The newest Path of Exile 2 class is the Witch, and the incoming magic wielder has undergone some critical changes from their turn in the original game. Where the Witch was once best unknown as a master or elemental and dark arts, the spellcaster has now been positioned as "the class that's going to have the most options for summoning minions," says game director Jonathan Rogers. The results are pretty gnarly – you know, in a good way.
I had a chance to sit down with the Witch during my Path of Exile 2 hands-on preview last week and immediately gravitated towards their capacity to deal pulverizing bone shard attacks or debilitating curse debuffs, and intuitively command a massive army of the dead. Having spent nearly 100 hours in the company of the Diablo 4 Necromancer in the past year, Path of Exile 2 has quickly made me realize that Blizzard may have missed a bit of a trick here. These skeletal warriors or shambling zombies are more impactful, the volume of them larger too – and Grinding Gear Games seems to have found ways to keep Necromancer-style builds more viable during boss encounters too.
"We've completely changed how summoning minions works. In POE 1, you had to summon all minions manually, and that could be a bit of a hassle in various situations," says Rogers. "But now, once none of your minions have died for a short period of time, then all of your minions will regenerate at the same time. We have found that it's way better to have all of your minions revive at once, rather than come back one at a time, as that single returning minion will usually just die again."
It's an impactful change. Charging into large, challenging battles now has a little added spice now – if your large army of minions is killed you just need to focus on survivability, dodge-rolling out of attacks until the lot revive at once and begin to push back against the hordes. It's an exceptionally cool sight to witness, particularly as there's a wide degree of customisation available between wanting to go all-in on minions, wielding a Scepter as your main hand weapon to alter which minions you're bringing with you, or perhaps building a minion-spellcaster hybrid which combines a Scepter with a Wand for a little more DPS protection.
There's even specific skills which allow you to curse attacking enemies and transform them into minion constructs with a limited lifetime once they die – something which Rodgers says is "a nice way to build up a little army there" – or other which are able to spread plagues across entire game levels, one minion to the next. If you want, you can even use a dedicated button to order your minions around – have them opening doors, attacking specific enemies, or opening chests.
The Witch in Path of Exile 2 feels far more flexible than the version of this class that you may have seen before in the original game, and certainly more so than the Diablo 4 Necromancer – a fun build to run, but I now realize Blizzard could have perhaps pushed its concept a little further. Either way, I'm keen to spend some more time with the class when Path of Exile 2 hits early access for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X later this year.
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