In a game as complex and constantly evolving as Path of Exile 2, it’s easy to assume that the most powerful builds are also the most obvious ones. Players gravitate toward familiar archetypes: Cast on Crit setups, ailment-stacking spellcasters, or heavily optimized meta slams. So when you hear about yet another Whirling Assault build, your first instinct might be to shrug. Haven’t we seen this before?

That’s where 787 Prada’s Whirling Assault Smith of Kitava shatters expectations.

On the surface, it looks like a classic melee bruiser—spinning through packs, stacking rage, leaning into tankiness. But under the hood, it’s doing something far more interesting. By combining the natural durability of the Smith of Kitava ascendancy with Fire Spell on Hit mechanics and the devastating scaling of Detonate Dead, this build transforms into a screen-wide chain reaction engine. It doesn’t just spin to win—it detonates entire battlefields with a single button press.

Let’s break down why this off-meta masterpiece works so well.

The Smith of Kitava: More Than Just a Tank

Traditionally, the Smith of Kitava is associated with raw survivability. It’s the ascendancy you pick when you want to stand your ground, soak damage, and outlast whatever the game throws at you. In hardcore environments or high-tier content, that kind of resilience is invaluable.

But 787 Prada’s build flips the script.

Instead of simply leaning into defense, this setup weaponizes the ascendancy’s unique mechanic: Fire Spell on Hit. Unlike Cast on Crit or Cast on Ailment, which require specific triggers and often strict investment into crit chance or status application, Fire Spell on Hit is refreshingly straightforward.

Hit an enemy with a melee attack.

Gain energy.

Automatically cast linked fire spells.

That’s it.

There’s no complicated crit threshold. No reliance on shock, ignite, or freeze uptime. No juggling of probabilistic triggers. Just pure, consistent activation. If you’re attacking, you’re casting.

The catch? You’re limited to fire spells.

For some builds, that restriction would feel suffocating. For this one, it becomes the key to unlocking absurd scaling.

Detonate Dead: The Hidden Nuclear Option

While many players gravitate toward flashy projectile spells or large AoE nukes, this build chooses something far less popular: Detonate Dead.

In Path of Exile 2, Detonate Dead is often overlooked. It’s not glamorous. It doesn’t flood the screen with meteors or lightning storms. But in terms of raw scaling potential, it is one of the strongest spells in the entire game.

Here’s why.

Detonate Dead deals damage based on the maximum life of a corpse. When you kill a monster, it leaves a corpse behind. That corpse becomes ammunition. When detonated, it deals physical damage proportional to that monster’s life pool.

And here’s the crucial part: as monsters get harder, they gain more life.

That means as you progress into higher-tier content—maps, endgame encounters, scaling difficulty modifiers—Detonate Dead automatically scales with the content. The tankier the enemies, the harder your explosions hit.

In other words, it scales infinitely alongside monster difficulty.

Most builds need heavier investment to keep up with endgame scaling. They require better gear, higher multipliers, more optimized stats. Detonate Dead simply asks for tougher enemies.

By linking Detonate Dead to Fire Spell on Hit, 787 Prada ensures that every time Whirling Assault wipes a pack, the corpses immediately explode. The build becomes self-fueling. Melee hits create corpses. Corpses become explosions. Explosions clear the next wave.

The result? Entire screens evaporate in a cascading chain reaction.

Whirling Assault: The Engine of Destruction

Of course, none of this works without a reliable melee trigger. That’s where Whirling Assault comes in.

Whirling Assault isn’t just a movement tool—it’s a wide-area, high-coverage melee attack that effectively hits everything in front of you and often beyond what you can even see. It’s fast, fluid, and aggressive.

In this build, Whirling Assault serves three core functions:

Generating Fire Spell on Hit triggers.

Killing initial targets to create corpses.

Maintaining mobility while clearing.

The synergy is almost unfair. You spin through a pack. Everything gets hit. The weakest monsters die instantly. Detonate Dead triggers automatically, turning those corpses into devastating explosions that wipe out the rest.

All of this happens with a single button press.

That’s the defining feature of this build: one-button screen deletion.

The Weapon Swap Trick: Trench Timber and Commanding Rage

If the build ended there, it would already be impressive. But 787 Prada adds another layer of ingenuity with a clever interaction involving Trench Timber and Commanding Rage.

On the second weapon set, the build uses Trench Timber, a unique one-handed mace that provides significant attack speed and a fascinating modifier:

“Increases and reductions to minion attack speed also affect you.”

At first glance, that seems irrelevant. This build doesn’t use minions.

But then comes the twist.

The passive node Commanding Rage causes each point of rage to grant increased attack speed to your minions. Under normal circumstances, that would be valuable only in minion-focused builds.

However, because Trench Timber transfers minion attack speed bonuses to the player, every point of rage now increases your own attack speed.

The result? Up to 44% increased attack speed purely from rage scaling and this interaction.

It’s elegant. It’s creative. And it’s devastatingly effective.

Bone Shatter and Mobility Through Speed

Now we introduce Bone Shatter.

On paper, Bone Shatter doesn’t look impressive. Its base damage isn’t particularly high, and it’s rarely the centerpiece of top-tier builds. But when paired with extreme attack speed, it becomes something else entirely.

With the Trench Timber + Commanding Rage synergy pushing attack speed through the roof, Bone Shatter becomes a rapid-fire movement and clearing tool. It functions similarly to Whirling Assault in that it allows the player to rapidly reposition and chain through packs.

In practice, this means:

You spin to obliterate a pack.

You weapon-swap.

You sprint across the map with hyper-fast Bone Shatter.

You swap back and repeat.

The build doesn’t just clear screens—it flies across them.

For mapping, this is invaluable. Speed equals efficiency. Efficiency equals more loot, more progression, more fun.

Why This Build Feels So Good

There’s a reason this setup stands out among countless others.

1. Consistency Over RNG

Unlike Cast on Crit builds, which rely on chance, Fire Spell on Hit guarantees triggers as long as you’re attacking. There’s no awkward downtime. No streaks of bad luck. Just constant output.

2. Scaling With Difficulty

Detonate Dead ensures that the build becomes stronger as enemies become tougher. This is the opposite of many builds that feel amazing early and struggle later.

3. Tankiness Without Sacrificing Damage

The Smith of Kitava ascendancy provides strong defensive foundations. You’re not a glass cannon. You’re a heavily armored pyromaniac spinning through explosions.

4. Creative Mechanical Synergy

The Trench Timber + Commanding Rage interaction is the kind of clever buildcraft that defines high-level play in Path of Exile 2. It’s not obvious. It’s not cookie-cutter. It rewards understanding the underlying systems.

5. One-Button Satisfaction

There’s something deeply satisfying about pressing one button and watching the entire screen implode.

Off-Meta, But Not Off-Power

One of the most compelling aspects of 787 Prada’s Whirling Assault Smith of Kitava is that it doesn’t rely on the obvious meta staples. It doesn’t spam Comet like many cast-on setups. It doesn’t chase crit stacking trends.

Instead, it takes underutilized mechanics—Detonate Dead, minion attack speed transfer, Fire Spell on Hit—and turns them into a cohesive engine of destruction.

That’s what makes it feel fresh.

In a game where build diversity is one of its greatest strengths, discovering interactions like this is part of the magic. The passive tree, weapon swaps, ascendancies, and unique items all intertwine into a sandbox of possibility.

And sometimes, the strongest builds aren’t the loudest ones. They’re the ones quietly detonating entire screens while everyone else is chasing the flavor of the month.

Final Thoughts

787 Prada’s Whirling Assault Smith of Kitava isn’t just another melee build. It’s a masterclass in synergy.

By combining:

The durability and Fire Spell on Hit mechanics of the Smith of Kitava

The infinitely scaling destruction of Detonate Dead

The sweeping coverage of Whirling Assault

The clever attack speed conversion of Trench Timber and Commanding Rage

And the mobility boost from high-speed Bone Shatter

…it creates a build that is tanky, explosive, fast, and deeply satisfying.

If you’re looking for something slightly off-meta that can clear everything you see—and then some—with a single button press, this is it.

In the ever-expanding chaos of Path of Exile 2, sometimes the best way forward isn’t to follow the crowd.

Sometimes, it’s to spin through it—and detonate what’s left behind.
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