Path of Exile 2: Critical Weakness, explained

Critical Weakness is an incredibly useful effect in Path of Exile 2. This effect, once available on the Eye of Winter skill, made the late game much easier for Witches and anyone else who chose to utilize it. The current primary method of accessing Critical Weakness is an Aura, so you don’t even have to do a whole lot of work for it — just be in range and let it do its thing.

Path of Exile 2 players will often find themselves using Critical Weakness as a part of minion builds in the late game to really ramp up the damage their Skeletal Archers and/or Arsonists do to enemies. If you’re looking for something useful that doesn’t take a lot of planning to add to your build, this could be it.

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What is Critical Weakness in Path of Exile 2, and how you can access it

Critical Weakness is an effect in Path of Exile 2 that causes enemies in your presence to have +0.5% to Critical Hit Chance, stacking up to 20 times. In the 0.2.0 patch notes for PoE 2 (Dawn of the Hunt), it was changed slightly. Now, the stacks track their duration individually instead of refreshing the duration of all stacks when a new stack is gained. This balances the powerful skill out a little bit.

The easiest way to get Malice is to find a solid Sceptre (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

Now that Critical Weakness was removed from Eye of Winter in the 0.2.0 update, it’s now found primarily on the Malice skill, which can be found on Sceptres throughout Path of Exile 2. Malice inflicts Critical Weakness on any foe in your presence. As you can see in the screenshot above, level 15 Malice makes Critical Weakness last for 4 seconds and applies it every 0.56 seconds.

The only other place we’ve found Critical Weakness to be available is on the Unique Sandstorm Visage. That version got buffed, as it now applies Critical Weakness once per second for 15 seconds instead of the previous 1 second. That makes it a very rare and incredibly useful skill for players.

Primarily found in Witch builds, it’s also much easier to use for Witches since a wide array of random Sceptres come with Malice equipped to them. This could, of course, change in the future, given that Eye of the Winter was seriously nerfed by removing the Critical Weakness ability from it in Path of Exile 2.

The important takeaway is that it can help you dish out critical hits much more often, even if enemies don’t live long enough to get to 20 stacks. It could be incredibly useful when bossing, as those will stick around a bit longer than your average enemy.

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Check out our other Path of Exile 2 guides and features

• Path of Exile 2’s new Ascendancies: Everything new for your classes in patch 0.2.0
• Path of Exile 2 Huntress class overview: How to take advantage of the new ranged/melee hybrid.
• Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt overview: What’s new in the world of PoE 2 in the 0.2.0 update
• Path of Exile 2 Lich League Starter build: How to get going as a master of undeath