Dawn of the Hunt is Path of Exile 2's most contentious update, but it's also the most fun I've had with ARPG necromancy, well… ever

Dawn of the Hunt hasn't been the smoothest update for Path of Exile 2. Whether it's the nerf-a-geddon that hit just about every build in the game, or its newfound grindiness as you butt your head against boss after boss, where previously you would've sailed through without too much difficulty. Damage is lower, enemies are tankier, and you'll definitely feel the escalation as you move from area to area, especially early on.

Grinding Gear Games obviously wants to make Path of Exile 2 harder—a game where every decision is meaningful, but that difficulty has proved excessive for a big chunk of the playerbase. Honestly, from my perspective? It goes too far.

Many of us have fought through its bosses, areas, and acts multiple times already (considering you have to do it twice just to reach the endgame), so suddenly having that process slowed to a snail's pace was never going to be enjoyable.

Despite the grindiness, though, I have had fun with Dawn of the Hunt, and that's all thanks to the new Bind Spectre skill. This ability lets you bind any monster in the game and turn it into a minion—that's right; you can catch any of the game's hundreds of monsters in this pokeball skill gem and then summon it for yourself.

You can add support gems to alter your new minion, and like other minion skill gems, you can summon multiple monsters provided you have adequate spirit reserve to do so. Once you've used your Bind Spectre gem, it contains that monster for good and is account-bound, so you'll have to make another if you want to catch and collect multiple monsters.

While this did annoy me at first (why not let me experiment more?) I ended up quite enjoying how meaningful it made capturing monsters. For one, you need a level 7 skill gem to grab Bind Spectre (which should drop around halfway through act 2), and I always seem to have plenty of spare skill gems knocking around after I've acquired what's most important for my build. This approach also requires you to scout out monsters and not grab every one you encounter.

Are you finding an enemy particularly troublesome? Well, kill it and steal its power for yourself just like it's Solo Leveling. Experimentation is what makes Bind Spectre so damn enjoyable. For example, as soon as I heard about this ability, I started thinking about the scarab enemies in the city of Keth who summon other smaller scarabs. Do they still do that in spectre form?

Hell yes they do. When I grabbed my first Gilded Beetle, I suddenly had an army of smaller scarabs as well which the big one would periodically produce. When I arrived in act 3, I also grabbed the giant mosquito monster—Bloodthief Queen—which periodically produces a horde of mosquitos to swarm enemies. This one costs a hefty 130 spirit to use, which might be a little steep, but it does give you a lot of minions.

The only current downsides to Bind Spectre are:

1. The aggro on the swarm-producing monsters is janky. They often won't produce swarms during bosses, and the smaller minions don't warp to your side with the bigger one when you move.
2. As far as I can tell, support gems only apply to the host monster, and not the swarms being produced. Perhaps this would be a little OP, but when you're paying 130 spirit, you want some bang for your buck
3. If you bind a rare variant of a monster, it doesn't seem to retain its affixes as with the new Tame Beast ability, which lets you grab a rare beast and keep four of its traits. This is obviously fair enough, since that would be absurdly strong, but it'd be great if there was a higher level version of this ability that let you capture a rare and use it as a kind of undead general

With the new Lich ascendancy's support for minions, curses, and chaos magic, the funny thing is that I haven't actually had all too much trouble with regular enemies and rares. The only problem is fighting bosses. It's down to a mixture of minions being squishy, swarm aggro often being a bit jank as mentioned, and contagion Lich not being great for single target DPS.

Once you unlock Dark Effigy, essentially a turret that fires chaos projectiles at whatever you hit with contagion, it becomes a lot easier to just avoid bosses and wear them down provided you have some movement speed.

It's definitely been a rough update, and I wouldn't be surprised if Grinding Gear Games roll back some of the difficulty to help players have a smoother experience—it did already release a hotfix that reduces monster health by up to 25%, so it obviously wants to soften the experience vs. its current version.

Still, Bind Spectre is as much fun as I thought it would be. There is an understandable layer of jank considering the sheer number of monsters you can pick from and that this is early access, but the necro in me can't wait to see how Lich and minion Witch continue to develop, and what fun future monsters I'll be able to yoink for my collection.