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Do you know what would be nice? To look at the latest patch notes for Path of Exile 2, think “holy stromboli no-one’s got time to read all that bro”, and then close the tab. Some of us can’t do that. Some of us get assigned to inform and summarise.
So I called for help. PCG’s man with a plan when it comes to Path of Exile 2 is Russell Adderson, whose response to these patch notes was to dive in and immerse himself, only breaking free occasionally to DM me something like “HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAA… they literally couldn’t figure out how to fix Grim Feast so they just… REMOVED it.” I guess they did!
So now I’m going to summarise things and, whenever you see quotes, that’s the PCG POE2 sicko talking. For example: “Pour one out for Grim Feast.”
There’s a whole bunch of changes to the Chronomancer class: “Chronomancer still unplayable, Fs in chat for the ascendancy I was looking forward to most pre-release.”
Players will now get their standard six portals in earlygame maps, a number that cuts down as you go further towards endgame, which should allow for a few more chances at the harder stuff: “WE HAVE OUR PORTALS BACK BABY!” There are tower and tablet changes to reduce the micromanagement which “was a pain.”
Corruption areas no longer implicitly have +1 to Area Level but now are much more likely to have modifiers. “This is interesting, I wonder if that means they’ve rebalanced where perfect jewelers’ orbs drop.”
A logout cheese has been fixed (“poor hardcore players”), the ailment threshold has been halved (“ooooooof”), and apparently Grinding Gear Games “really wanna try and make using shields a thing.” The news that the heavy stun is now three seconds long has our man using the grimace emoji, while a change to how conversion is calculated apparently means “RIP everlasting gaze ammy.”
Alright stop—Hammertime!
The Invoker gets some gentle nerfs but “should still be good assuming ES wasn’t nerfed into the ground.” Stormweaver gets hit hard “which makes sense” but “losing the 4% mana small nodes is roooooough.” Mana costs of attacks have been reduced, so “maybe now we can max out our Ice Strike gems without bricking our whole build.”
I’m going to let this one speak for itself: “HAHAHAHHAHA removing jewel sockets from the passive tree cause everyone was abusing the Adorned. Gottem.”
The patch notes say that Blink is now a travel skill, which has our man once again reaching for the caps lock key. “SIX WORDS FOR THIS CHANGE? I have so many questions.”
“Hexblast got haaaaaammered.” Lightning Conduit damage got cut by 80% (“it’s probably still good lol”). Changing the freeze mechanics “is huge.” Detonate dead, lightning rod, lightning conduit, offerings, spark, raging spirits, tempest bell: “all hammered.” Mana Tempest needed some big changes: “I knew it wasn’t working! I wasn’t crazy!” You’re certainly not, Russell.
Nerf-me-do!
“Give us a goddamn stash tab for them.”
Russell Adderson, POE2 sicko, on rune tiers
Changes to Raging Spirits mean it “might no longer make my computer explode.” Spark meanwhile “got squashed like a bug” so everyone has “gotta figure out a new way to level Sorceresses.”
The on-kill effects of Herald skills can no longer trigger from kills caused by Herald skills, which “is such a huge change it’s hard to even describe.”
All of the major chase uniques “got hammered: Astramentis, Ingenuity, Howa, Everlasting Gaze.” The addition of rune tiers is good but now “give us a goddamn stash tab for them.”
There’s an across-the-board damage increase for crossbows which means “maybe someone will actually shoot one at a monster now instead of just using it as a stat stick for grenade builds.”
Top level: a lot of positive changes for drop rates, especially in terms of getting guaranteed stuff early. Pinnacle boss content now requires half the time to unlock, “a huge change… it was so grindy to get those first breachstones / simulacra.” There’s been changes to the dodge roll, an important mechanic for not getting boxed-in, to ensure that smaller enemies and big groups can’t get you in a corner quite so easily.
Various checkpoint changes open up fast travel a little more, and fix some missions that just take forever (like the Dreadnought at the end of act two). Speaking of which: “haha they nerfed the Dreadnought XP strat RIP speedrunners.”
The overall vibe here is that GGG is targeting something that has become a problem for POE2, and needs fixing. Basically, as players got to the endgame it had begun to resemble the original POE: “All the fun mechanical fights got overwhelmed by our broken builds,” says Adderson.
GGG has been explicit that it wants POE2 to have a more challenging endgame, and before this patch that arguably wasn’t the case.
“Going through the campaign felt tense, I had to bash my head against encounters multiple times, dig deep, learn mechanics, etc. By the time I was on my 2nd build at t15s I was just thrashing maps going as fast as possible just like POE1,” writes Adderson. “So it makes perfect sense to me that they’d hammer basically everything we were using.”
Thanks to my esteemed collaborator, who’s just hopped through a portal with a wild-eyed look muttering something about fractured orbs, because I think that really is the thrust of what seems like an absurd number of changes. POE2 will live or die on the endgame and, at present, too many players have been finding it way too easy. No-one likes it when their favourite murder tools are made a bit less effective but, once players are past that initial disappointment, they may find there’s a lot to like about these nerfs.
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Kurt Indovina
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