Path Of Exile 2's new Monk and Sorceress classes look rad as devs detail extensive combat changes

rockpapershotgun.com:

Grinding Gear Games debuted a lovely big chunk of Path Of Exile 2 this evening, taking us through a section of Act 3 of its campaign and showing off two of its six new character classes: the Monk and the Sorceress. With almost 30 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay, we got to see exactly how they work in practice, and most importantly, we got a big long look at the monk's beautifully choreographed staff twirling melee attacks. Yes please and thank you. I have to say, this is instantly more exciting to me than biffing skeletons with my Druid in Diablo 4, and I'm very pumped indeed to try the Monk out for myself when Path Of Exile 2 enters its closed beta in June next year.

"In POE1, we had one character class for each of the combinations of Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. But looking at the design of POE2 though, we realised that many of the new skills we were trying to design just didn't really fit thematically with the existing classes that we have," creative director Jonathan Rogers told RPS in an advance press briefing ahead of tonight's ExileCon.

"Being a spellcaster with a bear form makes sense for Strength [and Intelligence], but it doesn't really sound like something a Templar would do. We realised that since we had new mechanics for every attribute combination, it actually made sense to design new character classes to explore the new themes."

As a result, every attribute combo in Path Of Exile 2 will have two classes associated with it. Strength/Intelligence will have the Templar and the Druid, for example, while Dexterity has the Ranger and spear-focused Huntress. Dexterity/Intelligence, on the other hand, will have the Monk and Shadow, but the Sorceress will be reserved for pure Intelligence players,