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Path of Exile 2.launches out of early access in December, but it’s still not quite “complete.” We’ll have the final two acts of the campaign, along with two more classes – the Duelist and Shadow – but that leaves us at ten of the promised 12. At Exilecon 2026, I sat down for a behind-the-scenes roundtable interview with Game Directors Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts, where we discussed GGG’s plans for implementing the Marauder and Templar, how Acts Five and Six will feel, and the decision to introduce a pretty deep strategy layer with the new 1.0 league mechanic, Conquerors of Wraeclast.
Both of the remaining classes still to make their debut in Path of Exile 2 are very familiar to anyone who’s played the studio’s preceding (albeit still ongoing) RPG. But with PoE 2’s increased insistence on distinctive class identity, how can we expect them to evolve? “Not to spoil things too much,” Rogers answers, “but I think the thing we haven’t yet succeeded at doing really is the spellsword, to actually truly mix attacks and spells.” He notes that the Druid was an attempt at this, but the incentives aren’t there, and most players either opt to make it a pure animal-form build or a pure spellcaster.
“For Templar, I would feel like we have failed if we can’t succeed in getting that true merging of those things going on,” Rogers remarks. “Ideally, some of the blowback of the things we have to do to achieve that will then help Druid as well in that regard.” As for the Marauder, the plan is simpler: “I guess the thing there is the item type we haven’t added yet, axes.” The question is then how that becomes something special: “What’s the thing that’s unique about this weapon that only this weapon type can do? That’s always what we’re looking at.”
Rogers says GGG already has an answer to that, but hasn’t had much of a chance to try it, at least recently. “All the classes got some very rudimentary tests a long time ago, but a lot of those are pre-WASD stuff that, honestly, I don’t know whether that would even make sense in the world we’re now in; the stuff that we’re doing.” The other big question is when we might see them. “I would feel unhappy if we didn’t have them by next year, but we’ll see,” Rogers says. “Originally the plan was to get them in by 1.0, and I do feel bad that we weren’t able to do that, it’s just taking longer than we expected. But I mean, it’s not like we’re short on classes.”
A big part of that time investment has been rounding out the campaign for the 1.0 launch, with Acts Five and Six. Rogers doesn’t think beating these should take people too much longer than working through the existing trio of ‘interlude acts,’ however (which themselves are being folded into other parts of the campaign and endgame as GGG sees fit). “Act Six is a bit smaller, a bit more focused on just the rush towards the end,” he notes. “There are a lot of bosses in it, but it’s not sort of physically huge. Act Five is more physically huge.”
“The campaign has been something that we have struggled with needing to develop concurrently with all the live-service stuff that we’re otherwise doing,” Rogers admits. “That’s been a real hard thing for our studio to manage, so for me there’s just going to be a huge relief of not having this extra project, effectively, that’s going on in the background the whole time.” Roberts can’t wait to return to the four-month seasonal cycle: “I am so looking forward to that cadence – stability on both [games].”
“Our studio thrives off creating stuff that’s going to be released in a really small amount of time,” Rogers explains. “And, honestly, the studio works best that way, just, ‘Okay, what’s the next thing? Let’s start, let’s go go.’ Because I think people really enjoy working on stuff that the players are going to see in a really short amount of time, so these longer-term things… I mean, it’s cool, we can deliver, but it’s not as easy.” He laughs, “So once the campaign’s released it’s obviously going to be easy mode for us.”
The other major new feature is 1.0’s signature league mechanic, Conquerors of Wraeclast. It’s a full strategy layer atop the regular game where you’ll join one of three player-filled factions, build a stronghold, gather an army of NPC troops, and fight alongside them to take over 100 endgame castles that each bestow you and your allies with access to valuable hunting grounds. “I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic,” Rogers acknowledges. He’s been a fan of the series for a long time, although he says that “a lot of people in the studio have never actually played HOMM.”
The real Path of Exile magic, however, comes from fighting alongside your troops when battle begins. “You’ve almost got this Dynasty Warriors thing going on; you’re like a god amongst all these mere mortals,” Rogers remarks. GGG is testing lots of ideas here: “We were very worried that everyone is going to pile into a single faction,” he admits, “so to prevent that, what you need to have is a thing where the rewards for the individuals who defect are incredibly high, if there’s one weak faction.”
Rogers suspects that the faction mechanic “will require some tweaking,” because it’s almost impossible to test without the true scale of the player base. He says GGG opted for this more individual-based design rather than everyone contributing to a big war effort value, because “you feel like you’re just throwing stuff into a void, you don’t really feel like you’re contributing to anything.” Instead, the hope is that players who manage to take back a castle for their faction will feel special: “You are the hero, you specifically did that.” That might limit who gets the glory, but as this is designed for people past the point of pinnacle bosses, you’re already dealing with “smaller communities” at that tier.
Does kicking off 1.0 with such a dramatic league mechanic, one that steps so far outside the bounds of traditional ARPG gameplay, set too high a bar? “Well hopefully we can clear it,” Rogers responds. “The goal every league is that we’ve got something that’s really exciting and different and interesting, and that what people should expect from us, ideally, is the unexpected.”
The one concern will be the aspects players will quickly get used to, and would quickly miss were they to be taken away in the future. “As we’re going forward, I suspect the thing that the players are going to be most keen for is the auto map-running stuff,” Rogers muses, “so I suspect we’ll need to find a way to do that at some point, in some way, whether or not it relates to this system or another one.” Could the answer be as simple as making the entire Conquerors mechanic part of the core game? “We never pre-decide [on what goes core],” Roberts answers. “The players will decide that for us.”
Even if the Conquerors mechanics don’t go core as we see them here, Roberts notes that a lot of it can still be folded into the main game in other ways. “Sure, there’s the battle at the front, but once you breach the castle, there’s just a full area full of monsters and a boss, there’s technically nothing distinguishing that back section from a map. So even if all the mechanics are hated, and we can’t manage to find a way to integrate it, you just add all the areas, the bosses, you keep the treasure rooms and all of that, and they’re just special cool things to now find on the Atlas.”
With 1.0 on the way, both developers say that the Shadow has quickly shot to the top of their priority list as their league starter. Roberts is aiming to find a weird build, and then after that he’s going to his standard strategy: “I always like to play something I like, and then I play the worst thing. I find the worst thing and play it because it educates me on how to fix it. Sometimes if there are two worst things, I’ll play both of those – I don’t always get all the way to the endgame because I get too angry.”
After that, he has one more build in his sights: “Full demon summoner with the Infernalist. For my own selfish reasons, I’m getting a kind of black-charred fire version of all of the skeleton minions made for a microtransaction, so that when I’m playing with all my demons, I’ll have all my fiery skeletons,” he laughs, before clarifying, “which I will pay for personally, of course.”
Path of Exile 2 hits 1.0 on Friday December 11, when it will become free to play for all. If you want to catch up on exactly what we can expect when it arrives, be sure to read my full summary of the PoE 2 Exilecon showcase for a complete rundown.
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