'%20x='0'%20y='0'%20height='100%25'%20width='100%25'%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20xlink%3Ahref='data:image/jpg;base64,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'%3E%3C/image%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Just a few days ago, I had the amazing opportunity to sit down with Path of Exile 2's Game Director, Jonathan Rogers, and chat with him regarding the upcoming The Last of the Druids expansion, the brand-new Fate of the Vaal League, and Path of Exile 2 in general. And just like my conversation with Path of Exile's Game Director Mark Roberts regarding Secrets of the Atlas expansion, we got to know a lot about Path of Exile 2's development and a small peek behind the curtain.
As the name suggests, The Last of the Druids expansion is almost solely focused on the release of the much-anticipated Druid class. It's one of those Path of Exile updates where the content was just ready to ship earlier, but it didn't make the cut. With the additional development time behind it, the Druid is coming out as one of the more fleshed-out classes in Path of Exile 2, complete with a new League mechanic to test the power scaling.
Trending
Jonathan Rogers explains the various mechanics of Path of Exile 2 and the design decisions behind balance-based decisions
Q. The first question that we came up with is, given that it's a Vaal League and Atziri is finally here, is Reflect coming to Path of Exile 2?
Jonathan Rogers: Well, we're not going to have a Reflect mod on monsters and maps, if that's what you're asking. I believe there is some Reflect stuff going on in the boss fight, but yeah, you'll have to wait and actually play it to see about that. But no, we're not just going to have it generally as a mechanic on monsters.
Q. Will there be multiple difficulty modes for the Atziri Pinnacle encounter?
Jonathan Rogers: No.
Effectively, it's just a single fight. So I suppose we might consider doing another version of it when it ships in the game eventually, but for now, it should be hard enough in its normal form.
Q. Again, this is the Fate of the Vaal League, and the Vaal are the primary focus. So are Vaal skills coming? And if not, can we expect those in a future update?
Jonathan Rogers: So we decided not to do Vaal skills for this because I guess fundamentally, there's no real difference in the pair we want between a Vaal skill and a non-Vaal skill other than I've got that charge-up mechanic. So we end up with Glory that is effectively working a little bit similarly, although that one's a bit more dynamic in the sense that it can have different conditions. But it's pretty much what a Vaal skill is, some form of an ultimate ability, and we end up expressing those in the normal skill system.
However, what we did do is Vaal gem corruption, which can do things like give extra quality, levels, and other effects. We still have some gem-related stuff. But, as far as just a general concept of Vaal skill, I think for now, having it in the regular skill system is the way forward. But you never know. In the future, we could definitely consider it.
For now, I think we have enough skills and balance changes that we're adding in one patch without having to add a lot more.
Q. So we saw that there were, I think, 200-plus passive points being added to the skill tree. Is life going to be a part of those trees? And this is a two-part question in the sense that if not, what is the reasoning that the team is going with, regarding the exclusion of life on the passive skill tree? Because it's a big part of PoE 1's Passive Tree progression.
Jonathan Rogers: Yeah, so the reason we didn't want to do life on the passive skill tree is that in PoE 1, it just ended up being a mandatory stat that you just effectively had to allocate. And it was a bit of a noob trap as well, because anyone who... Effectively, if you didn't allocate life, then your build was not viable, and you just had to know to do that, right?
And I guess the thing that we thought was, if life is so mandatory, what's the reason to make people allocate that? Because, effectively, what they're doing is just wasting 20 passives or 30 passives or whatever it is when they could be allocating something more interesting. And so what we prefer in PoE 2 is to try to make it so that, instead, if you're looking to go defensive, then you've got defensive nodes that you're doing.
There's a little bit more variety in what you can choose to do. I mean, you do obviously specialize in the dominant defensive stats that you need for the armor type you're using. But even within those, there's sort of different things going on with a few different mechanics and so on.
We like that better, and it somehow feels like not having things that are totally mandatory to allocate is a better overall feel for us. There has been some discussion about this because the... Actually, it's sort of complicated enough that I don't even know if I want to go into it.
Effectively, there are some balance implications of doing that that might lead to some potential downsides in terms of some aspects of survivability. But we've mostly felt like we've dealt with that. And as I said, it’s a little bit complicated to go into that. We prefer it this way. So we'd prefer not to add life if we don't need to.
Q. This is kind of... I don't want to label this as a balance or a design decision, so I'll just leave it up to you. But the question is that now, with the introduction of Shaman into the game, there are effectively three ascendancies, if I'm not wrong, that are in the same general archetype, that is, controlling the elements.
It's, I think, Shaman, Invoker, and Stormweaver. But Stormweaver is, I would say, taking the back seat if you look at the other patches. Invoker has generally been the dominant force when it comes to casting elemental spells. Now, Shaman is definitely going to become the dominant class here. So, are there any plans to introduce new keywords or new mechanics into the Stormweaver to bring it up to par?
Jonathan Rogers: Actually, I'm not hugely involved with ascendancy class balance in particular. So Mark's the one you would need to ask about that. There have been a bunch of balance changes to the ascendancy classes.
I'm not sure the specifics about the ones that you're asking about, though. So yeah, I guess you'll have to look into the patch notes for that one. But yeah, we will continue to balance the ascendancy classes as necessary. And yeah, there's a huge amount of them here. I believe that Mark says the exact number of them that ended up being rebalanced in the video, but it ends up being something like 12 to 15 of them that received some changes. Some of them are more substantial than others.
So, as I said, you'll have to look at the patch notes to see about that particular example.
Also read: Path of Exile 2 0.4 patch notes (Last of The Druids update)
Q. Continuing with the ascendancy theme, it's about the Druid's Oracle this time. Are there any mechanics in place that can increase the damage dealt to the spectral version of the bosses or enemies? So, characters that focus on elemental ailments more than damage can get better mileage out of them?
Jonathan Rogers: So I don't think there's anything that increases it, but fundamentally, what that skill is doing is giving you the ability to do double damage, right? Like, once you've got two copies of the boss standing there, then you can do damage to both. So it's about utilizing the time that you have to get both of them to do as much DPS in that window as you can.
Q. Are there any external crafting mechanics coming to this league? As in that is outside of the entire Fate of the Vaal League mechanic.
Jonathan Rogers: So all of the crafting mechanics that we're adding for this time are all tied to Fate of the Vaal. And there are lots of them. I believe there are nine crafting mechanics overall.
We didn't actually show all of them in the video, though we did show a bunch. So there really is a huge amount going on. So I think that's probably enough crafting for one release. And it's opening up a huge amount of options. A lot is going on there. So yeah, if that's what you're interested in, then there's a bunch there.
Q. Are there any changes coming to Abyss crafting now that it's more endgame-focused than before?
Jonathan Rogers: So there were some balance changes, I believe, to some of the mods. But the biggest change really is removing the crafting of waystones, because that was something that players really weren't enjoying. Other than that, it really is just balance. Overall, we were pretty happy with how Abyss crafting turned out, apart from the waystones.
Q. This is a spoiler-ish type of question because in the last league, the Abyssal Lich wasn't discovered until everyone got to the point where they could fight the Vessel of Kulemak. So, this time around, will Vaal Temple or the fight against Atziri have a special ascendancy that certain classes can tap into?
Jonathan Rogers: I don't think we've got anything like that for this one. Oh yeah, that was just kind of like a nice little bonus thing for the last league that got in. I don't think we've got anything on that particular nature in the Adziri fight.
Q. Bringing it back to the classes for this one. The last two leagues, if I'm not mistaken, were very much giving love to the caster side of the player base. You know, Melee got some buffs, some nice buffs as well. But casters were having a really good time.
Brands have been very much absent from the entire thing. Are they being planned? And are they being planned in tandem with Templar? Or can we see them in a different context?
Jonathan Rogers: Well, I'm obviously not going to discuss anything for an unreleased class like that. But certainly none of the classes that we have right now would fit the brand identity, as it were. So yeah, that's something we would indeed say is meant for a different class that we haven't talked about yet.
Q. This is kind of like an act-based question. And it's something that my friends were talking about regarding the last league while playing, that it takes a bit of time to reach Act 4.
And as you know, asynchronous trading has become a huge part of the entire progression system, now that we can access items faster. Are there any plans to introduce it in a truncated form, or anything? Or is it still tied to Act 4?
Jonathan Rogers: Personally, I want to continue to keep it in Act 4 if we can, just because it really does change the progression quite a lot. Now, by the time you get to Act 4, it's okay. But I think that if we had it too early, it would probably affect player progression early quite significantly, in a way that I don't think would be great.
So having it so that it's one of those things that you can do on subsequent playthroughs, but not in the first playthrough of a league, until you get to Act 4, I do actually think is quite good.
Q. When the third ascendancy for Druid comes in, will there be any more transformation-related things to it, similar to demon form? And this is an old question, because when PoE 2 was first announced, every class was supposed to receive the transformation system, if I'm not mistaken. Is that still something you're looking into?
Jonathan Rogers: I don't think it was every class, but we did have a transformation for the ranger that we ended up not doing in the end. That's one of those things that could come later on. But, I mean, ultimately, every class has the ability to use transformations because they are tied to skills and a weapon type.
But yeah, it wasn't so much that we had the plan to have every class have an ascendancy that did it. It's more just that, you know, you've got those standard ways of doing that kind of stuff. But when the...unfortunately, I can't tell you what's going to come on the third ascendancy class for the Druid. Right. But yeah, it is a possibility for sure.
Q. Let's head back to the Fate of the Vaal for a second. The 50% odds of destruction on the double corruption might make it too much of a gamble, given how it's at the extreme end of endgame crafting. Are you going to maintain that rate of failure, or are you open to turning it down if player sentiments demand otherwise?
Jonathan Rogers: I don't think that we would tune it down. I mean, it is effectively the same as what we had in POE 1 for the double corrupt. Like this is supposed to be a kind of ultimate endgame type situation.
So it's one of those things that we want to have... It is a real risk that we want you to be able to take. Now, I suspect the most common thing players will use it for is for uniques, because obviously, you can get as many more copies of a unique in order to experiment with.
But yeah, ultimately, it is an ultimate endgame form of crafting. And so only players who have stuff to lose should be engaging with it. Right.
Q. Continuing with the theme of double corruptions, is it possible to make every unique in the game right now into a Foulborn/Vaalborn?
Jonathan Rogers: So it's only the Vaal uniques that you can do that with. So effectively, there are quite a lot of them that are considered to be Vaal uniques.
And those are the ones that you can do that on. Originally, we were keen to do it on all uniques, but the problem with that is there are so many uniques that if you were able to remove a random mod from them, it would be just completely outrageous in terms of the level of power. So for that reason, we decided to restrict to Vaal uniques where we had a bit more of a controllable set that we could adjust.
Because it could remove any mod from the unique and add from a big pool of mods, which means that the potential here was kind of a bit crazy, and limiting it was important.
Q. How many transformation-based uniques are coming for Druid? And will each transformation have that? You don't have to be specific; it can be a ballpark number.
Jonathan Rogers: So the Fury of the King is, I believe, the only one that will be shipping this release, but we will probably do that more often later. We did have some more planned, but they didn't quite make it. There won't be a huge number of them, because they're quite a big thing to actually make.
But yeah, we have that one at least for this release.
Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids and Path of Exile 2: Fate of the Vaal come out on December 12, 2025, at 1 pm PDT for PC and consoles.
Check out our other Path of Exile 2 guides and articles.
