As promised, Grinding Gear Games delivered a major Path of Exile 2 update at ExileCon 2023, hosted yesterday in Auckland, New Zealand. To begin with, the developer clarified that Path of Exile 2 will be a full sequel instead of being considered a mere standalone campaign as originally announced.
Over the years in development, the game's scope continued to grow, featuring new monsters, skills, mechanics, classes, and more. The developers described Path of Exile 2 as 'huge' and also said they didn't want to mess with the first installment, so they will exist as separate titles. That said, microtransactions will be available across both games where applicable. For example, if you unlocked the stash tabs or purchased a particularly cool sword cosmetic item, both will carry over.
Grinding Gear Games then described the significant changes made to the class system in the sequel, as outlined below.
In Path of Exile, we had one character class for each of the combinations of Strength, Dexterity and
Intelligence. When looking at the design of Path of Exile 2, we realized that many of the new skills that we were trying to design, didn't really fit thematically with the existing classes that we have.
Being a spellcaster with a bear form makes sense for Strength Int, but it really doesn't sound like something a Templar would do. We realized that since we had new mechanics for every attribute combination, it actually made sense to design new character classes to explore the new themes. In Path of Exile 2, every attribute combination has two classes associated with it. Strength/Int has the Templar or the Druid. On Dexterity, you have the Ranger and the spear-focused Huntress. And on Dex/Int, you have the Shadow and the Monk.
Each class will also come with its own three Ascendancies, providing further ways to refine and specialize the class uniquely. Moreover, the developers worked hard to improve the feeling of melee combat by adding mobility to the skills. Every class has a dodge roll with no cooldowns or limitations of any kind.
You'll still be hit with Area of Effect spells and abilities while dodging, but direct strikes will miss. Dodge can even be used to cancel almost any animations whenever needed. There's also a brief window to redirect your attack's direction from one way to another if need be.
Every area of the Path of Exile 2 campaign contains a challenging boss. Overall, there's more than 100 of them, each sporting unique mechanics that will have to be learned by players. Killing an optional boss might provide a permanent stat bonus for your character.
Grinding Gear Games reworked how debuffs work in Path of Exile 2. Crowd control mechanics now have internal meters that slowly build up, allowing developers to avoid the situation of the first game where they had to empower bosses with immunities to effects like freeze.
A new resource called Spirit was added to the game. This dedicated resource is used for Heralds, Auras, Minions, and more. All characters have 100 Spirit by default, but the value can be increased with mods and through the passive tree.
Another major change from the first Path of Exile is that Weapon Swap also includes automatic switching from one build to another of the passive tree, allowing characters to take advantage of each weapon's best features. This will only work with passives granted from Skill Books rather than all passives in a tree, but it'll still increase the number of options available to players when building a character.
Diablo IV made a big debut last month, retaking the throne of the hack-and-slash genre. However, Blizzard must keep expanding its game to stay on top, as Grinding Gear isn't pulling any punches with the upcoming Path of Exile 2.
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