There’s no denying it: Path of Exile 2‘s endgame scaling is in a rough spot. The Trial of the Sekhemas difficulty exponentially increases between floors, and higher-tiered waystones seem no different. Chaos damage and critical strikes from monsters blast away entire health pools at the slightest touch. On-death effects seem entirely too abundant. Some of the most skilled players, tens of levels above some content, struggle to complete certain challenges. It’s brutal, it’s messy, and thankfully, an upcoming Path of Exile 2 update aims to remedy that.
Future ‘Path of Exile 2’ update makes sanctum and high-tier maps more doable
While the official patch notes are yet to release, Grinding Gear Games issued a new forum post yesterday. In the post, many welcome changes are planned for the near future. Easier fast-traveling, cheaper respec costs, and balance changes to Sekhemas, Endgame maps, and specific character skills will soon be live. Here’s what the Grinding Gear Games Community Team had to say in their most recent Path of Exile 2 post:
‘Path of Exile 2’ Gameplay Features
Like we mentioned last week, we’ll be adding the capacity to fast-travel between Checkpoints within an area, as well as adding many more checkpoints to areas, generally at all entrances and exits to areas, meaning if you find these first you’ll be able to instantly travel to them to continue exploring.
We’ll also be making Passive Point respeccing cheaper especially at higher levels. It had a relatively aggressive curve getting more expensive with character level, we have flattened that curve so it doesn’t exponentially grow as much. This should generally result in approximately 40-50% less gold cost for respeccing between the start and middle of endgame progression.
Trial of the Sekhemas
Players were finding Trial of the Sekhemas particularly frustrating in close range so we’ve reworked how Honour Damage scales when in close range, as well as fixing an important bug that was causing players to take far too much Honour Damage from Damage over Time.
- Honour Damage now scales down based on distance to enemies, when in close range you’ll take 35% less Honour Damage, tapering off as you are further away from Monsters.
- Fixed a bug where Damage over Time was dealing thrice as much damage to Honour as intended, and fixed a bug where Honour Resistance was only applying to two-thirds of that damage. (This was confusing for us too)
- Skitter Golems no longer use basic attacks and instead now just explode.
- Serpent Clans burrow and ambush attack now has improved visual telegraphing and cannot be used from as far away.
- Volcanoes created by Rattlecage’s Fissure Slam now last half the duration.
Endgame and Monster Balance
Generally the balance in Endgame Maps was more punishing than intended, so we’ve toned down the damage in a number of ways and disabled a certain on-death effect where the telegraphing was not as clear as it should have been.
- Maps no longer have additional elemental resistance penalties inherently applied at Tier 6 and Tier 11 or higher Maps. It is now consistent across all of the Endgame.
- Chaos Damage now also scales less aggressively over the Endgame.
- Critical Strikes from monsters now deal 40% less bonus Damage.
- Lowered the baseline monster density of Breach Encounters, primarily by reducing the frequency of the “Elite” monsters appearing.
- Disabled the Volatile Crystals Modifier, we’ll revisit this in the future pending telegraphing improvements.
- Purple Explosives created by the Volatile Plants Modifier on Rare Monsters now deal significantly less Damage.
- The Siphons Flask Charges Modifier on Monsters now drains ten-times less Flask Charges per second. (This was unintentionally draining way too many charges)
These changes should generally result in an endgame that is much more survivable than before and we will continue to address problematic cases as they arise.
‘Path of Exile 2’ Character and Item Balance
- We’ve made Charm Modifiers on Belts substantially more common and now appear at much lower levels. The “of Symbolism” Modifier now appears from level 23 onwards, and the “of Inscription” Modifier now appears from level 64 onwards.
- Electrocute is now 25% harder to buildup. (But the Damage Penalty has been removed from the Support Gem).
- Added a new Lightning Damage and Electrocute Cluster to the passive tree in between the Ranger and Monk sections.
- It is now more difficult to chain-freeze enemies by reducing the amount of Freeze Buildup applied after a Freeze has been applied.
- The Hunter’s Talisman Notable now grants +1 Charm Slot. The small passive skills leading up to it now grant the stat it formerly gave. The Charm helper text has been updated to indicate that you cannot have more than three Charm Slots unlocked, so that we can add more sources of it in the future.
Skill and Support Gem Balance
Since launch we’ve unfortunately had to nerf a few skills that were far too overpowered. How do we define overpowered? Basically it’s a situation in which a certain skill is so powerful that players feel no other method of playing the game is viable.
Generally speaking we are trying to do this in a way that doesn’t make a build bad (but we can make mistakes!). Ideally any truly meta shifting changes will only happen at the same time as a content patch with a new league to play in.
But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been looking at underpowered skills and support gems. We’ve got a number of changes planned which should improve some of these skills. The full list of changes will be in the patch notes but here is a sample of what you can expect.
Improvements coming to various skills:
- Improvements to Rolling Slam and all Shield Skills in the Mace section.
- Improvements to various Bow Skills, especially the skills used to generate Frenzy Charges.
- Improvements to Bone Spells and Chaos Damage over Time Spells in the Occult section.
- Improvements to various Crossbow Skills, especially those at higher Tiers.
- Improvements to some of the underachieving Quarterstaff abilities.
Alongside all of these Skill Gem improvements we’ve also done a pass over the Support Gems. We’ve added two new Supports and removed or lessened the penalties on many others, notably the Fire, Lightning and Cold Exposure Supports.
- Added the Tremors Support Gem. Which can be used to give up to multiple more Aftershocks to Skills, with a damage penalty.
- Added the Bidding Support Gem. Which can be used to give more damage to the Command Skills of Supported Minions.
- The Fire Exposure, Lightning Exposure and Cold Exposure Support Gems no longer penalize Damage of Supported Skills. They now have a Mana Cost Multiplier of 120%.
There are also some notable nerfs to a few of the remaining overachieving skills:
- Skeletal Arsonists Spirit costs now match the other two Skeleton Mages, this should result in a slight decrease in the number of Arsonists at a higher level.
- A nerf to the damage over time component on very high levels of Tornado and Vine Arrow. These were never intended to be dealing damage themselves, but more so act as a way for other skills to propagate damage.
- Magnetic Salvo can now only use your stuck Lightning Arrows as opposed to those created by your Party Members.
Hey, My Warrior feels like a Warrior now
Warriors in Path of Exile 2, typically some of the most tanky characters in the game, are struggling in endgame activities like Trial of the Sekhemas. With changes like decreased Honor loss based on closeness to the enemy and lowering the severity of taking Chaos damage, my fellow Mace swingers and I may start to feel like, well, Warriors again.
Several other classes will receive buffs to their skills, while others, like Sorceress, receive slight (but needed) nerfs. Ultimately, these changes should be easy to adapt to for those will affected builds, as cheaper respeccing costs will make build experimentation less risky in later stages.
The post ‘Path of Exile 2’ Teases New Updates That Radically Change Its Brutal Endgame Difficulty appeared first on VICE.
The post ‘Path of Exile 2’ Teases New Updates That Radically Change Its Brutal Endgame Difficulty appeared first on VICE.
