Path of Exile 2 has been out in early access since December, and now that the initial hype has died down we're all in kind of a waiting room until they add more content. In the meantime, GGG is running some smaller events to engage the community, and an early frontrunner for the game's worst class just absolutely demolished the competition in our first official race.
Path of Exile has long supported official speedrunning events, and this first event was an any% run to clear Act 3. There are two more runs being held as well, on March 9 and March 16, so it's not too late to join in the fun. The top racer for each class gets a unique item to mark their achievement, and the overall winner for the final race gets a laptop. Neat!
Clearing Act 3 took most of us over 10 hours when the game first came out, but Angormus cleared it in a blistering 2:28:37. This was forty minutes faster than the second place finisher and made the rest of the competition look like they were standing still.
He did this on a Warrior, which has been maligned by many, including myself, as Path of Exile 2's worst class. Its lackluster clear speed, inability to scale life with the passive tree, and dependence on armor as a defensive layer have made it last place on most players' lists of best classes. However, specifically for speedrunning the campaign, it appears to be top dog.
Angormus showed off incredible technique during the run, making good use of a slick animation cancel that players have discovered over the course of PoE2's first few months. If you launch into a Rolling Slam, hitting Boneshatter after the first hit will cancel the second attack. This lets you out of the slow second animation, instead hitting a huge AE slam. This is especially nasty if you can put the first monster you hit over 40% stun threshold, which lets the Boneshatter hit for even more damage in a larger area.
Another notch in the cap for Warrior is the ability to use Leap Slam and Shield Charge to traverse great distances once you get to Act 3. The final zone in Act 3 is level 45, which means players need to be somewhere around level 28-30 to be able to kill the boss. You can achieve this level at the end of Act 2 however, which means most of the final Act of the run becomes a race past all the monsters. Using the mace and shield travel skills gave Angormus a huge advantage in the final stretch, letting him open up a gigantic lead.
Finally, the RNG gods were clearly on his side. His drops were strong in the entire run, including some early 15% movement speed boots, solid life and resists on his armor, and a unique belt off the chimera boss. The crown jewel was the absolutely monstrous 2H mace he got from a chest in the Dreadnought (open your chests, people!) which dropped with attack speed. He aug'd a disgusting 67% increased physical damage, and snapped off the regal and 3 exalts faster than the eye could see, resulting in flat phys and flat cold. Bonkers.
So maybe I was wrong. Maybe, for speedrunning at least, Warrior has an important place in the Path of Exile 2 ecosystem and isn't total garbage. I did have an excellent time playing Palsteron's Sunder Totem Titan, a build that let me absolutely demolish the Arbiter of Ash, so if you're looking for something to do with that Warrior you just speedran through the campaign, check it out.
