A shield didn’t feel like much of a shield before, but it sure will act like one in Path of Exile 2. Shields will now include directional blocking capabilities, plus specific spells that let you get the most out of your newfound hunk of wood (or metal, or… whatever you find), as unveiled during a demo event.
In Path of Exile 2, once you acquire a shield as a melee class, you’ll be able to assign a hotkey, face the character in a certain direction, and block many oncoming attacks. This is thanks to the new WASD capabilities that ship with the game, which allow players to face one direction while moving in another.
“One thing that is majorly obvious about WASD controllers [is] you get to control the direction you're facing,” Jonathan Rogers, game director for PoE2, explained. “But once we did that, we're like, hang on a second, this guy's holding a shield. It'd be really cool if there was a button you could press to hold your shield up, and they do active blocking. Just like an action game, you sort of expect this kind of thing, right? So that is what we added.”
Some new capabilities and limits come with this ability, which I tested a bit in the game’s very first area and boss as part of the event, utilizing the Warrior class.
The bad news is that there’s a limit to your blocking, displayed by a small but bright bar on your HUD. Once this fills up, you’ll get heavy-stunned and set back for a few seconds. You also, of course, cannot directly block attacks from the sides, above, or below. That would be a bit broken.
Unfortunately, too, not every attack can be blocked. As I played through and reached the area’s first boss, I noticed that the boss would occasionally wind up an attack with a bright red flash, overtaking the full model of the enemy. These were described in the initial demo as unblockable, and I was at least able to get out of the way of the attack. Thankfully, it was distinguishable from the mere red outline indicating my mouse hover, too.
On the flip side, there’s passive blocking if you don’t hold down the key, which doesn’t affect the bar at all. In short, if you start fiddling with your inventory, and a little guy thinks he’s tough, he can dish out a few hits from the direct front while you take notice and get back on track.
Also, the first shield comes with a special ability. The one that was part of the demo was Rolling Slam, which was a two-part charging attack that applies a light, then heavy slam to enemies in the way. It was a lot of fun to use on crowds, and I’m hoping there are similar but different spells for different shields. With the new Skill Gem system, though, you can probably stack a lot of fun shenanigans on top of this.
Overall, it’s a nifty addition to the game that adds a fresh level of depth to builds. The Warrior and his shield were part of the demo build shown at this event, and therefore it’ll likely be part of PAX East demos shown this week, if you happen to have a chance to give it a whirl.
