Path of Exile 2 has been quietly building up steam through early access, and the 0.4.0 update feels like a real turning point. With the Druid finally joining the roster, shapeshifter fans get a proper playground for wild animal forms and hybrid builds, and it ties in nicely with the grind for PoE 2 Currency that keeps late‑night sessions going. The catch is that Grinding Gear Games has also started to temper expectations for the full 1.0 release, hinting that not every one of the twelve planned classes is guaranteed to be ready on day one.



More Classes, Less Time
Once the Druid lands, players will have seven full classes to mess around with, each backed by at least two ascendancies. You do not need long to see how much that already changes how you build a character; you can lean into spell damage, tanky support, or glass‑cannon crit setups without even touching the same ascendancy twice. Still, the devs have made it clear they refuse to drag the launch into 2027, which means something has to give. Templar, Shadow, Duelist, or Marauder could end up missing from the initial roster, and that is just the reality of trying to ship a huge game without burning the team out.



What The Devs Are Focusing On
Jonathan Rogers has been upfront about what really matters to him and the rest of the studio. The priority list is pretty simple: get the campaign finished, get the balance into a good place, and make sure the endgame actually feels worth logging into every night. Once those pieces are in, he is happy to pull the trigger on leaving early access, even if the class list stops at ten or eleven. From a player point of view, that trade‑off is not wild at all. A smooth story, an endgame that does not feel like a chore, and builds that do not randomly implode after a patch are worth way more than squeezing in one extra archetype for launch week.



Why Swords Matter So Much
There is one non‑negotiable for Rogers, and it sounds almost silly until you think about it: swords. For most of the first year of early access, they have basically been missing, and that gap sticks out in a fantasy action RPG. He has said straight up that shipping the game without them would be "bad," and he is not wrong. A lot of players grew up on sword‑and‑board, nimble duelist types, or spinning melee builds, and those fantasies hit different when you are swinging an actual blade instead of improvising with axes or maces. So even if a specific class does not make the 1.0 cut, you can expect real sword builds to be front and centre when that release build goes live.



Living With A Split Focus
All of this sits on top of another big pressure point: the team is still keeping the original Path of Exile alive with its own four‑month update cycle while building the sequel. That means staff get shuffled around, priorities shift mid‑league, and some classes just are not going to be ready as fast as people would like. The upside is that every existing class in Path of Exile 2 already has three ascendancies to explore, so you are not short on build diversity even if your favourite archetype takes a bit longer to arrive. If you are the kind of player who loves rerolling and trying weird setups, you will probably spend more time thinking about passive choices and gear than counting how many character portraits are on the class screen, especially once you start farming, trading, and experimenting around with PoE 2 Currency buy as the economy evolves.