It’s probably fair to say Path of Exile 2’s previous update wasn’t received well. On Steam, reviews were pretty negative—players upset by a series of nerfs that made the game harder, the combat slower and loot more of a grind. Despite the wave of positivity that welcomed the game when it first launched into early access, it felt like the momentum had been taken out of the ARPG sequel’s sails.
The thing with balance, though, is it can change. The bones of PoE2 remain strong, so as long as Grinding Gear can find a combat pace that resonates with players, there’s still the potential to capitalise on its early heyday. While I can’t say yet if next week’s update, called The Third Edict, will successfully do that, it does feel like things are moving in the right direction.
There’s no new class this time. Instead, The Third Edict feels more foundational, with some big balance swings to all of the existing classes. We’re also getting the fourth act of the game’s campaign, a new league, and a brand new way for players to trade items.
The new campaign act will take place across a series of islands, as you’re tasked with hunting down pieces of an ancient weapon. Grinding Gear calls it non-linear in design, letting you sail to any island you choose—eight in total, with over 100 new monster types and 12 new bosses to be encountered. Fortunately the introduction of a new act means that you no longer need to play through the campaign twice to reach the endgame. Cruel difficulty has been removed. Now, after finishing Act 4, you’ll be tasked with completing three mini-acts that will temporarily bridge the gap until the rest of the campaign is finished.
In terms of balance changes, there’s a lot planned for each class—a mixture of new skills and buffs to existing ones. Most classes have been tweaked with an eye to improving a part of their kit—Ranger is getting major improvements to cold skills, for instance, while Warrior is getting a huge swathe of buffs covering everything from fire and shield skills to no longer needing to build into accuracy for close-range hits. But there are also some big changes planned for systems that affect multiple classes.
For instance, dex-based characters currently have to deal with the fact that evasion is the weakest of the defence types—not protecting against slams or other unblockable attacks. To redress that, Grinding Gear is adding a new mechanic called deflect. This is rolled in addition to evasion, and works on everything. If you deflect a hit, you’ll take 40% less damage from it. And unlike evasion, there’s no cap to deflection—you can reach 100% if you build into through the passive tree, or item mods that give an amount of deflect based on your current evasion.
In totality, it feels like the buffs should mean there’s less friction to the combat—a lot of the skills seem designed to make skills less restrictive or awkward to use. Hell, there’s even a new sprinting mechanic being added to make traversal quicker—the downside being you’ll be knocked prone if you get hit while legging it across a map.
Support gems are also getting an overhaul—the biggest change being that you’ll now be able to socket a support gem into multiple skills at the same time. In addition, existing supports are being balanced across multiple tiers—with upgrades as well as new and reworked effects at higher tiers. Grinding Gear is also adding “Lineage Supports”—essentially unique items, but for support gems.
Elsewhere, perhaps the most impactful change to endgame players is the introduction of asynchronous trading. You can now choose to give your loot to a new merchant NPC in your hideout. Once you’ve set the price, other players who find your listing on PoE2’s trading site can click a button to visit your hideout, and buy what they want—even if you’re offline.
This feels like a major improvement. The previous method—in which you had to manually meet and trade your items with players directly—was incredibly antiquated. Quaint? Yes. Charming? Perhaps. Actually useful? Not when the person you were trying to buy from was AFK or busy mapping. Cutting down on the busywork of buying some new piece of gear feels like a big step up.
Naturally there are also a bunch of additions and improvements throughout the endgame, not least of which is PoE2’s first official league—The Rise of the Abyssal. Once the update drops, you’ll be able to create a new character in the abyssal league, which will have a brand new economy and a bunch of new mechanics. This one is all about sealing fissures and defeating bosses that will emerge from the pits of the abyss. Doing this will give you an item that you can use to give rare items new abyssal modifiers. You can also jump into a spooky green pit—although Grinding Gear isn’t saying what happens when you do.
There’s plenty more being changed throughout the update—lots of small tweaks that will hopefully amount to a much improved version of the game. As someone who pretty quickly soured on the nerfs made to my character in the last update, I’m hoping this one does the job and proves a good excuse to jump back in and try something new. And hopefully the new back-end of the campaign will cut down on some of the fatigue of rolling a new character.
The Third Edict launches next week, on August 29. And hey, if you haven’t tried the game at all yet, you’ll also be able to sample it for free on Steam for a weekend—from the update’s launch until September 1.