What's up, Exiles! Today, we're diving into an exciting Path of Exile 2 build update, featuring the Lightning Spear Huntress by Vinnie. This is not your typical beginner's guide — instead, it's a deep-dive update and pinnacle showcase to highlight the evolution of a powerful endgame character that's smashing high-tier content POE 2 Currency Orbs. We'll walk through the skills, passive tree updates, gearing decisions, and how this build achieves monstrous DPS while staying durable in some of POE 2's hardest encounters.
Build Overview: 2+ Million DPS and Rising
First, let's tackle the attention-grabber — the Lightning Spear Huntress is clocking in at 2.5 million full DPS in PoB. That's from a combination of detonated Stormlance hits and Infused Weapon procs, before even factoring in the projectile DPS from Stormlance itself (which adds another ~660k DPS). When you barrage multiple Stormlances together, you stack insane amounts of damage quickly, especially when bosses stay stationary.
In practical terms, depending on the encounter, the build typically outputs anywhere from 1 million to 2.5 million DPS, with peak moments feeling even stronger — easily melting bosses like Zest in under 5 seconds.
Skill Set Breakdown: What's New?
While the core skills remain intact, several important upgrades have pushed this build's performance to new levels:
Infused Weapon: Still used for applying Exposure and Blind. The addition of Conduction in the 5th link is key, ensuring that even Pinnacle bosses are reliably Shocked for that sweet extra damage scaling.
Lightning Spear: No big changes, but now socketed with Perpetual Charge, further enhancing uptime and consistent DPS.
Stormlance: The setup here was refined — Martial Tempo was dropped in favor of stacking even more raw damage support gems. Running a 5-link full damage setup proved to be the strongest configuration after multiple tests.
Conductivity: Only used for specific bosses like Arbiter, Zest, and Trimaster (those with 75% Lightning Resistance). With exposure, pen nodes, and curse stacking, we effectively bypass enemy resistance.
Barrage Setup: Thanks to the Inhibitor support gem, Barrage no longer consumes Frenzy Charges, allowing high-powered, multi-frenzy Stormlance shots during boss phases.
Mobility and Spirit Skills: Mobility is being phased out since we're now running Combat Frenzy and Cast on Critical consistently, covering Frenzy charge generation. Additionally, thanks to new gear (more on that soon), spirit skills have expanded dramatically, adding major utility and survivability.
Spirit Skills Expansion: Tankiness Meets Speed
Thanks to a new Omen Scepter granting +133 Spirit, the build now boasts a total of 267 Spirit. That's massive, and it fuels several critical Spirit Skills:
Cast on Critical for auto-casting Sniper's Mark.
Ingenuity and Impetus: Reducing cooldowns and fueling energy generation.
Wind Dancer and Ghost Dance: Massive defensive layers.
Cannibalism: An extra luxury skill simply because we had the Spirit available.
The automatic Sniper's Mark application is a particularly huge quality-of-life buff, especially in dense or hectic fights like Simulacrum waves.
Addressing the Elemental Focus Controversy
Many players questioned using Elemental Focus linked to Herald of Thunder when running Electrocute and Neural Overload. Wouldn't Elemental Focus prevent the build-up of ailments like Electrocution? After extensive testing:
It works.
Elemental Focus prevents inflicting elemental ailments but does not stop building up effects like Electrocution. Neural Overload still procs correctly, ensuring both damage and defensive layers continue operating at peak efficiency.
If GGG patches this interaction in the future, swapping Elemental Focus out is a simple fix.
Defensive Setup: Why This Build Is So Tanky Now
By switching to the Omen Scepter setup (instead of shields or bucklers), Vinnie optimized tankiness dramatically:
Wind Dancer and Ghost Dance synergize perfectly, offering damage mitigation, instant energy shield recovery, and near-permanent uptime on defensive buffs.
7,000+ Evasion ensures most hits miss entirely.
When hits land, Ghost Shrouds instantly recover ~500 Energy Shield per hit.
Triple Charm Immunities (Freeze, Stun, Bleed) thanks to extra Spirit and Ingenuity belt, eliminating three of the most dangerous status threats in endgame content.
This setup results in a character that feels nearly unkillable in everything from T4 Pinnacles to deep Simulacrum runs.
Gear Snapshot: Key Upgrades
Here's the rundown of the major item shifts that evolved the build:
Weapon: Seilas Spear
Still king for Lightning Spear Huntresses, focusing heavily on Accuracy Rating, with secondary rolls like Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Flat Lightning Damage.
Gloves:
Dropped Kokos Gloves for massive pure DPS gloves. The change alone added ~250k DPS. Kokos were lowering attack speed, hurting overall output.
Scepter:
Omen Scepter with Malice (Malice applies Critical Weakness to enemies, boosting critical damage even further).
Also rolled with +30% Spirit and reduced attribute requirements, solving the build's notorious strength-starvation issues.
Belt:
Ingenuity, post-nerf but still excellent, especially for stacking two Charm slots. Essential for Freeze, Stun, and Bleed immunity.
Simulacrum-Specific Adjustments
Simulacrum is brutal in Path of Exile 2 — you either keep moving or die instantly. To address this, the build swaps out Wind Dancer and Cannibalism for a Blasphemy Temp Chains setup during Simulacrum runs:
Temp Chains + Encumbrance + Magnified Effect:
Slows enemies so significantly that you can kite them like "COD Zombies," outrunning mobs easily.
This greatly improves survivability, allowing you to charge up big Barrage Lightning Spears and nuke massive Simulacrum waves without getting overwhelmed.
Final Thoughts: Is This the Best Lightning Spear Huntress Yet?
While there's no “one best way” to play Huntress right now, Vinnie's Lightning Spear Huntress update shows that thoughtful optimizations around Spirit Skills, defensive layers, and scepter tech can push the build into true endgame dominance cheap Path of Exile 2 Currency.
The combination of extreme DPS, defensive resiliency, and quality-of-life improvements (like automated Sniper's Mark and built-in ailment immunities) makes this variation arguably the smoothest and safest Lightning Spear Huntress to date.
Of course, different variations are still perfectly viable — traditional Buckler setups, Three Dragons helmets, and even older glove configs are all strong. The new version just leans slightly harder into boss killing and ultra-endgame farming, without losing that satisfying speed-clear mapping feel.
Expect a full, polished build guide soon once the final tweaks settle, but for now, this showcase proves one thing: the Huntress archetype is alive, thriving, and absolutely electrifying in Path of Exile 2.
Stay tuned, — and happy hunting!