Path of Exile 2 classes explained and best starter class

Picking between the Path of Exile 2 classes available in early access is a tricky business, especially since you know you'll likely be with this character for the next 100 hours—depending how deep you go. One of the best things about this game is that the skill system is so broad, you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want.

In some ways that makes picking a class easier; you know you're not bound by skills or passives. But it can actually make the choice trickier, too. With the possibility of such expansive builds, you want to make sure your foundation is solid and will compliment whatever you try. 

With that in mind, I'll give a brief overview of each of the six PoE 2 classes you can play right now, plus my personal pick for best starter class if you want something that'll steamroll the early game and get you moving.

Path of Exile 2 best starter class

The best starter class in Path of Exile 2 is the Mercenary. Sure, he's not your generic melee fighter like the Warrior, but that's what makes him so strong. Melee combat is far harder than ranged combat in Path of Exile 2, especially in terms of surviving boss fights. The Mercenary can stay mobile while peppering bosses and hordes with bolts, especially if you build evasion and movement speed.

This class also has easy access to a variety of ailments and damage types early on, including ice, fire, lightning, poison, and armour-piercing. His grenades, in-particular, are very strong, especially if you add support gems and passive skills to increase the number you fire. During most early bosses you can effectively roll around firing grenades for most of each fight while remaining invulnerable, or combo Permafrost Bolts with Fragmentation Rounds to freeze and explode enemies in an effortless big damage synergy.

Warrior

Choose if you want to:

• Trigger shockwaves and tank attacks in thick of the fight
• Summon totems that can damage enemies

If you're a big fan of straightforward melee classes, then the Warrior is a good pick. This fighter is all about charging in, creating massive AoE shockwaves with his slam skills, and enhancing his attacks with war cries and by summoning totems. The Warrior is also unique in that he can equip a shield, letting him actively block attacks at the cost of stamina, just in case all the dodge rolling wasn't quite Dark Souls enough for you.  

Monk

Choose if you want to:

• Stun monsters with a giant bell
• Pretend you're in Avatar: The Last Airbender

The Monk is a complex but rewarding class that whacks monsters with a staff and spits out elemental attacks. It's ostensibly a melee class, but also has quite a lot of ranged skills. Monk skills broadly fall into three categories: frost, shock and stun. A lot of them can also be augmented by others, like Killing Palm, which nets you orbs that interact with skills like Falling Thunder, turning this short-range lightning skill into a huge screen-clearing attack. 

Tempest Bell, meanwhile, summons a huge bell, which rings out when struck, stunning your foes. Using elemental attacks on the bell gives the shockwave those elemental properties. If you like the idea of using lots of interconnected skills, or shocking, freezing or stunning enemies, this one's for you. 

Mercenary

Choose if you want to:

• Combo crossbow ammo types in a ranged playstyle
• Summon ballista minions and explode enemies with grenades

The Mercenary is one of Path of Exile 2's most entertaining classes, especially if you enjoy wielding a crossbow that for all intents and purposes functions more like an assault rifle. The Merc can blast enemies with all sorts of different ammo types, applying ailments, and combo-ing effects for big damage. He can also toss grenades into the mix to stun, explode, poison, or even cover enemies in oil so you can ignite them. A little later on you'll get access to ballista minions, too, and these can pin enemies or rain AoE fire from above.

Ranger

Choose if you want to:

• Use movement-based bow skills to run circles around enemies
• Zap, freeze, or poison foes with your arrows

The Ranger is the second ranged non-spellcaster after the Mercenary and they're quite similar in a lot of ways, especially in that both classes have access to a wide variety of damage types and ailments. The main difference with the Ranger, however, is that this bow-wielder focuses more on speed and evasion. If you fancy a bit more mobility from the start than the Merc can offer, the Ranger is definitely for you.

Witch

Choose if you want to:

• Summon a horde of minions and buff them through skills
• Deal chaos damage early via curses and damage-over-time spells

The Witch is the class to pick if you want a skeleton posse from the start. She has easy access to minions and can beef them up in the passive skill tree not far from where she starts. As you level up, however, the witch starts to run into issues with her relatively low survivability, especially when you’re minion-less. I’d recommend stacking as much life as you can and picking up sorceress skills, like frozen orb, to be able to crowd control monsters. 

Sorceress

Choose if you want to: 

• Employ a wide variety of damage types as an elemental spellcaster
• Use trigger gems to set up combos that activate on certain conditions

If you enjoy the classic complex experience of being a spellcaster with access to many different elements, the Sorceress is worth a try. Not only can this wizard combo spells for powerful effects, but you can also set up trigger gems, activating a skill when a certain threshold is reached. This adds a whole extra layer of depth to your magic, as you weave together various magic types and elements for maximum effective damage.