At Gamescom 2026, I met with Jonathan Rogers, Game Director of Path of Exile 2 at Grinding Gear Games, for a closer look at that class: the Duelist. Jonathan is a wonderfully enthusiastic person to watch demonstrating his game. He could explain what an ability did, smoothly transition into another combination, and keep the conversation flowing while making the combat look far more manageable than it probably was. My own rather clumsy hands-on session would later confirm just how deceptive that impression was. More on that later.
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Finally, Someone Brought a Sword
I’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. In the latter, running rifts became one of my ways to unwind after a hard day at work. There is something wonderfully relaxing about settling into a familiar build and clearing your head while clearing a dungeon. Probably less relaxing for the dungeon’s inhabitants, but they were never particularly welcoming anyway.
With that history, you might expect Path of Exile to have become another permanent home for me. I did try the first game, but somehow it never quite clicked. I don’t have a grand explanation for that; sometimes a game simply doesn’t catch you at the right moment. The sequel has kept my attention, though, and I’ve been looking forward to giving it a proper try. So when an invitation for an interview and an NDA-protected hands-on session landed in my inbox, I had a rather simple thought: this is it! The game is finally heading toward its full release, and I’ve officially run out of excuses.
The walkthrough began with an admission that probably needs very little explanation for anyone who has followed the game: people have been asking about swords. “Swords are like the most generic weapon in the world,” Rogers said. “How do you actually create a unique feel for sword combat?” That was the problem behind the missing weapon. GGG wanted sword combat to offer something more meaningful than just a different weapon shape and damage numbers. Their answer was to make the attacks flow naturally from one into another.
Path of Exile 2 entered Early Access on December 6, 2024. Its full launch is scheduled for December 11, 2026, with the Duelist joining that release, and GGG has since reaffirmed the date and the move to free-to-play. That will bring just over two years of Early Access to a close. For now, let’s look at what Jonathan showed us in Cologne, starting with a surprisingly involved answer to a very simple question: what should happen when you swing a sword?
One Skill, Several Possibilities
The first part of the demonstration took something very ordinary, the default attack, and showed how much could change around it. Certain abilities put the character into Ready Stance, changing what the next attack does. The skill icons also change to reflect those alternatives, and the character can still move while ready. In other words, the transition between attacks becomes part of the decision you make, rather than just the animation connecting two button presses.
There are forward and backward variations to consider, too. Rogers demonstrated a lightning attack in its ordinary form and then used it from Ready Stance to show the difference. A question during the presentation described this as a more tactical decision, and the answer came back to the same idea: flowing between abilities gives you access to enhanced versions that can do different things. The point is to look at how attacks fit together, instead of treating each icon as an isolated tool.
Blood and Sand add another layer. Depending on how you engage enemies, your blades can acquire one or the other, altering subsequent attacks again. In the demonstration, that meant switching between effects such as a wave of blood and spinning sand discs. Perforate, shown as a sequence of thrusts, could go straight into its larger stab from Ready Stance, while Blood and Sand produced their own variations. This is where the apparent simplicity of a small skill bar becomes a little deceptive: the same buttons can lead to quite different results.
“Every skill is not really one skill, it’s like three skills,” Rogers explained, referring to the normal, Blood, and Sand versions the team has to design. That sounds like quite a workload when you put yourself on the development side of the screen. For players, though, it means the variety comes from learning the tools already in your hands. Even the default attack has a place in that conversation.
Lightning Should Behave Like Lightning
The interactions extend beyond the blade the Duelist is holding. One ability leaves blades in the ground, and another can electrify them. A further attack detonates those planted blades; if they have already been charged, the result is a lightning explosion. It is a sequence with several moving parts, but the visual connection makes it easier to follow: the lightning you added has to go somewhere.
Rogers acknowledged that this can look complicated when reduced to damage values and different versions of each skill. The team’s aim, however, is for the behavior to make sense inside the world. Players interested in calculating every interaction can do that, while someone looking at an electrified blade should already have a reasonable idea of what will happen when it explodes. I appreciate that. There will be time to work out which combination squeezes out another few percent of damage. While something is actively trying to remove my head, being able to understand an interaction by looking at it is rather useful.
There are practical limitations in these combinations as well. During one Sand demonstration, Rogers explained that the attack could be held down but would keep the character in place. Stunning a boss first would make that a more useful opening, especially with blades already set up. So even when a combination looks wonderfully destructive, there is still the small matter of persuading the monster to let you finish it.
Spin to Win, With a Few Extra Ingredients
Of course, a sword presentation would eventually have to get to Cyclone. Rogers introduced it with the familiar “spin to win” phrase, then showed how the Duelist’s other systems feed into it. The demonstration moved through Sand and Blood variations, but the more interesting part was how those effects could be acquired. Blood left on the ground by an earlier ability could be picked up by Cyclone, offering another route to the combination.
That flexibility is deliberate. “We want to be able to have multiple ways to do most of these combos,” Rogers explained. The aim is to make interactions accessible through different builds, rather than forcing everyone down exactly the same sequence. It is a useful distinction when talking about combinations in an action RPG. There is a difference between discovering that two parts of your build work together and being told that the only correct way to play is to press the same buttons in the same order forever.
Cyclone can also pick up elemental ground effects. Blade Conduit was used to create lightning on the ground, which then carried into the spinning attack. Rogers went further, explaining that effects could be combined rather than simply replacing one another. Blood, Sand, and elemental effects all became part of the same demonstration. For anyone who enjoys experimenting, that leaves a very obvious question hanging over the skill: what else can I get into this thing?
Worldcutter followed, introduced as a rather anime-like ability: a buildup into an enormous strike, with its own Blood and Sand versions. It was presented as the sort of attack you might use to finish a boss. Between that and Cyclone, the Duelist clearly has room for spectacle, but the walkthrough kept bringing those big moments back to the same underlying interactions. The flashy attack still belongs to the system you have been learning.
How Much Do You Have to Juggle?
All of this raises a fair concern, especially for someone whose idea of a pleasant evening has often involved settling into the rhythm of another Diablo 3 rift. What if you like swords but do not want to spend every fight monitoring several different conditions? Rogers’ preferred approach was to use Blood and Sand together, responding to what an enemy is doing: whether it is close to being stunned, whether an attack can be parried, and whether it makes sense to move forward or retreat. That is the ideal he described, but he also made room for players who want to simplify things.
Players can choose to concentrate on just Blood or just Sand, with support gems and the passive skill tree providing options for shaping a build around those preferences. And yes, that tree. Calling Path of Exile’s passive tree a “tree” feels wonderfully modest for something that looks as though it should come with its own public transport system. Somewhere in that enormous network is the route to the character you want to make. Finding it could probably occupy an evening before you’ve inconvenienced a single monster.
Jokes aside, that freedom to customize is a serious part of the appeal. There are players for whom planning and refining a build is as enjoyable as taking it into combat, and I can appreciate the attraction even if I haven’t yet found my own place in PoE. Jonathan also described another way of approaching it: treating the game more as an action game, relying on dodging, recognizing openings, and choosing the right ability. Both preparation and execution were presented as ways to make progress. How comfortably those approaches carry through the finished game is something I still want to discover for myself.
For me, the encouraging part is having room to find a rhythm. I enjoy learning what a build can do, but I also understand the pleasure of reaching the point where you can settle into it after work. Diablo gave me plenty of those evenings. Whether the Duelist becomes that kind of character for me remains to be seen, but hearing that I can narrow my focus while learning gives me a more inviting starting point than trying to master everything Jonathan demonstrated at once.
I also had a chance to put the Duelist to work myself, and I’ll add the gameplay recording below. Jonathan had already provided the demonstration of what happens when someone knows exactly what they are doing. My footage should help keep expectations about the rest of us at a sensible level. 😀
A Boss Fight, and a Very Gamescom Interruption
The walkthrough eventually moved toward a boss in a ruined arena, with Rogers describing the area’s gladiators and beasts before starting the encounter. Then the game crashed. Jonathan apologized and worked on getting back into the fight, explaining that he hadn’t encountered that crash during his demonstrations so far. Even knowing your combat systems inside out apparently doesn’t give you a useful counterattack against that particular problem. It was a brief reminder that we were watching a development build being played live, with all the unpredictability that brings.
After the fight, the conversation turned to the broader game. Rogers described the planned launch offering as more than 100 bosses, more than 100 campaign areas, six acts, and an extensive endgame. Those are substantial ambitions for the release, and he acknowledged that Early Access had taken a long time while emphasizing how much the team had added along the way.
The point he seemed particularly proud of was the work going into bosses. According to Rogers, more of the studio’s designers were working on boss fights than on any other area. After talking about the effort spent on their quality and polish, he returned to the interruption with a small qualification: “It’s cool when they don’t crash, anyway.” I appreciated both the enthusiasm and the ability to laugh at the unfortunate timing. Jonathan clearly had plenty he wanted to show us, and a temperamental demo wasn’t going to end the conversation.
What Comes After Gamescom
GGG kept the focus here on the Duelist’s basic combat systems. Rogers said the class’s Ascendancies and other 1.0 features would be discussed at ExileCon in November. The studio’s October 29 announcement has since scheduled the full reveal broadcast for November 6 PST, so we should soon have a much clearer picture of what will accompany the Duelist at launch.
What this session did explain was why GGG wanted sword combat to work this way. Ready Stance changes an attack, Blood and Sand change it again, and other skills can leave something in the world for the next ability to use. The design gives you reasons to pay attention to the attack before the big hit, and to what remains after it. That is the part I find most interesting: learning a weapon through the things you can make it do, with enough flexibility to develop your own habits along the way.
For fans who have followed Path of Exile 2 through Early Access, reaching 1.0 with a new class to explore is fantastic news. For me, December 11 is an opportunity to give the series another proper chance. The first game never quite caught me, but Jonathan’s enthusiasm, the Duelist’s possibilities, and the approaching full release have given me plenty of reasons to come back. Perhaps Wraeclast will become another place where I unwind after work. I should probably work out where I’m going on that skill tree first.
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