Best crossbow skills in Path of Exile 2

Crossbow in Path of Exile 2 is basically a heavy weapons platform that fires a variety of munitions, from shotgun blasts to grenades and an actual plasma railgun. Using this weapon turns the game into a top-down horde shooter, sacrificing skill rotations and flash attacks for overwhelming firepower.

There are tons of skills for Crossbow i PoE 2and if it's your first time using this weapon, you may have trouble getting into the swing. In this guide, we'll go through each level of Crossbow skills in the game to help you find the one that suits your playstyle.

Construction work i Path of Exile 2 is extremely flexible, and with proper construction, every Crossbow skill can be good in one way or another.

Recommended crossbow skills for beginners

TL;DR for new players

• Armor Piercing Rounds

  with Chain and Armor Explosion

• High speed rounds

  with melee and brutality

• Explosive grenade

  with Multishot and Short Fuse

Armor Piercing Rounds (APR) makes for a great pack-clearing skill when equipped with Chain and Armor Explosion. Once you get a Lesser Jeweler you can also equip a Bleed Support Gem to make Armor Piercing Rounds synergize with Herald of Bloodgreatly increasing its AoE damage.

APR is intended to be used with High Velocity Rounds (HVR). When the former completely breaks the enemy's armor, use HVR to apply Riven Armor, causing subsequent hits on that target to deal significantly more damage.

Explosive grenade is mainly for dealing heavy damage to bosses and other tough enemies. They take a while to detonate, so be sure to compensate for the fuse time when using this.

Mid-game options

• Galvanic shards

  with Lightning Attunement

• Explosive shot

  with fire setting

• Stormblast Bolts

  with Multishot

Galvanic shards is very good for clearing large monster packs, and when facing a rare monster or a boss, spam Stormblast Bolts and detonate the embedded ammo with Explosive Shot.

Level I Crossbow skills

• Armor Piercing Rounds
• Fragmentation Rounds
• Permafrost is pounding
• Explosive grenade

We've already mentioned how APR and Explosive Grenade are good, so we'll talk more about Fragmentation Rounds and Permafrost Bolts here. The latter two skills have innate synergy with each other: Permafrost freezes and fragmentation shatters.

Using Permafrost Rounds and Fragmentation Rounds feels a lot like using a double-barreled shotgun. First freeze a target and then blast them apart. This skill combo is very satisfying to use, but in the very early stages of the game, players may run into mana issues until they get good gear. If you'd rather not run out of mana all the time, use APR instead.

Tier III Armbow Skills

• High speed rounds
• Burning shot
• Flash grenade

Of these three, Flash Grenade is the most versatile option. It can fit into almost any build as a crowd control/stun tool, and it can also blast weaker enemies in an instant. Flash Grenade has a cooldown though, so it's not quite as spammable as regular Crossbow skills.

Burning shot can be an extremely effective skill for clearing and bossing, but it will feel very slow during the leveling process. The other shotgun blast skills do a much better job than Incendiary Shot early on, so it's better to just use them instead until you get the items and passives necessary to seriously crank Incendiary Shot's DPS further.

Level V Crossbow skills

• Quick shot
• Shards of ice
• Galvanic shards
• Gas grenade

Let's get the Galvanic Shards out of the way first. This has the best clearing potential of all T3 skills as of now PoE2 0.4. It can decimate screens of enemies and cut down boss health bars pretty quickly too, especially when equipped with the right support gems. If all you want is a good skill to remove everything on the screen, stick with this one.

Quick shot is a strange skill. It exists primarily to generate heat, which can then be consumed by incendiary shots or explosive grenades to make them do more damage. Beyond that, Rapid Shot doesn't have much of a purpose as well it literally becomes unusable for 10 seconds after reaching maximum heat.

Shards of iceon the other hand, is much more complex. This skill targets the ground and creates chunks of ice that explode when enemies step on them. The shards take time to arm, and they won't explode until that arming time is up. Ice Shards is best reserved for intermediate players who can take advantage of its unique properties through skill interactions (such as with Amazon's Elemental Infusion ability).

Gas grenade creates toxic clouds that cause enemies to take damage over time. When the poison clouds are hit by Detonator or Fire skills, they explode and cause massive fire damage in a large area. This is good if you want to make a grenade based build with Explosive Shot.

Level VII Crossbow skills

• Artillery Ballista
• Explosive shot
• Glacial Bolt
• Voltaic Grenade

Artillery Ballista is a Totem skill that summons a tower. This turret fires a hail of bolts into the air, and when they crash, they will pin and maim enemies. This skill is mainly used for the Pin/Maim effects that immobilize and slow targets, although the ballista itself is good for distracting enemies.

Explosive shot is a Detonator skill great for manually detonating grenades, ice shards, ice walls, and other similar effects. It's good at clearing mobs and killing bosses, and it's one of the best skills for Crossbow i PoE 2.

Glacial Bolt creates walls of ice that can be destroyed to deal AoE Cold damage. Use this with shotgun ammo types like Fragmentation Rounds for maximum effectiveness.

Voltaic Grenade deals damage and causes an electric shock, which paralyzes enemies in place. This is another good skill for grenade builds, and can be a decent alternative to Flash grenades if you want something for crowd control.

Level IX Crossbow skills

• Siege Ballista

• Stormblast Bolts
• Oil grenade

Siege Ballista and Oil Grenade go hand in hand. The latter creates fields of oil that slow and reduce enemy resistance, while the former rains down fireballs that detonate the oil and set the ground on fire. There are some fun builds to be had with this combo, but if you prefer to use your actual weapon to do the work for you, stick with Stormblast Bolts.

Stormblast Bolts isn't impressive on its own, but when you pair it with Explosive Grenade, Explosive Shot, or other explosives, it can be massively challenging against bosses. Fill the screen with bolts, and when the boss steps on a spot with a high concentration of them, blast them all.

Tier XI Crossbow Skills

• Hailstorm rounds
• Shockburst rounds
• Emergency charging

• Mortar cannon

Emergency charging is the best general purpose skill here. It automatically recharges all of your ammo skills while powering up their next clip, causing them damage. This skill is especially good for high ammo skills like armor piercing rounds or fragmentation rounds with the Streamlined Rounds gem. It is also good for increasing the effectiveness of Riven Armor by buffing High Velocity Rounds.

Hailstorm rounds is an AoE DPS skill meant to be fired and forgotten. Simply use it when the ammo is full and watch as ice bolts rain down from above. It's hard to recommend this skill for the campaign/leveling stage, and while it can definitely be used to clear screens and take out bosses, it requires many complicated interactions to function properly as a main DPS tool.

Shockburst rounds used to blast down high health targets that have already hit by Shock or Electrocute. Hitting targets with these ailments causes Shockburst Rounds to explode, dealing damage in an area and converting all physical damage into lightning damage. Use this if you use Galvanic Shards and Voltaic Grenade.

Mortar cannon can be equipped with grenade skills, causing it to fire that grenade at a steady rate. This is great if you want to do a Totem or Grenade build, but not much use if you're using anything else.

Level XIII Crossbow skills

• Siege Cascade
• Plasma blast
• Cluster grenade

Siege Cascade excels at quickly clearing large monster packs. It's not very good against single targets due to its low fire rate and reload speed, but when it comes to wiping out entire screens of monsters, this can easily be used as a substitute for any of the other clear Crossbow skills.

Plasma blaston the other hand, is the opposite of Siege Cascade. This skill is for fighting bosses; it deals devastating damage at the cost of a two second recharge time. Pair this with Shockburst Rounds and Galvanic Shards to help with map clearing.

Cluster grenade has the highest AoE of all the grenade skills, and it can be used to make some fun builds when you want to fill your screen with explosions. It's a great skill to have, provided you have a build specifically designed to support it.