What towers to build?
In general, it’s a safe bet to build one of the 5 damaging tower types – Fireball, Chilling, Shock Nova, Seismic, or Summoning tower. That’s purely because damage is king in Path of Exile. The quicker you can kill enemies, the fewer problems you’ll have. You could potentially go for the utility towers, but they’re not as effective if you’re lacking damage in the first place.
After that, you can consider things like your build, synergy, and enemy resistances. For example, if you’re playing a summoner build, there’s a high chance you have multiple auras. These auras will also affect the minions from the Summoning towers, creating synergy. If you’re playing a cold attack build with Hypothermia or Ice Bite Support gems, having Chilling towers will help with your damage output and freezing enemies. Or if you already have a ton of damage, you can boost it even further by building an Imbuing tower or Smothering tower.
As for enemy resistances, there are three resistance sources – map resistances, monster resistances, and Blight portal resistances. The first one you can re-roll if need be and the second one you can ignore. As for Blight portal resistances, read below for an explainer.
What do the symbols on Blight portals mean?
Sometimes you’ll see a symbol on a portal like so:
It means the monsters coming from those portals are resistant to that type of tower, or rather, damage type. So to gain the most out of your towers, build any tower that’s different from the portal types.
For example, in the screenshot there are 3 cold portals, meaning monsters that are resistant to cold damage and 1 fire portal, meaning monsters resistant to fire damage. So if you build Shock Nova, Seismic, or Summoning Towers, which is Lightning, Physical, and Physical damage respectively, you’ll have an easier time with the Blight encounter. And knowing this helps a ton in Blighted maps!
A thing to note – if a portal has the minion icon, it’s not resistant to any type of damage. It will simply ignore minions and pass right through them, rendering the blocking effect of Summoning towers useless.
Should you upgrade towers or build many of them?
In most cases, upgrading a tower all the way is best. First, fewer but stronger towers can be placed more strategically to make sure they’re attacking at all times. But the more towers you build, the more towers will get placed in out of reach places, hardly doing anything.
Second, the damage values are pretty close across all upgrades. For example, an Arc tower costs 1050 points total, dealing 46K-139K Lightning damage at level 82. But 10 MKI Shock Nova towers cost 1000 points total, theoretically reaching the same 46K-139K Lightning damage range. But that’s only in the ideal case scenario if all your towers are on the main lane. Realistically that will hardly ever happen.
Third, upgraded towers usually have better effects. For example, the Shock Nova tower gets increased range and chance to shock with each upgrade, making the damage more effective and reliable.
Lastly, there are a few exceptions, however. For example, the Seismic tower. Three MKI Seismic towers for 300 points outdo a MKIII for 550 points in terms of damage effectiveness. You can check out the tower list above for a more detailed breakdown!
Are Empowering towers worth it?
Yes, absolutely. If you build a damaging tower, like the Arc tower, and an Empowering tower MKIII, you effectively double the towers damage for half the price. And while Empowering bonuses differ wildly, they’re worth it in almost any situation.
I need your help!
Thanks for checking out this guide! Most of the info was taken from PoEDB and some of it came from testing out towers in-game. Currently, there are some gaps and possible inaccuracies, so if you’ve got corrections or additions, please let me know in the comments!
