It feels like we have been waiting forever for the Druid in Path of Exile 2, but it is finally almost here, and a lot of players are already planning their builds and figuring out how they will farm PoE 2 Currency around it. This new hybrid Strength and Intelligence class steps into that space the old Templar used to occupy, mixing heavy hits with proper spellcasting instead of locking you into one lane. Even from early previews you can tell it is built for people who like to swap roles on the fly, not just stand there spamming one button all night.

Shapeshifting That Just Works

The big hook is shapeshifting, and it actually looks clean in play, not like some clunky form dance. You stick an Animal Talisman on, hit a linked skill, and bam, you are in Bear, Werewolf, or Wyvern form without digging through menus. The Bear is pretty much how you imagine it: slow, chunky, hits like a truck, and stacks Rage while smashing the ground with fire. If you are more into speed, the Werewolf form feels quicker and sharper, leaning into cold damage and tossing out little wolf buddies to swarm stuff. Then there is the Wyvern, which is kind of ridiculous in a good way. You glide over packs, breathe fire, then chew up corpses to charge up lightning strikes, and it has that “ok, this is why I rolled Druid” kind of energy.

Human Form Still Matters

It is easy to get distracted by the animal forms and forget that the human side of the kit is still doing a lot of work. You are dropping spells and totems in between shifts, and totems now use charges instead of just mana, so you actually have to think about when you place them instead of carpet bombing the whole area. That extra layer of resource management is the sort of thing PoE players either love or hate, but it fits the class. The Ascendancy options look like they will push things even further. The Shaman leans into raw elemental chaos, while the Oracle is clearly built for people who keep Path of Building open on a second monitor, throwing more than 130 new nodes onto the passive tree and messing with this “future self” vision system that buffs you if your actions line up with what you were shown.

Fate Of The Vaal League Hooks

It is not just the class that is doing the heavy lifting in this update. The new Fate of the Vaal league drags Queen Atziri back into the spotlight, and that alone will pull a lot of long-time players in. The core loop has you piecing together your own Vaal Temple layout, then diving back in time to try and shut down her ritual before it all goes wrong. It is the kind of system where you get greedy fast. Double-corrupting gear is a coin flip between landing something absurd and watching a favourite item vanish into dust, and everyone knows people are going to risk it anyway. On top of that, the Flesh Surgeon thing lets you swap out your limbs for creepy mechanical upgrades, which sounds great till you remember they pop off when you die, so it has that “do you trust yourself not to choke” tension baked in.

What Update 0.4.0 Actually Means

Update 0.4.0 drops on December 12 with a free weekend, which means even if you bounced off the first beta you can jump back in and see how the Druid and the league feel now without spending a penny, then decide how deep you want to go on poe2 cheap divine after that. There are no new story chapters in this patch, which stings a bit if you are mainly here for the campaign, but there is enough going on between learning the forms, testing Ascendancies, and trying not to brick your gear in the Vaal temple that most people are going to lose a good chunk of their holiday break to it.