Path of Exile 2 Builds - [0.4] Hedgewitch Blood Mage - Forum

TL;DR
Blood Mage that uses:

Overgrowing plant spells with the keystone passive Wildsurge Incantation
- Entangle as main damage dealer
- Thrashing Vines for extra damage against rares and bosses
together with Thunderstorm to trigger Overgrowth (and also Shock)
Instant Life Leech via Vitality Siphon together with Atziri's Acuity and Couture of Crimson
Critical Hits to trigger Instant Life Leech from Atziri's Acuity and extra damage

POE Ninja link

Attributes
Intelligence/Dexterity as much as we need to equip the gear/gems, the rest into strength.

Mechanics

Life Leech and Life Overflow

The downside of Life-based builds is the limited ability to scale maximum Life. This is amplified for the Blood Mage Ascendency, due to the mandatory use of Life as a resource to use skills.
The Blood Mage's skill Life Remnants, provided by the ascendency passive Sanguimancy generates Remnants, which recover some life, when collected. This life can Overflow up to 150% max. Life.

In addition to Life Remnants this build uses Life Leech, provided by the ascendency node Vitality Siphon to restore Life. The unique Atziri's Acuity makes Leech from critical hits instant, which, together with the ascendency passive Grasping Wounds helps to mitigate damage spikes.

The unique Couture of Crimson allows leeched Life to overflow, stabilizing our overflowed Life a bit (no more searching/waiting for remnants). It also provides 10% - 15% increased maximum Life, which can be more than 300 Life.

Plant Skills and Overgrowth

Plant skills come with the exclusive Overgrowth mechanic, some passives including the keystone passive Wildsurge Incantation and the support skills Accelerated Growth and Poison Spores.

Entangle is supported by Accelerated Growth II. When the Fissures and Vines do not kill fast enough, Thunderstorm triggers Accelerated Growth II, finishing mobs quickly. The slow of the vines increase the probability, that the explosion hits.

Wildsurge Incantation makes both our plant skills more "spammable". The downside is, that Thunderstorm gets shortened, so timing becomes more important.

Critical Hits

Critical Hits increase the damage and make Life Leech instant, due to Atziri's Acuity. Thus we use every chance to increase the critical hit chance, including the ascendance passives Sunder the Flesh and Gore Spike.

Leeching in combination with Leech overflow from Couture of Crimson helps us to keep Life at ~150% max. Life, which increases the extra critical damage via Gore Spike.

Convert Mana cost to Life cost

The damage dealing skills are all supported by Zenith II. To keep Mana above 90%, we convert 48% of Mana cost to Life Cost with the notable passive Blood Transfusion and its associated normal passives.

The notable passive Sacrificial Blood increases the damage further.

Downsides
This build is pretty susceptible for damage spikes, i.e. in boss fights or when swarmed. The defence of this build depends on the ability to do damage. Thus rare enemies with Proximal Tangibility (Damage is suppressed depending on the distance between Enemy and Player) can easily kill you, when you keep your distance. Due to that, this build is not suitable for Hardcore.

This build (like all "Life" builds) depends heavily on equipment. While the uniques in this build are not too expensive (~10 Ex per), you can burn through a lot of currency, to get gear with just the right attributes.

Last bumped on Feb 22, 2026, 2:14:13 PM