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A Series Of Possible Changes To Skill Usage In Path Of Exile 2

Oct 28, 2024

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!

Melee Rework

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.

A Series Of Possible Changes To Skill Usage In Path Of Exile 2

Retargeting Skills

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.

Skill Cancellation

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.

Mana Cost Changes

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 POE 2 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.

Movement

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.

Animation Rigs

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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