It’s time to return to Path of Exile 2, as developer Grinding Gear Games unveils everything coming with PoE 2 patch 0.2.0 and the Dawn of the Hunt update. Game directors Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts run us through all of the changes, which start with the addition of a new class and more ascendancies, but extend to a wealth of extra skills, support gems, unique items, and crafting tools, along with a massive expansion to the endgame.
As the title suggests, the new Path of Exile 2 patch introduces the first addition to the roster. The Huntress joins the six Path of Exile 2 classes that have been available since launch, and she’s a spear-wielding dexterity expert that employs a blend of ranged and melee combat. Her signature starting skill, Whirling Slash, leaps in and strikes in a circle around you, creating a whirlwind that blinds enemies caught in it. When you leave the whirlwind, it explodes, but it can also interact with many other skills in accordance with the action RPG sequel’s focus on ability combos.
Another Huntress skill fires tornadoes that bounce off walls, for example, but using it inside a whirlwind releases a more powerful version with additional twisters. Use elemental variants instead, and you’ll get fire, ice, or lightning tornados. Her other options include explosive spears and skills that focus on bleed effects, while Thunderous Leap lets her jump onto and detonate any spears stuck in enemies or the ground.
Complementing this is the Huntress’s ability to carry a buckler in her off-hand, allowing her to parry. This works like a more advanced block, countering and stunning any monster that attacks, with the ability to follow up with specific skills that can grant Frenzy charges, which are used to empower your spear-throwing moves. Like with blocking, however, trying to parry too often will result in you getting stunned (and probably killed).
Rounding out the Huntress’s kit is the ability to tame any beast you encounter to fight alongside you as a companion. You can only have one at a time, but it will keep all the mods that were on it, so try to grab something powerful. The first two Huntress ascendancies are the Ritualist, which embraces animal sacrifice and plague, and the Amazon, an elite warrior that spots enemy weaknesses and exploits them with elemental infusions and crit-boosting bonuses.
Three more ascendancies are coming in Dawn of the Hunt. Warriors get the Smith of Kitava, who can whip out an anvil in the field to buff their weapons or use the power of Kitava to summon an animated copy of your weapon that fights by your side. The class also boasts a unique tree that forces you to use plain body armor but lets you enhance it with powerful buffs of your choosing by spending ascendancy points.
For Mercenaries, the Tactician lets you step into the shoes of an ex-Blackguard elite. This gives them tools such as Suppressing Fire, which causes all your projectiles to pin enemies and prevent them from moving. Take that one step further with Right Where We Want Them, which stops pinned enemies from performing actions, and you can completely lock your foes down. They also have the ability to place multiple banners, apply buffs to allies, or call off-screen archers to unleash a hail of arrows.
Almost certainly my next pick is the Lich, the third ascendancy for Witches. Joining the ranks of the undead themselves, they can sacrifice their life to boost their energy shield, and store part of their soul in a jewel to massively boost its effects. Just be careful; if your energy shield runs out, your mana costs will dramatically increase. Masters of chaos damage, Liches can apply an additional curse and cause afflicted targets to explode when slain.
The vast majority of the new skills are for the Huntress, but there are some very exciting options even if you aren’t playing the class. The much-anticipated Bind Spectre ability is finally complete, and allows you to trap the soul of “almost any” monster in the game, creating a summon skill for it. Their spirit cost will be determined by its power, but with hundreds of creatures to choose from it’s safe to say that the potential for experimentation is vast.
Another exciting addition is Summon Rhoa, which brings in a friendly Rhoa to act as a combat minion that you can also ride as a mount. Doing so will allow you to move at full speed even when firing arrows or throwing spears, making it perfect for Huntresses. Take too much damage, however, and you’ll be knocked to the ground and left extremely vulnerable.
Supplementing these new skill gems are more than 100 new support gems, with the most focus placed on increasing the options for builds that felt under-represented at launch. Alongside that comes over 100 new unique items. These favor midgame and endgame tiers to give higher-level characters more exciting options. The Coming Calamity is body armor that gives you all three Elemental Heralds for free while also stripping away enemy elemental resistances. Waistgate is a belt that allows you to equip two life flasks or mana flasks rather than requiring one of each type.
Next on the list of new features is Azmerian Wisps. These will appear following an encounter in the Grelwood in act one, and you’ll need to chase them down when you see them. Each enemy they pass will be infused by abilities based on the wisp’s type, and it will eventually possess a rare or unique monster. This will create a particularly powerful foe, but defeating it will grant you rewards based on the number of infused creatures you killed along the wisp’s flight path.
There are a wide range of wisps that you’ll encounter, including particularly powerful Sacred Wisps. One such example is the Wisp of the Cunning Fox, which upgrades the rarity of monsters it touches – even turning rares into actual, full-on bosses. Azmerian Wisps also drop a new type of socketable item that allows for some unique crafting options, and you’ll have the ability to modify their behavior and rewards further in the endgame Atlas tree. Separately, new runes have been introduced and you’ll now find increasingly powerful tiers of runes as you progress.
Speaking of endgame, Roberts says the launch offering “needed a lot of work,” and Dawn of the Hunt has two goals in that area: smoothing the progression through maps and reducing the amount of “annoying busy work,” and introducing “a lot more interesting and exciting content to find.”
The number of towers has been drastically reduced, but they’ll be more potent. Tablets used on them will add twice as many mechanics as before by default, but you can increase this number by running higher-tier maps in your towers. You can also earn the ability to consume up to three tablets at once if you use a waystone with enough mods, dramatically enhancing your juicing potential with far less monotony. Every tower map also has a new boss, and special unique tablets can create some never-before-seen interactions.
Roberts also discusses sustaining waystones through endgame, noting that players who were running into trouble “were dying a lot more than we had expected.” He attributes this to the sharp transition from a lack of punishment for death in the campaign to much more severe penalties from the start of endgame. To help address this, you’ll now get up to six respawns per map, but this number will decrease as you add more modifiers, amplifying the risk/reward ramp up.
The progression in early endgame has also been overhauled; rather than simply being tasked with a dull grind by Doryani, you’ll now have more specific objectives that focus on clearing corrupted areas. Doing so requires you to tackle specific Corrupted Nexus maps where you’ll face one of three unique boss fights.
Purging a corrupted zone causes the surrounding maps to be transformed into ‘cleansed maps,’ which come with a new set of monster types and another boss. Cleansed maps also include their own modifiers and rewards, which include new Fracturing Orbs that can be used to ‘fracture’ one affix on a rare item, meaning it will never change as you continue to craft.
Rogue Exiles make a return from the first game, with 12 unique NPCs that can show up, each with their own skills and personalities. They fight much more like players, and will come equipped with powerful unique items that you can claim as your own if you’re able to defeat them – fail to do so on your first attempt, however, and they’ll portal out and take their loot with them.
Four new unique strongboxes have been introduced, along with five unique map types. The Fractured Lake, for example, creates mirrors of all its rare monsters, posing a particularly tough challenge to overcome, but manage to do so and you’ll be awarded a new type of amulet or ring that can be crafted with additional prefixes or suffixes at the expense of the other.
The Phaaryl Megaliths map, meanwhile, allows you to summon up to ten waves of increasingly challenging (but rewarding) boss fights in a single encounter. Complete the full gauntlet and you’ll earn runes specific to this map type. Another features rare monsters and a map boss all trapped in essences. Each rare you defeat adds its power to the boss as a greater essence, creating a harder final fight with a bigger potential payout.
As for the overarching progression, there are ten more Atlas passive points to be earned from completing unique maps, and you’ll need them as the tree itself has expanded even further. Recombination also makes a return from PoE 1, and is tied to Expedition. Much like its original incarnation, it will allow you to merge two items together, pulling mods from each to create something that, if luck is on your side, exceeds the power of its component parts.
Finally, the first set of Twilight Order Reliquary Keys have appeared. These drops contain unique items that were hand-picked by early access supporters, although items that are tied to pinnacle boss fights can only appear in the encounters they’re tied to. Suffice it to say that there’s ample reason to check in with PoE 2 once again, whether you’re eager to try the new class or just want to experience its expanded endgame.
Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt arrives Friday April 4. The update will be accompanied by new leagues to allow you to start fresh alongside other players, although you’ll also be able to experience all the additions on your existing characters if you’d prefer to do so.
Get ready for the new patch with our pick of the best Path of Exile 2 builds. Can’t wait until then? Here are the best games like Diablo to play in 2025.
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