PoE 2 0.5 Class Tier List

Path of Exile 2 patch 0.5 launched May 29, 2026, titled Return of the Ancients. It is the largest update the game has received in early access: five endgame storylines, 21 new Kalguuran skills, two new ascendancies, and a sustainability balance pass that amounts to GGG declaring war on comfortable builds. Instant life leech is gone. Energy Shield recovery was targeted across the board. If your build existed to facetank through regen, it is now a corpse.

Two new ascendancies arrived: Martial Artist for Monk and Spirit Walker for Huntress. Both are immediately S-tier relevant. The Runes of Aldur league mechanic introduces Verisium Runesmithing: a crafting system built around Ezomyte Remnants that lets you socket unique modifiers into rare gear. Expedition is now the primary deterministic crafting source. Ritual exclusively drops omens and uniques. GGG rearranged the furniture and set half of it on fire.

This list prioritizes the first 25–40 hours: campaign smoothness, time to tier-15 maps, defensive baseline at level 80 without crafted gear. Anything works at 100 divines. This list is not about that.

Full Ascendancy Tier List

The Winners

Spirit Walker: Huntress

The Spirit Walker ascendancy is the headline class of Runes of Aldur. It channels Stag, Owl, and Bear spirits, can summon unique pinnacle bosses as companions, and abuses the Twister + Whirling Slash interaction to freeze entire screens before they load. Spear prices will be deranged for the first 48 hours. Budget accordingly or suffer in silence.

Martial Artist: Monk

The Martial Artist generates combo faster than any previous Monk ascendancy, enabling triple Tempest Bell detonations and Glacial Cascade boss deletion. Wind Blast builds enemy stagger meters from safe range. Frozen Locus freezes bosses on contact. Smoothest linear progression from campaign to Tier 15 maps in the entire patch. The cons: melee range occasionally demands repositioning, and gear competition will be real week one.

Deadeye: Ranger

Gathering Winds, Point Blank, Far Shot, and Endless Munitions were not touched. In a patch that used patch notes as a hit list, being invisible to the nerf bat is its own S-tier qualifier. Ice Shot + Snipe remains the fastest map clear in the game. Ice Shot Deadeye is the recommended starting point for anyone new to the league: campaign clears in 8–12 hours, kills quest pinnacle bosses in league-start gear.

The Executed

GGG decided sustainability was a design flaw and corrected it. The Path of Exile 2 0.5 patch notes read like a hit list with names circled in red. Here is what is dead on arrival:

• Instant leech: removed entirely from the game. One leech instance per resource, hard cap of 40,000 damage per hit toward leech calculation.
• Energy Shield stacking: pure ES without hybrid bases is a glass coffin. Budget ES builds do not function past early maps.
• Infernal Legion: nerfed 67%. IL3 removed. Base damage halved from 20% to 10% of max life. Ignite radius halved. GGG sent a message, not a balance pass.
• Blood Mage immortality loops: the entire identity of the archetype was leech. It no longer exists.
• Wall of Shields endgame: dead.
• Poison Pathfinder (budget): took multiple heavy hits. Technically alive as an expensive option. Budget version is non-functional.