Gaming

Path of Exile 2 patch fixes endgame “pain points”

Sam Smith
path of exileGrinding Gear Games

Path of Exile 2 has a steep learning curve for new players who reach the endgame, but the next patch should make life easier in this difficult game.

Path of Exile 2‘s early access has been a triumph so far, the game has had some teething problems, but for the most part, POE2 has already established itself as a credible and fun Diablo alternative. However, it’s a deep game with lots of mechanics to learn. This, coupled with the game’s difficulty, can make it rather obtuse and overwhelming at times.

Those who reach endgame will find themselves in uncharted waters, and those who don’t adapt quickly could waste hours doing the wrong thing. The good news is that Grinding Gears Games is releasing a patch to make Path of Exile 2’s endgame more accessible, addressing some of the “pain points” such as more checkpoints and fast travel locations.

Early patch notes

The devs are also adding much more balance to the game’s various functions and mechanics, such as the Trial of the Sekhemas, enemies, and items. While the full patch notes aren’t available yet, here’s a list of everything that will be made easier from the game’s official blog:

Gameplay Features

Like we mentioned last week, we’ll be adding the capacity to fast-travel between Checkpoints within an area, as well as adding many more Checkpoints to areas, generally at all entrances and exits to areas, meaning if you find these first you’ll be able to instantly travel to them to continue exploring.

We’ll also be making Passive Point respeccing cheaper especially at higher levels. It had a relatively aggressive curve getting more expensive with character level, we have flattened that curve so it doesn’t exponentially grow as much. This should generally result in approximately 40-50% less gold cost for respeccing between the start and middle of endgame progression.

Trial of the Sekhemas

Players were finding Trial of the Sekhemas particularly frustrating in close range so we’ve reworked how Honour Damage scales when in close range, as well as fixing an important bug that was causing players to take far too much Honour Damage from Damage over Time.

  • Honour Damage now scales down based on distance to enemies, when in close range you’ll take 35% less Honour Damage, tapering off as you are further away from Monsters.
  • Fixed a bug where Damage over Time was dealing thrice as much damage to Honour as intended, and fixed a bug where Honour Resistance was only applying to two-thirds of that damage. (This was confusing for us too)
  • Skitter Golems no longer use basic attacks and instead now just explode.
  • Serpent Clans burrow and ambush attack now has improved visual telegraphing and cannot be used from as far away.
  • Volcanoes created by Rattlecage’s Fissure Slam now last half the duration.

Endgame and Monster Balance

Generally the balance in Endgame Maps was more punishing than intended, so we’ve toned down the damage in a number of ways and disabled a certain on-death effect where the telegraphing was not as clear as it should have been.

  • Maps no longer have additional elemental resistance penalties inherently applied at Tier 6 and Tier 11 or higher Maps. It is now consistent across all of the Endgame.
  • Chaos Damage now also scales less aggressively over the Endgame.
  • Critical Strikes from monsters now deal 40% less bonus Damage.
  • Lowered the baseline monster density of Breach Encounters, primarily by reducing the frequency of the “Elite” monsters appearing.
  • Disabled the Volatile Crystals Modifier, we’ll revisit this in the future pending telegraphing improvements.
  • Purple Explosives created by the Volatile Plants Modifier on Rare Monsters now deal significantly less Damage.
  • The Siphons Flask Charges Modifier on Monsters now drains ten-times less Flask Charges per second. (This was unintentionally draining way too many charges)

These changes should generally result in an endgame that is much more survivable than before and we will continue to address problematic cases as they arise.

Path of Exile 2 MultiplayerGrinding Gear Games
Path of Exile 2 mixes in some MMO elements so a strong player count is necessary.

Character and Item Balance

  • We’ve made Charm Modifiers on Belts substantially more common and now appear at much lower levels. The “of Symbolism” Modifier now appears from level 23 onwards, and the “of Inscription” Modifier now appears from level 64 onwards.
  • Electrocute is now 25% harder to buildup. (But the Damage Penalty has been removed from the Support Gem).
  • Added a new Lightning Damage and Electrocute Cluster to the passive tree in between the Ranger and Monk sections.
  • It is now more difficult to chain-freeze enemies by reducing the amount of Freeze Buildup applied after a Freeze has been applied.
  • The Hunter’s Talisman Notable now grants +1 Charm Slot. The small passive skills leading up to it now grant the stat it formerly gave. The Charm helper text has been updated to indicate that you cannot have more than three Charm Slots unlocked, so that we can add more sources of it in the future.

Skill and Support Gem Balance

Since launch we’ve unfortunately had to nerf a few skills that were far too overpowered. How do we define overpowered? Basically it’s a situation in which a certain skill is so powerful that players feel no other method of playing the game is viable.

Generally speaking we are trying to do this in a way that doesn’t make a build bad (but we can make mistakes!). Ideally any truly meta shifting changes will only happen at the same time as a content patch with a new league to play in.

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been looking at underpowered skills and support gems. We’ve got a number of changes planned which should improve some of these skills. The full list of changes will be in the patch notes but here is a sample of what you can expect.

  • Improvements to Rolling Slam and all Shield Skills in the Mace section.
  • Improvements to various Bow Skills, especially the skills used to generate Frenzy Charges.
  • Improvements to Bone Spells and Chaos Damage over Time Spells in the Occult section.
  • Improvements to various Crossbow Skills, especially those at higher Tiers.
  • Improvements to some of the underachieving Quarterstaff abilities.

Alongside all of these Skill Gem improvements we’ve also done a pass over the Support Gems. We’ve added two new Supports and removed or lessened the penalties on many others, notably the Fire, Lightning and Cold Exposure Supports.

  • Added the Tremors Support Gem. Which can be used to give up to multiple more Aftershocks to Skills, with a damage penalty.
  • Added the Bidding Support Gem. Which can be used to give more damage to the Command Skills of Supported Minions.
  • The Fire Exposure, Lightning Exposure and Cold Exposure Support Gems no longer penalize Damage of Supported Skills. They now have a Mana Cost Multiplier of 120%.

There are also some notable nerfs to a few of the remaining overachieving skills:

  • Skeletal Arsonists Spirit costs now match the other two Skeleton Mages, this should result in a slight decrease in the number of Arsonists at a higher level.
  • A nerf to the damage over time component on very high levels of Tornado and Vine Arrow. These were never intended to be dealing damage themselves, but more so act as a way for other skills to propagate damage.
  • Magnetic Salvo can now only use your stuck Lightning Arrows as opposed to those created by your Party Members.

If you’re jumping back into the game, here is a breakdown of every class in Path of Exile 2 and what they can do.

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