At PAX West 2023, I had the chance to check out the latest build of Path of Exile 2, which is hitting its first beta next June. The sequel to the award-winning ARPG Path of Exile, PoE 2 looks to be a natural evolution of that formula, and after spending some time with it, I honestly cannot wait for the full release.
As someone who enjoyed Diablo 4, but it just didn't click with me in the way I was hoping, I went into this hoping that Path of Exile 2 would give that ARPG spark missing from my life. I really enjoy the first iteration, with its complex passive skill tree, incredible world building and frenetic combat. When Path of Exile 2 was first announced at ExileCon in 2019, I was able to go hands on there, but since then the ARPG has evolved in many ways.
During my meeting with Grinding Gear Games at PAX West 2023, I was able to chat with game director Jonathan Rogers about the latest addition: the Druid class.
The Druid is a shapeshifter, capable of slinging spells in his human form while rampaging enemies in his animal shape, which in this demo was the Bear. However, what struck me was the complexity and the interplay between the two forms, all thanks to the new way skill gems are slotted.
All Of The Skills, Please
Showcased at ExileCon 2023, Path of Exile 2 takes the existing skill gem system but turns it on its head. Instead of slotting skill gems into gear, there is now a skill gem tree where you can slot each skill individually and augment it from there. While the new system feels more streamlined than dealing with gear slots in PoE 1, it doesn't feel any less complex, especially when you throw in all the different ways you can mix and match gems to create crazy synergies and effects.
As a result, we don't really have predefined skill combinations, but rather something that flourishes with experimentation and finding the more efficient way to combine skills and effects to do their max damage.
"We really try and look at it more like Magic: The Gathering," Rogers tells me during our meeting at PAX West. "[We] provide a bunch of tools with general keywords."
One example he gives is the synergies between one of the bear's skills, a slam, and how that "slam" keyword can be tied to skills across each of the 12 classes to create unique synergies across the board. In this example, the bear skill Ferocious Slam works well with the Druid spellcaster skill Volcano. The volcano is channeled, spewing lava rocks for a certain amount of time to deal AOE damage around the fissure. However, if you slam the ground near the volcano, the amount and frequency of those lava rocks increase, creating more havoc and dealing more AOE damage across the board.
This is especially useful with a skill like Rampage, which sees the Bear slam the ground multiple times while running around, well, rampaging. Doing so near a volcano creates a cascade of lava rocks, amplifying the amount of DPS the Driud can pump out.
"For example, the slam - the reason it works for the bear is not because we decided to wait for the bear; the bear has slams, the warrior has slams. Anything that looks like a slam is a slam, and therefore, that will just work for anything like that. Ideally, the players will be able to use these skills in ways we've never even anticipated. We tried to be very keywordy with that stuff, like "This is a war cry." There are a lot of war cries, and this does stuff with war cries."
Path of Exile is already known for its insane level of complexity with player builds, and Path of Exile 2 already feels like it's ramping that up, while also feeling more accessible to newcomers. The skill gem tree is just one part of that, and while you can get some utility out of just general skills, diving deep and uncovering these insane synergies is rewarded.
Mixing and Matching
As I played through the demo at PAX, I became keenly aware that you can't simply stay as a bear the whole time. As i ran through the Isle of Kin, demons and other monsters swarmed my bear, his health went down incredibly fast. Even with Path of Exile's fancy new dodgeball, I couldn't quite get out of the way in time to stay alive.
This is where playing around with the new skill gems, the way they interplay with each other, comes into play. Using both the spellcaster side of the Druid and the Bear side is key to not getting swarmed and ultimately killed during the course of the game.
That Volcano skill and how it synergizes with the slam keyword - which comes in handy thanks to all the slams the bear form has at its disposal - can come in handy when using it to help pull off other spellcasting skills. Lightning Storm is an AOE skill that, while it doesn't do a ton of damage itself, but when combined with all the other abilities at our disposal, it just adds to that overall DPS and efficiency while fighting.
Meta gems help to make this possible, such as the Cast While Channeling gem. By setting the Cast While Channeling gem in the skill tree, and then slotting the Lightning Storm skill gem in the same tree, we will now cast this skill whenever we are channeling another skill - like the volcano. Other meta gems, such as Cast on Melee Stun, can further augment things, such as summoning a pack of wolves when the Druid stuns enemies in his bear form.
What ends up happening is a dance of death, seeing the Druid rampage and decimate foes - provided everything is cast in the right order. Channel the Volcano, which casts Lightning Storm as well. Popping into Bear form to perform a Furious Slam, getting more lava rocks to flow. Building up Enrage, which is a resource used to pop off some Bear abilities such as Rampage, and you've now got a zone of utter destruction, zapping, burning and slamming anything in its wake. And, if you get a few stuns off, some wolves pop up to help soak up some damage of their own.
It's this sheer complexity that makes Path of Exile 2 so damn exciting. The Magic: The Gathering reference is a great one by Jonathan, as someone who plays the TCG religiously. I love finding weird interactions that no one thinks of while deck building. Pulling off elaborate combos just because of a single word on a card is so satisfying, and pulling off this elaborate skill combination felt just like that. I can't way to mix and match my way to finding weird and powerful combinations that even the developers didn't know were there.
While it sucks that we have to wait over half a year for Path of Exile 2 to hit its beta phase, after playing it at PAX West 2023, I'm pretty excited for where Grinding Gear Games is taking things. It's beautifully complex in a way that I love, yet feels refreshingly accessible. I can't wait to play more.
