Sorceress is one of the two Intelligence starting classes in Path of Exile 2. The class focuses primarily on Elemental Damage, Elemental Ailments, Mana and Energy Shield, which makes it somewhat similar to the Elementalist from POE 1.

Here we’ll go over all Sorceress themed abilities we know so far. But just like in POE 1, you can of course use these skills on any class, not just Sorceress, this is just for marketing POE 2, to make all of these skills clearer and easier to understand for new players joining the series for the first time. Let’s get straight into it!

Fireball

Starting with Fireball, this skill looks very similar to the one in POE 1. But it functions differently, as it explodes on contact, forming a small fireball that shoots out in all directions. This is great for clearing out dense groups of monsters to speed up POE Currency farming efficiency.

It’s also worth mentioning that Fireball was one of the showcase abilities, and it appeared in ExileCon Showcase as an Implicit skill granted by the weapon. The developers stated that this version of the skill can be cast for free.

Spark

Next up we have Spark, which is also very similar to its counterpart from POE 1, firing projectiles that appear to move around randomly and bounce off the terrain. During ExileCon Showcase, the developers mentioned that this skill would be better suited for clearing monsters if equipped with Pierce Support.

Arc

Arc is another Lightning skill. The character fires some lightning at a target enemy, which then chains to other nearby enemies. This skill is better suited for single targets, as it deals more damage to the first target it hits.

Frostbolt

Frostbolt is also very similar to its counterpart from POE 1, with the major difference as the projectile follows Chilled Ground that forms below it as it moves, and when the projectile collides with the terrain it actually explodes, dealing AOE cold damage. This will make it a key skill for clearing a lot of enclosed space in some map layouts.

Ice Nova

Next up is Ice Nova, a spell that increases the cold damage radius around the caster while also knocking back enemies, depending on how close they are to you. Ice Nova can also be used on a moving Frostbolt Projectile, and doing so will increase the power of Ice Nova, making it easier to freeze enemies.

Cold Snap

Cold Snap is another cold skill that interacts with Frostbolt Projectile. The skill can target frozen enemies, causing them to shatter and explode, dealing AOE cold damage.

You’ll be able to use Cold Snap by targeting Frostbolt Projectiles, causing the skill to shatter all frozen enemies in the area around Frostbolt. Obviously, this means that the combination of Frostbolt, Ice Nova, and Cold Snap is great for clearing setups.

Comet

Then we have Comet, another cold-themed skill. This skill looks great. It has a long cast time, and it drops a giant Ice Ball at the target area, dealing a ton of cold damage. It’s worth noting that casting this skill actually moves the character back a bit, allowing for some repositioning counterattacks.

Barrier Invocation

Barrier Invocation is an interesting skill, one of the new Meta Skill Gems. It reserves Spirit to gain buffs, and the buffs will recharge the energy mechanic based on the amount of damage you deal to Energy Shield until the maximum energy threshold is reached. You can then use the skill again to consume the already accumulated energy to trigger socketed spells.

It’s important to note here that in POE 2, triggered abilities work differently. Because the casting time of the triggered ability will directly affect the trigger condition, Barrier Invocation will use more stored energy to trigger a spell with a longer casting time than a spell with a shorter casting time.

Cast On Shock

This is another new Meta Skill Gem. It also accumulates energy when you shock an enemy, similar to Barrier Invocation, and the maximum amount of energy you can have is based on the casting time of the triggered ability. So if the skill has a longer casting time, it will take longer to accumulate the energy required to trigger the skill.

Arctic Armour

Arctic Armour is another skill that reserves Spirit, and it will grant you an Ice Barrier that builds up over time while stationary, and wears off pretty quickly. Once you start moving, the buff will make you immune to Freeze, and it will cause you to take less Physical and Fire damage per phase, which is accumulated while standing still.

Importantly, from the looks of it, the less Physical and Fire damage Arctic Armour takes seems to work on other types of sustained damage as well. Not just hitting monsters, as long as Ice Barrier is up and active, they’ll take cold damage.

Flame Wall

Flame Wall seems to function exactly the same as it did in POE 1. It creates a wall of flames on the ground that deals sustained fire damage to enemies standing in it.

If any enemies enter the area after it’s activated, they’ll take additional fire damage over time from the secondary debuff. Not only that, but this can also apply some extra fire damage by firing projectiles at enemies.

Rolling Magma

One protection skill that can be used with Flame Wall is Rolling Magma, which forms a bouncing Fiery Orb that deals AOE damage with each bounce. This skill also refreshes the number of remaining bounces when it passes through a Flame Wall.

Solar Orb

Next up we have Solar Orb, which creates a large Fire Orb at a location that will periodically explode for fire damage. Any enemy close enough to Fire Orb will also take ongoing fire damage, but recasting Solar Orb will actively replace the current Orb.

Flameblast

Flameblast is another classic skill from POE 1 that is slightly different in POE 2. This channeling skill will release explosions around Castle in the initial stages, but will shift to a larger area and deal more damage at higher stages. What’s more, Flameblast can also target an active Solar Orb to expand the blast radius at that location.

Frost Bomb

Frost Bomb will pulse in an area for its duration and apply Cold Exposure to nearby enemies. After the duration expires, Frost Bomb will explode, dealing massive cold damage.

Mana Tempest

Mana Tempest is a spell that boosts your other abilities while you’re standing in its area. This ability consumes your mana while you stay in Storm to power up your spells.

Additionally, it adds chaining to Lightning Projectile and Beam spells so they can hit more enemies. However, be aware that Mana Tempest area disappears shortly after you leave it, just like in POE 1.

Orb Of Storms

Orb of Storms creates a stationary storm that periodically attacks nearby enemies, and this damage is then spread out to other enemies in the area. It’s worth noting that increasing your casting speed affects how often Orb of Storms triggers.

Lightning Warp

Lightning Warp looks pretty interesting, and it can be used to target an enemy and teleport to them. Once they’re in cold range, and teleport to an enemy that can deal cold damage, the enemy will explode in the area around them dealing lightning damage and creating Shocked Ground.

This skill also highlights enemies in your vicinity that are in a cold radius, which you can then use to teleport to multiple targets in sequence.

Lightning Conduit

Lightning Conduit can be used to attack a group of enemies in a cone in front of the caster. If the enemy is already shocked, this lightning damage will do more damage, but will also then remove the shock.

Frost Wall

Frost Wall forms a wall of ice that prevents enemies from reaching you. If you take enough damage or an enemy moves in its direction, and the wall is stressed enough, it will explode. When it explodes, it will deal heavy AOE damage to enemies around the broken area of ​​the wall.

Firestorm

Firestorm is a duration-based fire spell that rains down fire at a target location that explodes on impact, dealing damage to enemies caught in the storm.

Energy Remnants

Energy Remnants is a Sorceress-themed skill. At this point, we know nothing about it, except for the name of the skill. However, the icon is the same as Arcane Cloak in POE 1, maybe with some color changes, so perhaps this skill will also achieve a very similar effect by consuming energy shields.

Raging Spirit

Finally, Raging Spirit. From what we know so far, this skill doesn’t actually appear on Sorceress skill list, so it’s likely a Sorceress-themed skill. But I feel like it might be somewhere in between, a minion skill.

In POE 2, Raging Spirit can also be triggered by using fire spells. Whenever you use a fire spell, it summons Raging Spirit Minions, and the number of summoned Spirits can be increased by either boosting AOE of the fire spell you’re using or hitting more targets with projectile-based fire spells.

Outro

That’s all we know so far about Sorceress-themed abilities in Path of Exile 2. Again, remember, these are just thematic abilities, and you can absolutely use any of these abilities in any class you like. The choice is yours. See you next time!

In this guide we’ll talk about some of the big changes we’ve learned about Passive Skill Tree in Path of Exile 2. These changes are derived from Path of Exile 1, from the extinction of Life node to the introduction of the brand new Weapon Passive Skill feature, here we cover everything you need to know. Let’s get started!

Weapon Skill Tree Passive

So let’s jump right into the most interesting change on this list, Weapon Skill Tree Passive in POE 2 Weapon Swap will be incorporated into normal gameplay, with a feature that allows you to choose which weapon set a specific skill will use when it is cast.

For example, you can attach a Staff that provides gem levels for Fire skills to your Firestorm skill, while you may want to attach another weapon set that improves the effect of the shocks you cause to your Spark skill. When you cast one of these skills, you automatically switch to the weapon set it is attached to so that using that skill can benefit from the stats of that weapon.

But as part of this feature, there will also be Weapon Skill Tree Passives, which are a portion of your character’s total Passive Skill allocation. This portion will come from Book of Skill during the campaign, and we don’t know exactly how many you’ll get, but I’d guess it’s around 20 or 25.

These Passive Points differ from Skill Points you get from leveling up, in that they can be attached to a weapon set to be assigned to a specific Passive Skill Tree while that weapon set is active. This, combined with the previously mentioned feature, allows you to assign these weapon specific Passive Points to nodes that will benefit that specific weapon set and its attached skills.

We could imagine a melee character using Two Hand Maces as an offensive weapon, and another Weapon Swap for a more defensive Flail and Shield combo. This character could then use their Weapon Passive Skill to deal more damage while Two Hand Maces is active. With the defensive Shield active, we could then choose to spend the points on a node that provides more armor or a chance to block.

This feature will be part of the build in Path of Exile 2, making it less focused on just one Archetype, and allowing them to focus on other options for specific scenarios.

Starting Position Of Characters

The next big change coming to PoE 2 is the starting position of characters on Passive Skill Tree.

In PoE 1, each class had a specific starting position, which was primarily determined by the class attribute alignment and Archetype category those classes belonged to.

In Path of Exile 2, each class still has a specific starting position, but the positions have been moved. All classes will start in the middle of Skill Tree, and the position they face is once again defined by attribute and archetype alignment.

Something to note here is the removal of Scion class in Path of Exile 2. In PoE 1, Scions started in the middle of the tree and could choose to leave the center in any direction they liked. This class was designed as a sort of Jackal Trades, bridging the gap between any possible unsupported archetypes by allowing easy access to specific areas of the tree in exchange for the mostly weaker Ascendency.

But in POE 2, Scion is gone, and that’s because they’ve added two classes for each attribute alignment, which means there will be a total of six different Ascendency options for each starting position on Passive Skill Tree, helping to solve the problem that Scion solved before.

You may also notice that the middle of the tree has changed significantly as well, with no routes going directly through the middle of the tree. The developers mentioned that the layout of the tree in POE 1 made it harder to balance, so they made it more direct to get from the class starting position to specific Keystones or Clusters by removing the middle of the tree.

Life Node Removal

Speaking of balance, the third notable change between Passive Skill Tree in POE 1 and POE 2 is that Skill Tree in POE 2 will not have Life nodes.

Note that the decision to remove Life nodes would have had a tremendous impact on POE 1 if it was fully implemented, but POE 2 was designed from the beginning to have no Life nodes on the tree. When you think about it this way, this design decision actually makes a lot of sense.

They can better balance the life of ordinary characters, and the life available to players will be largely determined by POE Currency they invest in equipment. At the same time, due to this change, space on Passive Skill Tree without Life nodes is freed up. By the way, there are a lot of Life nodes on POE 1 Skill Tree.

These spaces can be used for more specific character defense investments, which is one of their goals for this change. The developers allow players to use these points to specialize in defense mechanics that make sense for the build they are playing.

Cancel Masteries

Another major change is that Path of Exile 2’s Passive Skill Tree will not have Masteries, at least at the beginning.

Just like the design of no Life nodes on Skill Tree, the concept of no Masteries makes sense in the context of POE 2. After all, Passive Masteries system was originally created to solve the problem of locking unique build-enabling mechanics into specific areas of the tree.

But POE 2’s skill system was designed to be very different from the beginning. It has performance abilities that can be combined with each other and a Support Gem system that limits characters to copies of a support gem. So it makes sense that these more niche offensive mechanics exist on the skills themselves or on specialized support gems that can enhance them.

Travel Nodes Selectable Stats

In addition, POE 2’s Travel Nodes will be stat selectable, providing lower but generally more meaningful stats. When selecting Travel Nodes, you can choose +5 Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity, helping you more easily meet the stat requirements of gear or abilities.

This change is actually huge for leveling, especially considering that the socket colors are gone as well, so you’ll be able to more easily level up the way you want without being limited by your stats or gear sockets.

That’s the major difference between the passive skill trees in Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2.

Outro

So those are the top 5 changes we know about Passive Skill Tree in Path of Exile 2 so far. Let me know what you think of these changes and which changes (if any) you’re most excited about. I think it’s definitely those Weapon Skill Tree Passives, which could end up being an incredible feature! See you next time!

In this guide, I want to talk about the iconic skill in Path of Exile, Summon Raging Spirit. Path of Exile 2 has changed its casting and skill effect in the form of an automatic skill that summons temporary minions whenever you use a fire spell.

Here, we will talk about how SRS in POE 2 differs from POE 1 and explain the mechanics of this skill and how it can be applied to your build.

Differences And Similarities

It has to be said that the implementation of Summon Raging Spirit in Path of Exile 2 is really different. Here is a comparison of the two Support Gems.

Raging Spirit in Path of Exile 2 retains Spirit while it is activated. Your fire spells also summon Raging Spirits, which are short-lived flying flaming skulls that will rush to nearby enemies and quickly attack them. Enemies will not attack these minions directly and can pass through them.

There are also a lot of similarities between the actual minion mechanics of POE 2 and POE 1, which still summons a short-lived minion. It appears to have aggressive behavior and will rush to the enemy, and the enemy still will not directly engage it.

These minions are just like they were in Path of Exile 1, and they will not collide with the enemy. At the same time, they still cannot attack the enemy, but 70% of physical damage is converted into fire instead of 100% of the current SRS in POE 1.

This is pretty much the similarities and differences between the two skills, and it also shows where the new mechanics of this skill in Path of Exile 2 come in handy.

Mechanics Explained

I am very excited about the changes to this skill because not only can we use this Support Gem in POE 2, but GGG can use it to implement other new and old skills in POE 2.

Since this Raging Spirit ability can reserve Spirit, and we know that Spirit is like a reservation resource in POE 2, it will most likely be used to reserve things like Auras or permanent minions.

We actually saw this in a recent Witch gameplay preview, where permanent minions retain Spirit, and will automatically respawn after a short time as long as your other permanent minions haven’t died recently.

We also have temporary minions, which don’t retain Spirit, but they consume resources like corpses to be summoned.

In fact, in one discussion, the developers talked about a very interesting balance between permanent and temporary minions. Minion builds have extremely high single target damage output, but they lack clearing speed. So investing more POE Currency in improving temporary minions clearing speed is always our first strategy to optimize minion builds.

But you can’t really use these temporary minions in boss fights because corpses are not very easy to obtain, and in Path of Exile 2, they will be more limited and there will be no Desecrate ability or anything like that, so players won’t be able to actually generate their own corpses.

This is also what makes the Raging Spirit in POE 2 so interesting, because it’s between permanent and temporary minions. It does reserve Spirits just like permanent minions, but it does so in order to allow you to create temporary minions, which means that these temporary minions will be used in boss fight scenarios.

SRS Synergy With Fire Spells

Let’s take a look at the interaction here and see how it works with your Fire spells.

The Reservation ability allows you to summon Raging Spirits when you use a Fire spell. Any spell with the Fire tag will do.

We achieve this by casting two rows of Fire Area spells to summon one Spirit per 1.5 meter radius, besides which the projectiles from the Fire spells can also summon a Spirit when they hit. This immediately gives you two very interesting ways to scale this ability so that you can summon more Raging Spirits every time you cast those Fire spells.

Besides this, you can also think about scaling Fire spell Area of ​​Effect. Imagine a giant explosion of fire and summoning a swarm of Raging Spirits. I’m not actually sure if it summons Spirits at the location where the spell hits the enemy, or if they spawn next to the corpse, but it will be interesting to see how exactly it works.

Of course, you can also go the projectile route with a Fire spell that fires projectiles, and you can adjust the number of projectiles so you can hit more enemies and summon more minions. Or, you can use a mechanic like Chain or Pierce so you can have a projectile go through multiple enemies and summon multiple minions that way.

Final Thoughts

I can already imagine a Fire Mage throwing Fireballs and summoning a bunch of Raging Spirits in a Popcorn setup, with the minions instantly exploding on top of the enemies, which sounds pretty fun.

This is pretty crazy when you think about it, because this ability simply doesn’t make sense in the context of POE 1, because we didn’t have builds like Spellcaster. They were dealing damage with their abilities, while also summoning minions, and the minions themselves dealing tons of damage.

I really think this is one thing I’m most excited about POE 2. This combination of Archetypes really wasn’t possible in POE 1. And POE 2 gives players more opportunities to have more and more freedom. Anyway, I love this, and that’s what this guide will be all about.

All in all, this Support Gem has me really excited about what else might be coming to Path of Exile 2. Do you have any crazy ideas about how they could implement other parts of POE 1’s abilities into POE 2 in new ways? Let me know what you think of SRS in POE 2.

Greetings, Exiles! I’m sure you all have received the sad news recently that Path of Exile 2 closed beta, originally scheduled for June 7, 2024, has been postponed, with the developers stating that it will be released “towards the end” in 2024.

However, this also means that we have more time to prepare for a better gaming experience when we enter POE 2. In this guide, we will reveal the gameplay of Witch. So, Witch main players, please don’t miss this guide.

Minion Mechanics

In Path of Exile 2, you can play as Witch, Mistress of Death and Decay, commanding your hordes of the undead and launching attacks on enemies.

Most classes have access to some kind of minions, but if you want to control an army, Witch may be the ideal class choice for you.

In POE 2, most minions do not need to be summoned manually. Celebrant Sceptre gives the player a couple of free warriors, as well as another resource called Spirit, which you can use to acquire any minions you want. You can see this Spirit Bar above the mana.

On the skills screen, you can choose the composition of your army and choose between the various minion variants available. Since this is a level-two area, we can only afford one more minion. However, when minions die, they are automatically resurrected as long as no other minions have died recently. So, before your next battle, all your minions will be resurrected.

You can also command your minions with a dedicated button, telling them to move to a specific location, attack a specific enemy, or even open a chest or portal for you.

We also have temporary minions. Besides this, many minions have command skills that depend on the type of minion you summoned.

Skills

Next, let’s talk about the spells available to Witch class.

Unearth

First up is Unearth, which creates some bone constructs if it kills a monster or hits the corpse of a monster. They can’t take many hits and have a limited lifespan, but you can build a proper army with them.

Contagion

I also use some debuffs with monsters when my minions attack. The first one we can use here is Contagion. If a monster dies with Contagion, it spreads to nearby enemies. And with each spread, the damage increases. So it’s a good idea to try to keep the infection going.

If any corpse is infected when you summon minions, then the minions will also be infected. Every time they hit an enemy, they will continue to infect the enemy. So it’s great to have an army of infected hordes of the undead.

Essence Drain

We can also use another chaos debuff called Essence Drain. This effect has a higher degen on a single target. If the monster is also infected with Contagion, then Essence Drain will spread as well, which can turn into a real disaster.

Bone Storm

I can use a channeling skill like Bone Storm, which creates a devastating burst of sharp spikes. Note that the longer you channel this skill, the more damage it will cause.

Pain Offering

We also have a skill called Pain Offering. These skills allow you to pierce one of your skeletons with a big spike of bone to buff all of your other minions. It makes all of our other minions faster and do more damage.

Profane Ritual

After a battle, we usually have some extra corpses that we don’t want to waste. Profane Ritual can generate Power Charge by consuming corpses, which can buff some of my other spells. If we use it to summon Zombies, we can create more powerful super Zombies that don’t even need corpses to summon them.

We can also use Power Charge to channel Bone Storm. If I do this, it adds a devastating AoE.

Minion Types

Finally, it’s time to focus on the types of minions that Witch can summon.

Zombies

The first one that comes to mind must be Zombies, which are extremely tanky minions. Although they require corpses to summon and won’t resurrect if they die, they are quite tough and can increase the number of your minions.

What’s more, many minions also have command skills. You can command them to deploy Gas Cloud Arrow on the battlefield to deal some sustained damage.

Skeletal Arsonist

In addition, we can summon Skeletal Arsonists, who can throw small Fire Grenades. Besides this, they have a command skill that can detonate your minions with low health. When you see the red indicator, use this skill and the minion will explode.

These bone constructs are especially good because they expire quickly, anyway. So, you can go and farm this area’s boss, Carrion Crone, with all the tools you find to earn a good amount of POE Currency.

Storm Mages

That’s the type of minions you can get in the level two area. But let’s see what the higher level minion gameplay is like.

In a level 30 area, besides still having our trusty warriors, there are many types of minions to choose from, such as Brutes for stunning or Ice Mages for freezing, most of which come with their own special abilities or command skills.

You can also stun enemies by using multiple Storm Mages: a Cleric to heal and revive my minions, and Reavers for high damage. You can also enrage them before the fight to slowly kill them, but Cleric should be able to keep enemies alive while my minions attack.

Storm Mages has a useful skill if a lot of your minions die. He can summon a Lightning Storm to hit the location of each Dead Skeleton in your army.

Monster Corpse

In POE 2, even non-boss monsters can be very devastating, such as Faridun Impaler. It has a wide variety of abilities and is difficult to defeat. But maybe we can make better use of its corpse.

By using Bind Spectre gems, we can take the corpse of any enemy and capture its spirit so that I can use it as a minion. Any monster can be captured, but the spirit cost depends on how powerful the monster is.

Such a powerful enemy requires a lot of spirit, so I have to summon a lot of other minions, but it does seem worth it. If Spectre dies like other minions, it will respawn after a short time.

All in all, Witch in Path of Exile 2 seems to have received some amazing quality of life updates to cater to her unique play style. Her various minion mechanics and gameplay will bring a lot of fun to the game. Even for those who don’t like minion builds, the diverse gameplay of Witch class will make you shine!

In POE 2, you can choose from 12 character classes. Each character has a combination of the key attributes they focus on. Today I want to show you a character who is good at Strength and Intelligence, Druid.

In Human form, Druid is a spell caster, channeling Fury of Nature on the battlefield. But when you get closer, you will see why Druid also pays attention to Strength. He can transform himself into one of several beasts.

Bear Form Gameplay

Today, we’re going to show off his Bear form. The transition in POE 2 happens automatically when you use the bear attack. With Bear Maul, your character turns into a bear and swings. Using a spell, your character turns back into a human and casts it. Hitting enemies with your Bear Maul attack accumulates Rage, which increases your attack damage. So your bear gets stronger with each attack.

While the bears are big and strong, this isn’t a pure Strength class. You don’t have as much armor as a Warrior. To protect yourself from larger groups, you need to consider a skill like Furious Slam. This skill is mainly for stun rather than damage. So it’s pretty useful if you’re mobbed by smaller monsters and just need to get out of there.

Of course, like any POE 2 character, you can always use the dodge roll to get out of danger. Since bears are the slowest of all Druid’s forms, it’s crucial to make sure the dodge is reliable and able to get you out of any situation.

When you dodge in animal form, your character instantly transforms back so you can dodge. You can even convert halfway through. Of course, doing this means that you have to pay some POE Currency and time costs that you have to transform again. But it’s certainly much better than death.

Next, I want to talk about Ferocious Roar, which is a rare POE Item in Bear form. It allows you to adopt any Warcry skills that other classes might use. You can also insert Seismic Cry gems into Ferocious Roar.

In fact, you can connect multiple Warcry and use them together. Seismic Cry pushes enemy back and has a chance to be stunned. If there are any severely stunned enemies within range of Warcry, then your next Slam skill will be enhanced by twice the number of Slams.

Human Form Gameplay

We’ve covered this Druid Bear side, but what about him as a spell caster? Of course, right now we want to maximize the time you spend in Druid animal form. So most spells against Druid tend to be things that last a long time or provide tactical options on the battlefield.

The first and probably easiest of these is Lightning Storm. Throw it on the ground and you’ll get an area where monsters are constantly being struck by lightning. This is a debuff that increases all damage done to them.

This is followed by Tornado, which sucks monsters into it, allowing you to split teams and tackle groups individually. Or pin monsters in place to build combos with your other abilities. Tornado doesn’t really move enormous monsters, so you can actually use it to separate bosses from their minions as well.

Druid also can summon animal companions. This is another very useful defense. Wolves howl when summoned, inflicting a temporary debuff on enemies. This makes them more vulnerable to critical hits and gives you a reason to re-summon them in combat.

The last Druid spell we’re going to discuss today is Volcano. You can cast it quickly, and it spawns some projectiles. Or you can hold the button to channel it longer, which will cause it to fire a bunch of projectiles when it spawns, dealing with more damage. Volcano fires small projectiles over a long period, so this is another wonderful ability to cast before Druid turns into a bear.

Currently, in our Human and Bear form, channeling spells are all active, and spirit reserved. This means that any channeling skills we use as bears will technically cast Lightning Storm as well.

Skill Tree

Finally, we come to the skill tree. Bear's form counts as another weapon set for a professional, so he also gets a tree. If you turn on the passive tree, you can see how close we are to a Melee Damage cluster and Spell Damage cluster.

I can assign these passive abilities to our Human or Bear form. When I switch between Human and Bear forms, my passive skills are automatically reassigned.

With a bit of customization, our build can combine many active skills to achieve some really interesting effects. Meanwhile, your skill tree will automatically reconfigure at the right time, as will your buffs. You can even auto-cast certain abilities.

Many abilities interact with each other, and the ability you choose to use depends on the situation you are in. At the right moment, you might combine all your skills into one baffling combo. Get some satisfying screen-covering spam and do some baffling damage.

The above are some skills and gameplay demonstrations for Druid in POE 2. There is more content to play and experience. Let us look forward to POE 2.

Here we’ll discuss two ARPG giants, Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2, and compare them. We will introduce their game mechanics, character progression and endgame content, respectively.

Gameplay

Let’s start by discussing the depth and variety of POE 2’s gameplay. It offers an incredibly deep gameplay experience with a huge Skill Tree. This also means that players have countless possibilities for character building.

In comparison, Diablo 4’s classes will be more fixed. And POE 2’s Skill Gem system allows players to customize and combine abilities in unique ways, providing unparalleled build variety.

Content Updates & Expansion

Let’s talk about content updates and expansions next. Now POE’s developers are constantly releasing expansions and content updates to ensure the game remains fresh and exciting.

But now Diablo 4 has just been released, but as we have seen from history, their expansions and updates are less frequent, which makes it difficult to add content.

Also Read: Path Of Exile 1 And Path Of Exile 2 Are Two Different Games! - Differences Between POE 1 & POE 2

League

Next, let’s talk about leagues. Now POE introduces new temporary leagues regularly. It offers fresh mechanics and challenges that reinvigorate the gaming experience. And these leagues often bring unique rewards to players, encouraging players to explore new content and mechanics, while earning exclusive POE Items and cosmetics.

And Diablo 4 has just released their first season - Season of The Malignant. Although they do have similar rewards to POE. But I don’t find it that refreshing, and the mechanics are still well-worn old ones introduced in the core gameplay.

Trading Systems & Economy

Let’s move on to the trading system and economy of both games. Now, in POE, the player-driven economy is much more robust and dynamic than Diablo 4’s current system. This helps create a sense of community and heightens the thrill of looting POE Currency.

And Diablo 4’s approach to item classification and trading is less player-oriented. This can lead to players being less than happy with loot quests.

Endgame

Finally, let’s talk about the endgame content of these two games. Now, POE 2 endgame content includes a deep exploration of Invaded map. And provide a challenging and rewarding experience for players who reach the highest level.

On the other hand, right now Diablo 4 lacks endgame content. But I’m sure they’ll generate more content. It’s just that in comparison, the current endgame content of POE 2 is indeed much more.

Another disappointment with Diablo 4 is that they knew all this information before launching the game and still failed to create all this endgame content.

Summarize

In conclusion, GGG and POE developers have a strong bond with their player base while actively listening to their feedback and taking part in discussions. This forms a strong community bond that allows for better communication of more player-focused updates. This is where POE 2 differs from Diablo 4.

Path of Exile 2 shows many advantages over Diablo 4. Plus, it boasts deeper gameplay, unparalleled character customization, frequent content updates, a fair monetization model, and developer engagement with the community.

Although both games have their own advantages, POE is undoubtedly the ultimate choice for ARPG fans looking for immersive and endless fun. For these reasons, that’s why I believe POE 2 will truly be just as great as POE 1. Which game do you like better? I want to know your thoughts.

Last week was the long-awaited ExileCon 2023. While many of us were eager to hear all of the new details on Path of Exile 2 and the new Challenge League, GGG started the show off with a shocking announcement: 

Path of Exile 2 would no longer be an expansion to Path of Exile 1, and would now be a standalone game. Both games will receive updates and staggered challenge leagues, so players can play one or both games going forwards. 

This is a huge change, and the community has had very mixed reactions to it. Here, I want to talk a bit about why I think this is happening, what this means for POE going forwards, some concerns, and how I feel about it. 

GGG didn’t spend a lot of time explaining the reasons behind the change. Only that it became clear to them that POE 2 needed to be a separate game as they continued development. 

However, to me, the reasons seem very clear. Since the original announcement of POE 2, there’s been unease and discontent in the POE community. There was a feeling, partially due to developer statements, that POE 2 was going to have to slow the game down somewhat when it launched. That the insane screen-clearing speed of the modern Path of Exile was just too much to be the baseline of this new game, and that GGG would have to slow things down. 

There was also the feeling that GGG would need to slow things down gradually in POE 1 as we got closer and closer to the launch of POE 2, in order to ease players into it. 

Players who have been playing POE 1 for the last few years, or god forbid, visited the subreddit, will know the extreme outrage that happened when GGG did, in fact, try to slow the game down. Patches 3.15 and 3.19 were received extremely negatively by the community. 

To the point, GGG had to effectively roll back many of the changes they had made, publicly go in front of the community to explain where things had gone wrong, and even permanently withdraw from engaging with the community on the subreddit, in order to protect themselves from the extreme, disproportionate toxicity. 

It’s clear that part of why Path of Exile is so beloved is because of the extreme, absurd map-clearing speed you can achieve. And that large portions of the community will absolutely hate any attempts to curtail that. 

But that isn’t the sort of game the devs want to make. And, if we’re being honest, perhaps isn’t the sort of game the general gaming public wants to play, either. After all, one of the major goals of POE 2 is to bring in new players who previously didn’t enjoy POE. 

When looked at through that lens, the original plan to make POE 2 into an expansion for PoE is really the root cause of these problems. If GGG went with their original plan of having POE 2 effectively replace POE 1, they would run the risk of alienating their entire current player base of POE 1 players. But if they instead compromised on their vision for POE 2, they’d run the risk of having the game not be different enough to bring in new players, and stifle their ability to create an experience that was wildly different from PoE 1. 

Having them be two separate games solves these problems. They can keep the fast gameplay of POE 1, while also providing a slower, different, and more combat-focused experience in POE 2. So, what does this mean going forwards? 

It means we’re going to have two different flavors of Path of Exile. We’ll be getting twice as many challenge leagues per year as both POE 1 and POE 2 will be receiving their own, different, challenge leagues, and players will be able to play whichever seems more appealing to them or both.

This also means that they can have POE 2 diverge in some pretty wild ways from POE 1. They’ve already previewed that many currency items have been overhauled, and some have been removed, presumably with the goal of making currency more useful for actually crafting your own POE Items. Not to mention all the crazy new weapon-swap features, which will completely change how players create builds! 

However, there are a number of major concerns that remain mostly unaddressed. The biggest one is what the impact of split development resources will have on POE 1. Will it still continue to get major development support? Will the challenge leagues end up being small and lackluster? Will POE 1 development end suddenly after a few years? I think that as far as challenge leagues go, I’m not really concerned. 

There was a comment during ExileCon stating that for the last few years, the development team of POE 1 has been mostly just 8 people. If that’s true, it shows that they can still create some incredible leagues on a shoestring budget. And I’d expect support for POE 1 to continue indefinitely as long as there remains even a small, dedicated community. 

The bigger concern, I think, is the issues in POE 1 that we’ve been hearing POE 2 would fix for years now. Melee builds, large swathes of useless underpowered skills, balance issues with ascendancies and archetypes…... Will they just end up remaining bad forever now? Will we ever see major balance changes again? Or, will POE 1 just keep chugging along, with players feeling more and more pigeonholed into specific archetypes and skills? 

I think this is something GGG needs to directly address. It’s not just enough to know that they intend to continue updating and creating challenge leagues for POE 1. We need to hear that they’re committed to having it be its own game with its own distinct playstyle, and not just a glorified POE 1 classic server. 

Also Read: Path Of Exile 1 And Path Of Exile 2 Are Two Different Games! - Differences Between POE 1 & POE 2

However, my biggest concern is the economic impacts of splitting the player base across two games. POE relies on having players to trade with, and the trade system requires players to be online currently in order to trade. If you’ve ever tried to play a regular challenge league after something like a Flashback league has started, you know it can be nearly impossible to do any trades. Everyone has switched over to playing the new Flashback league, and the league feels basically over, whether or not you personally want to keep playing. 

Chris pitched the idea that POE 1 leagues may launch something like 4 weeks before a new POE 2 league, giving them about the lifespan of a Flashback event. 

If you want to be a dedicated POE 1 player, you may find that you can only realistically play the game within these short 4 week windows. Similarly, playing POE 2 late in the league after the POE 1 league has already launched may have similar issues. 

I think if GGG is going to go down this path, they need to seriously consider changing their stance on offline trading in POE. There needs to be some way of still getting the items you need, even when the majority of players have switched to playing the other game. Otherwise, both games will end up suffering. 

I know GGG is dead-set against anything with instant buyout, but if they implemented something that let you buy offline items and then you received them some amount of time later (even days later, perhaps), it would really fix this issue and allow players to buy previously listed items even after that player has moved onto the other game’s challenge league. And maybe even give these players a reason to switch back, once they’re bored with the new league, to a pile of POE Currency they can use to dive back in! 

Having said all of that, despite these concerns, I would say that I am feeling very positive about this decision. I think that had they continued down the path of having POE 2 be an expansion, it would have been disastrous. Either the game would have been too slow, or not different enough. Now, not only do we get to keep playing the game we know and love, but we get to play two different takes on Path of Exile. 

I’ve said before that I find the idea of Ruthless extremely exciting. I’ve been playing POE since Closed Beta, and I will play and enjoy other ARPGs that are a fair bit slower than POE. As much as I love the insane clear speed you can reach in POE, I also feel like I’d enjoy a much slower experience, with a bigger emphasis on combat and moment-to-moment gameplay. And I feel that POE 2 is going to be exactly that. And I get to have both! And I get to have twice as many challenge leagues per year! 

To me, this just means more Path of Exile, and I absolutely love it. I hope GGG can nail this and have two different versions of POE that appeal to both of these playstyles. I’m really excited to see what they have cooking for POE 2, and explore a game that’s going to be both new and familiar! 

I got a bit lost in all the information on Path of Exile 2, so here’s a quick wrap up of what to expect from the game following ExileCon 2023.

1. Two Games Instead Of One

The biggest news might be that POE 2 won’t be an expansion of POE 1.

Instead, it will be a fully fledged standalone game with a brand new campaign, skill mechanics classes, and a plethora of new monsters to face. 

2. Going In A New Direction 

Path of Exile 2 takes place approximately 25 years after the events of the first game. While we are missing many story details so far, we know that it’s set in a fresh direction, possibly leaning more towards the style of Diablo 4. 

However, the game world is still divided into zones, each coming with its own unique boss. And there are still no in-game cutscenes. But there shall be significantly more animated and scripted events in the game world.

3. Higher Focus On Boss Fights 

Do you like boss battles?

In the new campaign, you will fight over 100 unique bosses with challenging mechanics. Some of them will be optional. But defeating them will reward you with permanent bonuses for your character.

GGG promises a more engaging experience than in the prequel. So, expect to face some real challenges.

4. Mana Reservation Gone  

Speaking of permanent bonuses in Path of Exile 2, reservation will no longer affect your Mana pool.

Instead, it will require Spirit, which can be obtained by the Skill Tree items and by killing bosses in the campaign.

5. Loot And Crafting Changes  

Path of Exile 2 will also bring some changes to the loot system. 

In POE 1, killing enemies will drop a certain amount of POE Currency. However, in POE 2, enemies will now drop Gold, reducing the reliance on trading orbs for a better gear. 

Additionally, Chaos Orbs will no longer reroll all mods on rare POE Items but only one. 

6. New Classes & Skill Combos 

The new game will also introduce 6 new classes, each with their own free unique ascendancy classes.

There will also be a fundamental change in the way you use skills. While in POE 1 you usually only have one or two main skills, there will be a lot more synergy in POE 2 between different skills, encouraging us players to experiment with effective combos.

7. Much More Fluid Combat  

Combat in POE 2 will be slower but more dynamic than in POE 1 with almost every midi skill having a built-in movement ability. 

In addition to that, there will also be a new weapon swap system that allows players to assign skills to weapon sets, allowing for a flexible and tactical gameplay. You will be able to play lightning and firebase, which, for example, without sacrificing efficiency.

8. Game Modes (Ruthless?) 

POE 2 offers various game modes like POE1, including the Standard mode, a Hardcore variant, and Solo Self-Found.

The Ruthless mode known for its difficulty on the other hand is currently omitted. 

9. The Quality Of Life 

Newcomers will appreciate a handy feature where you can summon an NPC to provide information about quest objectives, saving you from backtracking and keeping the game flow smooth.

It won’t be possible, though, to skip the campaign with the second character. So, you’ll have to play through it over and over again, like you did in POE 1. And I hope this doesn’t get too repetitive over time.

10. Both POEs Go Hand In Hand 

GGG is putting a substantial effort into POE 2 with about 100 employees working on the new game and compare that to only 20 employees working on POE 1.

Both games show the same core engine, allowing for easier migration of lead mechanics.

GGG also has put a lot of emphasis on the fact that you can use your microtransactions in both POE 1 and POE 2. 

11. Beta Release - When? 

While the closed beta won’t be available until June 24, Chris assured that Path of Exile 1 will continue receiving content updates every three months.

So, we’re stuck with POE 1 for another year. But I think it’s worth the wait if GGG manages to really publish POE 2’s gameplay in the meantime.

ExileCon 2023 is here and with it lots of news about Path of Exile 2. And it’s not at all what I expected. Path of Exile 2 has been in development for around four years since its first announcement at ExileCon 2019. In that announcement, we heard the tagline: one game, two campaigns. 

Path Of Exile 1 VS Path Of Exile 2

This is no longer a true path. Path of Exile 2 is going to be its own title. It appears to be set many years after the first game. And as usual, there are some big bad ones that end the world. 

For those of you worried about what might happen to your favorite game, Path of Exile 1 after the sequel is released, you probably don’t have to worry too much. Because GGG at least initially will be releasing leagues for both the Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. These will be staggered. So, you can play some of Path of Exile 2 and when you get bored with it, you can then jump over to battle Path of Exile 1. That means when life is even more ruined than it was before.

Many people suspected that Path of Exile was going to be announced as releasing later this year into closed beta. I thought this was a little ambitious at least. Through ExileCon 2023, we know that the specific beta time of POE 2 is June 7, 2024. 

And POE 2 is currently scheduled to release just under a year from now. The sheer scope of the new game is way beyond anything I could have imagined. It features over 100 distinct environments, 600 monsters, 100 bosses, 1500 passive skill points on the tree and 36 Ascendancy classes. There are 240 active skills, 700 equipment types, and six Person Co-op.

Now, the game does look to be a lot slower with a lot fewer monsters than in Path of Exile 1. It looks to be returning to the roots of what the developers originally had envisaged for the original game. The game also looks brutally hard with even the developers who practice 10 times dying in the demo. If you die while fighting a boss, no longer do you respawn outside the room where you’ve got to start the whole area again. Each battle, even the mobs, are a lot more challenging. You’re gonna have to really think and use your skills to beat them. 

The game has solved a lot of the problems from Path of Exile 1. One of them was they had to make bosses immune to free freeze just so you couldn’t perma-free them and kill them. Instead, things like freeze and stun have a hidden meter that builds up as you hit the enemy. Once it reached a certain level, you will freeze bosses. And from the gameplay, we saw the freezes did seem to be pretty meaningful, stopping the boss for a couple of seconds and soon seem to interrupt them pretty regularly. 

Gold Will Be In Path Of Exile 2

One thing that didn’t look very POE was the fact that we now dropped gold. This wasn’t explained very well at the time either. In fact, they just skated over it. Later, we found out that gold will be used for vendors. It helped solve the challenge of the drops where we dropped hundreds of rares in Path of Exile 1. We’ll drop gold instead with only the most notable rares dropping instead. 

All the existing POE Currency were there with a lot of new ones. It also appears that gear no longer has any links at all. It’s just gear. 

New Skill Gem System

Instead, each cat’s class of which there are 12, 2 per stack combination will have nine skill gem slots. 

The skill gems themselves will have up to five links to allow you to support them directly. That means potentially you can have 9 six-links, which sounds truly insane.

In the gameplay demos we saw, the characters only had lit one support in each gem. With up to five, you can imagine the gameplay will be much faster and much easier. They’ve also made it much harder for you to break your character in the early game. 

Grammaticals will now only change the color of a single socket, and it will be deterministic. No more running a chromatic just to find that now you can’t use any of your supports.

One thing that originally concerned me in the demo is that you saw that skill gems were tied to a character class. Active Skill Gems now appear to drop uncut. Right clicking on them will allow you to select the gem you actually want. 

Later in the character skills talk, my mind was put a little at ease as they did say that any character would be able to play any skill gems. So, all the diversity we have in the original game will be in the new one. What is unclear at this point is whether we’ll have to play each character to get those gems or not? If we do, it’s not a major hardship for me. Because I tend to play each character in each league, anyway. 

Furthermore, when these uncut skill gems drop, they’ll drop with the level of the area you’re in. So, as long as you’re maintaining your character to the level of the area, they should be a lot easier to switch over as they drop. 

Weapon Swap

Another thing that I wasn’t expecting is that they’re going to start pushing weapon swappers as a viable option. 

Now a proportion of your skill points on your tree will be able to be changed, depending on which weapon swap you’re in. Different skills can be tied to different weapon swaps. 

So, when you use them, you will swap your weapon automatically. And this, of course, will pick the alternative skill points on the tree. This gives so much diversity. 

It isn’t, however, completely free as you swap your weapon and animation plays, which will slow down the casting of the next skill. 

Animation System

Another problem of the original game is the animation system itself. 

Once a character attack animation has started, it wasn’t possible to change targets. It also wasn’t possible to get out of some animations, which meant you get one slam by a boss. They did kind of change movement skills to interrupt the animation system. 

But this had its own problems and that you would lose Mana. Because the spell would have been cast but never actually hit the target because you interrupted it. 

In Path of Exile 2, every character class will have its own dodge roll. This will interrupt an animation immediately. To get around losing all that Mana, Mana will now be spent from when the skill starts over time up until it hits. This means the early you dodged an interrupture animation, the less man he’ll actually spend. 

Weapons

For the weapons themselves, these used to have a built-in attack that no one ever used. Instead, weapons are now going to grant a free skill. These skills won’t be supportable, so they’ll be pretty weak. 

But they will be Mana cost free, which means when you run at a Mana, you still have something you can attack it with.

I found out about a lot of changes to currency in Path of Exile 2, and unfortunately this isn't limited to just the look of them.

Great Change To Currency

Some currencies are disappearing completely, namely the alteration that's gone. As Scouring Orb, this means that you can't force a decent magic base on an item to then build on with other currency. It also means if you drop a good base with terrible mods that base is now useless, because you can't drop it down to 0 and start building it back up again.

This is going to be a huge change to the way crafting works, it's going to mean that the gear you drop is going to be far more valuable than it was before. They've also noted that they don't want to change the way that trading works, this is going to mean trading a lot more blue POE 2 Items I feel and I'm not looking forward to that.

Some Other Changes

In addition to the changes, Chaos Orbs are going to work completely differently to how they do now. Today when we hit an item with a Chaos Orb, it re-rolls all of the mods. So all the mods come off and then a random set of mods come back on. In Path of Exile 2, it will take one of the mods and remove it and replace it with a new mod.

So basically a Chaos Orb is now an annulment followed immediately by an Exalted Orb. Now I can totally see why these changes were made, it really makes the drop of the item much more impactful.

Several Big Problems With This

First use of item filters. They look at item bases, they can't see the roll down item. That means that the use of item filters may actually screw you over.

The other problem I see is not really with items, it's with map sustain. Right now when we drop a map and it has physical reflect on it and our character does fizz, we can't run it.

So what we do today is we discourage the item, this is no longer an option. We then might hit it with a Chaos Orb to refresh everything. That also isn't an option although we might be lucky and remove the Fizz reflect, but there may be other mods on there we want to get rid of too like cannot leech. This is going to become extremely costly, we also need to think about the impact on Cartographer's Chisel, right now when we drop a magic map we scour it and then chisel it up to full, that also is no longer an option.

How To Face These Problems?

We kind of have this problem today when we fall Urban item, we could get it to the perfect state valid and screws it. But today if I'm running short on maps, I just stop valing maps, I can't control the way the maps drop. Not directly linked to POE 2 Currency changes, but it will seriously affect crafting it is they're removing the crafting bench from Path Of Exile 2. It's going to be so much harder in Path Of Exile 2 to craft the perfect end game item, and this is one of the things I hate so so much about endless delve, there was no crafting bench and you really felt that lack of power that you used to have.

Now they have said that they do intend for vendors in towns to be a bigger part of fixing builds and small things we build like resistances and things. So maybe this completely offsets all of these concerns. But I've just had so many bad experiences with getting decent items from vendors early game, that I just don't see it.

Also your vendors aren't going to solve the map problem, map problems aside these changes are probably going to affect SSF players more than any other, because they're gonna have to craft all their items. Even though I play trade League, it's going to affect me more than others because I play with an SSF player mentality even in trade League only buying almost what I absolutely have to.

You may have guessed from my tone that I really dislike these changes, I'm just so scared that I'm gonna hate Path of Exile 2 because of this.