Path of Exile 2 has had an astounding Early Access period. With more than 1 million players at launch, the Grinding Gear Games-published top-down ARPG has remained a much-played and much-explored game. Now, with POE 2 Season 2, titled Dawn of the Hunt, Path of Exile 2 is getting a new class: Huntress.
The Huntress is a hybrid ranged and melee class. As you step into the bloodstained boots of the Huntress, you become a dexterous and ferocious spear-wielding warrior, which fits perfectly into the third act of the game, if we’re honest. The Huntress is a spear-wielding Azmeri warrior, born into a society with strict traditions. She was exiled from her homeland after using the power of a skill gem to defend her village as a dexterous spare user.
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In our review, we said that “Path of Exile 2‘s difficulty, combat, art, and map designs keep pulling you in. No matter how many times you die or how many times you have to adjust your build, you just keep coming right back. This is a game that is firing on absolutely all cylinders and shows no signs of slowing down.”
What is the Huntress’ combat style in POE 2?
Banished from her homeland, she now stalks her prey using both ranged spear throws and close combat attacks. A melee character when needed, GGG has designed her gear to make combat feel like a relentless pursuit. This makes here a good choice for any player who prefers to always in motion, moving into and out of melee range consistently. This should make the character a good choice for bow-staff Monk players to switch between.
Spears have an extended range and a short dash, but unlike other melee weapons, you can also throw them allowing you to embody a hybrid class. But what’s good melee without a parry? Huntress can parry incoming attacks from enemies. The Huntress’ parry stuns them, allowing the player to launch rapid counterattacks after.
One of the examples that the developers gave during the live letter was for the Huntress to use her Disengage skill after a Parry to quickly jump back, gaining a Frenzy charge, then follow up with an empowered spear throw. Additionally, the developers showcased that the using the elemental spear attacks as a Huntress allows her to create the longest combo chains that GGG has created on any class.
Now, as well as hunting animals, the Huntress also has the ability to work with them. When fighting any beast enemy, players have the ability to tame it and use it as a companion. The Huntress can also only have one companion at a time, but it will keep the mods that were on the previous one.
Key Huntress Skills
There are 22 new skills available for the Huntress by the time that you reach endgame. At your height, you will be using hundreds of insanely powerful spears, sending forth spirit animals and summoning the might of Solaris from the sky. But here are a few of the skills that GGG highlighted in the developer video.
Whirling Slash: As well as striking in a circle around you. This skill creates a whirlwind that blinds your enemies, leaving the whirlwind will make it explode. The more whirling slash is used, the bigger the whirlwind and the bigger the explosion. Once you’re out of there, you’ll want to follow up with something ranged, whip your spear around to shoot twisters towards your foes. These twisters bounce off walls and can hit enemies multiple times. You can also throw twisters inside a whirlwind to shoot up extra tornadoes that do way more damage.
Parry: The Huntress should equip a buckler, which allows the player to use the new skill: Parry. While holding down parry, your character will counter attack any incoming attack from monsters near you, stunning them. In addition, enemies take extra attack damage from your follow up strike. It’s important to note that some specific skills are designed to be used after a parry and have extra effects when done in the correct order.
Disengage: Disengage is a skill that does a quick jump back damaging enemies in front of you, and it can be used to interrupt other actions like dodge, drop. If you use it against a parried enemy, though, it causes an explosion and gives you a frenzy charge. Just be careful, if you parry too much, you’re going to get stunned and possibly killed. Adding in Whirling Slash after Disengage allows you to form a larger combo.
Blood Loss: This skill dashes towards your target and unleashes a deadly slash which opens wounds that when you follow up with disengage will cause them to bleed out as they run towards you. Blood Loss causes a debuff on the health bar of monsters, you can see how much blood loss the enemy has experienced. The more blood the enemy has lost, the more damage you can cause as the Huntress.
Blood Hunt: Blood Hunt is a skill that pairs with Blood Loss and will thrust forward and cause a bloody explosion. The more blood loss, the bigger the explosion.
Lightning Spear Attacks: will bounce lightning between enemies and allows you to throw explosive spears into the ground where they detonate. But be careful, these do damage to everything in their explosion radius. Explosive spears will do an even larger explosion and leave fire on the ground. And these empowered versions can activate even more combos using Boiling Slash over that affected ground.
Fire Spear Attacks: Fire will suck it into the Whirlwind if called over the detonated firey ground which allows you to add fires to the explosion, using twisters inside a fire whirlwind which will of course make some chaotic fire tornadoes as well.
Stormlands: This skill creates multiple spears on the ground that arc toward enemies. These spears can be detonated either in the ground or in your enemies. Now this is just the beginning of the Huntress. We’ve really tried to make the hybrid ranged and melee gameplay work for this class by having a huge amount of synergy between ranged and melee options.
Huntress Starts Off With Two Ascendancy Classes in POE2
POE2’s Dawn of the Hunt introduces fresh new ways to expand your build options with a total of five new Ascendancy Classes. Two of which belong to the Huntress.
Ritualist: The Ritualist sacrifices flesh and blood, unleashing corrupted lifeforce upon their foes. She delved into the forbidden depths of Azmeri traditions, wielding blood sacrifice and plague as weapons.
- Corrupted Life Force Skill: This skill causes all enemies around you to grow volatile blood boils on their skin. In return, when those enemies are slain, the boils burst, spreading a Corrupted Blood debuff to all enemies around them.
- Unfurled Finger Skill: The ritualist also excels in taking advantage of magical trinkets, with this skill allowing you to equip an additional ring on a finger around your neck. Taking mystic attunement increases the bonuses of all the rings and amulets you have equipped.
- Ritual Sacrifice Skill: Use the skill on the corpses of slain rare monsters to absorb the power in their blood, to give you one of their modifiers for a short time.
- Whispers Demand Skill: Allows the player to perform the Ritual Sacrifice skill on yourself instead of a corpse, sacrificing some of your own blood to empower yourself.
Amazon: By choosing Amazon, you will become a peerless hunter who thrives on precision and elemental fury. The Amazon Ascension forges warriors into elite hunters, sworn to protect Azmeri Elders with lethal precision.
- Predatory Instinct Skill: Using this skill will reveal weaknesses in the defenses of rare and unique enemies, causing you to deal more damage. You can see those weak spots represented on their life bars. While using elemental infusion, any charges you consume will infuse your weapon with elemental power, causing any projectile. To explode on impact.
- Critical Strike Skill: This skill takes your excess accuracy and gives it to you as critical strike chance.
- Mystic Harvest Skill: This skill allows your elemental damage to leech life.
- Azmeri Brew: Allows you to use either flask to restore both life and mana.
