Path of Exile 2 Gameplay Experience: I Would Take the Shadow Class Over the Knight

Of the two new classes in Path of Exile 2, I expected to leave Bangkok talking about the Duelist. I left talking about the Shadow class.

I played both at the World Tour stop, on the demo stations GGG set up for the 1.0 preview. Gadget Pililipinas has covered what the Full Release actually contains since ExileCon 2026.

The stealth loop rewards aggression

The Shadow runs on a stealth state that resets the moment I land a kill. That single rule changes the whole rhythm of the class. I attacked out of stealth, killed something, went straight back into stealth, and moved to the next pack. There is very little downtime.

It is not free, though. One hit from a monster knocks me out of stealth, and walking too close breaks it as well. If I have not killed anything, I need a kill to get back in. So the class punishes hesitation more than it punishes bad positioning. Standing still is the mistake.

That is a rare thing in an action RPG. Most classes ask me to manage distance. This one asks me to keep the kill chain alive.

Traps are the part of the Shadow class that surprised me

I expected to dislike the traps. In practice they are the most interesting part.

Traps thrown while stealthed do not break the stealth state. I stacked several, threw a few more, then attacked and watched the whole set go off at once. The class hands me a planning phase in the middle of a fight, which no other class in the game does.

There are eight trap types, so the combinations run across poison, fire, ice and impale. I only tried the poison side in my session, and it was enough to convince me there is real depth here.

The poison build is where it clicked

The build I played was built around poison, and it is the one I would start with.

The loop is simple to learn and hard to do cleanly. A gas trap creates a cloud on the ground that slows enemies. A fire trap ignites that cloud for extra damage. Ethereal Knives adds chaos damage on top, and with poison already applied it produces additional poison explosions.

What makes it work is the queuing. If I throw the gas trap and then the fire trap, one attack fires both, so the combo happens every time instead of depending on my timing. That is the sort of detail that decides whether a build feels good on the third hour or only in a highlight clip.

The Knight is the safer pick, and that is the problem

The Knight is the new Ascendancy for the Duelist, and it is a good time. Swords, war banners, a Squire you can gear up, and a mounted charge that carries the character through a pack.

It is also much tankier than the Shadow. I could stand inside a group of enemies and keep swinging rather than vanishing every two seconds. I did not die once in my whole demo run, which almost never happens to me in an action RPG.

So why would I pick the Shadow class?

Because the Knight gave me fewer decisions per minute. The banners are placed and then they work. The Squire fights on its own. The tankiness forgives mistakes, and forgiven mistakes are not memorable. After twenty minutes on the Knight I understood it. After twenty minutes on the Shadow I wanted another hour to get the trap order right.

That is a preference, not a verdict. For anyone who wants to finish the campaign without dying, the Knight is the safer hand-off.

What I still cannot tell you

The preview build is not final, my session was short, and I did not touch the endgame on either class. Balance at launch will decide a lot of this. A class that feels strong in a leveling area can fall apart when the monster density climbs.

I also did not test either class with high level gear, and the passive tree was not something I could meaningfully explore in a demo. My read on the Shadow is a read on its mechanics, not on its numbers.

The Shadow arrives with the Assassin and Infiltrator Ascendancies, and the Knight joins the Duelist with a second Ascendancy, Master of Arms, coming later, per GGG’s Full Release announcement. Both classes ship with the 1.0 release on December 11, the same day the endgame rework from earlier this year finally gets its full campaign wrapped around it.

I will settle the rest in my full hands-on, which will cover the campaign pacing and the endgame on both.

Gadget Pilipinas attended the Path of Exile 2 World Tour in Bangkok as a guest of Grinding Gear Games, which covered travel and accommodation.