Best Crossbow Skills in Path of Exile 2

The 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 railcannon. 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 the Crossbow in PoE 2, and if it’s your first time using this weapon, you may have trouble getting into the swing of things. In this guide, we’ll be going ever each tier of Crossbow skills in the game to help you find the one that fits your playstyle.

Related

Path of Exile 2: Mercenary Leveling Guide

Follow this Mercenary leveling guide for Path of Exile 2 to learn the best Skill and Support gems, the best Passives, and what items to look out for.

Recommended Beginner Crossbow Skills

TL;DR for New Players

• Armour Piercing Rounds
  with Chain and Armour Explosion
• High Velocity Rounds
  with Close Combat and Brutality
• Explosive Grenade
  with Multishot and Short Fuse

Armour Piercing Rounds (APR) makes for a great pack-clearing skill when equipped with Chain and Armour Explosion. Once you get a Lesser Jeweler’s Orb, you can equip a Bleed Support Gem too, to make Armour Piercing Rounds synergize with Herald of Blood, greatly increasing its AoE damage.

APR is meant to be used with High Velocity Rounds (HVR). When the former fully breaks an enemy’s armour, use HVR to apply the Riven Armour, which causes subsequent hits on that target to deal significantly more damage.

Explosive Grenade is mainly for dealing big bursts of damage to bosses and other tough enemies. They take a while to detonate, so make sure to compensate for the fuse time when using this.

Mid-Game Alternatives

• Galvanic Shards
  with Lightning Attunement
• Explosive Shot
  with Fire Attunement
• Stormblast Bolts
  with Multishot

Galvanic Shards is very good for clearing big monster packs, and when you’re up against a Rare monster or a boss, spam Stormblast Bolts and detonate the embedded munitions with Explosive Shot.

Tier I Crossbow Skills

• Armour Piercing Rounds
• Fragmentation Rounds
• Permafrost Bolts
• 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 much like using a double-barreled shotgun. Freeze a target first, then blow them apart. This skill combo is very satisfying to use, but in the very early stages of the game, players might 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 Crossbow Skills

• High Velocity Rounds
• Incendiary Shot
• Flash Grenade

Out of these three, Flash Grenade is the most versatile option. It can fit in almost every build as a crowd control/stun tool, and it can blow up weaker enemies in the blink of an eye as well. Flash Grenade does have a cooldown, though, so it’s not quite as spammable as regular Crossbow skills.

Incendiary Shot can be an extremely effective skill for clearing and bossing, but it’s going to 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 those instead until you get the items and passives necessary to seriously crank Incendiary Shot’s DPS further.

Tier V Crossbow Skills

• Rapid Shot
• Ice Shards
• Galvanic Shards
• Gas Grenade

Let’s get Galvanic Shards out of the way first. This has the best clearing potential out of all T3 skills as of PoE 2 0.4. It can decimate screens of enemies and chunk down boss health bars fairly quickly too, especially once it’s kitted out with the right support gems. If all you want is a good skill for deleting everything on the screen, stick with this one.

Rapid Shot is a weird skill. It exists mainly to generate Heat, which can then be consumed by Incendiary Shot or Explosive Grenade to make them deal more damage. Outside of that, Rapid Shot doesn’t have much of a purpose as it becomes literally unusable for 10 seconds after reaching max Heat.

Ice Shards, on the other hand, is a lot more complex. This skill targets the ground and creates shards 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 the Amazon’s Elemental Infusion ability).

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

Tier VII Crossbow Skills

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

Artillery Ballista is a Totem skill that summons a turret. This turret fires a hail of bolts into the air, and when they crash down, they’ll Pin and Maim enemies. This skill is mainly used for the Pin/Maim effects that immobilize and slow targets, though the ballista itself is great for distracting enemies.

Explosive Shot is a Detonator skill that’s great for manually detonating grenades, ice shards, ice walls, and other similar effects. It’s great at clearing mobs and killing bosses, and it’s one of the best skills for the Crossbow in 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 efficiency.

Voltaic Grenade deals damage and causes Electrocution, which paralyzes enemies in place. This is yet another great skill for grenade builds, and it can be a decent alternative to Flash Grenades if you want something for crowd control.

Tier IX Crossbow Skills

• Siege Ballista
• Stormblast Bolts
• Oil Grenade

Siege Ballista and Oil Grenade go hand-in-hand. The latter creates oil fields that slow and reduce enemy resistances, while the former rains down fireballs that detonate the oil, lighting the ground on fire. There are some fun builds to be made using this combo, but if you prefer using your actual weapon to do the job for you, then stick with Stormblast Bolts.

Stormblast Bolts isn’t impressive by itself, but when you pair it with Explosive Grenade, Explosive Shot, or other Detonators, it can deal massive against bosses. Fill the screen with bolts, and once the boss steps on a spot with a high concentration of them, blow them all up.

Tier XI Crossbow Skills

• Hailstorm Rounds
• Shockburst Rounds
• Emergency Reload
• Mortar Cannon

Emergency Reload is the best general-use skill here. It automatically reloads all of your Ammunition skills while also empowering their next clips, making them deal more damage. This skill is especially good for high-ammo skills like Armour Piercing Rounds or Fragmentation Rounds with the Streamlined Rounds gem. It’s also good for boosting the effectiveness of Riven Armour by buffing High Velocity Rounds.

Hailstorm Rounds is an AoE DPS skill that’s meant to be fired and forgotten. Simply use it when its ammo count is full, and watch as ice bolts rain 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 delete bosses, it requires a lot of complicated interactions to work properly as a main DPS tool.

Shockburst Rounds is used to burst down high-health targets that have already been afflicted with Shock or Electrocute. Hitting targets with these ailments cause Shockburst Rounds to explode, dealing damage in an area and converting all Physical Damage to Lightning Damage. Use this if you’re using Galvanic Shards and Voltaic Grenade.

Mortar Cannon can be equipped with Grenade skills, causing it to fire that grenade at a steady pace. This is good if you want to make a Totem or Grenade build, but it doesn’t have much use if you’re using anything else.

Tier XIII Crossbow Skills

• Siege Cascade
• Plasma Blast
• Cluster Grenade

Siege Cascade excels at clearing large monster packs quickly. 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-focused Crossbow skills.

Plasma Blast, on the other hand, is the opposite of Siege Cascade. This skill is for fighting bosses; it deals devastating damage at the cost of having a 2-second charge-up time. Pair this with Shockburst Rounds and Galvanic Shards to help with map clearing.

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