Path of Exile 2's new boss-taming summoner class breaks ARPG minions like never before

Ever since I first picked up Diablo 2 and chose the Necromancer, I've been chasing the fantasy of wandering leisurely through an ARPG while my horde of minions do all the hard work. The new Path of Exile 2 summoner subclass has therefore captivated me like almost nothing that's come before. Arriving with the PoE 2 Return of the Ancients update at the end of the month, the Spirit Walker Ascendancy lets you command some of the game's most feared bosses, turning them to your side. In a new deep-dive video, developer Grinding Gear Games explains exactly how this works.

The new Path of Exile 2 0.5 update is absolutely vast, spanning a complete endgame redesign and crafting overhaul that should make the action RPG notably deeper, yet hopefully more easy to follow. Alongside it comes a pair of new Ascendancies (essentially PoE 2's subclass system). The Martial Artist Monk appeals to those who want to turn their critical strikes into giant, ringing explosions, or stand motionless while channeling spirit clones that fly around you and take out your foes.

It's the Spirit Walker Huntress that's caught my eye, however, and Grinding Gear Games has just given us a lot more detail. While it's the ability to bring beast bosses under your control that has me most enticed, there's a lot more at play. At the core of the Ascendancy are three branches following the Vivid, Primal, and Wild paths of the Azmerian Wisps. If you've already played PoE2, you'll be familiar with these animal guardians, and their ability to empower enemies, making them more dangerous and valuable. Now it's our turn.

Choose the Vivid path to call upon stag spirits that will leap ahead of you as you attack, leaving shocked ground in their wake. Opt for Primal to boost your projectile skills, firing out more at once, at an increased speed, each time you empower them. Picking Wild gives you a spirit bear companion who leaps at foes, maiming them and leeching life, and occasionally intimidating them with a roar. It also boosts all your minions' damage and life, while not counting towards your usual companion cap.

You can invest more heavily in one single tree to maximize its potency, or take just the basic form of all three for a special bonus that enhances each of them in a unique manner. Alternatively, there's the Idolatry path, which opens up the Spirit Walker's potential to a wider range of minion builds. It provides additional boosts to your companions based on the Idols you've socketed into your equipment.

What I'm really here for, though, is The Natural Order. This allows the Tame Beast skill to work on unique beasts - and even bestows a 30% increased movement speed buff on them. That starts with Act One faces like the Devourer and Crowbell, but just keeps escalating from there. Notorious hardcore run-killer the Mighty Silverfist? Giant landshark The Great White One? Rakker, the Frozen Talon? The list keeps going. I suspect some sneaky type tweaks might appear in the patch notes to stop us short of claiming end-of-act icons like Count Geonor, but there's already more than enough to play with.

To show this off in its most beautiful form, game director Mark Roberts demos what he calls the "zookeeper build," using new unique scepter Sylvan's Effigy, which removes the limit on companions. It also hands you a permanent Azmerian Wolf to lead the pack, and Roberts suggests combining this with a regular Wolf Pack, the Wild tree's spirit bear, Skeletal Clerics to heal, and a trio of Tame Beast minions. He's gone for some obvious summoner favorites: Quadrilla, the Plague Harvester, and the Mighty Silverfist.

"The Spirit Walker has enlisted the entire zoo to fight on her behalf," Roberts remarks. "All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the show, and maybe remind your alpha wolf to summon its spirit friends every once in a while." As if all of that wasn't enough, he adds, "This might be a good time to mention that companion damage has been buffed across the board." Good grief. With individual balance attention, will the bosses probably still have been toned down enough to not break the whole game? Probably, but that won't stop me from trying.

Path of Exile 2 Return of the Ancients launches on Friday May 29. GGG is adding a whole heap of even more wild tricks, including a raven flock that acts like PoE 1 favorite Righteous Fire, and a straight-up cluster grenade launcher called Redemption. Despite all that, I think it's finally time for me to unleash my minion hordes on PoE 2's new-look Atlas endgame.