How and why today's Path of Exile 2 update makes combat deadlier than ever

With today's update, Dawn of The Hunt, Path of Exile 2 will have more difficult combat on a fundamental level. Don't let this be an alarmist or negative statement; in fact, this is possibly how Path of Exile 2 was meant to be from the beginning. This patch, 0.2.0, is the first major economy reset, and thus the developers' chance for the biggest possible balance pass.

In a way, therefore, the type of balance this patch tries to envision cements the direction that GGG wants to take with the game. If you have played Path of Exile 2 a bunch in its debutant Early Access Vanilla league in these past months, get ready to recalibrate your threat perception, because times are a-changing.

What exactly is making Path of Exile 2 combat deadlier in patch 0.2.0?

Today's Path of Exile 2 update makes you roll to put out the fire, because you definitely will catch some (Image via GGG)

As the developers had forewarned in the post-content reveal QnA a week ago, this patch was always meant to be nerfs galore. No class has made it out unscathed, although Warriors and Mercenaries got some more pick-me-ups out of it. But that's not the only thing we're dealing with here.

While the nerfhammer on Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2.0 shattered many different Skills, Nodes, and class synergies both meta and off-meta, the biggest hit was on the player character. There's two elements to consider here.

The first one is the Elements themselves. Before, you'd take note of them only when dealing with patches of hazardous goo or burning trails. Now, the danger of status effect, also called Ailments in Path of Exile 2, is far more ubiquitous.

This is because your base Ailment Threshold has been halved compared to what it would have been from patch 0.1.1. For players who are not sure what this is, think of it as cushioning that absorbs elemental effect triggers. This being half of what it used to be means you will actually catch fire from a stray fire projectile, or worse, start losing blood much easier from monsters who can proc bleed.

Come Act 3, there is the horror of the Sea Witches and their suffocating bubbles — if those were bad before, imagine them being twice as easy to suck you in. The most apparent reason for this heighened danger is to make Charms feel more relevant, so you'll have to actively juggle them much more between different areas now.

The other half of the picture is, of course, physical hits. Hiding behind your shield is now a more risky gambit thanks to the implementation of Heavy Stun on the player character.

Essentially, if you Stun meter fills up, you get stunlocked for three seconds. You cannot dodge, blink, or otherwise animation-cancel your way out of this. Plus your chance to block or evade hits is set to zero when you are recovering from a Heavy Stun.

You can mitigate some of this by incorporating Evasion into your stat spread — which the traditional shield-user class, Warrior, doesn't traditionally pump.

Heavy Stun is a way to balance Shield and Parry-spamming, and trying to kite enemies on the Rhoa Mount. However, it's specific inclusion seems to be more catered around boss mechanics. Bosses, it turns out, can cause Heavy Stun build-up on certain moves, so these fights will get much sweatier.

Why is GGG apparently trying to make Path of Exile 2 harder?

There's a new spceial kind of Rogues Gallery (Image via GGG)

Between these, and the direct nerf on the ES-stacking meta (goodbye Grim Feast - literally), Path of Exile 2 is now well and truly gravitating towards its unique design principle of being a hard game. Yet, on the other side of that same coin is more engaging combat.

As the game director had commented prior to the release of Path of Exile 2, good combat necessitates some level of challenge. The entire point of patch 0.2.0 being a nerf fiesta is the idea that the power ceiling for player builds was too high.

This made, for example, the freshly nerfed Breach mechanic a loot-bonanaza rather than its original conceptualization as a struggle for survival. You were not originally meant to look at an expanding circle of high-density monster spawn as a way to corral them for farming, but a careful dance between risk and reward.

In all likelihood, incredibly powerful builds will break expectations, and still turn a dangerous situation into a lucrative loot-blender. The point, however, is that Path of Exile 2 doesn't want to take away the reward, but dares to elevate the risk far more. The new boss-stacking mechanic of the Pharryl Megaliths map is concrete proof of this design philosophy.

That concept of tactile risk could be what GGG wants to frame Path of Exile 2 around.

The first game, a hit ARPG on its own merit, can often be played as a second-monitor game with one-button playstyles to get you all the way to the endgame. Path of Exile 2 precisely wants to be something different than that.

As is clear from the chages in Dawn of The Hunt, it wants to be engaging by keeping a reasonable amount of power fantasy while deterring builds that trivialize its mechanics.

This version of Wraeclast is more lore-appropriate, where your Exile stares down deadly monsters (which made it through the 0.2.0 toll booth un-nerfed) that demand attentive outmaneuvering. Sometimes, it also wants you to pay attention to Dark Souls-esque Invaders.

Another aspect to look at is the more moderate pace of meta-progression this impies. Looking at the hyper-inflated Exalted Orb market bubble of the 0.1.0 economy, a tamer fresh economy is maybe not a bad thing after all.

Check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

Know More

Edited by Abu Amjad Khan