The Legacy of Phrecia event in Path of Exile 1 introduces 19 new Ascendancies, each with unique mechanics and build potential. Below is the PoE 1 Legacy of Phrecia Tier List to rank each new Ascendancy along with its best build recommendation.

PoE 1 Best New Legacy of Phrecia Ascendancy & Build Tier List

The Legacy of Phrecia event is coming to Path of Exile 1, bringing 19 new ascendancies. As promised, I am excited to break down each of these ascendancies and rank them based on my personal excitement, potential league-start viability, and overall gameplay impact.

This tier list is not necessarily a ranking of power but rather a reflection of my enthusiasm for each ascendancy. Some are incredibly exciting, while others feel underwhelming. We will also provide build ideas and insights into which ascendancies seem most viable early on and which might shine later in the game.

1. Daughter of Oshabi (S Tier)

Daughter of Oshabi is a shrine-focused Ascendancy that enhances shrine effects and introduces poison mechanics. It enables powerful buffs from shrines while integrating poison damage into various builds. This makes it an excellent choice for scaling poison-based attacks and spells while maintaining strong defenses.

• Best Daughter of Oshabi Build: Poison Blade Vortex – This build stacks poison damage through Blade Vortex, benefiting from Daughter of Oshabi’s shrine effects and strong poison application. It excels in clear speed and sustain, making it a top-tier league starter.

2. Surfcaster (S Tier)

Surfcaster revolves around self-chill mechanics, providing massive attack and movement speed boosts. It also enables strong shock and freeze uptime, making it a high-speed mapping Ascendancy.

• Best Surfcaster Build: Lightning Arrow Surfcaster – This build converts all Lightning damage to Cold, ensuring consistent chill and shock application. The self-chill effect significantly boosts speed, making it a top-tier choice for fast mapping and progression.

3. Scavenger (S Tier)

Scavenger is one of the best ascendancies for flexibility, much like the original Ascendant. It provides shrine buffs and versatile damage conversion. If I don’t play Daughter of Shabi, this would likely be my second choice.

• Best Scavenger Build: Shrine Buff Stacking Attack Build – Utilizing shrine mechanics for massive buffs, this build could focus on a fast-hitting melee or ranged attack skill.

4. Blind Prophet (S Tier)

Blind Prophet is a projectile-based Ascendancy that enhances returning projectiles and evasion. It allows for projectile-based attacks and spells to gain additional defensive and offensive benefits, making it an excellent choice for ranged builds.

• Best Blind Prophet Build: Hexblast Shadow – This build utilizes Hexblast to trigger powerful chaos explosions, benefiting from Blind Prophet’s projectile mechanics. The returning projectiles provide massive AoE, making it strong for both clearing and bossing.

5. Architect of Chaos (S Tier)

Architect of Chaos is a Vaal skill-centric Ascendancy that enhances corrupted items and allows life-based spell casting. It grants huge bonuses to Vaal gems, making it one of the strongest burst-damage Ascendancies in the game.

• Best Architect of Chaos Build: Vaal Ice Nova Frostbolt – This build leverages Vaal Ice Nova and Frostbolt for massive AoE damage. The life-based casting mechanics reduce reliance on mana, ensuring consistent uptime on abilities.

6. Bog Shaman (S Tier)

Bog Shaman is a chaos-based Ascendancy that grants poison immunity and pacification effects. It also provides trade-offs, such as reduced resistances in exchange for increased projectile speed and AoE, making it a unique but niche choice.

• Best Bog Shaman Build: Essence Drain/Contagion Chaos DoT – This build leverages chaos DoTs for strong sustained damage, benefiting from Bog Shaman’s poison immunity and increased AoE.

7. Ancestral Commander (A Tier)

Ancestral Commander is a totem-based Marauder Ascendancy that absorbs damage through totems, making it one of the tankiest choices available. It also provides additional totem support, making it ideal for totem-based builds.

• Best Ancestral Commander Build: Explosive Arrow Ballista Totem – This build utilizes Explosive Arrow and Ballista Totems to deal massive fire damage over time. The totem damage absorption mechanics provide excellent survivability, making it a top choice for Hardcore players.

8. Whisperer (A Tier)

Whisperer is a stealth-based Ascendancy that focuses on forking projectiles, free power/frenzy charges, and lightning damage scaling. It is ideal for high-speed projectile builds.

• Best Whisperer Build: Tornado Shot Ranger – This build utilizes high projectile scaling for fast clear speed, benefiting from Whisperer’s free charge generation and projectile buffs.

9. Servant of Arakaali (A Tier)

Servant of Arakaali is a minion-focused Ascendancy that specializes in poison-based mechanics. It summons spiders that attack enemies and applies webs to slow and weaken foes.

• Best Servant of Arakaali Build: Herald of Agony Poison Minions – This build uses Herald of Agony and poison-stacking mechanics for strong sustained DPS. The spiders provide additional poison damage, making it a great choice for bossing and sustained damage.

10. Puppeteer (A Tier)

Puppeteer is a minion-based Ascendancy that specializes in zombie and animated weapon mechanics. It provides strong buffs to minion damage and durability, making it a top choice for summoner builds.

• Best Puppeteer Build: Animated Guardian/Zombie Summoner – This build focuses on maximizing zombie and guardian uptime, ensuring consistent tankiness and high minion damage output.

11. Herald (A Tier)

Herald is a Herald-based Ascendancy that enhances Herald of Purity, Ice, Ash, and Thunder. It also boosts Sentinels of Radiance, making it a great option for elemental minion builds.

• Best Herald Build: Herald of Agony & Purity Poison Build – This build utilizes Herald synergy for high poison damage, benefiting from Herald’s minion-enhancing mechanics.

12. Wildspeaker (B Tier)

Wildspeaker is a beast summoner archetype that attempts to combine ranged weapon attacks with minion mechanics. It provides bonuses to minion damage and buffs summoned beasts, but its overall viability remains questionable. While the idea of a bow-based minion build is interesting, there are few existing mechanics that properly support this hybrid playstyle.

• Best Wildspeaker Build: Summon Raging Spirits + Bows – This build could use Summon Phantasms to generate minions while using a bow for additional ranged damage. However, the lack of strong synergy between bows and minions makes this an experimental choice.

13. Polytheist (B Tier)

Polytheist is a versatile Ascendancy that allows players to choose from multiple deity-based buffs. It offers flexibility in offensive and defensive playstyles, making it one of the most customizable Ascendancies.

• Best Polytheist Build: Ice Nova/Frostbolt Polytheist – This build capitalizes on projectile-based Nova spells, benefiting from Polytheist’s projectile and evasion bonuses.

14. Paladin (C Tier)

Paladin is a tank-oriented Duelist Ascendancy that provides defensive buffs and utility. However, its focus on link skills makes it less effective for solo play.

• Best Paladin Build: Holy Paladin Duelist – This build utilizes link skills and defensive auras to enhance survivability, making it better suited for group play.

15. Aristocrat (C Tier)

Aristocrat is a stat-stacking Ascendancy that provides raw attribute scaling, passive points, and gem level increases. However, it lacks a unique defining mechanic.

• Best Aristocrat Build: Strength-Stacking Duelist – This build focuses on stacking Strength for massive damage and defenses, benefiting from high Strength-based scaling.

16. Antiquarian (C Tier)

Antiquarian is a Ward-based Ascendancy that focuses on projectile immunity and strength stacking. However, its mechanics feel underdeveloped.

• Best Antiquarian Build: Strength-Stacking Storm Rain Marauder – This build experiments with strength-stacking Ward mechanics, offering some defensive utility.

17. Gambler (F Tier)

Gambler is an ascendancy built around luck-based mechanics, where some bonuses are extremely powerful while others impose significant drawbacks. For example, spell block can be lucky, but attack block can be unlucky, leading to a high-risk, high-reward playstyle. Unfortunately, Path of Exile is a game where consistency is key, making this ascendancy a difficult choice for endgame content.

• Best Gambler Build: Crit Gladiator Blade Flurry – This build makes use of lucky critical strikes, allowing Blade Flurry to deal massive burst damage. However, the unpredictability of the ascendancy’s mechanics makes it hard to plan around.

18. Behemoth (F Tier)

Behemoth is, unfortunately, one of the worst ascendancies in Legacy of Phrecia. The major issue is that spells are disabled, which means: No auras, No movement skills like Flame Dash, No Berserk, No curses This restriction is severe, and while the ascendancy grants Rampage and fortification, it just doesn’t compensate for the loss of spell functionality. If they removed the spells disabled line and instead made spell skills deal no damage, this ascendancy could be amazing. As it stands, it’s a hard pass.

• Best Behemoth Build: Unarmed Heavy Strike Juggernaut – Given the heavy restrictions Behemoth imposes, an unarmed melee build utilizing Facebreaker gloves for massive damage multipliers is one of the few viable options. The build would rely on Leap Slam for mobility and Warcries for utility, but overall, it remains an extremely difficult ascendancy to justify.

19. Harbinger (F Tier)

Harbinger is a summoner-themed ascendancy that revolves around greater harbingers of time, focus, and arcane. While this sounds intriguing, the mechanics suffer from long cooldowns and limited impact. The ascendancy also enhances hex proliferation and temporal chains, suggesting a playstyle centered around extending debuffs and controlling enemy movement. Unfortunately, the reliance on cooldown-based summons makes it feel slow and clunky compared to other summoner ascendancies.

• Best Harbinger Build: Storm Burst Channeling Build – This build could leverage Harbinger of Arcane to sustain mana while continuously channeling Storm Burst. Additionally, Hexblast could be incorporated for extra synergy with the ascendancy’s hex-related mechanics. However, this setup remains underwhelming compared to more traditional summoner builds.