Path of Exile 2 exits early access on December 11 with swords and the Duelist class

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It's finally time for the one thing every Path of Exile 2 player has been waiting for: swords. A new class and weapon type is coming to the action RPG later this year—oh, and the full 1.0 release of the game.

On December 11, PoE 2 will leave early access behind and go full free-to-play, just like its predecessor. While developer Grinding Gear Games has several previously announced classes to get to eventually, the 1.0 release will at least include the one many players have been waiting for.

The Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 trailer doesn't actually give the man with the sword a title, but a post on the GGG forums calls him the duelist, which lines up with the class that was teased a while ago. It's possible he's gone through a few iterations over the last few years, but he's definitely using a sword for all the new skills.

Swords are a big deal in PoE 2 because weapons are class agnostic, meaning a new weapon type is like getting a big drop of new skills for everyone to play with. I'm more of a caster player, but I can't deny how good some of them look. At one point, the mysterious swordsman pulls up a cone of icicles and slams the sword down in the middle, turning the poor monsters in the middle into bloody ice cubes. That specific attack is borrowed from a campaign boss and part of me wants to use it against him to get revenge for how many times he's killed me with it.

Even though we're still a few months away from the full release, GGG has said it will kickoff a mini-league focused on tightening up the balance across its classes. That update, 0.5.5, is expected to be released within the next month.

Many players were that's when swords would finally be leaving the scabbard, but the new trailer suggests we might have to wait. GGG will have a stream to announce more details on the full release and the upcoming mini-league on Thursday. Every now and then someone posts on the PoE 2 subreddit that they found an unusable sword as a drop that clearly wasn't intended. Maybe, just maybe, swords will be useable before the full release. Fingers crossed.

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