Grinding Gear Games revealed the Shadow at ExileCon 2026, a dagger and trap class arriving with Path of Exile 2’s 1.0 launch on December 11, 2026. Game director Jonathan Rogers showed a trailer, then narrated a live demo through the estates and the Den of Pleasure in Act 5.
The class is built around stealth, which Rogers called “a totally new mechanic to PoE.” In stealth, monsters cannot see you until you get close, and any attack dashes through the target to backstab it. Its cooldown resets on a kill. Viper Strike used from stealth coats the blade in poison, so follow-up hits cause small poison explosions.
Traps thrown in stealth do not go off until you leave it, and they detonate in the order you placed them. “It really does feel like an ambush,” Rogers said. The demo chained Shrapnel Trap with Freezing Trap and mixed Poison Gas, Concussive and Fire traps for bigger explosions. Each of the eight trap types interacts with at least three others, he said.
Other builds leaned on impales. Ethereal Knives can be used without breaking stealth, a second knife skill throws poison knives while retreating, and Electrocution Trap charges the blades stuck in a target. A reworked Blade Vortex pulls impales back out and now expires after a set number of hits, not over time.
The Den of Pleasure build showed shades and Darkness. Entering stealth blinds nearby monsters and leaves a shade they attack, and shades copy your stealth attacks. Blade of the Night builds Darkness, a new resource spent on stealth damage, Shadow Extraction creates more shades, and Eclipse enters the Shadow Realm, where every attack counts as from stealth.
The Shadow will have two ascendancies at launch, the Assassin and the Infiltrator. Neither was shown in detail.
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Still unanswered
- What do the Assassin and Infiltrator ascendancies actually do?
