefit from Incision the most.
Refraction
Refraction is probably one of the best support gems to use for the Tactician ascendancy class, especially when the “Whoever Pays Best” node is allocated. When you place a Banner with at least 25 Valour, you gain a buff called Refractive Plating.
What Refractive Plating does is it makes your armor also mitigate elemental damage, as well as physical damage, thus making you incredibly tanky when you get mobbed in maps and other densely-populated areas.
Ideally, you want to put Refraction into Defiance Banner since the said banner skill improves armor and evasion when planted. However, you could use it on War Banner and Dread Banner if you like.
Rip
Rip is primarily for sustaining yourself in high-tier maps. Every time you kill a bleeding enemy with a supported attack skill, you create a Blood Remnant that increases your life regeneration rate by 10% each, up to a maximum of 100%.
For this support gem to feel more consistent, you need to have a very high chance of inflicting bleed with your skills. Fortunately, the aforementioned First Blood and Incision greatly assists you on this, so utilizing Rip to improve your survivability is something you might want to consider.
Steadfast
When GGG released the patch notes for Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt, a lot of players were concerned that the monsters had become more deadly in Patch 0.2.0. Well, that is an understatement but one thing you have to know is that your elemental ailment threshold is reduced considerably, likely to keep you on your toes while mapping or bossing. This means that monsters now have a higher chance to inflict Freeze, Shock, and Ignite than ever before!
Fortunately, all is not lost and that is what Steadfast does. Steadfast basically increases your ailment threshold by 100%, but only if you are using channeling skills like Flameblast, Snipe, or Incinerate.
GGG has introduced a lot of powerful support gems in this update, though some of them have certain conditions that have to be satisfied in order for them to work. So, bear that in mind as you read the other entries on this list.
Tireless
Some skills in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt can empower your next attack, allowing it to do more than its default configuration. For instance, Infernal Cry provides extra fire damage to your next attack. Tireless could help extend that to two attacks.
Tireless is a new support gem in PoE 2 that provides a 30% chance for empowered attacks to not consume its “empowered” status. This allows you to initiate skills that deal a substantial amount of damage in quick succession.
One of the best use cases for this support gem is the Ice Twister Amazon build. Basically, you cast Barrage which will then empower your Twisters to create additional twisters. Imagine being able to do this twice in a row, you could populate the screen with powerful twisters as a result!
Unabating
Spear of Solaris and Hammer of the Gods are just some really devastating abilities that are only hampered by their noticeably slower attack times. Well, this next support gem should help with that.
Unabating basically increases your armor by 25% per quarter second of attack time of supported skill. To put it simply, Unabating makes you incredibly tanky while you wait for your skill to commence and finish the enemy off.
Only use Unabating on skills that have relatively long attack times, such as the ones mentioned in the first paragraph of this support gem.
Unyielding
Many players rarely utilize recoup effects in Path of Exile 2, mainly because of the fact that the amount of HP you recover from it is spread over an 8-second window. However, recoup is actually pretty helpful considering that the life recovered is compounded when you are constantly getting hit by the enemy.
Unyielding is a support gem that allows you to recoup 8% of the damage you have taken while casting skills that have long cast times. As you can see, Unyielding can work in conjunction with Unabating to keep you alive while you are casting your damaging abilities.
If you are going to use both Unyielding and Unabating together, make sure that you use the Perfect Jeweller’s Orb on your primary skills so that you can use all of its support gem slots. You can buy Perfect Jeweller’s Orbs in our PoE 2 Store.
Best Green Support Gems
Blindside
When you are playing the Ice Twister Amazon build in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt, you want to be able to land critical hits on the enemy so that you can eliminate them really fast. Blindside can certainly help you with that as it provides you a hefty boost in critical hit chance, as well as a critical damage bonus when hitting blind enemies with supported skills.
Take note that although Twister can blind enemies on their own, socketing Blindside into the said skill will prevent it from applying the Blind status effect. Thankfully, there is a Blind Support gem you can insert into Whirlwind Slash so that it can have a higher chance to blind enemies prior to turning the Whirlwind into smaller twisters.
Mercenary Builds that use a crossbow in PoE 2 can also benefit from Blindside. This is by using the Flash Grenade first followed by any attack skill that is supported by Blindside.
Charged Shots
Charged Shots is a support gem that is only meant to be used by bow skills like Lightning Arrow and Ice Shot. Lightning Shot seems to be the perfect fit, though, because of the extra lightning damage it can get from this support gem.
How is Charged Shots activated? Well, you simply fire the bow skill you have socketed Charged Shots into and it will automatically empower every third shot, granting it extra lightning damage. What’s more, Charged Shots refunds the mana cost of the third shot. This could help prevent the issue of getting mana starved by spamming a high-level Lightning Arrow.
Of course, you will need something like the Thief’s Torment to truly prevent that from happening. Do you want to buy Thief’s Torment in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt? If so, visit our PoE 2 Store today!
Deliberation
Bow and spear users in PoE 2 Patch 0.2.0 may find this next support gem pretty useful to their cause. Deliberation provides support skills with 20% more damage at the cost of a 30% movement speed penalty. While the downside may seem too much, just know that you can use the Summon Rhoa Mount skill to effectively negate that!
Alternatively, the Pathfinder can make use of Deliberation on any viable skill provided that the “Running Assault” ascendancy node is allocated. For those who do not know, Running Assault grants a 50% less movement speed penalty when using skills while moving.
Excoriate
Tempest Bell has been hit hard by the nerfs implemented in Patch 0.2.0. However, Excoriate could help bring some of the power back by giving the bell 10% more melee damage for each elemental ailment on the enemies it hits.
Some prior setup must be done in order to get the most out of Excoriate. Ice Strike empowered by Charged Staff can already provide Freeze and Shock, respectively. If you have items that contain the “Fire Damage to Attacks” modifier, that will solve your Ignite problem.
Of course, Excoriate can be used on other melee attack skills of your choosing. Just remember about the prior setup needed to take full advantage of this green support gem.
Pursuit
The Huntress is a new class in Path of Exile 2 that encourages a hybrid melee-range playstyle, where you gain certain bonuses if you follow up a ranged attack with a melee hit or a melee hit with a ranged attack. Pursuit is pretty much like that.
What Pursuit does is it grants supported skills 25% more damage if you hit an enemy that was just damaged by a projectile attack. This damage boost is only available to you if you initiate a melee attack within eight seconds from the last projectile hit.
A good combo that can bring out Pursuit’s damage boost is Lightning Spear and Primal Strikes. Throw as many Lightning Spears as needed until the target suffers from Shock. After that, use Primal Strikes to deal massive amounts of damage!
Reach
Reach grants a 35% "more" area effect bonus on supported skills. In Path of Exile 2, "more" simply means that it’s multiplicative, so you are getting better value over modifiers that contain "increased" in their wording.
That said, Reach does have a pretty substantial downside in that it makes your attacks less accurate against monsters that are within two meters of you. To circumvent that, you could allocate the Resolute Technique if you are playing the Warrior Class.
With Reach, just imagine the massive area that is covered by Hammer of the Gods when you put the said support gem into HoTG!
Retreat
Retreat is akin to Pursuit, albeit for projectile attacks specifically. It looks like Lightning Spear and Primal Strikes are a match made in Heaven because the same combo that you use for Pursuit may also be utilized by Retreat! Just make sure that Retreat is socketed into Lightning Spear and not into Primal Strikes.
If you do not like that combo, you could go for Whirling Slash and Twister. Put Retreat as part of Twister’s support gems. Take note that Whirling Slash, in this instance, is only meant to create more twisters and is not intended as your main damage dealer.
Support gems that enhance spell damage or projectiles like Mysticism or Voltaic-type effects will be particularly useful for Spark-based builds. For those interested, the PoE 2 [0.2.0] Spark Stormweaver Build Guide shows how Spark has been utilized in patch 0.2.0, how to scale projectile spells, and what support combinations work best.
Salvo
When you read Salvo’s description, you might find it quite confusing but it’s actually really simple. It works pretty much the same way as Unleash except for projectile attack skills.
Salvo enables the support skill to fire two additional projectiles for every seal consumed (up to a maximum of six). This is best used for skills that do not require manual aiming like Twister. If you have it on Twister, you can easily populate the screen on a single cast (provided that you have all three seals).
Single Out
Single Out is best used in conjunction with the new Bloodhound’s Mark. Since bleeding is a physical damage ailment in Path of Exile 2, and Bloodhound’s Mark makes enemies release a blood explosion, the "Armor Broken" status of affected enemies will allow you to deal more physical damage from hits. This makes your bleeding damage and physical damage from hits (from your other skills) become even more devastating!
Tumult
The Huntress could be developed into a potent physical damage build in PoE 2 with skills like Rake, Blood Hunt, and Rapid Assault. If that is what you are aiming for, Tumult is a nice support gem to use for one of those skills.
Tumult consumes a Frenzy Charge, and in doing so, allows the supported skill to break the enemy’s armor equal to 50% of the damage dealt. This is very helpful in making sure that you deal the most amount of physical damage possible with your subsequent attacks.
Twofold
This is another support gem that can benefit the Huntress or any spear-wielding build in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt. Twofold allows supported skills to gain double the benefits from consuming charges.
If you are playing the Huntress, you can use this on Windserpent’s Fury, Storm Lance, Lightning Spear, and Whirlwind Lance as they can greatly benefit from Frenzy Charge consumption.
Unerring Power
A sizable number of the new support gems in Patch 0.2.0 have certain downsides to balance them out. However, Unerring Power simply gives you all of the benefits without any disadvantages!
Unerring Power grants more accuracy and less life/mana consumption on supported skills that can be empowered. Warrior and Huntress builds in PoE 2 can make great use of Unerring Power, though some arrangements can be made for other classes as well.
For instance, Barrage can be utilized by the Lightning Arrow Deadeye to plant more Lightning Rods to the ground for huge amounts of damage!
Untouchable
Untouchable is similar to Unabating discussed earlier, though it provides evasion rather than armor. This is mainly utilized by skills that have considerably longer attack times like the Spear of Solaris. However, if you are going to use this on Hammer of the Gods, which is typically cast by armor-clad characters, you have to invest in evasion-based gear and passive skills to get the most out of the Untouchable support gem.
Volt
The Lightning Spear comes to mind when talking about this last green support gem. Volt makes the supported projectile skill gain up to 15% extra lightning damage, as well as the ability to chain three times.
You have to accumulate 30 Voltaic Charges to get the full amount. Fortunately, that doesn’t take a long time to accomplish since you only have to travel 10 meters (which is kind of short). Just walk around and look at Volt’s icon at the top-left corner of the screen. Once you have all 30 stacks, then throw your Lightning Spear and obliterate your enemies with massive lightning damage!
Best Blue Support Gems
Ambrosia
Ambrosia is a support gem that can actually benefit builds that use either attack skills or spells. When socketed into an appropriate skill, Ambrosia gives it more oomph by providing extra lightning damage based on the amount of mana flask charges consumed upon use. Because it takes 20% of your mana flask every time you cast a supported skill, Ambrosia is best socketed into your most damaging abilities.
Builds that allocate the Blood Magic keystone passive can also make great use of Ambrosia. This is because such builds do not need the Mana Flask to function, especially when utilizing their primary skills.
If you want to bring out the best of the Ambrosia support gem, equip a mana flask that has "Increased Amount Recovered" and "Increased Charges" as its modifiers.
Burgeon
Do you like to use Incinerate? If so, you will definitely love this next support gem! Burgeon allows supported skills to deal up to 40% more damage while channeling. Right now, Incinerate is the only skill that lets you channel it indefinitely. That’s why socketing Burgeon into it is a no-brainer!
Commandment
Minions have been nerfed substantially in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt. Well, that was the assumption anyway when GGG released the full patch notes for Patch 0.2.0. However, most of the power has just been spread out across gear and support gems and the next one we are going to talk about here exemplifies that.
Commandment allows you to use your minions’ command skills more frequently. The Skeletal Frost Mage can certainly benefit from this the most given that its command skill can eliminate monsters on the screen with massive cold damage bursts!
It is still unclear whether spectres that you have raised from the dead (using Bind Spectre) can use command skills, but if they can, then definitely try the new Commandment support gem on them, stat!
Crazed Minions
The good thing about minions in PoE 2 is that they can revive shortly after they are dead. Why not empower them to deal more damage as soon as they resurrect themselves? Well, that is the purpose of Crazed Minions!
Crazed Minions provide a hefty 30% more damage boost on your minions that have revived in the past four seconds. We are not sure if this buff only lasts for several seconds or not. Despite that ambiguity, Crazed Minions can give your allies a much-needed increase in power.
Enormity
Your skeletal minions and raised spectres can make great use of this next support gem. Enormity makes minions from your supported skills to gain 20% size, damage, and maximum life. However, this comes with a heavy price (no pun intended) because it also increases the Spirit cost of the empowered minions significantly.
Enormity could be inserted into a spectre minion that deals massive amounts of damage already. Having only a few of these minions on the battlefield should be enough to take care of monsters and bosses.
Muster
A typical minion build in Path of Exile 2 has at least several different types of minions summoned at a time. Muster just makes it so that your primary minions deal a lot of damage based on the different types of persistent minions you have summoned.
Let’s say you want to have the Skeletal Storm Mage as your primary minion. When you have the Skeletal Warrior, Skeletal Cleric, Skeletal Frost Mage, and a spectre (of your choosing), your Skeletal Storm Mage now inflicts 28% more damage as a result!
Getting the most out of the Muster support gem requires some creativity on your part, so you have to decide on which allies to call forth on the field for that insane damage boost for your primary minion.
Mysticism
Spark has been heavily nerfed in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt. However, it is still surprisingly good, especially when you put this next support gem into it.
Mysticism grants a 30% increased spell damage boost when your energy shield is still at full capacity. The reason why I made Spark as the example here is that it can eliminate enemies off the screen, allowing you to cast it without getting damaged at all!
Of course, Mysticism can also be used on your other spells, though you have to be wary not to get hit.
Profanity
Hexblast has been hit hard in Patch 0.2.0 but it doesn’t have to suck, right? Well, Profanity provides 30% more chaos damage if a corpse is consumed when casting the supported skill.
Although Hexblast comes to mind due to its sheer damage potential, Profanity can be used to improve Contagion as well. In fact, there are plenty of spellcasters that utilize Contagion in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt, so you might want to give the Profanity support gem a try.
Many of the new gems buffing spells (like Profanity) or caster-minion hybrids will shine in builds that already emphasize spell damage and casting speed. If you are playing such a path, Best Caster Builds in PoE 2: Blood Mage - Chronomancer & Lich Guide [0.2.1] is a helpful reference to see how those builds use support gems to maximize DPS.
Sacrificial Lamb
When you have so many minions summoned at once, it is relatively hard for you to find the specific minions that you want, especially during combat. So, if you want to ensure that you are targeting the right minion, you might want to socket the Sacrificial Lamb support gem.
Sacrificial Lamb just makes it so that your skills that target a specific minion will always choose that minion if it is within six meters. This is best used on the Skeletal Brutes since this particular minion has the most HP among the other skeletal minion skills in PoE 2. If you want to cast Detonate Dead on the Skeletal Brutes at all times, then utilizing the Sacrificial Lamb support makes perfect sense.
Suffuse
When playing a build like the Ice Twister Amazon, for example, you would cast Frostbolt to create the chilled ground necessary for Twisters to become infused with cold damage. Well, you can increase the created chilled ground’s coverage area simply by socketing Suffuse.
Unbending
Yes, Unbending is quite similar to Unyielding in terms of mechanics, though it recoups mana instead of life when casting the supported skill. Comet, Hexblast, Flameblast, and Contagion are some of the spells that can benefit from Unbending the most.
Upwelling
Among the minion support gems mentioned so far, Upwelling seems to be the most accessible in terms of how easy it is to gain its buff. This support gem makes your minions deal 30% increased damage when you are not in full mana. You insert this into one of your persistent buffs, such as Cast on Shock, Ghost Dance, and Arctic Armour, among others. Just keep in mind that it adds 15 Spirit on top of the Spirit Cost of those skills.
If you are going to use Upwelling, you might want to forgo any mana regeneration nodes on the passive tree, as well as items that have this particular modifier. Should you need mana to cast your mana-intensive skills, simply use a Mana Flask to top your resource off.
Zenith
Are you planning to play the Lich ascendancy class in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt? If so, this last blue support gem should be used on your primary skill for sure!
Zenith grants a 30% more damage boost to the supported skill. This damage boost is only active when you are casting the supported skill while you still have 90% of your maximum mana.
Now, the reason why the Lich is the best ascendancy class to utilize Zenith is that it has “Soulless Form” which is an ascendancy node that regenerates heaps of mana per second based on a percentage of your maximum life.
With the Melting Maelstrom nerfed in Patch 0.2.0, only the Lich can easily satisfy Zenith’s requirements.
Final Thoughts
The new support gems in Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt are quite useful, especially the ones that we have highlighted in this article. We hope that you have found this guide helpful in terms of providing you with information on how to best utilize the support gems.
With that said, which support gem has caught your attention the most? Also, which one do you think should not have been included in this guide? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
If you want to bring the best out of your character, you do not only need the right support gems, but the right gear as well. Visit our PoE 2 Store today to purchase any item that you want!