Path of Exile (PoE) Fist of War support explained

Path of Exile patch 3.22, the Trial of the Ancestors league, brought changes to several gems in PoE. One of the updated gems is a support skill gem called Fist of War, which supports slam skills. When you use a slam skill that is supported by First of War, it empowers your attack with more damage and area of effect. However, the effect from Fist of War does have a cooldown between its uses.

Interestingly, multiple instances of Fist of War each have their own separate cooldown. Therefore, if you were to equip three slam skills linked to three separate Fist of War support gems, you would be able to boost all of the skills within the cooldown. Furthermore, the slam skills do not have to be different attacks, meaning you could link up to three Fist of War support gems with three of the same slam skill. It remains to be seen if that would ever be a more beneficial scenario, though.

This is everything you need to know about the Path of Exile Fist of War support gem explained.

How to get the Fist of War Support Gem in Path of Exile

There are several ways to obtain a Fist of War Support Gem in Path of Exile. If you are a Duelist, Marauder, or Templar, you can choose the gem as a quest reward in Act 4 upon completion of The Eternal Nightmare quest. If you are either of those three classes or a Scion, you can buy the gem from Petarus and Vanja.

Once you reach Act 6 and unlock Lilly Roth as a vendor, you can buy Fist of War. This applies to all classes. Lilly is also at your hideout where she offers the First of War support gem as well.

Is Fist of War Support Gem good in PoE?

Before now Fist of War didn’t make much sense to play. The cooldown made the effect of the support gem too slow. In fact, according to poe.ninja, recent leagues have only seen a handful of people even using the gem.

However, with the new changes Fist of War could find uses in some specific builds. Primarily, I could see certain Shockwave based builds synergizing well with Fist of War. As the league plays out I imagine we will see more builds giving this gem a try with the proper itemization.