Path of Exile 2 has been out on Steam Early Access for nary a week, but already it's been a wild ride of record-breaking player counts, servers buckling under the load, and overpowered builds that can one-shot bosses (though when they're not being ganked by broken builds, the bosses are actually way more challenging than Diablo 4's).
Grinding Gear Games has wasted no time in rebalancing ridiculous moves like the Supercharged Slam, which were widely agreed to be overpowered, but it seems that the community isn't too happy with some of the nerfs implemented in patch 0.1.0D which rolled out last night, leaving many Sorceress builds broken.
The exact issue that's been gaining traction on Reddit is that Cast on Freeze and Cast on Shock have been heavily nerfed due to sweeping changes to the Trigger gem system. This means that the probability of triggering powerful automatic effects has plummeted, leaving fans frustrated that builds they've poured hours into are now not fit to progress with their campaigns.
- Path of Exile 2 devs acknowledge the endgame is 'too severe' but are sticking to their guns because 'the whole death actually mattering thing is actually important'
- Path of Exile 2's first patch of 2025 is coming later this week, with 'more rewarding' endgame mapping and the rollout of respawns when fighting pinnacle bosses
The general consensus seems to be that players understand Early Access is inevitably going to be a maelstrom of massive, game-changing updates (especially in the first week), but that Grinding Gear Games should offer more respec flexibility so that players can easily adapt to these changes. As it stands, respeccing in PoE 2 is a bit of a faff, and the gold prices increases relative to your level.
The OP of the above Reddit post said: "We need to have a free respec because right now my character is completely brick[ed] and I have no way to spec into something else. I believe every time GGG make change that COMPLETELY rebalances some builds, we should have some free respec."
Another popular post said: "I understand needing to quickly address the truly broken things like the charged slam attack one-shotting bosses, but while cast on freeze was strong I don't think it was "need to turbo delete a huge amount of players characters" strong. It also seems like a large [part of the] identity of the sorceress was built around the trigger skills and this has practically been removed as a core identity from the game now. Go try cast on shock, it's laughably bad."
Some players are more blunt in their frustrations, with a growing narrative of 'Does the build feel good to play? It will get nerfed' emerging in the community.
While putting restrictions on respec forces players to be more discerning about their builds, that whole idea goes out the window when a build refined by dozens of hours of grinding and research gets rug-pulled overnight by a patch. Hopefully devs and fans can find a happy middle ground during these unpredictable early days of the monster-melting ARPG.
