Path of Exile 2

Yeah I look at it as more time to try and learn POE1, but the hive BS in every map is getting extremely annoying.

The fact they didn't even say they would roll out endgame changes mid patch cycle is also a bummer - pretty sure I'll skip this league unless people say the passive additions / skill rebalancing made it worth playing.

Druid looks visually cool but will pe9bably end up not being fun to play, but who knows?

Also, what the fuck is up with the temporary limb replacements until you die? That was a pretty random and pointless addition.

That "see the future by watching your ability tell you what you should cast next!" ascendancy is next level horseshit. Like holy fuck that's honestly one of the dumbest things I've ever seen and they think its cool.

mkopec said:

I dont understand what the beef is here? You still mash buttons and explode screens. How does this make any difference if you have 2 weapons or a weapon and a druid animal or even 1 weapon? Since in this game skills are pretty much locked into weapons, this allows for more depth in your combat and build variety IF YOU WANT IT. Or skip it entirely if you want as well. Last league I had a 1 button warrior that destroyed screens. I also had a weapon swapping bow/crossbow dude as well. Both were fun.

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The difference isn't whether screens still explode, of course they do. The concern is how you get there. In PoE1, the depth came from building power into a single core skill or setup and then unleashing it. PoE2 shifts that identity by tying performance to rotations, sequencing, and alternating skill states. That's a very different gameplay language, even if the end result is still a dead pack.

In PoE2, the foundational systems (weapon-locked skills, form changes, combo scaling, and payoff skills) are designed so that sequencing is the optimal baseline, not an optional layer. The choice becomes "engage with this loop or deliberately play suboptimally." Sure, you have a couple builds that exist specifically to avoid that, but those are the exception not the rule.

It's not that complexity is bad. It's that the complexity has migrated from buildcrafting and gearing into moment-to-moment execution. That's where people feel the friction. ARPGs traditionally let you express mastery through planning, not maintaining a Street Fighter-lite rotation during trash clear.

So the pushback isn't "Combos are hard," or "I can't press more than one button." It's, "Why is the game recalibrating the core feel from power expression through builds to power expression through mandated input flow?" If some players love that, great. But when the optimal way to play increasingly resembles a rotation-based action system, people are right to ask whether PoE2 is drifting away from what made PoE distinct in the first place.

Reveal was whatever. Druid looks fine I guess, I'm pretty sure all the really cool shit I saw weren't druid/shapeshifting related. Patch notes are buffs and nerfs but a ton of skills are getting buffed and huge QoL and shit so a lot of 0.2 or 0.3 builds are probably coming back. Elemental Equilibrium looks like it'll make infusions work better.

Synth was the worst mechanical league they ever added and this looks like Synth + Incursion, but at least in the Q&A they said you can do 60 maps before you "have to" do a Temple.

This IS the game they actively change during league quite a bit as they still consider this testing. So we'll see where the nerfs swing in the first week or two.

no, they're slower. but now they're HP sponges that take 4-5 different combo button presses to slog down.

mkopec said:

I think this is just a core balance issue in this game still. And Mark kind of covered this in his post reveal chat. There is a lot of balance still that needs to happen in this game. But to your issue of a "rotation" you need to execute/perform to clear, I think this is more of a balance issue rather than them forcing rotations on us all. Like I said I played a one skill one button mashing warrior last league and it did fine through like T15?. But on the other hand, some of the caster builds needed to perform rotations of skills to have the same deeps/clearing power? IDK since I didnt play a caster. I mean you can see the fucking balance as being an issue when 40% of the players essentially play 2 builds last league.

TLDR I dont think POE2 is re calibrating anything. I think this is and overall skill/weapon balance issue.

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I get what you're saying, but framing it purely as a balance issue kind of sidesteps the underlying design. Balance can explain why some builds outperform others or why casters needed more steps to match a melee slam build, sure. But PoE2's systems aren't just coincidentally producing rotations, the game is architected around them. Weapon-locked skills, form changes, payoff skills that scale off previous actions, and abilities that gain value based on sequencing aren't just balance issues, they’re very deliberate mechanical incentives.

You can absolutely brute-force a one-button build right now because tuning isn't finished, but that doesn't mean the intended direction isn't toward layered inputs. When the foundational mechanics reward chained skill usage as the most efficient path, that's not "oops, numbers are off". That's a philosophical change in how the game wants you to interact with combat. Balance will smooth the edges, but it won't erase the fact that the systems themselves are built to encourage sequencing.

The "40% of players picked the same few builds" stat doesn’t invalidate that either, it actually reinforces it. If the only way to avoid the emerging rotation playstyle is to latch onto a couple of overtuned exceptions, that's not player freedom, it's an early meta clinging to loopholes. Once those get nerfed, what's left is the design skeleton, which is a combat system where the optimal path is executing inputs in order.

So yeah, balance is a mess (it always is in an ARPG's early life), but balance alone doesn't explain why PoE2 feels different in motion. The concern isn't that rotations currently exist. It's that the core mechanics are built to expect them.

.4 notes

Xevy said:

Reveal was whatever. Druid looks fine I guess, I'm pretty sure all the really cool shit I saw weren't druid/shapeshifting related. Patch notes are buffs and nerfs but a ton of skills are getting buffed and huge QoL and shit so a lot of 0.2 or 0.3 builds are probably coming back. Elemental Equilibrium looks like it'll make infusions work better.

Synth was the worst mechanical league they ever added and this looks like Synth + Incursion, but at least in the Q&A they said you can do 60 maps before you "have to" do a Temple.

This IS the game they actively change during league quite a bit as they still consider this testing. So we'll see where the nerfs swing in the first week or two.

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Yea dude, they actively changed the fuck out of this game last January and February right after they first released it.... oh wait.

Khane said:

Yea dude, they actively changed the fuck out of this game last January and February right after they first released it.... oh wait.

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1.1 Hit January 17th, 5 weeks after 1.0 launched.

2.1 Hit June 6th, 8 weeks after 2.0 launched.

3.1 Hit October 1st, nearly 5 weeks after 3.0 launched.

There's some rather big sub patches in there too, especially involving stuff like maps, but I don't care to find them.

God damn that is a lot of ability changes.

Witch Hunter and Smith of Kitava were the 2 that really stood out to me as getting some pretty major buffs.

Bloodmage got nerfed pretty hard with their life cost to phys spell damage shenanigans

Xevy said:

Version history - Path of Exile 2 Wiki - poe2

www.poe2wiki.net

1.1 Hit January 17th, 5 weeks after 1.0 launched.

2.1 Hit June 6th, 8 weeks after 2.0 launched.

3.1 Hit October 1st, nearly 5 weeks after 3.0 launched.

There's some rather big sub patches in there too, especially involving stuff like maps, but I don't care to find them.

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Thanks for proving my point?

Khane said:

Thanks for proving my point?

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I like this post because it proves neither of us know what the fuck you're saying.

Xevy said:

I like this post because it proves neither of us know what the fuck you're saying.

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No it proves that you think them going MIA directly after releasing a content revision in an EA even when shit is actively being abused/exploited/duped (even crashing servers) qualifies as "actively updating".

I almost forget how idiotic you are but it never takes long for you to remind me.

In case anyone reading this thread hadn't bought into the PoE2 release last year or doesn't know, GGG released PoE2, made like a handful of bug fixes, and then their entire office went on vacation for an entire fucking month (not a joke). And during that month there were massive exploits, duping (that involved malicious actors actively crashing the servers) and rampant omen/crafting abuse that also involved crashing the servers.

They were very literally gone for an entire fucking month while all that was happening.

But Xevy is over here posting factoids about how 5 weeks or 8 weeks or 5 weeks shows how dedicated they are to fixing shit.