Path of Exile 2’s newest update, Dawn of the Hunt, went live last week to a strongly negative response from fans. “Recent Reviews” on Steam have nose-dived to “Mixed” with only 40 percent of the 10,294 user reviews giving it the thumbs-up.
Grinding Gear Games has discussed various changes in accordance with feedback, the latest including class buffs. For example, the Sorceress can create a lightning explosion by striking a shocked enemy with Arc and Eye of Winter will gain extra elemental damage if fired through Solar Orb, Frost Bomb, and Orb of Storms.
As for the Huntress, which received numerous complaints regarding its overall viability, parried enemies can’t evade your attacks. Detonating the spear stuck in foes after Rapid Assault also always induces bleed. Other notable changes include Delirium lasting 2.5 times, Artificer’s Orbs at specific locations during the campaign, Runes now applying to Wands and Staves, and more.
Check out some of the changes below and full details here. They’ll go live in the coming days, though the developer is also doing a pass on monster speed. However, any changes are “likely to be targeted at specific monsters that are too difficult, especially in zones that have a lot of fast monsters.” Stay tuned for more details.
Path of Exile 2 – Upcoming Changes
Player Balance Changes
Sorceress Specific Changes
- Arc now does a lightning explosion when it hits a shocked enemy but can no longer shock. It does not consume the shock.
- Eye of Winter now gains bonus elemental damage when passing through other elemental orbs like Solar Orb, Orb of Storms or Frost Bomb.
- Incinerate’s exposure duration has been increased to 8 seconds from 2 seconds.
- Mana Tempest can now be used with all spells, and has been changed to cause empowered spells to split to additional targets instead of chaining or forking.
- Frostbolt explosion radius has been increased by 50%.
- Ice Nova’s freeze buildup has been increased significantly.
- Frost Bomb exposure duration has been increased to 8 seconds from 5 seconds.
- Mana remnants has been changed to work with other elemental ailments than just shock.
- We are lowering the delay for Ignites spreading from sources such as the Wildfire support to 1 second from 2 seconds, but the radius has been decreased slightly.
Chaos Innoculation
- Chaos Innoculation now prevents bleeding.
- The passive clusters that grant you additional stun threshold based on your maximum energy shield now also increase your ailment threshold so you will no longer be ignited/chilled/frozen/shocked as often while using CI if you take these passives.
Huntress Specific Changes
- Parried enemies can no longer evade your attacks.
- Energy Shield no longer prevents bleeding from being applied.
- The spear stuck in enemies by Rapid Assault now always bleeds on hit when you detonate it, the AoE has been increased by 20% and the detonate does 67% more damage.
- Spearfield’s spear duration has been increased to 10 seconds from 6 and had it’s damage growth increased, dealing 30% more damage by level 20.
- Herald of Blood no longer deletes the corpses of Rares or Uniques, allowing you to use Ritual Sacrifice on the rares.
Warrior Specific Changes
- Temper Weapon on Smith of Kitava now adds 3 empowerments per strike of your weapon, and is 25% faster. The damage might need to come down a little.
- Shield Wall is now detonatable with Warcries.
- Armour break being applied to players by monsters no longer has the 20% extra physical damage modifier that was intended to only be a buff to players, and we have also reduced its duration to 4 seconds from 12. In addition, there was a bug where partial armour breaks were never removed on the player.
Ranger Specific Changes
- Stormcaller arrow now proliferates shocks to nearby enemies in a small radius and has had its AoE radius increased by 50%.
- Lightning Rod damage has been increased by 30%, and their duration has been increased to 20 seconds.
- Lightning Arrow has had the radius at which it arcs to targets increased by 50%.
- Tornado Shots maximum duration has been increased to 15 seconds
