Hello all. I wanted to share with you my critical strike focused Poison Concoction Pathfinder that I use to farm Trial of the Sekhemas (TotS). This build focuses on using Queen of the Forest (QotF) and evasion scaling to reach high levels of movement speed, high gem level scaling with Widowhail, and strong poison applications with critical strikes. Coming from Path of Exile 1, I had some prior experience with Sanctum and using Hexblast Mines Occultist. This build really hit home for me with the speed and damage that I had in that build.

Since the 0.1.1c patch that fixed the crediting of damage over time builds with kills of any enemies that had energy shield upon time of death, I have been trying to get more mapping done with this character. It is important to note that TotS does not provide a lot of experience per hour like Sanctum does for Path of Exile 1. I do not think that this QotF style build is the ideal mapping setup. With how strong energy shield is right now, I would probably suggest finding a non QotF builds that are more sturdy if mapping is your focus. I have tried to mitigate this by shifting out some of the offensive talents into more energy shield but 1000 energy shield (2000 with Grim Feast) is less than ideal. The drastic reduction in on death ground effects has felt better, but I do occasionally get caught by something that takes me from 100 to 0.

At the time of writing this I am approaching 96 and have gone back to do all of the +4 pinnacle boss content except Simulacrum. I do not know if this build could do Simulacrum or not. Our AoE clear potential is stymied because delirious monsters do not leave a corpse for Decompose as they evaporate back into the mirrors they originate from. With only really high evasion and movement speed being our primary defensive layers: small, tight spaces with dozens of mobs melee attacking from all directions is on average going to equate to a bad time.

Summary of the build

QotF allows for a unique movement scaling opportunity that can be exploited in TotS through the use of relic and boons. Corpsewade grants access to Decompose but has the extreme penalty of having 10% movement speed. Since QotF overrides any other movement speed modifiers we can utilize Decompose without paying this steep penalty.

Path of Exile 2 allows unarmed attacks to be used while a weapon is in hand. This allows us to benefit from Widowhail's quiver effect scaling paired with a + Projectile Skills quiver. As with most other builds, adding gem levels is an incredibly strong way to scale any skill.

Finally I focused on using critical strike as the entry scaling method for my poisons. We are capped on the applications of poison in Path of Exile 2. This is a departure from the unlimited applications but total damage over time cap that was applied in Path of Exile 1. Since poisons are applied via 20% of the combined physical and chaos damage of the total hit, a critical strike naturally applies a stronger poison. If for instance you had 400% critical strike bonus (total) you would apply a poison that was the same as if you had applied 5 non critical poison applications. After scaling critical strike and bonus, I would focus on number of applications, poison magnitude, and poison duration for further scaling.

My Guide

Over the past week I have begun to write out and update my guide on Mobalytics

I have tried to include as much information that I have learned from the various sources across the community. I have included links to the sources I have used in the guide, and have included them again below. Please make sure to check these out!

When possible I included details about why I made the choices I made. Most of the basic information is in the 'Ideal Stats' variant and below in the 'How it Works'/'How it Plays' sections. I have included some upgrade ideas if you end up liking the base build. These can be found the 'Expensive Upgrades' variant. I also included my current PoB and setup at the time of writing this post (2/10/25) that can be found in the 'My Gear (at time of writing)' variant. Finally I have a work in process 'Mapping' variant, but again I do not think this setup is ideal poison concoction setup for mapping as a main strategy.

I want to reiterate that TotS can be played a variety of different ways. I do not think the way I play is the best, nor do I think this is the best build for it. This is just simply what I think is fun and a build that supports that. There are a lot of videos, guides, and resources for TotS (and Sanctum) and I suggest looking at multiple references to see what works best for you.

My thoughts on TotS in 0.1.1

Overall I find TotS to be a fairly rewarding mechanic to engage with. I feel that with a proper relic setup you can see The Desperate Alliance vase relic enough to generate some semi reliable income. If you cannot run the relic yourself, there always seems to be a market for it. Overall there are enough builds that use the Against the Darkness jewel so the relic has a fairly consistent demand. I also think you can generate enough Sapphire and Emerald jewels that you should be able to find something that will be worthwhile to sell after a handful of runs. I do wish that the old vendor recipe for 3:1 still existed as it is tedious to roll these down. I have found a handful of normal relics that I have sold, but jewels seem to be more consistent income for me.

Sources and References

I drew a lot of the inspiration to try a Concoction Pathfinder after reading this post: Trial of Sekhemas Runner: Frozen Concoction QoTF Pathfinder by user u/xLapsed . I highly recommend taking a look at their post for a version of the build using Shattering Concoction and the heralds. There is also a lot of good information about TotS within.

I also referenced two written guides on Mobalystics: PoE 2 Build Post nerf Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder by Misho_the_Exile, and Crit Poisonous Concoction Eye of winter by Ruetoo. Reutoo also has a video guide that expands a little further from the written guide.

Finally I learned more about poisons in Path of Exile 2 from: How to Scale Poison Damage in Path of Exile 2 by MisuxShiro, and Path of Exile 2: Damaging Ailments Guide- Bleeding, Ignite & Poison by Dreamcore. Path of Exile 2 has taken a different direction from Path of Exile 1 in terms of how Poison apply/scale and both of these sources helped me understand what happened.

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If you have any questions or suggestions for improvements on the build please feel free to reach out. I hope this inspires someone to try TotS, the build, or to create something of their own.