In the third week of the new league of Path of Exile, the developers at Grinding Gear Games looked into which classes and ascendancies are the most chosen by players. It is noticeable that more melee characters are being played in Legion. Some melee characters are even leading the rankings – the revision of melee characters seems to be well-received by players.
What is it about? The developers at Grinding Gear Games recently published statistics on the classes being played. The classes and ascendancies of different level ranges are compared to determine which characters are chosen more often.
This is to give the developers an overview of which classes are currently popular among players.
The character choices between PC and the consoles Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will also be compared. PS4 players have been able to join Path of Exile since March 26.
What are the notable changes? According to the developers, there is a rapid increase in melee characters in the new league Legion, which started on June 7 and immediatelyset a new player record. In the previous league Synthesis, these characters were the most popular:
- Trickster (Shadow Ascendancy)
- Occultist (Witch Ascendancy)
- Elementalist (Witch Ascendancy)
Although the Trickster is an evolution of the melee character Shadow, the Witch ascendancies especially led the popularity scale in Synthesis.
This seems to have changed in the third week of Legion. Looking at all levels on PC, the hybrid melee class Duelist leads the rankings with 11.72% of all characters.
The change becomes clearer with classes at level 70+. In the top four spots of all classes, there are melee characters:
- Butcher 25.63%
- Trickster 16.12%
- Berserker 8.35%
- Gladiator 6.41%
The distribution of characters at level 70+ is the same across all platforms: On PC, PS4, and Xbox One, the same four classes lead the popularity scale.
What was the issue with melee characters? In Path of Exile, melee characters had long faced the problem of simply not being effective enough. Most ranged characters can defeat enemies from a distance or like witches simultaneously defeat hordes of monsters with their area damage.
Melee characters had a harder time and usually had to deal with their enemies one at a time. This made them much less efficient and slower when leveling up.
With the current season Legion and Patch 3.7.0, there was a major overhaul of the melee classes, ranging from changes to skills to buffs for gems and entire ascendancies:
