Yesterday was the reveal stream for Path of Exile II 0.2.0 or the Dawn of the Hunt which is their first named league/season. If you are so inclined you can watch the full content reveal here on YouTube. I’ve said before that this first patch that comes with an economy reset is going to effectively be a battle for the soul of the game. Will it be the fast paced blasting content type game that one chunk of the community wants… or will it slow things down to the more tedious and cumbersome game-play that GGG showed in the lead up to the launch of early access. While we will not get the patch notes until next week… I think the message was clear. Path of Exile II is going to remain in that plodding awkward pace that you experienced early in the campaign, and it seems like the goal is for that same pace to continue through the game.
The biggest addition with this content drop is the introduction of a new base class: The Huntress, and its first two acendancies: The Ritualist, and The Amazon. The gameplay showed off in the above trailer seems like it is going to lean into a midrange combat style of having some ranged attacks and some melee attacks, and playing in the middle ground between the two with the ability to disengage. It is not particularly a player fantasy that I specifically care about, and I was not necessarily the biggest fan of the Amazon from Diablo 2, but I am certain there are players who have been craving this. With this class they are also introducing Buckler type shields which have an active parry system attached to them instead of active block. I am not entirely certain what the difference is going to be but I am sure we will be able to see this once we get the patch note drop.
I feel like the biggest thing that needed a lot of work was the general class balance and the endgame. During the Q&A it was stated that this patch is going to feel like a lot of massive nerfs, which does not bode well. Sure I thought Herald stacking and Spark nonsense was a bit much, but I felt like EVERY class should have been brought up to at least the level of the Raging Spirits Infernalist that I ultimately re-rolled to later in the early access. It seems like they are bringing everything down to the floor of what the worst performing builds were capable of doing… but again we won’t really know much officially until we get the patch notes. As far as mapping goes… there really were not a ton of significant changes to the way the endgame would work. A few nice changes are that you get six portals if you are running a raw map with no mods on it, and waystones will no longer drop for lower levels than the map tier you are currently running. However in the Blizzard style of not being able to have nice things… the six portals turn into one portal once you actually roll your map with a full compliment of affixes on it.
The new “league mechanic” is the Azmerian Wisps which is effectively an escort quest. We all know how much players LOVE escort quests. Essentially the optimal gameplay here is to grab a wisp and then guide it around the map through all of the Rare mobs, which it will keep empowering and as such improving the loot drops. If you get too far from the wisp the event fails and the wisp disappears, so this is going to be a deeply anti-zoom mechanic. This does not bode well, because it sort of sets the pace for the sort of game-play that they are wanting from this game. Slow methodical game-play… and maps taking thirty minutes to complete instead of the sub five minutes that players tend to prefer. The thing is it isn’t just this mechanic that is doubling down on “maps take forever”.
There is another map type called the Ezomyte Megaliths that is being introduced that will involve going around the map and turning on pylons. Then you return to the center of the map and once all of the stones are powered you can summon ten waves of boss encounters, each one improving your rewards. Again this is a deeply anti-zoomer map mechanic, and feels like a re-scoped version of Ultimatum… which is one of the few mechanics that I purposefully block on my atlas in Path of Exile 1. In addition to this they have added a reworked version of the Lake of Kalandra, and a map where you empower an Essence monster in the center of the map to be super rippy. Like these are sort of cool but at the same time… really seem to be driving home the point that they want mapping to be a slow process and not something that you blast through.
They are also introducing Rogue Exiles into the game, which normally would be a big win. However it appears that they have turned them into this super tanky speedbump, which again will massively slow down the game-play. No one wants to find random pinnacle bosses in their maps. This is the problem that folks had with Metamorphs and the Arch-Nemesis system in Path of Exile 1. I feel like they are setting themselves up to re-learn the lessons that they SHOULD have learned during Kalandra. I said this patch was going to be a battle for the soul of the game, and really… I think I am learning that it is just turning away from the sort of game that I actually want to be playing. The biggest take away so far… is that I really hope that they extend the Legacy of Phrecia event until the launch of 3.26… because playing it has been infinitely more enjoyable than my experience of playing Path of Exile II.
Another major complaint is the lack of crafting options and how all crafting in the game is effectively gambling. This really does not seem to have changed. They added new tiers of the socketable runes, which is a good change because they stopped being that good once you leveled out of the first few areas. They are also adding more Essences, but since I only saw two Greater essences in the entire 335 hours that I have played the game… I am not sure how much I care about that. Fracturing orbs are going into the game which will help somewhat, but items are not dropping pre-fractured which is going to limit the availability of this mechanic. Recombinators are going in… which I guess is something, but since you can’t really control your inputs… it will not be anywhere near as deterministic as it feels in Settlers of Kalguur currently. I still feel like the game is lacking crafting options, especially when compared to the infinitely better crafting system of Last Epoch.
We are getting a few new ascendancies for existing classes as well. The one that probably excites me the most is the Lich which is gained by the Witch class. Essentially this seems to be leaning into the chaos minion damage type gameplay that has been popular in the first game, and also comes with double curse support along with explode on curse. Right now if I end up rolling something new for this event, I will probably leaning into this class fantasy. Of what I played during the initial early access, I liked the Minion Witch gameplay far more than pretty much anything else. The addition of Spectres is also going to be interesting because they become permanently resummonable skill gems, which resolves the shitty UX problem that Spectres have in Path of Exile 1. I would love to see something like this backported to POE1, because the biggest problem with playing minions is how crappy it feels to summon Spectres and equip your Animate Guardian.
They added another Warrior ascendancy called the Smith of Kitava, and it is weird. On one hand it gives me the thing I love about Chieftain where you can effectively use Fire Resistance for capping Lightning and Cold Resistance so that you can go all in on a single resistance. Then there are a few bits that make less sense… like Temper Weapon which seems to be this really slow buff up ability that you use which gives your next attack a bunch of fire damage. Then there is Smith’s Masterwork that effectively allows you to sacrifice having any affixes on your body armor… but then sort of craft your own using the ability points. This is a cool idea but very few of the things you can get on said armor… are better than an endgame item with good rolls. You can get +5 max resist, 25% phys taken as fire, and some percentage scaling that seem nice… but I am not really sure it is worth giving up your body armor slot.
Maybe I am too critical… but watching this gave me “brother eww” meme vibes. I will give it a shot, because I always seem to give it a shot. However I am going into it not really expecting the game to improve in the ways I wanted it to improve. Maybe I will be surprised… but I doubt it. What worries me the most though is how rapidly the studio seems to have abandoned the Path of Exile 1 player. Maybe 3.26 will blow me out of the water… but the focus always seems to be on this game instead. Path of Exile II made them likely more money than they have made in years of running the first game. Thankfully Last Epoch appears to be going in the right direction, so if Path of Exile falls apart there will always be that game. There is part of me that is also frustrated that Last Epoch delayed their season for this? Really? It was not worth it.
There are a bunch of details that came out of the livestream yesterday and the following Q&A that I did not really talk about here. I suggest you check out Raxx’s video summary as he always does a great job of bullet pointing these sort of things. If you want a much more detailed review, then I would check out SirGog who often adds a lot of background to the changes. There is also a good video summary out from Pohx our Righteous Fire Lord and Savior, that I will always support just because I love his “swimmer” vibe. I am sure there will be others coming out today, so I will also be interested in hearing the takes from Zizaran, Ghazzy, and Darth Microtransaction… though lately I think DM has been way more of a cheerleader for this game than I am. At the end of the day I am telling you how I am feeling about it, not trying to hype something up.
What were your thoughts about the presentation? Do you think the game is going in the direction you wanted it to go? Drop me a line below.