Open Build → Character Planner. It has five tabs: Import Build, Meta Heatmap, Keystones, Ascendancy and Notables. Over the game, the Passives & Heatmap tool window is the same page. It is on the feature bar by default. It has no default hotkey, so assign one under Overlays → Hotkeys if you want one.
Importing a build
Your Path of Building builds. If Path of Building is installed, the top card lists the builds it has saved on this PC. Click one to load it. You don't paste anything. After you re-import a character in PoB, press ↻ Refresh. The Upgrade Finder reads this same list.
A Mobalytics or Maxroll URL. Paste the build guide's address and press Import URL. You get class, skills, gear and passives. Guides that have several variants (levelling, early maps, endgame) show a Variant chip for each one, labelled with its passive count.
Grinding Gear Games' passive-tree planner. Paste the share link (or just the code) and press Import Tree. That gives you the class, the ascendancy and every allocated passive. A tree link does not include gems, gear or level, and the note under the box says so.
A `.build` file from the in-game Build Planner. Drop it on the box (the game saves these under Documents/My Games/Path of Exile 2). ePOE reads the skills and the description. It cannot place the passives, because GGG publishes no mapping from the file's passive names to the tree's nodes. For the tree, use the planner share link instead.
A PoB code. In Path of Building, use Import/Export → Generate and paste the code into the text box, then press Import Code. It is decoded on your machine.
When a build is showing, press Save build and it appears under Saved builds, where you can reload it without importing again. A saved PoB build is re-read from its file if that file is still on disk, so it picks up your latest changes.
Reading the build
A loaded build shows its class, ascendancy and level, then the Character sheet, the Passive tree, Skills, the allocated Keystones, Ascendancy and Notable passives, and Equipment. For PoB builds the character sheet is recomputed in the background by Path of Building itself. ⚡ PoB live marks those numbers, and All computed stats opens the full list with a filter.
The tree is for reading, not planning. You can't allocate points on it. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom and hover a node to see its name. Fit build frames your allocation, Whole tree zooms out and ⛶ Pop out gives it the whole window. The ascendancy is drawn as a medallion at the tree's centre, using its real in-game layout.
Icons: off is the default, and the tree shows plain dots. Switch it on to use the real game icons and ascendancy art. They are downloaded from Path of Building's public sheets the first time and cached locally.
Meta Heatmap
This tab shows how often tracked characters allocate each passive. It opens poe.ninja's public Builds page in a separate window. ePOE does not use poe.ninja's private API, and nothing is scraped.
- The League is the one set under Settings → Price checks.
- Class or ascendancy narrows the heatmap. Changing it reloads the open window.
- Press Open live heatmap (or Open in browser). Then use Zoom (drag from 25% to 300%, or type any percentage from 1% to 500%) and Opacity to fit it over your screen. If poe.ninja changes its page layout, the zoom greys out until ePOE is updated.
- Freeze in game captures the open window and pins that image over the game. Unfreeze removes it. You have to open the live heatmap first.
Snapshots
Save snapshot stores the current heatmap as an image, with an optional name. The image lives in a heatmaps folder in your ePOE data, and ePOE keeps the newest 50. Each row has Recall (show it over the game again, even offline), Rename and Delete.
Two hotkeys do this without the dashboard, and both are unbound by default. Freeze Meta Heatmap freezes the live window, or unfreezes the image that is already showing. Recall Last Heatmap Snapshot shows your newest snapshot. Assign them under Overlays → Hotkeys. They only work while the Passives & Heatmap overlay is switched on.
Tips
- Snapshot the meta at the start of a league. Recalling it weeks later shows you how the tree has shifted.
- Heatmaps show popularity, not power. A red node means lots of people took it. That is worth a look, but it doesn't make the node right for your build.
- The reference tabs are there for search. Keystones, Ascendancy (with a class filter) and Notables all match against stat text, so searching "block" finds every node that mentions it.
Related
- Upgrade Finder to score gear against the same PoB builds.
- Ascendancy Roulette if you haven't picked a class yet.