The Blood Mage is an ascendancy of the Witch class in Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) that utilizes their vitality to fuel their spells while siphoning the enemy's life force.Learn more about the Blood Mage's mechanics, skills, and base class in this guide!

Blood Mage Ascendancy Skills

All Blood Mage Skills and Passives

The Blood Mage Ascendancy focuses entirely on managing one's own life force to sustain HP while drowning opponents with amped up spells. Listed below are the skills shown in the Blood Mage Ascendancy showcase:

Best Blood Mage Ascendancy Skills

Listed above are the best Ascendancy skills for the Blood Mage. Open Sores is a game-changing node, granting infinite duration to her curses, allowing her to maintain powerful debuffs on enemies without the need for reapplication.

Vitality Siphon adds incredible sustain by leeching 10% of her spell damage as life, ensuring she can recover health while dealing damage, making it essential for prolonged battles.

Finally, Gore Spike amplifies her offensive potential, increasing critical damage bonus for every 40 Life she has. And since most Blood Mage builds focus on stacking high Life, this skill becomes incredibly powerful, turning her resilience into a deadly weapon.

Blood Mage Ascendancy Mechanics

Sacrifices Own Life Force as a Resource

Upon ascending as a Blood Mage, the Witch uses Sanguimancy, which replaces mana costs with Life, consuming HP to cast spells. To balance this, enemies killed drop Life Remnants, restoring the HP spent.

While the Blood Mage's Sanguimancy may seem detrimental at first, further progressing its tree will reveal nodes that synergize and boost the Blood Mage's self-damaging mechanic.

Leeches Life with Spells

With Vitality Siphon, the Blood Mage gains the ability to leech 10% of her spell damage as life, turning her offensive power into a means of self-sustain. This skill ensures she can recover health during combat, even while casting high-damage spells.

Casts Curses with Infinite Duration

Upon unlocking Open Sores, the Blood Mage gains the ability to maintain curses indefinitely, as they now have infinite duration. This allows her to keep enemies permanently cursed without needing to reapply debuffs, saving both time and resources in battle.

List of Blood Mage Builds

All Blood Mage Builds

Blood Mage Builds
Bonestorm Blood Mage
	Focus: Leveling, Endgame, High Single Target Damage
Summary: This Bonestorm Blood Mage build focuses on maximizing critical hits and explosive shrapnel damage of the Bonestorm spell, offering massive single-target damage and great sustain, making it perfect for Bossing.
Detonate Dead Blood Mage
	Focus: Endgame, High Damage, Fast Clear, Minions
Summary: The Detonate Dead Blood Mage build uses explosive corpse damage for mob clearing, while Skeletal Brutes with high HP amplify damage, shredding even bosses.

PoE 2 Best Leveling and Endgame Witch Builds

Blood Mage Base Class

Ascends From the Witch

To become a Blood Mage, one must take on the Witch as their starting class and complete their Ascension Trials. The other ascended option of the Witch would be the Infernalist.

Due to the Witch's squishy and less mobile nature, it is recommended to take on Ascension Trials with minimal environmental hazards to minimize the risk of dying!

Witch Class Overview and Ascendancies

Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) Related Guides

List of Classes

List of Early Access Classes

List of Upcoming Classes