Warbringer Grenade Totems Build Guide

If your idea of a good time is dropping a few totems, walking in circles, and watching the whole screen explode without ever managing a mana bar, the Warbringer Grenade Totems build is for you. It is a crossbow Warrior that raises Mortar Cannon Ballista totems loaded with Cluster Grenades, stacks armour until the character feels like a walking bunker, and lets the totems do all the aiming.

The build starts for roughly 1 to 2 Divine Orbs, comfortably farms high-tier Waystones, and scales into a several-Divine setup that has cleared every pinnacle boss in the game, including the Arbiter of Divinity. This guide covers the complete setup for Patch 0.5.5 “Forbidden Rites”, from the campaign to endgame gearing.

Build Overview

Class: Warrior / Warbringer Damage Type: Physical converted to Fire Weapon: Crossbow (equipped in Weapon Set II) Playstyle: Place Mortar Cannon totems, keep moving, let the grenades do the work.

Why Play This Build

• Genuinely one-button mapping. Totems automatically target and kill enemies. Your job is placement and movement, not an attack rotation.
• No mana management at all. The Blood Magic keystone converts every skill cost to life, so there is no mana flask and no resource mini-game.
• Exceptionally tanky. Heavy armour, a percentage of every hit redirected to a totem, stacking physical damage reduction from Jade, and an emergency guard skill all layer on top of each other.
• Cheap to start, expensive to perfect. The budget version is one of the cheapest reliable mappers in the patch; the ceiling exists for players who want to chase it.
• Runs every Waystone mod. There is no restrictive mod filter. You can take almost any map without rerolling.
• Unharmed by 0.5.5. Nothing in the Forbidden Rites patch nerfed Warbringer, totems, or the core grenade skills.

The tradeoff is that damage is slightly delayed while totems are placed and grenades finish their fuses, and the screen can become visually noisy during dense boss fights. If you want instant, screen-clearing burst or an active combo rotation, this is not that build.

How the Build Works

The Damage Engine

Mortar Cannon is a meta skill gem that raises a cannon Ballista totem. The totem uses any grenade skills socketed inside Mortar Cannon, with greatly improved cooldown recovery in exchange for less attack speed and less grenade damage. Each totem lasts 8 seconds.

The grenade socketed inside is Cluster Grenade, which fires a bouncing primary grenade that splits into a ring of 18 mini grenades. Cluster Grenade already converts part of its physical damage to fire, and when the crossbow has Heat available it consumes Heat to gain a large portion of damage as extra fire. Fire-scaling supports then push the damage firmly into the fire column.

How Many Totems You Get

The Mortar Cannon skill starts with a base limit of 1 totem. Several effects raise that limit:

That puts the build at four totems in the standard setup and five when Artillery Strike is allocated. Every extra totem is effectively a separate damage source, which is why the in-game tooltip understates the build’s real output — it does not always account for every source of additional totems.

Each totem placement also triggers Ancestral Spirits through the Answered Call ascendancy node, adding a wave of ancestral minion damage alongside the grenades.

Defensive Layers

Survivability is built from several independent layers:

1. Armour stacking. The gear plan pushes armour high enough to approach the physical damage reduction cap, and ”% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage” modifiers extend that mitigation to elemental hits.
2. Wooden Wall. Twenty percent of damage from hits is taken from your nearest totem’s life before it reaches you. Keep a totem alive and every incoming hit is effectively split 80/20.
3. Jade Heritage. You gain one stack of Jade every second, up to ten, each granting 1% additional physical damage reduction — ten seconds of free mitigation with no input.
4. Encase in Jade. The same ascendancy node grants a guard skill for emergency protection during dangerous boss sequences.
5. Armour Break. Anvil’s Weight breaks enemy armour equal to 10% of every hit’s damage, keeping tanky targets at zero armour while the totems unload.

Skill Gem Setup

Mortar Cannon is a meta gem with its own sockets. Open the Skills Panel and place Cluster Grenade plus the support gems into Mortar Cannon’s meta-gem sockets.

Main Link — Mortar Cannon Meta Gem

1. Cluster Grenade — the actual damage dealer. Keep this gem levelled at all times; it does not level itself automatically just because Mortar Cannon does.
2. Fire Attunement — grants a portion of damage as extra fire damage and reduces cold and lightning damage, aligning the build’s scaling toward fire.
3. Multishot II — supported projectile skills fire two additional projectiles, at the cost of some damage and skill speed.
4. Payload — grenades have a 50% chance to activate a second time, in exchange for reduced cooldown recovery. A large effective damage multiplier on grenade skills.
5. Rigwald’s Ferocity — supported attack skills deal 30% more damage when used in Weapon Set II.

The Weapon Set II Rule

Rigwald’s Ferocity behaves differently depending on which weapon set is active. In Weapon Set I it grants attack speed but makes supported skills deal 15% less damage. In Weapon Set II supported skills deal 30% more damage. The crossbow must be equipped in Weapon Set II, or you lose a massive chunk of damage for no benefit. This is the single most common mistake on this build.

Budget Alternatives

Rigwald’s Ferocity is a drop-only support and may be pricey early in a league. Until you can buy it, Elemental Armament II is a clean placeholder because the grenades deal elemental attack damage. Replace it as soon as the budget allows.

Boss Setup — Voltaic Grenade

For tough encounters, socket Voltaic Grenade into a second setup or swap it into the Mortar Cannon meta gem for the fight. Voltaic Grenade converts most of its physical damage to lightning and builds up Electrocution on the boss. In Path of Exile 2, Electrocution is an action-interrupting ailment: a fully electrocuted target has its actions interrupted and cannot act for the duration. This is both a single-target damage increase in practice and a powerful safety tool against bosses with dangerous wind-ups. It is not needed for routine mapping.

Leveling Grenade

Oil Grenade is worth carrying through the transition. It covers the ground and enemies in Oil, which slows enemy movement and applies Exposure that lowers total elemental resistances, and the oil can be ignited. Use it on tanky rares during the campaign before your full damage comes online.

Utility

• A movement skill of your choice (the Warrior’s mobility options such as Leap Slam or Shield Charge work depending on whether you carry a shield while leveling).
• Time of Need as the defensive Spirit skill in the budget version.

Ascendancy Skills

Two skills come from the ascendancy tree and need no gem sockets:

• Ancestral Spirits, granted and triggered by Answered Call.
• Encase in Jade, granted by Jade Heritage.

Ascendancy Order

Warbringer offers eight notable ascendancy nodes. This build takes four points in the following order:

1. Answered Call — first point, taken around the first ascendancy trial in Act 2. It grants the Ancestral Spirits skill, raises the totem cap by one, and triggers Ancestral Spirits whenever you place a totem. The single biggest power spike in the campaign.
2. Wooden Wall — second point, from the Trial of Chaos at the end of Act 3. The 20% hit redirect is what makes the character feel unkillable while a totem is up.
3. Jade Heritage — third point, taken in endgame. Passive physical damage reduction plus the Encase in Jade guard skill.
4. Anvil’s Weight — fourth point. Breaks enemy armour with every hit and pairs with The Molten One’s Gift on the passive tree.

The first two points are enough to finish the campaign comfortably. Points three and four are endgame upgrades rather than campaign gates.

A useful synergy note: The Molten One’s Gift notable adds 15% increased effect of Fully Broken Armour and makes Fully Broken Armour effects also apply to fire damage taken from hits, which is exactly what a fire-converting, armour-breaking totem build wants.

Passive Tree Priorities

If you are new to how keystones and clusters work, the passive tree guide covers the basics. Only two nodes are effectively mandatory:

• Blood Magic (keystone) — removes mana entirely and converts skill costs to life. Once allocated, resource management is gone for good.
• Artillery Strike (notable) — +1 to maximum Ballista totems and increased area of effect while you have a totem. This is the fifth totem and a meaningful damage node.

Around those, prioritize in this order:

1. Maximum life everywhere it is efficient.
2. Armour and physical damage reduction, including any ”% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage” clusters you can path through.
3. Projectile, attack, and physical damage notables feeding the grenades.
4. Maximum Rage scaling, including the Craving Slaughter notable, which grants +15 maximum Rage after using a skill that requires Glory.
5. Totem life small passives, which make the Wooden Wall redirect more valuable.

If you use several hybrid armour/evasion bases, the Iron Reflexes keystone converts evasion into armour and consolidates the defensive stack. Avoid energy shield bases — this is a life and armour character.

For the Gem Enthusiast notable, note exactly what it requires: 5% increased maximum life if you have at least ten red support gems socketed, and 5% increased movement speed if you have at least ten green support gems socketed. You can satisfy this by packing cheap, low-level red and green support gems into unused sockets; they do not need to be useful.

Allocate only enough dexterity and intelligence to meet gem requirements. The endgame gem setup needs roughly 40 Dexterity, 30 Strength, and 10 Intelligence beyond what gear provides; every leftover point goes into life and armour through the strength side of the tree. Check your own gear before spending stat points, since amulets and jewellery often cover the requirements.

No public tree planner link is embedded here; the build’s creator maintains the most current passive tree in the official forum thread linked at the end of this guide, and it should be treated as the source of truth for exact point-by-point paths.

Spirit Setup

Spirit determines which persistent skills you can run.

Eternal Rage generally requires Spirit on the body armour (roughly 30 or more) on top of the campaign baseline, which is why it is listed as the maxed version rather than the starter.

Gear by Budget

Prices drift over the course of a league — Rigwald’s Ferocity in particular gets much pricier late — so treat the tiers below as gear levels rather than fixed price tags, and check live marketplace prices before buying.

Starter — 1 to 2 Divine Orbs

This tier farms high-tier Waystones (roughly T15/T16) and is the intended league-starter target.

Normal — A Few Divine Orbs (Mid Budget)

The all-content version. Upgrade the crossbow toward 400+ physical DPS, target a body armour with 1,700+ armour, cap all resistances, and seek ”% of Armour also applies to Elemental Damage” on body, helmet, gloves, or boots. Gloves can also roll added physical damage to attacks. This tier is designed to handle Simulacrum, Xesht, We That Are One, the King in the Mists, the Arbiter of Ash, Olroth, Origin of the Fall, and the Arbiter of Divinity.

Maxed — Chase Gear

The min-maxed version uses a fully crafted endgame crossbow, a high-armour Ornate Plate with at least 30 Spirit for Eternal Rage, a Fireflower Solar Amulet with +4 to all Fire Skills (corrupted versions can reach higher), and well-rolled regular jewels with fire and projectile mods. Fireflower does carry a self-damage line when you ignite enemies, so it is an endgame item rather than a starter pickup.

Weapon Bases

Both crossbow bases to look for share the implicit “Grenade Skills fire an additional Projectile”:

• Cannonade Crossbow — requires level 59, the standard mid-tier base.
• Siege Crossbow — requires level 79, the highest physical base for the endgame.

Amulet and Instil Plan

• Start with Idol of Uldurn and instil Heavy Ammunition, which grants increased projectile damage (with a small attack speed tradeoff).
• The endgame damage option is Grenadier (+1 cooldown use for grenade skills), either allocated directly on the passive tree or instilled onto the amulet with the Paranoia, Fear and Isolation Liquid Emotions from Delirium.
• If the Grenadier instil is too expensive, keep Heavy Ammunition on the amulet and simply path to Grenadier on the tree.

Ring Damage Works With Totems

Flat “adds physical damage to attacks” on rings applies to attacks made through totems. It is one of the cheapest damage upgrades available and is frequently overlooked by new totem players.

Corruptions

• On armour slots, an extra socket is the best outcome.
• On Idol of Uldurn, +1 to level of all skills is the standout corruption.

Jewels, Runes, and Soul Cores

• Ruby jewels should look for fire, attack, projectile, or totem damage alongside life, armour, and maximum Rage.
• Heart of the Well is a limited-to-one unique Diamond jewel from Abyss content that rolls custom Desecrated modifiers, including strong options such as a percentage of damage gained as extra fire and percentage of maximum life recovered on kill. It is a chase item for the maxed version, not a requirement.
• For augment sockets, the 0.5.5 patch buffed several soul cores that fit this build, including the Soul Core of Jiquani for increased maximum life on body armour, the Soul Core of Tzamoto for +2% to maximum cold resistance on helmets, and Tzamoto’s Soul Core of Ferocity, which grants +4 to maximum Rage on helmets. Fill remaining sockets with resistance or armour runes wherever your gear has gaps.

Flasks and Charms

Because of Blood Magic there is no meaningful mana flask setup. A strong life flask is the only flask you actively press.

Recommended charms:

• Thawing Charm — immunity to Freeze.
• Grounding Charm — immunity to Shock.
• Amethyst Charm — temporary chaos resistance when hit by chaos damage.
• Stone Charm (cannot be stunned) and Cleansing Charm (immunity to curses) are good flex options if your belt has extra charm slots.

A belt with multiple charm slots is therefore both a quality-of-life and a survivability upgrade.

Campaign Leveling

The character levels as an ordinary melee Warrior and only becomes the totem build after Act 4. Roughly 80% of the leveling tree overlaps with the endgame tree, so respec cost is minimal.

Acts 1 and 2

• Start with a one-handed mace and shield using Boneshatter for survivability. After the early cave boss, engrave its Uncut Support Gem reward as Rage, then move to a two-handed mace for more damage.
• Shockwave Totem is available early; use it to draw aggro and add damage while you hit things in melee.
• Around level 22, complete the first ascendancy trial and take Answered Call.
• Before you have the ascendancy, avoid the optional side bosses Zalmarath, the Colossus in the Titan Grotto and the Iktab, the Deathlord and Ekbab, Ancient Steed duo in the Bone Pits. Both are much easier once a totem is tanking for you.

Blood Magic Transition

As soon as you allocate Blood Magic, mana problems end. Until then, lean on the mana flask and mana regeneration gear. One warning: after Blood Magic, avoid ”+ to Melee Skills” modifiers on weapons, gloves, and amulets if they inflate the life cost of skills you no longer use, since every cost now comes out of your life pool.

Level 52 Swap

After defeating Tavakai, the Chieftain, the level 53 Act 4 final boss in the Heart of the Tribe, which most characters reach around level 52, make the swap:

1. Buy a Cannonade-base crossbow with 250+ physical damage and the grenade implicit.
2. Equip an amulet with projectile skill levels or, preferably, an Idol of Uldurn.
3. Socket Cluster Grenade into Mortar Cannon and start levelling both gems together.
4. Carry Oil Grenade for Exposure and slowing on rares.
5. Upgrade the crossbow every roughly ten levels until the Siege Crossbow base becomes available.

The most common leveling mistake at this stage is forgetting that Cluster Grenade needs manual gem levelling. Check it after every few sessions.

Mapping While Leveling

Spread totems out rather than stacking them on one spot, keep moving while they fire, and place a fresh totem roughly every half second as you run through packs. The clear speed comes from coverage, not from standing still.

Endgame Playstyle

Mapping

Run into a pack, drop two to four totems while moving, and circle until the room is dead. Because the build ignores most map mods, you can chain Waystones without a strict reroll policy.

Bosses

Place totems before the boss becomes active so the ramp-up happens during the entrance animation. For pinnacle fights, bring in Voltaic Grenade to build Electrocution and interrupt dangerous actions, keep moving between totem placements, and use Encase in Jade for the attacks you cannot dodge. Wooden Wall only redirects damage while a totem is alive, so reposition near fresh totems rather than fighting across the arena from all of them.

Pinnacle Capability

A properly equipped Normal-tier character is designed to clear the full 0.5.5 pinnacle roster, including:

• Arbiter of Divinity
• Arbiter of Ash
• Xesht, We That Are One
• King in the Mists
• Olroth, Origin of the Fall
• The Simulacrum fights

Two practical warnings from players running the build: the grenade effects can obscure boss attack animations in visually dense fights, particularly the Arbiter of Divinity, so learn mechanics before relying on reaction dodging; and teleport-style mod effects that drop you directly into packs can cause deaths in the brief window before totems start killing, so do not face-tank the moment you land.

Patch Status

• 0.5.5 “Forbidden Rites” introduced no nerfs to Warbringer, totems, Mortar Cannon, or Cluster Grenade. Several soul cores used by the build were buffed.
• 0.5.0 “Return of the Ancients” was the major positive turning point: the Ancestral Bond rework doubled the totem limit and removed placement charges, and a hotfix repaired Ancestral Spirits summoned through Warbringer so the minions actually act.
• Gem text evolves. Cluster Grenade was reworked in earlier patches (0.3.0 and before), so very old video guides can show outdated mechanics — always follow the current in-game tooltip rather than an older guide’s numbers.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• One of the lowest-effort playstyles in the game.
• Extremely tanky through layered, independent defenses.
• Cheap league start with a real pinnacle-boss ceiling.
• No mana management and no restrictive map mod filter.
• Beginner-friendly mechanics that are hard to pilot incorrectly.

Cons

• Damage ramps over a couple of seconds rather than happening instantly.
• Visual clutter during dense boss encounters.
• Melee-focused Act 1 through early Act 2 is the weakest part of the run.
• Rage and totem upkeep require basic discipline even if the rotation is simple.
• The fully min-maxed version is dramatically more expensive than the starter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a good first character for a new player? Yes. The mechanics are forgiving, the resource system is removed entirely by Blood Magic, and the budget is low. It is one of the strongest beginner-friendly Warrior options in 0.5.5.

Why is my damage lower than expected? Check two things first: the crossbow must be in Weapon Set II for Rigwald’s Ferocity’s 30% more damage, and Cluster Grenade must be kept at your level. Also remember that tooltip DPS often does not include every additional totem.

How many totems can I have? Four in the standard configuration — doubled base limit from Ancestral Bond, plus one from Answered Call and one from Idol of Uldurn — and five once Artillery Strike is allocated.

Do I need Fireflower? No. It is a maxed-budget item for +fire skill levels. Idol of Uldurn is the recommended amulet through the Starter and Normal tiers.

What do I do against shock and freeze effects? Run a Grounding Charm and a Thawing Charm in the belt, supported by a belt with as many charm slots as you can find.

Further Reference

The build was created and is actively maintained by POEGuy, who posts gem updates, budget tables, and the current passive tree in the official Path of Exile forum thread: Warbringer Grenade Totems forum thread. Always cross-check the exact passive tree and current prices there, since both shift over the course of a league.