PoE 2 Blood MageB
Witch ascendancy · verified 2026-07-04 · INT
community tier · patch 0.5.4b (editorial)
A life-as-resource caster who pays for spells with health instead of mana, weaponizing a large life pool for crit and bleed damage.
Sanguimancy gives your skills a life cost equal to their mana cost, so you spend health to cast and sustain through leech and life recovery. You build a big life pool because both your survivability and your crit damage scale off it. Bleed and elemental synergies, amplified by curses, round out the offense.
Strengths
- Aggressive, high-ceiling crit and bleed damage that scales directly with your life pool
- Built-in spell crit foundation plus bleed/curse synergy for strong single-target and DoT
- Life leech baked into the ascendancy provides self-contained sustain
- Body-armour energy shield can be turned into extra maximum life for a fat health pool
Weaknesses
- Paying life to cast is punishing before you have solid leech and recovery — rough early gearing
- The 0.5 leech overhaul (no instant leech, per-instance leech cap) hit its sustain, pushing power to a higher gear budget
- Endgame-capable but generally after significant investment, not a cheap early powerhouse
Current standing (B-tier): Powerful crit/bleed ceiling, but the 0.5 leech nerfs make it gear-hungry and weaker as an early league starter than top options. [editorial] (community tier · patch 0.5.4b — editorial rank, community meta consensus (maxroll · mobalytics · game8 0.5 tier lists), editorial — checked 2026-07-03)
Key Blood Mage notables
What each ascendancy notable actually does for the build — effect directions, not raw numbers (exact values shift every patch; check in game before committing points).
Sanguimancy
Foundational notable: grants the Life Remnants skill and makes your skills cost life equal to their mana cost, defining the blood-magic identity.
Sunder the Flesh
Raises your base spell critical hit chance to a flat baseline, giving crit builds a reliable foundation.
Gore Spike
Scales your critical damage bonus based on your current life, rewarding a large health pool.
Vitality Siphon
Leeches a portion of your spell damage as life, the core sustain that offsets life-based casting.
Blood Barbs
Lets elemental damage contribute to bleeding magnitude and aggravates bleeds on cursed targets, enabling elemental-bleed hybrids.
Crimson Power
Grants energy shield from your body armour as extra maximum life, inflating the life pool your other notables scale off.
Best Blood Mage skills (0.5.4b)
How to unlock Blood Mage
Unlock via your first Ascendancy Trial in Act 2 (Trial of the Sekhemas or Trial of Chaos); 8 points total across the trials. See the full points & trials table + tracker → for exactly which run grants points 3–8, or the respec guide if you want to switch into Blood Mage from another Witch ascendancy.
Want Blood Mage online today?
Timesaver pros run the Trial of the Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos on your character — all 8 ascendancy points on your Witch, your build, usually same-day.
Other Witch ascendancies
Back to all Witch ascendancies, the ascendancy hub and full tier list.
Notables and effects verified against patch 0.5.4b (2026-07-02) — qualitative effect directions only; exact values change between patches. Tier ranks are editorial community-meta consensus, never game facts. Ascendancy art is in-game artwork © Grinding Gear Games, used for identification. Last verified 2026-07-04. Timesaver.gg is not affiliated with Grinding Gear Games. Source notes: High. Notables cross-verified on poe2db.tw and fextralife. Leech-overhaul context from 0.5 patch discourse (Maxroll/community); tier is editorial from Maxroll 0.5.1. Exact 0.5.4b numbers not individually re-verified.