"POE 2 vision: Turn Based RPG": Players are baffled by 1500ms delay curses in Path of Exile 2's new update

Curses were already pretty slow in Path of Exile 2, but according to what we’ve seen of the latest patch notes, they’re borderline worthless. Players have been expressing their concern on Reddit about this change, where Hexblast builds could be dead on arrival once the patch drops. One Redditor, AeonChaos, joked that the vision of PoE 2 by the devs appears to be a turn-based game, judging by the 1.5-second delay for curses.

“POE 2 vision: Turn Based RPG”

Honestly, a turn-based Path of Exile game would be great; but not like this (Image via Grinding Gear Games & Reddit)

The crux of the argument was made by Redditor SexyIntelligence, who asked the developers, "If you don't want one button builds, why add MORE delay to curses?" The notion of waiting 1500 MS for a curse to trigger sounds incredibly annoying. Any other online game would certainly be unplayable if players had to wait for a long duration for just one skill.

It sounds like curse builds are going to be miserable in 0.2.0 (Image via Grinding Gear Games & Reddit)

Other Redditors, like Mirroroe also made a note of highlighting something interesting. Grinding Gear Games, creators of Path of Exile 2, definitely want to provide “meaningful combat”, and they feel this change will do just that.

It's certainly not enjoyable to press a button and have to wait almost 2 seconds for an activation (Image via Grinding Gear Games & Reddit)

Players feel like at this point, the game should just taunt you when using curses (Image via Grinding Gear Games & Reddit)

Unfortunately, it makes Curses feel completely inadequate. Others still mocked it because enemies will likely just leave the skill’s area of effect before it goes off — which many already did in the first place.

The speed of combat/enemies is the real problem, according to some players (Image via Grinding Gear Games & Reddit)

Redditor Cr4ckshooter highlighted that it’s not the delay that’s the problem — enemies already move incredibly fast, so they’re able to get out of curses before they trigger. If enemies were slower, it would likely be far less of a problem. Other players are simply curious about why this was done.

This change has really baffled players. There's still hope, but not much (Image via Grinding Gear Games & Reddit)

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Major change to Path of Exile 2’s curses sounds bad, but players haven’t seen all the patch notes yet

This curse change in Path of Exile 2 definitely sounds bad — I for one was looking at playing a Witch this season with the new Lich Ascendancy. However, if this change goes in exactly as it reads right now, it could be a miserable way to play the game. There is something to keep in mind though.

Very few of the new support gems or uniques coming to this patch have been revealed yet. We know there are mountains of both of them and perhaps some of these new gems/uniques will make curses much faster. The point is that curses are balanced around the upcoming patch, not the current one.

That said, with the current information we have available, it does sound like Hexblast/curse builds will be borderline unplayable in the coming patch. We’ll just have to see what shakes out of the full patch notes. We have some information on patch 0.2.0, but not everything yet.

Unfortunately, while we do not know everything when it comes to support gems or uniques, it's likely that we're just going to have to deal with slow curses and fast enemies. The hope is that something coming will help balance this out though.

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Check out our other Path of Exile 2 guides and features

• Path of Exile 2: A Quick Summary of what’s new in Dawn of the Hunt
• Path of Exile 2’s upcoming patch will make Weapon Set-swapping far more viable
• All new Ascendancies in Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt (0.2.0)