It’s been quite the week for Path of Exile 2, with its Dawn of the Hunt update landing to a rather firm outcry from players about the ARPG’s slower, more laborious campaign and leveling process. As a direct result, the game’s recent Steam reviews sit at just 40% positive. Fortunately, we might just have reached the inflection point. Following a two-hour interview between livestreamer ‘Zizaran’ and game directors Jonathan Rogers and Mark Roberts, a new set of PoE 2 patch notes have appeared with a lot of planned changes that look to be tackling many of the major complaints.
If you’re invested in the ongoing RPG. Within the first few minutes, Roberts states, “There were some blatant fuckups, speaking bluntly – a lot of it is because there’s a little bit of, ‘it’s early access so we’re allowed,’ but we are firing from the hip a lot here. There’s stuff that we’re like, let’s get it in there, try it out, see what people think, and if it’s bad we just undo it.”
It’s worth noting that, while the tone of the interview can be quite intense, especially early on, all parties involved seemed pleased with the results. “I know it was a bit combative today, but I promise it was from love for the game,” Zizaran says (around 2:15:45). “At the beginning I obviously got out on the wrong side of the bed, and I apologize for that,” Rogers responds, while Mark adds, “Actually compared to most [discussions] I came out of this with about 15 changes we’re going to make immediately, which is awesome.”
He wasn’t kidding; within a handful of hours Grinding Gear Games has shared a new blog post detailing another list of changes that are set to roll out “over the next few days.” The developer notes that these “are not the only changes we are investigating and do not represent a full list of what players are reporting to us,” but there are a lot of improvements to aspects that the community has been eager to see adjusted.
One of the biggest complaints, monster speed and swarming attacks, has finally been addressed, although specific changes are yet to be revealed. GGG says it’s planning to target “specific monsters that are too difficult, especially in zones that have a lot of fast monsters.” To help mitigate having to wander endlessly around endgame maps, rare enemies will now be marked on the map at all times, ensuring you won’t miss one hiding in a corner somewhere and be unable to complete the zone.
In addition to the announced act three area changes from yesterday, GGG has now merged several sections of the Matlan Waterways together, meaning you’ll have to pull approximately six fewer levers on average to drain the entire zone. Artificer’s Orbs have been introduced at fixed points throughout the campaign to enable more socket crafting, new attribute runes will help you resolve any early-game stat deficits, and Delirium encounters have been extended to 2.5x the length to for awkward environments.
There are also a whole list of additional buffs across several Path of Exile 2 classes. “I don’t think you can just nerf people in the middle of a league no matter what,” Rogers explains, “it is actually strictly worse if you get nerfed while playing the game. We’re in a position now where because things are possibly undertuned that we can do mid-league buffs – it’s okay to do major buffs during the middle of a league.”
Alongside this comes some more changes for issues that arose during the discussion. Monsters with Energy Shield will no longer be immune to bleeding, while players that have the Chaos Innoculation keystone ive now will be. ive clusters granting additional stun threshold based on your Energy Shield will also increase your ailment threshold to make it harder for you to be ignited, chilled, frozen, or shocked.
Rounding out the additions is a new gem called Inhibitor that will prevent your Endurance, Frenzy, or Power Charges from being consumed by skills. The plan is for this to eventually increase the damage of the ed skill as well, but GGG says this extra buff was not feasible to implement “in the timeframe that we want this gem to be released.”
Overall, there’s a lot of good news in here – in a follow-up video titled, ‘They fixed everything I asked for,’ Zizaran expresses his satisfaction and notes, “I can’t believe that some of these things are already coming.” The player response is also positive across the board. “Thank you Jonathan for doing so many interviews and listening, no matter how stressful or uncomfortable it may be,” one comment writes, while another says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone be as honest and transparent as GGG has been.”
Not everything is solved – many of these changes are yet to be fully nailed down and released to the game – but this feels like a key turning point after a week of confusion and concern among the community. As Roberts notes, PoE 2 is still very much in early access, and hopefully GGG is able to build its fantastic foundation into a game that its players and developers alike are happy with.
In closing, the new GGG blog also addresses a recent Ritual exploit that allowed players to reduce costs to allow for infinite rerolls. “This occurred during the middle of the night and unfortunately we didn’t fix the exploit until around eight hours after,” the studio writes. “We have banned 301 s that were clearly exploiting this, and they will remain banned until the end of the current league. Thankfully, the economic impact outside of the banned s is relatively small.”
Ready to jump back in and find out what’s changed? Take a look through our pick of the best best games like Diablo in 2025.
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