Path of Exile 2 News

Path of Exile 2 has been live for just over a week! We’ve addressed some feedback already and are working on more fixes for key pain points in an upcoming patch. The full patch notes are coming soon, but check out some of the more significant changes below.

[h2]Gameplay Features[/h2]

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.

[h2]Trial of the Sekhemas[/h2]

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.

[h2]Endgame and Monster Balance[/h2]

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.


[h2]Character and Item Balance[/h2]

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.

[h2]Skill and Support Gem Balance[/h2]

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.

As we wind down for the holiday season we wanted to thank you all for our most successful launch so far, we could not have done it without all of your support. A lot of our team will begin to take some much needed rest over the next few weeks but we look forward to getting back in the new year refreshed and ready for an exciting year of development in 2025. Happy Holidays, Exiles!

This weekend we’re running a Stash Tab Sale! You can view the full selection of discounted tabs by pressing M in-game. The Stash Tab sale ends at 4PM December 16th PST.


The following tabs will work in both Path of Exile 1 and 2:

Premium Stash Tab
Extra Stash Tab
Premium Quad Stash Tab
Gem Stash Tab
Flask Stash Tab
Currency Stash Tab
Essence Stash Tab
Unique Collection Tab
Delirium Stash Tab

If you’re missing points for the sale, be sure to check out the Early Access supporter packs here!

Thanks for your support!

• Passive Block chance now applies to blockable hits from all directions, as opposed to just hits from in front.
  
• Player size is now set to Zero units while dodge rolling instead of One unit.
  
• Some smaller monsters can now be pushed while dodge rolling. This includes monsters such as the Adorned Beetles in Keth.
  
• Inscribed Ultimatums and Djinn Baryas now display whether you will obtain Ascendancy Skill Points upon completing the Trial of Chaos or Trial of the Sekhemas respectively.
  
• Removed World Map Pins for encounters that were not from specific locations in Areas. ie. From Monster drops.
  
• Improved attack in place behaviour.
  
• Rain of Arrows and Firestorm now have a hit-rate limit to prevent cases of them absolutely obliterating very large bosses. This will have little to no impact outside of boss fights with very large hitboxes.
  
• Leech has been buffed.
  
• Boneshatter now more reliably hits your target.
  
• The duration of Armour Break has been increased to 12 seconds (previously 6).
  
• To improve performance, Incinerate now creates circular areas of ignited ground instead of segments.
  
• Added CTRL+Click shortcut to open the Currency Exchange at the appropriate NPCs.
  
• Added a button to travel to the Trial of Chaos on the world map.
  
• Added art for Close Combat Support.
  
• Added 2D art for the Defiance of Destiny Unique Amulet.
  
• Added "Ascendancy Skill Points" as a keyword, which details how sets of Ascendancy Points are obtained.
  
• Added search functionality for Gemcutting and vendor inventories when using a controller. Keybinds for searching Stash on a controller have also been updated.
  
• Added Gemcutting restrictions option for Gamepad.
  
• Added suggested Supports for Time of Need.
  
• Updated the suggested Supports for Bonestorm.
  
• Added an option for opening the Trade website to the main menu for consoles.
  
• Runes now sell to vendors for more Gold.
  
• Updated art for Reserved Life and Mana.
  
• Updated the description on Runes to clarify that once socketed they cannot be replaced.
  
• Auras and Curses that affect ally or enemy resistances now display values in the Skill popout panel.
  
• Tweaked the audio of the Kiwi Pets, Chimera Pet, and Baby Crowbell Pet to reduce their impact in town areas.
  
• Updated the wording on the Invoker's "...and Protect me from Harm" Ascendancy Passive Skill to clarify its functionality.
  
• Updated the description on Hexblast to clarify that it only detonates a single Curse per Enemy in its radius.
  
• Updated the description on Fiery Death Support to clarify that the Supported Skill does not need to kill the ignited enemy itself.
  
• Reduced the defenses provided to monsters by the Magma Barrier modifier.
  
• Walking Goliaths no longer use their suicide attack if they are Rare.
  

[h2]Trigger Gems and Energy Gain[/h2]

Trigger gem energy gain was not in the right place and it was far too easy to use ailments to trigger spells. One problem with the previous system is that if we balanced it to make triggering happen in boss fights then the triggering would happen far too often during clearing. In order to address this we are now making "Monster Power" part of the calculation for energy gain. This means that it's far easier to trigger skills from Unique Monsters than it is from normal monsters, but you also hit many more normal monsters when fighting. Another issue was using low level skills with unconditional ailment applications such as Flame Wall to ignite enemies for triggering. In order to make the source of the ignite matter we are making the energy gain be dependent on the strength of the ignite. We have also rebalanced all energy gain across the board.

[h2]Ultimatum Changes[/h2]

• Generally improved balance across the board with Ultimatum monsters, bosses and modifiers. Mostly targeting outliers that were too difficult and bringing them in line.
  
• The monster density of Ultimatum encounters has been made more consistent.
  
• Stormcaller Runes, Blood Globules, Heart Tethers and Impending Doom rings no longer spawn while a player is on a lift or near the altars in the Vaal Soul Core room.
  
• Fixed a bug where Player Minions could get stuck at the top of the lift in the Trials of Chaos.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a bug which caused enemies to be Primed for Stun or Electrocute earlier than intended while in a party.
  
• Fixed a bug where Gemling Legionnaires with the Integrated Efficiency Ascendancy Passive Skill allocated could lose their 3 additional Skill Slots if they were empty when entering a new area.
  
• Fixed a bug with party member reviving when using WASD input where you could revive party members from too far away.
  
• Fixed a bug where "Waystones found have a chance to be a tier higher" on the Atlas Passive Tree wasn't working.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Audio Mix setting was not being remembered when restarting the game.
  
• Fixed a bug where one of the small Passive Skills in the Fleshcrafter cluster was not connected to the Notable Passive Skill. It is possible for your Passive Skill Tree to be reset if you had this cluster allocated, apologies!
  
• Fixed a bug where you could not open a portal in The Riverbank in Cruel difficulty.
  
• Fixed a bug where some of Zalmarath, the Colossus' skills could persist after their death.
  
• Fixed a bug where opening a full-screen panel while disenchanting could prevent you from performing any actions until you relogged.
  
• Fixed a bug where some fire spells, such as Volatile Dead and Incinerate, were not functioning correctly with Raging Spirits.
  
• Fixed a bug where "Buffs on you expire Slower" from the Prolonged Assault Notable Passive Skill and other Chronomancer Ascendancy Passive Skills was applying to Debuffs and other effects as well as Buffs.
  
• Fixed a bug where non-reviving Minions were spawning a Remnant from the Grim Feast Buff when dying in your presence.
  
• Fixed a bug Infernalists with the Pyromantic Pact Ascendancy Passive Skill allocated were considered to be on Low Infernal Flame if they were at 50% of Maximum Infernal Flame or lower, instead of 35%.
  
• Fixed a bug where the world map icon for Candlemass in Cruel was not updating correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could be unable to upgrade Gems despite satisfying the Attribute Requirement by having the Adaptive Capability Gemling Legionnaire Ascendancy Passive Skill allocated.
  
• Fixed a bug where Fiery Death Support was not dealing damage correctly.
  
• Fixed Infusion Support Gems on Herald skills applying the gain damage as extra elemental damage to all attacks instead of just the damage from the Herald skill
  
• Fixed a bug where Expedition encounters could fail to generate in the Decay Map.
  
• Fixed a bug where Quality on the Sacrifice Skill was causing Minions to Revive 0-5% more slowly, instead of more quickly.
  
• Fixed a bug where the exit portal for the final boss in Trial of the Sekhemas did not visually display upon killing the boss.
  
• Fixed a bug where socketed Skills you didn't meet the requirements for were missing their name in the Skills menu when using a controller.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Elemental Storm skill granted by the Stormweaver's Tempest Caller Ascendancy Passive Skill could sometimes place the storm underneath you.
  
• Fixed a snapshotting bug with the "Loads an Additional Bolt" Crossbow modifier.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Contagion Skill was not spreading Poison.
  
• Fixed a bug where Tempest Bell could become invisible.
  
• Fixed a bug where NPCs were missing their name labels in Hideouts when using a controller.
  
• Fixed a bug where signing into a guest account on PlayStation 5 could delete your friends list in-game.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes be unable to enter your hideout on PlayStation 5.
  
• Fixed eight instance crashes.
  
• Fixed six client crashes.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occur on Xbox.
  
• Fixed three client crashes that could occur on PlayStation 5.