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As we all know, Path of Exile 2 Early Access will be released on November 15th, and as the time approaches, all exiles are gearing up to have an excellent performance in this new sequel.
In this guide, we will talk about the various changes we know so far to skill usage and animation rigs in Path of Exile 2, and how they differ from the same mechanics in POE 1, to help old and new players prepare before entering the game. If you are interested, don’t miss this guide and let’s jump right in!
One of the biggest reasons GGG took on the task of making a sequel to Path of Exile was that they wanted to make a new action role-playing game that solved many of the problems that the original Path of Exile had been plaguing players, and the most important of them was visceral action combat, especially melee combat.
Path of Exile 2 will put more emphasis on the feeling of moment to moment combat, using the new rig system to assist animations so that character movement can seamlessly transition from one skill use to another.
In POE 2, you can re-target skills during animations, allowing your character to turn around during the casting or attack time before using skills with longer animations, which will give your character more room to adjust. This means that you can still track more moving targets in combat and strike with skills with longer play times.
Of course, you can also manually cancel the use of abilities. For example, if you need to avoid the immediate danger or you no longer need to use the skill, you can force a skill to cancel through Dodge Roll.
Compared with Path of Exile 1, canceling skills may be more important in POE 2. Because the casting time of skills is usually longer than we are used to in POE 1. For example, Arc spell has a casting time of 0.9 seconds in POE 2, while the casting time in POE 1 is 0.7 seconds.
Additionally, there are several more powerful skills that have very significant cast time changes. For example, Comet has a base cast time of 1 second, with an additional 1 second total cast time as a modifier from the gem itself, which may scale with the gem level.
Therefore, being able to cancel skills with such long cast times is crucial to maintaining the freedom and fluidity of moment to moment combat.
However, what happens to the mana cost in Path of Exile 1 if you cancel a skill animation before it starts or are forced to cancel a skill animation, such as by being stunned? In fact, you will lose the resource cost of the skill because it is pre-consumed.
But the resource cost of using skills has also changed significantly from POE 1 to POE 2. The cost of using a skill will no longer be pre-consumed when the skill is first activated, but will be consumed over the entire duration of the skill animation.
This means that manually canceling a skill before it starts or forcing it to be canceled by being stunned is much less expensive, which can save you a lot of POE2 Currency. And the option to re-target and cancel a skill without losing resources should go a long way toward providing the foundation for more fluid combat for players.
But these aren’t the only aspects of ability usage changes that Path of Exile 2 brings to the series. Many skills now either have built-in movement capabilities by default or can be used while moving, and skills that can be used while moving often impose a movement penalty on the character for the duration of the spell, slowing down movement speed.
But at the same time, for those skills that require you to stand still, they may also have built-in movement capabilities. This goes back to Comet spell from before. This skill had a movement component that would only activate if the spell was aimed close to the character. It would lift the character up and re-target slightly backwards without turning around, providing some defensive utility to help keep distance while casting.
There are also some skills that act similarly to movement skills in POE 1, such as the new Hand of Chayula skill, which will dash to the target if the target is now far away from you.
Finally, for the changes in general ability usage, there are some cosmetic changes more related to the new Rigging System in POE 2.
Some of you who played POE 1 may be familiar with the casting or attacking animations for specific classes and specific weapon types, and how these animations tend to start looking a little ridiculous when you start stacking a lot of attack and casting speeds or a lot of action speeds.
This is because each animation doesn’t change, it just speeds up to such an extent. You can imagine that an animation that looks good when it plays in one second will start to look weird once it plays 10 times in a second. But in POE 2, skill use animations are planned to be different based on the animation speed. When certain speed thresholds are met, some parts of the animation will change to faster or slower animation variants, allowing players to enjoy a better visual experience.
These are some differences and new changes that we have learned so far about how players in Path of Exile 2 use skills compared to previous games. Overall, the developers want to bring players a feast for gameplay and visuals. So, let’s wait and see!
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In a livestream hosted by GGG late last month about Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt update, the developers announced that five Ascendancies will be added on April 4th to allow players to create more builds and play styles. The most exciting for players who are used to hitting enemies with spells and dealing tremendous damage is the addition of a Lich Ascendancy Class with increased spell damage for Witch.
If you are very curious about this new playable character, this guide will introduce you to all the passive skills used by Lich from all the current trailers and developer statements, so that you can master the use of this class as soon as possible after the patch is released.
In POE 2, Lich Ascendancy will turn your character into a powerful undead with a lot of magical passive skills, such as Crystalline Phylactery, Eternal Life, and Rupture the Soul. And it will provide you with higher spell damage capabilities based on your mana.
Similar to Witch, Lich is also a class based on non-channeled spells, so when making and building it, you need to buy POE 2 Currency as much as possible and invest on gear that can provide more Energy Shield, so that you can use Curses to create higher damage capabilities.
According to some informed players, Lich will also have the ability to gain an additional Energy Shield in battle to apply an explosion to the enemy. If this can be achieved, it will have a significant advantage in dealing with group enemies, because it can both increase its own defense and successfully kill those groups of enemies.
From GGG’s livestream, Lich Ascendancy’s passive skill tree looks very much like a spider web, spreading from the top to the left and right. So here we will not list all the passive skill points you can unlock in a branching path, but divide them into left and right branches so that you can distinguish them better.
Here we need to remind you that Unholy Might is a buff effect that Lich can obtain, which can cast 30% of all the damage you can cast as additional chaos damage, which makes up for the lack of direct chaos damage in the current POE 2. The following are all the passive skill points that Lich has.
From the above passive skills, it can be concluded that before you choose Lich as your Ascendancy Class, you need to think about whether your mana and energy shield value can support you to complete all the campaigns and successfully challenge all the content in the endgame, because when your energy shield is insufficient, your mana will continue to deplete and it will be difficult to restore to a healthy level.
The above are some of the passive skill nodes of Lich Ascendancy that will be added to the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt on April 4. At this stage, the beginning of this very strange passive skill tree has not revealed a bit, and we will continue to pay attention to it. Again, you need to really consider which passives are most important to their play style, and which passives will do the most damage to them so that you can have more fun with them.
Ever since the early access of Path of Exile 2, there have been numerous complaints about the endgame content, most notably that it lacks the depth of the original game. So on April 4, the developers will release the most significant patch since the release of POE 2, Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which aims to completely overhaul the endgame, introducing changes that are both substantive and meta-defining.
The changes we’ve seen so far include the introduction of some new endgame mechanics, the integration of campaign-related changes into the endgame, and major changes to existing mechanics in order to pursue deeper and more meaningful exploration. This guide will show you what new endgame mechanics will be available in patch 0.2.0 and how they work, so that you can explore further.
It’s worth mentioning here that in order to bridge the digital divide between the original and the sequel, there will be a lot of new endgame mechanics coming to POE 2 in Dawn of the Hunt, which indirectly prompted the developers to add 10 additional Atlas passive points for players to farm and grind.
The first new mechanic we need to introduce is Rogue Exiles, which look very similar to you will appear in maps with a lot of POE 2 Divine Orbs that you want to farm, as well as some super-powered Unique gloves.
According to the developers, there will be 12 Rogue Exiles when the patch is officially released, each with different item combinations and unique encounters. Rogue Exiles will use the same skills as you. For example, they can also do evasive rolling and can use very advanced pathing and enemy targeting mechanics. The gear used in the build is no exception, so this encounter is very challenging when they are equipped with Temporalis or Hands of Wisdom and Action.
For this kind of battle, you may want to equip as many gears as possible with higher damage or defense capabilities or buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the rarity and roll affixes of the same gear to ensure that your combat capabilities are higher than these Rogue Exiles. After you successfully defeat them, the Uniques they are equipped with will become your loot.
Wildwood Wisps in POE have also been added to the sequel to a new name, now called Azmerian Wisps. These little wisps have a very huge impact. They have already appeared in Grelwood in Act 1 of the original game, and become one of the monsters that players must defeat in the endgame.
In POE 2, Azmerian Wisps appear randomly in zones and Waystones, and will infuse monsters in the current zone with additional powers, such as offensive and defensive abilities. When you get close to them, Wisps will fly faster to normal monsters and turn them into rare or unique monsters.
These possessed monsters have additional attacks, such as summoning spectral animals to finish the fight, so you need to be flexible enough in these encounters to get the increased quantity and quality of loot and experience points.
Here are the names and specific effects of the four Azmerian Wisps that have been confirmed to appear in the game. In addition, as part of the endgame content, Azmerian Wisps will also have their own Precursor Tablets and Atlas Passive nodes, which may not be fully known until the official release.
These are all the new endgame mechanics added to the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which is expected to be released on April 4. Of course, as mentioned earlier, this patch also makes very significant improvements to the mechanics that already exist in the game, such as Towers, Strongbox, and Essence.
These improvements and additions are all designed to get players who once gave up on this over-marketed sequel back to the game, and to give all players a better endgame experience. In general, everything GGG has done this time seems to be based on the player’s perspective and carefully listens to the player’s opinions and suggestions, so we are very much looking forward to what surprises it will bring us this spring.
Five new Ascendancy Classes have been added in this Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt update, giving players more options for their builds. Mercenary has been one of the most popular classes in the game since its Early Access release, so naturally, the addition of a brand new Ascendancy to this class has been highly anticipated once it was leaked. Here, we discuss this Ascendancy and explain what its strengths are, and what builds you might see play on this Ascendancy. Let’s jump right in!
Let’s first take a look at the first skill node in Tactician dual-choice four-point branch, A Solid Plan.
First, note that it provides an 8% increase in Spirit, which is very solid for a small passive, especially considering the 50% reduction in Reserve modifiers for Persistent Buffs. Now this one is really powerful, you will be able to retain more buffs with this node, for example Combat Frenzy will only retain 15 Spirit baseline instead of 30. But you need to have gem socket links for these skills to fit.
Now one thing to mention about this node is that there are over 100 new Support Gems coming out in patch 0.2.0, so the chances of us getting new Persistent Buff Skill Gems, like Vitality and Clarity, are pretty high.
Keep in mind though, that even though they are Support Gems, something like Vitality is still a Persistent Buff that would normally retain 20 Spirit, whereas with this node it will only retain 10.
All of Herald Skills will also be marked as Persistent Buffs, and while they will most likely be severely nerfed in this patch, consider how powerful this notable node is. Especially since it allows you to retain a bunch of high-cost buffs for a very low investment.
For example, Blink will cost you 30 Spirits to keep, and Cast on Critical will be 50 Spirits instead of 100. And yes, all of these Trigger Gems count as Persistent Buffs as well. So they apply to this node as well.
Considering there are so many options for persistent and buffs, this is just a very versatile strong node that you can get with almost any build you want.
Now there are two different notable nodes branching off from this A Solid Plan node, each with a more specific effect on the build you want to use.
For Watch How I Do It, this causes allies in front of you to gain bonus attack damage equal to 25% of your mainhand weapon damage. Now, this may have some interesting effects on Spectres that appear in this patch. I’m sure there will be some mob types who abuse these fixed damage like crazy.
I think this node is more of a party support playstyle than any other mode, that’s because if you’re playing minions you can’t drop your Spectres, Gem Levels and Spirits, so you can’t use two-handed weapons here. You can only use one-handed weapons with Sceptres for fixed damage, which would be ideal for fixed damage, but I don’t really think that would be that great.
Also, there are Totems, but since all Totems in the game currently deal fixed damage based on Gem Level, I don’t think that would be too useful either, but from a party support perspective in group play this node is fine.
Then we have another branch option, Whoever Pays Best. Now this can place multiple Banners, in addition to War Banner. Banners are generally a bit weak in Path of Exile 2. So hopefully this change will get them some attention in the upcoming patches, but as of now I don’t see many people picking this up.
Let’s move on to the next four point branch, starting with Suppressing Fire. Pin is a debuff that essentially acts as a route, since projectile damage builds up Pin, which will bind the target in place, and while the target is pinned, they can’t move. Pin has a default base duration of 4 seconds.
It’s worth noting that Pin is pretty easy to build up compared to Freeze. When the target is pinned, they are also considered immobile, so you can take advantage of this, like with Leverage Support Gem, which increases critical chance by 50%. But perhaps more notable is Siege Cascade, which is a crossbow damage ability.
So, you’ll be able to use this to actually build up the pins for Suppressing Fire, and the skill itself has 50% more built-in damage to pinned enemies, so this is a nice secondary node.
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For the next node in Suppressing Fire branch, this makes it even more powerful, which is Right Where We Want Them. This node makes the pinned enemy unable to do anything, they can’t move, they can’t attack or cast spells, they just stand there for the entire pinning period, like a puppet.
You know, the crazy Freeze is already very powerful in POE 2, but Freeze is much harder to get compared to Pin. So this node essentially turns your Pin into a pseudo-Freeze, and when mapping, you can immobilize everything you hit with a projectile. So it’s a great option for when your character has very limited movement speed, so you can buy POE 2 Currency and make Pin easier to build. This will go up most of the time, and it’s a very good four-point branch.
Now moving on to the next four-point branch, Polish That Gear, this gives you 100% of your Armor as additional Stun Threshold, and 100% of your Evasion Rating as additional Ailment Threshold.
So how does this node generally work? Your Stun and Ailment Threshold are first based on your max life, so if your max life is 3,200, let’s say your Stun and Ailment Threshold are both 3,200, then those numbers are used to calculate whether a hit will stun you or cause an Ailment shock to you.
For example, for every 4% of Ailment Threshold, there’s a 1% chance of a Stun Threshold being struck, but Polish That Gear gives you the potential to increase those thresholds significantly. Of these, just having 5,000 Armour alone will more than double your Stun Threshold. Considering we can’t easily avoid Stun and Ailment completely in POE 2, I think this is an excellent investment, especially if Ailment becomes more dangerous in patch 0.2.0.
Now the next node off this branch is Stay Light, Use Cover, and this is where things get a little interesting. This node gives you 200% Armor Defense, and enemies have an Accuracy Penalty against you based on distance. Additionally, your maximum Evade chance against strikes is 50%, and your maximum physical damage is reduced by 50%.
What this node does for evasion is that it essentially makes monsters less accurate, which reduces the trade-off against your evasion, making a lower total Evasion Rating more effective. But the other half of this node is more interesting, because you can defend with 200% armor, which means that any hit that interacts with your armor will use twice your total armor to calculate the damage reduction it provides.
Now, armor is at the other end of the scale compared to evasion, and we hope to see buffs to this mechanic in an upcoming patch that will provide similar benefits to the other half of Evade node.
The next node we want to mention is Unleash Hell! From the trailer we can see the actual effect of this skill, to be honest it looks terrible, but who knew it was a very interesting skill design.
As we all know, for some off-screen minions, they are not actually with you, but with this skill, you can shoot a bunch of arrows to a location, and the minions will scale their damage based on your Dexterity and Strength. So there is a bit of attribute stacking factor, but in fact without the base damage number, we really don’t know how good this skill will be.
The last node is Cannons, Ready! This makes your totems’ skills 30% faster, and the totems only use skills when you fire attack projectiles.
But honestly, it’s not great, because the biggest problem for us is that the totem playstyle usually allows your totems to do all the work, but this node prevents the totems from using their skills until you specifically use skills to shoot and attack projectiles.
But for single target damage, 30% skill speed increase is a lot. And this node does not specify Ballista Totem, which means that you can use Weapon Swap to summon Shockwave Totem or Ancestral Warrior Totem, and then you can switch to another set of weapons to fire attack projectiles, making them trigger damage faster than usual. So this can lead to a lot of burst damage. As I said, it’s good for boss fights, but it’s terrible for mapping.
Now in general, Tactician Ascendancy does bring some pleasant effects, especially Pin branch and Reservation node are very good, and for those who like group games, the existence of Tactician will also provide unlimited support for you! I believe we will see some pretty good bows and crossbows built on this Ascendancy in the future.
Path of Exile 2, which was released at the end of last year, has been in early access for about 4 months, which has led to a very monotonous exploration experience and stale exploration content for players with super-strong levels and who entered the endgame stage early.
Not only that, some loyal players from the original game have been criticizing it since they entered the endgame stage of this sequel in early 2025, such as lack of depth and cruel death mechanism. But on the upcoming April 4, these may all face a very big change, because POE 2 will bring a major patch and a new season Dawn of the Hunt.
In it, you will get a lot of new game content, such as new classes, Ascendancies and more than 100 Support Gems, but the most important thing is the improvement of the endgame content. This guide will outline some of the endgame changes we’ve seen so far from POE 2 trailer and recent livestreams, so you can explore the new season once it’s officially released.
First of all, in response to previous criticisms that the endgame content in Path of Exile 2’s Early Access lacked depth, Dawn of the Hunt will introduce an expanded Atlas tree with 10 additional points. This will allow players to customize the way they explore the endgame Waystones more freely, making exploration more fun.
In addition, the developers announced that they would add 7 new unique maps to the new season of POE 2, each with its own unique mechanics and encounters, but only 3 new maps were shown in the livestreams that took place the past two days.
In Ezomyte Megaliths, you’ll enter a forest with some rune-carved stones. After you walk around these stones and activate them, an energy storm will break out in a centralized location, spawning 10 waves of bosses that you need to defeat.
From what game director Jonathan Rogers has said about this map, Ezomyte Megaliths are probably the most challenging of the new maps added, as waves of enemies have never appeared in previous game content. So if you want to run it smoothly in one go, you can buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade and improve the defensive gear in the build.
Another map called Fractured Lake looks very similar to the exploration area provided by the original Lake of Kalandra League from the existing trailers. It will send players to a broken lake full of mirror enemies. During the run, the terrain you can explore will gradually rise from the water as you approach and eventually lead you to Fragmented Mirror.
Like POE Lake of Kalandra League, this Mirror will give you the opportunity to craft customized gear such as rings and amulets, and the number of affixes they carry is very large, and may even give your build the ability to break the rules.
The last map announced is Silent Cave, which will have a group of monsters trapped by Essence and a boss. You can choose to release Essences around you to gain experience and loot from these low-level monsters before challenging the boss, but the boss will be stronger at this time.
Or you can choose to challenge the boss directly to complete the map, and then release the four Essences that can provide you with Hysteria, Delirium, Horror, and Insanity, which can add some unique modifiers to your gear.
Have you ever thought that the character you use becomes an NPC in the game and needs you to kill? POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt turns this seemingly ridiculous idea into reality: the game will introduce 12 different Rogue Exiles, which will bring their unique skills and personalities to your opposite side and will fight you to the death.
These Rogue Exiles fight in the same way and with the same moves as the character you use, with the same ability to dodge and roll, avoid skills through smart pathing, and even smart aiming, which will make players who challenge them feel like they are in PVP. On top of that, these very lifelike opponents will even carry and gain some buffs from the gear you pick up during your exploration.
And when your build outperform these enemies and you defeat them successfully, you’ll be able to earn all the powerful Uniques they carry. Given this mechanic, many players are excited to farm a lot of high-quality gear from these Rogue Exiles and use it to enhance their own builds.
In the current POE 2 exploration, you only need to complete all the main campaigns to enter the endgame stage directly, and there is no inquiry system. Next, NPC in your hideout will give you a Complete 15 Maps task common to all players and ask you to explore on your own.
Although this process is very simple and easy to understand, it is very stale and cannot bring players the excitement of entering more challenging endgame content, which is one of the important reasons why many players are controversial about it.
Fortunately, Dawn of the Hunt will make some changes to this, which brings a new perspective on mapping: you need to clean up all Corrupted Nexus that appear in Atlas and defeat enemies and unique bosses in them. After you successfully complete this operation, you will get crystalized power, which can provide you with additional Atlas points.
Previously, the towers you explored were scattered around your Atlas, but you couldn’t avoid them. This meant that you had to go through a tower before you could unlock a map with unique modifiers or mechanics, which could result in a lot of wasted in-game resources or lost builds.
To address player complaints about this, the developers have significantly reduced the number of towers in Dawn of the Hunt and greatly increased their impact, with bosses having more combat mechanics and loot.
In addition, running some higher-level maps with towers increases the number of mechanics contained in tablets and the number of surrounding maps affected by them, all in an effort to make towers feel like a worthwhile part of POE 2, rather than something you’d rather skip.
The above are some changes and additions to the endgame content in Patch 0.2.0 and Dawn of the Hunt, which will be released on April 4th. I hope you can have a better experience in this game content that has been changed based on player suggestions, and get an excellent ranking in the season rankings as soon as possible. I wish you a happy game!
