Game intel
Path of Exile 2
Path of Exile 2 is a next generation Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Set years after the original Path of Exile, you will return to the dark world o…
Path of Exile 2’s third season doesn’t add a new class, and I’m fine with that. Instead, The Third Edict goes after the stuff that makes or breaks an ARPG season: pacing, mobility, loot flow, and buildcraft. Act Four lands with nonlinear islands, three interlude acts bridge to endgame, and – finally – full asynchronous trading. As someone who’s played since the PoE1 closed beta and sold fewer items than I’ve had Tabula Rasa drops, this caught my attention because it fixes the friction that used to send me back to Diablo or Last Epoch between leagues.
Act Four takes us to Kingsmarch with a choose-your-own-route island hop. You can sail in any order, which instantly makes leveling less of a corridor and more of a loop. Then come three “interlude” acts that replace what would’ve been a Cruel replay — good call; PoE1 removed multi-difficulty years ago, and PoE2 was overdue to follow suit. Together, you’re looking at 35 new zones and 24 boss fights across the back half of the campaign. The interludes vanish once the full story is in, but their bosses and regions persist in endgame, which is the right kind of recycling.
The other headline is a sprint tied to your dodge. Hold the dodge key after a roll and you move “faster than basically any monster,” Jonathan Rogers says. The catch: get clipped while sprinting and you faceplant, totally vulnerable. That’s a smart risk/reward lever. It’ll let softcore players zoom like it’s an ARPG in 2025, while hardcore players will weave sprint bursts between enemy packs and cancel with skills at the last second. If you’ve ever kited Metamorphs on one flask charge, you already see the skill ceiling here.
Let’s be real: manual trading has been PoE’s worst feature for a decade. The Third Edict introduces full async trade via the new NPC Ange and a Merchant tab. You list an item at a currency price; buyers click on the trade site and teleport to your hideout to purchase instantly — even when you’re offline. There’s a small gold fee on top that covers Ange’s cut. “This has been a long time coming,” Mark Roberts admits, and it shows.
This isn’t a raw auction house, and that matters. You still set prices and list items, but the whisper-and-wait circus is dead. Flippers will flip, but removing human bottlenecks should lower price volatility and get more loot actually used in builds. Premium tabs convert to Merchant tabs, and GGG plans to carry this system back to PoE1 once it’s hardened — a rare win for both games’ ecosystems.
Defense first: Evasion gains Deflect, a new stat you can scale to a 100% activation chance that reduces damage by 40% when hit. Nearly every enemy attack is now blockable (minus the obvious red-flash moves), making parries consistent instead of “sometimes nope.” Warriors get reliable close-range accuracy by default, and minions no longer need accuracy — your melee summons will just hit. Monks can go full unarmed Hollow Palm and still use quarterstaff skills. All of that sounds like more viable archetypes without forcing weird tax nodes.
Elemental play gets a much-needed nudge. Sorceress folds separate curses into a single Elemental Weakness, weapon swap delay is gone so you can hot-swap elements mid-combat, and “elemental infusions” let skills leave behind pickups that buff others — think Frost Bomb tagging your next attack with cold. Crossbows are de-clunked, reloading no longer roots your feet, and slows while moving are trimmed across classes. Debuffs like shock and chill last longer, and skills that capitalize on them scale harder, especially on bosses. Finally, the game is rewarding setups instead of just raw tooltip DPS.
The support gem overhaul might be the biggest systemic change. You can now run multiple copies of a support type, undoing the old design that accidentally funneled all power into a single main skill. Supports also have tiers that unlock as you progress, with rank-threes adding new behavior — like Double Barrel auto-reloading on heavy stuns — and endgame “lineage” supports that are basically unique supports with build-defining twists. Ratha’s Assault, for example, reloads on dodge roll and only on dodge roll, but gives you more bolts. This is the kind of late-game expression PoE2 needed to stop every build converging on the same five gems.
The passive tree somehow got denser — over 150 new notables, roughly 20 per class — arranged in thematic clusters so you don’t need a passport to reach them. Gear stat requirements drop 25% across the board, which frees points for actual power. Crafting also evolves: Essences behave more like targeted Regals, currencies can drop higher-rank versions later that guarantee better base tiers, and the Recombinator gains an “unpredictable” mode that sacrifices control for guaranteed outcomes. Translation: spend early, still have meaningful crafting in maps, and fewer dead-end bricks.
The new seasonal league leans into escalating risk. Abyssal fissures spawn, you clear around them, the pit opens, and nastier variants pour out carrying the mods of what you just killed — down a Rogue Exile near one and it returns as a Lichborn. Sometimes the pit becomes a portal to the Dark Domain, an undead city capped by a Lichborn overlord. Clear it for some of the best loot, including those lineage supports and exclusive rewards. You’ll also find “desecrated” gear with hidden mods you reveal at the Act Two Well of Souls, choosing one of three corrupt twists, plus options to juice Waystones for spicier endgame maps.
No new class hurts the headline sizzle, but this patch tackles why many bounced off PoE2: campaign drag, clunky movement, and a loot economy trapped behind player availability. If the async trade rollout avoids obvious exploits, and if GGG’s new support/lineage balance doesn’t blow out boss TTKs, The Third Edict could be the moment PoE2 stops feeling like a promising early access and starts feeling like a mainline ARPG worth maining for a season or three.
The Third Edict cuts campaign bloat, injects real speed with risk, and finally fixes trading. Build variety spikes thanks to support gem tiers, lineage supports, and a fatter passive tree. If you were waiting for PoE2 to respect your time and your creativity, this is the patch to try.
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