Summary
Despite a great early access launch in December of last year,Path of Exile 2’s new Dawn of the Hunt update is proving to be quite controversial among fans on multiple fronts - be it the approach to player power level, changes to design philosophy, or how these affect the ARPG.Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt patch notesworried many longtime fans due to the overabundance of nerfs to most builds, items, and skills in the game - not just the outliers like Spark Archmage and stat-stacking. The result is that the new patch feels much worse to play even after some changes GGG has already made, and the current plan may be addressing the wrong things.
Ever since the 0.2.0 update came out, GGG has been releasing some hotfixes and patches to address current issues that range from technical ones, like crashes and bugs, to gameplay-related ones, such as player damage or minion life. There are other concerns players have been vocal about since the newPath of Exile 2release came out, and GGG addressed the general state of the game in a post on the official forum talking about what the studio is working on. However, the company is not looking in the right direction.
Path of Exile 2’s Huntress is The Symptom of a Bigger Problem
An example comes from the leading point in the forum post discussing the Huntress' combos.Path of Exile 2’s spear skills are lacklusterbecause they are specifically designed to work together and to promote the use of combos, which can be a huge issue in ARPGs where combat is often hectic. In this case, GGG wants to make the combat slow and methodical, but it struggles to achieve this with monsters being too fast and deadly. As for the changes, GGG is adding a new spear skill to cull enemies and generate a Frenzy Charge as an alternative to parry, but the main problem persists - skills shouldn’t require a Frenzy Charge to be playable.
Many spear skills have improved effects when spending a Frenzy Charge, which heavily leans into generating them for builds to feel good, but then too many abilities spend them and there are too few ways to get them. These also require combos, which is not something many fans are happy about. On top of that,Path of Exile 2’s Huntressdeals very little damage with the spear skills, as their base values are incredibly low.
Path of Exile 2 is Shooting Itself in the Foot With Its Slow Campaign
Likewise, GGG’s post references the complaints aboutPath of Exile 2’s slow campaignand overall gameplay, stating that this is typically tied to high monster life, low player damage, and areas being too large. These are all true, rather than just one, and while monsters now have less health than they did when Dawn of the Hunt launched, player damage is still too low and areas still too big. But the latter doesn’t seem to be a concern for GGG, as the forum post dismisses this issue. Yet, areas like Azak Bog or The Matlan Waterways are not only massive, but also maze-like, requiring too much backtracking with too little movement speed.
What follows is that the current vision forPath of Exile 2is not exactly aligned with the game’s offering, in the sense that GGG wants slower combat but leaves monsters untouched in terms of damage and speed, for example. Likewise, movement speed or movement abilities are heavily limited, butPath of Exile 2’s campaignrequires a lot of time to complete, making it a slog or a chore. The company is trying to address fan feedback, but based on what the devs are working on, it doesn’t seem like priorities are the same as those of fans playing the game. This can create a dissonance between expectations and reality, and it could become a bigger problem in the future.
Path of Exile II
WHERE TO PLAY
Path of Exile 2 is a next generation free-to-play Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Journey across the deadly continent of Wraeclast, meeting multiple immersive cultures while facing off against evil in many forms. Path of Exile 2 features twelve character classes, 240 Skill Gems, hundreds of equipment base types, a six-act campaign, more than a hundred unique boss fights, a deep endgame system and so much more. Play with your friends without losing any progress with couch co-op, cross-play and cross-progression.
