Smith of Kitava – Manifest Weapon Still Feels Underwhelming

First off, I really enjoy the design of the Smith of Kitava ascendancy. The concept of forging power into your gear and bending fire resistance into a defensive backbone is incredibly thematic and fun. However, I feel one of its signature skills, Manifest Weapon, doesn’t live up to the rest of the ascendancy’s potential.

Currently, Manifest Weapon feels underwhelming for several reasons:

Damage Output – The skill doesn’t scale meaningfully compared to the other skills in the game...

AI/Utility – The weapon’s behavior is slow and lacks impactful utility (aggro control, taunts, or special attack patterns), making it feel like a weak sidekick rather than a forged extension of the warrior.

Thematic Disconnect – The fantasy of a smith summoning a weapon to fight alongside you is awesome, but in practice, it doesn’t feel like a “living forge creation” so much as a minor distraction.

Obsolete in Practice – Based on community data from poe.ninja
, there are 68,061 characters in the current Abyss league, yet only 13 characters are using Manifest Weapon (https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/abyss?skills=Manifest+Weapon). That’s an extremely low adoption rate, showing that most players don’t find the skill viable despite its thematic appeal.

Suggestions for Improvement:

Allow Manifest Weapon to inherit more of the player’s weapon modifiers (damage type, attack speed, elemental effects) so it scales better with investment.

Improve its AI so it sticks to enemies more reliably or grants some supportive effects (e.g., grants you attack speed, helps apply exposure/ailments, or give shields to you when it is near).

Add unique forging synergy: for example, casting Temper Weapon could also empower Manifest Weapon temporarily, giving players a reason to weave both skills together.

Introduce area-of-effect or piercing capabilities so the Manifest Weapon can impact groups of enemies instead of feeling like a single-target extra. For example, giving it a sweeping AoE slash or the ability to pierce through multiple targets would make it feel far more threatening and versatile in real combat situations.

Smith of Kitava already has one of the most flavorful design identities in PoE 2, and Manifest Weapon could be its crown jewel if it felt impactful. Right now, though, it feels like a “nice extra” that most players skip. Usage stats confirm this problem, and I’d love to see the skill improved so it becomes a core reason to pick this ascendancy.

I played through the campaign with Manifest weapon as I was determined to. Act 2 and 3 were horrible, but manageable. Act 4 was honestly not bad because I bought a strong 2h mace off the market as soon as I unlocked trading. At some points during the act it even felt fast, one-shotting mobs with a little bit of cleave and massive cleave when the aoe slam was off cooldown.

Then I hit maps and wow it went back to feeling awful, I cleared a few maps at an extremely slow pace and decided I was done for the season. I think mace is the only really usable one as that giant slam every 8 seconds or so makes up for some of the terrible AI.

I'll highlight the good and bad from the campaign, as I really do think it was almost all bad after maps:

The good:
- Has really good support gems to scale the damage (all other scalers suck though)
- Has extremely decent single target
- Really good at breaking armor with the right gems
- Immortal so can save a fair number of points on minion survivability
- The mace slam skill feels powerful and looks great

The bad:
- Very, very slow clear
- Very dumb AI, this plagues many minions but when you have a single one it stands out a lot. Often times it would stop killing a rare/boss and run off to any white mob that showed up.
- It misses a ton, especially when a monster is chasing you
- I could not find a reasonable way to get damage high enough once maps started


I think there are many ways they could fix it, but it really depends what the devs ultimately want it to be...

1) A way to summon more than 1, be that a spirit cost or whatever. This is how most minions deal with less than spectacular AI is to have more of them, so that a bad moment for 1 is compensated by your other minions.

2) Give it a skill with much less cooldown, or better yet give it a way to inherit one of the skills that you use, so that it really is a reflection of your weapon.

3) If it is left as is, it really needs to inherit more from you. It could get a portion of your increased attack damage/speed, which would also encourage a more hybrid play-style if this is the route you want to go.

I lean option 1 or 2 (especially 2 as I think that's the most interesting), but that's because I really don't think it'll ever be good enough as it exists now, even if it is given more damage. This is based on when I first bought a strong 2h mace in act 4, it was crushing things for a while, but there were still many times where the AI got stupid running between things and never attacking or constantly swinging behind the intended target.

I am using Manifest Weapon now. It is horrible. Its AI is completely all over the place. It would switch targets and fight things off the screen even when a Rare monster is chasing me. What the hell? Protect your master!!!

I like that there are 3 "minor" variants of Manifest Weapon but I wish the ascendancy could let you go further like how he can make his "perfect armor" through ascendancy points. He should be able to make his perfect Manifest Weapon IMO.

For more ascendancy points, you can make your Weapon do:
1. Make way more copies (so help clearing)
2. More skills and better cool down
3. Weapons buff you or debuff enemies greatly
4. Synergy/Combo style when you and your Weapon hits the same target (this could be hard as its AI is horrible)


I literally saw my Mace weapon hitting nothing because a Zombie monster was walking away. The Weapon needs a way bigger hit box. I even put Maim in support.

Right now Manifest Weapon feels very underwhelmed. Please continue the theme of making his Dream Armor and Weapon. I am trying to scale Strength for manifest but there aren't that many support or items that benefit strength stacking. Strength doesn't even increase my own damage.