When it comes to enhancing your gear with Artificer’s Orbs in Path of Exile 2, choosing the right equipment to socket is crucial for maximizing your build’s power and flexibility. Artificer’s Orbs add sockets to weapons and armor, enabling you to equip runes or soul cores that grant powerful bonuses. Here’s a guide to the best gear types to enhance with Artificer’s Orbs for optimal impact.

1. Two-Handed Weapons
   Two-handed weapons can receive up to two sockets via Artificer’s Orbs, making them prime candidates for socketing. More sockets allow you to equip multiple runes, significantly boosting damage output or utility. Since two-handed weapons often form the core of your offensive capabilities, investing Artificer’s Orbs here can yield substantial returns.

2. Body Armor
   Body armor also supports up to two sockets, allowing for greater customization of defensive and offensive runes. Because armor is central to your survivability, adding sockets here lets you insert runes that improve resistances, life, or other defensive stats, as well as offensive bonuses if your build supports it.

3. One-Handed Weapons and Off-Hands
   One-handed weapons and off-hand items like shields or caster foci can each receive one socket. While limited compared to two-handed gear, these sockets are still valuable for adding runes that enhance attack speed, elemental damage, or defensive layers. For dual-wield builds, socketing both weapon and off-hand maximizes rune utility.

If you're short on crafting resources, many players choose to buy poe 2 currency early in the league to accelerate socketing and gear optimization.

4. Helmets, Gloves, and Boots
   These armor pieces typically allow one socket each. Adding sockets to helmets, gloves, and boots enables you to slot runes that provide resistances, movement speed, or other utility bonuses. Since these slots often have unique affixes, socketing runes here can complement your overall build strategy.

5. Martial Weapons (Excluding Wands, Staves, and Scepters)
   Artificer’s Orbs can be used on a wide range of martial weapons such as bows, crossbows, maces, axes, spears, claws, daggers, and flails. These weapons benefit from sockets because runes can enhance elemental damage, physical damage, or provide special effects tailored to your build’s needs. Notably, wands, staves, and scepters currently cannot be socketed with Artificer’s Orbs, so focus on martial weapons for rune customization.

For those grinding through endgame maps, managing your poe 2 currency wisely ensures you're always stocked with orbs when a prime socketing opportunity appears.

Strategic Considerations
Prioritize gear that forms the backbone of your build, such as your main weapon and chest armor, since sockets here have the greatest impact.

Maximize socket count on two-handed weapons and body armor to unlock more rune slots.

Use sockets on secondary gear like helmets and gloves to shore up resistances or add utility runes.

Avoid socketing gear that you plan to replace soon to conserve Artificer’s Orbs, as these orbs can be scarce early on.

Artificer’s Orbs are best spent on weapons and armor pieces that allow multiple sockets and play a significant role in your build’s offense or defense. Two-handed weapons and body armor top the list due to their capacity for two sockets, followed by one-handed weapons, off-hands, and other armor pieces. By strategically applying Artificer’s Orbs to these key items, you unlock powerful rune combinations that greatly enhance your character’s capabilities throughout your Path of Exile 2 journey.