Path of Exile 2 version 1.0 will add a lot, including the finale of its main campaign, but one inclusion sparked wider attention among the ARPG’s community than any other: Swords. The lack of one of the world’s most common melee weapons has become a running joke among the community, and Game Director Jonathan Rogers of Grinding Gear Games is more than ready to put it to bed. We caught up with him at Gamescom 2026 to learn how the Duelist differs from its PoE 1 incarnation, and what goes into making a new class stand out.
“Obviously we didn’t want to go into 1.0 without swords,” Rogers tells us, “but it did suddenly become more of a meme than I was hoping for. The funny thing is, I’m not really sure how it happened, but somehow it felt like the melee classes were not the ones we ended up developing first.” He believes that’s led to the perception that there aren’t enough melee options in Path of Exile 2, despite the presence of the Warrior and Monk, close-range options for the Ranger, and most recently the Druid. “That’s something that we’re now wanting to change.”
Rogers reveals that the Duelist has actually proved more of a pain to convert to PoE 2’s increased level of fidelity. “Honestly, this has been one of the harder classes to prototype.” He explains, “There’s so much animation complexity that goes on for a player class to make it look good, which I believe we’ve achieved. And if you’re just casting a spell or something, it’s honestly way easier.”
“That kind of meant that when we were coming up to 0.1.0, the early access, the classes that were easier to just get done were some of the ones that we did first, but it has been that we’ve been a bit deficient in the melee stuff. So I’m really looking to make sure that that’s different now.”
Rogers tells us he’s also proud of how Grinding Gear Games has implemented the Duelist. “It’s quite unlike a lot of other ARPGs – I think ARPG combat, like from a top-down perspective, it’s been very hard for a lot of games to create sword combat that really feels like you’re not just kind of projecting giant things everywhere, you know, just giant AoE effects. Actually feeling like you’re really in combat, ‘dueling’ another thing, is something that I really think we’ve managed to achieve here.”
In terms of its overall theming, the PoE 2 Duelist shares a lot in common with the version that exists in GGG’s previous action RPG. “But obviously the mechanics are very, very different,” Rogers remarks. “We had the concept of Blood and Sand stances, but it did not work anything at all like how it works here. It’s effectively completely new from that perspective, just thematically the same.”
In terms of skills, one stood out. “I’ll tell you, thing number one was there had to be Cyclone.” The constant spinning attack has been one of the most iconic and beloved in ARPGs over the decades, whether in this form or the likes of Diablo’s equivalent, Whirlwind. Path of Exile 2 is a more combo-driven game, but GGG recognized that “at the end of the day, there are people who are just going to want to ‘spin to win,’ and that is 100% a thing – so we had to make sure that was in.
“The challenge there was, ‘How can we make it so that we entice you into doing interesting combo gameplay, even though you’re using something like that?'” The team therefore started experimenting: “What if you could add all of these other things to Cyclone, what if you could add the Blood, add the Sand, add the Lightning, all that sort of stuff. That way we’re sort of enticing you to actually go a bit outside of your comfort zone as far as comboing is concerned.”
If you don’t want to overcomplicate things, don’t worry. Rogers reassures us, “There are also ways to build it to make it pretty simple – if you get the right uniques, the right support gems, and other mechanics.” He also promises that “by the endgame you’ve got some crazy ridiculousness.” GGG’s endgame deep dive today digs in further to “how much can you juice Cyclone if you’re really going for it?”
After more than a decade, has GGG figured out the perfect way to design a new class? “I honestly don’t know that there’s a secret formula,” Rogers responds. “There are so many prototypes that we’ve worked on to try and find the thing that makes a class feel different.” The Druid had its shapeshifting, for example, but “that one was really hard because the obvious thing to do was to put a person in a wolf suit and call it a day. But what we actually did was, ‘We want to make them walk like a wolf,’ we wanted all that sort of stuff.’
“We do set ourselves hard challenges like that,” Rogers notes. In the case of the Druid, it was “‘What can we do to really encourage you to have that feeling of flow?’ That was kind of my initial guiding star for the class, to make that work.” He concludes, “There’s no other thing that’s any one magic formula beyond just trying stuff, and not being afraid to go outside the box a little bit. Really that’s what it is.”
Path of Exile 2 1.0 launches on Friday December 11, and will become free to play for everyone at that time. We’ll no doubt be bringing you more as that date gets closer, with a bigger reveal expected at the Exilecon event in November.
Additional reporting by Lauren Bergin for PCGamesN at Gamescom.