Path of Exile 2 is getting its first major content update, and with it a new class, new Ascendancies, and many heavy-hitting balance changes.
Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt update is upon us with a ton of additions, changes and improvements. With this update comes the Huntress, a new Dexterity-based Class, and her two Ascendancies, as well as another Ascendancy Class for the Mercenary, Warrior, and Witch.
There are also over 100 Support Gems and 100 Unique Items being added. We don’t have any details for most of them besides what was previously teased. We cover these Teasers in our What to Expect from 0.2.0 and Dawn of the Hunt Devstream Recap articles. As such, we won’t cover those here in great detail.
That said, let’s dive into what we do have and what it means for the overall meta going into this update.
Table of contents
New Class: Huntress
The Huntress is a new Dexterity-based Class that Wields a Spear and a Buckler. Spear have a mix of Melee and Ranged Attacks at their disposal, while Bucklers replace the active block of a Shield with a new parry mechanic that can grant various bonuses like generating Frenzy Charges.
She has two Ascendancies, the Ritualist, who makes great sacrifices in pursuit of power; and the Amazon, a formidable hunter that excels in Elemental damage.
We’ve covered both of these Ascendancies in-depth, covering possible uses and synergies. For the Ritualist, check out our Ritualist Explained guide; for the Amazon, check out our Amazon Explained guide.
New Ascendancies
Alongside the Huntress comes new ascendancies for the Mercenary, Warrior, and Witch, in the form of the the Tactician, Smith of Kitava, and Lich.
The Tactician is a supportive Ascendancy, with access to easy crowd control and benefits for allies, as well as Reduced Spirit Reservation to enable tons of effect to bolster themselves. For more about the Tactician, refer to our Tactician Explained guide.
The Smith of Kitava is a Warrior who prides themselves on improving weapons and Armour. With access to being able to completely customize a Normal Body Armour to their liking as well as bolstering their Weapon and Armour with Fire, they’re looking to be one of the tankiest Ascendancies in POE2. For more information of the Smith of Katava, refer to our Smith of Kitava Explained guide.
The Lich specializes in the darker arts, empowering their curses and Chaos damage in addition to multiple benefits for Energy Shield. For more information on the Lich, refer to our Lich Explained guide.
Dawn of the Hunt League
Similar to how POE1 handles new leagues, there will be a new league for Dawn of the Hunt with a fresh economy to start in. However, this league’s mechanics will also be available to players in Standard League as well.
League Mechanic: Azmeri Wisps
Azmeri wisps will now spawn in the endgame and as well as the campaign. These Wisps will empower the enemies around them, granting the monsters unique abilities and increasing the Wisps drops. Straying too far from a Wisp will cause it to dissipate and make it less rewarding.
Wisps have a variety of rewards based on their type and how many monsters they apply their effects to, including some league-specific items and currency.
Endgame Changes
The endgame has been given a significant bump up in quality and content, with more to do and more unique encounters to experience. We covered a lot of these changes previously in our Dawn of the Hunt Devstream Recap, so we’ll quickly go over them here.
The Endgame has an improved storyline, having us root out the Corrupted Nexuses around the Atlas, in place of having to run maps of every tier a given number of times. Rooting out this Corruption also cleanses remaining maps in the same area of Corruption, allowing them to spawn new bosses and have a chance of dropping Fracturing Orbs.
Maps now allow the use of multiple portals per player and Portals are only lost on death. However, higher-rarity maps will have less Portals, scaling down to a single portal. This allows us to freely come and go from maps while making early mapping much easier.
Towers are now less common, and treated as full maps including additional content. Depending on the tier of map a tower is completed with affects how many tablets it can apply at once, up to a max of three, and how powerful they are. Tablets themselves are stronger, including new unique variants that allow for more interesting mapping strategies.
There are new Unique Maps that offer a variety of new rewards, including some exclusive item base types with powerful effects, similar to the Heist bases of POE. There is also a Boss Rush map, which allows us to earn Talismans, a new socketable item, and an Essence-focused map.
Essences can now be corrupted to add, remove, or upgrade existing Essences, including the return of Corruption-only essences. Rogue Exiles and Unique Strongboxes are also being added for new randomly occurring encounters.
The Recombinator has been added to Expedition. This unique crafting method allows us to combine two items and selects the mods we’d like to have. The more mods we select, the lower the chances it has of success, resulting in both items used being destroyed.
Pinnacle bosses now take less time to reach, with the entrance keys taking less time to build up or being more common to find. This results in more access to these bosses and allows for easier upgrading of their respective content.
Finally, the Atlas Passive Tree has been updated to be better overall and to include Azmeri Wisps and Rogue Exiles. There are also a number of changes to the existing trees for Breach and Expedition.
Balance Changes
Since everything is scattered in different sections of the notes, here are the major points of the changes. We’ll organize these by the build or archetype most affected by them. This is to provide a more solid idea of meta shifts.
Energy Shield Changes
Grim Feast has been removed, pending a rework. Surprised they’re going this route with it, but it was quite strong for what it offered.
Passive that sets a stat to a specific value now also occurs before any conversion. This directly targets popular Energy Shield Uniques Ghostwrithe, Atziri’s Disdain, and Everlasting Gaze, and how they interact with Eldritch Battery or Chaos Incoulation. These items are also nerfed further, granting far less Energy Shield than before, but slightly buffed their other properties.
Heavy Buffer now lets some damage bypass Energy Shield, meaning that it cannot be used with Chaos Inoculation. Icebreaker now only grants 50% of Energy shield as Freeze Threshold, removing a lot of protection against Freeze.
Despite this, Energy Shield will still be a good defensive option. It will just take better gear to work and be far more limited in scaling. Recovery is now severely limited, reduced to Recharge or Eternal Youth as the main options.
Rarity Changes
As stated in an interview that GGG did, Rarity will have dramatically less effect when stacked, particularly to the extent it was being stacked before. In addition to this, many sources of Rarity were reduced or removed.
One of the numbers thrown out by GGG as an approximation where diminishing returns for Rarity kicks in heavily is around 400%. This is still a significantly high value, but will be much harder to reach.
On gear, the Rarity affix has been lowered from 32%/30% for prefix or suffix to 25% for both. Golden Charms also now only grant 15% Rarity.
Soul Cores of Azcapa now grant 5% increased Gold dropped by slain enemies, instead of Rarity. Tablets for Mapping now grant 10-15% Rarity as an affix, reduced from 10-20%
Mahuxotl’s Machination now has 100% increased effect of socketed Soul Cores, down from 333-666%. Additionally, it now has Everlasting Sacrifice, which, if unchanged from POE1, sacrifices all Energy Shield when reaching full Energy Shield to provide +5% All Maximum Resistance.
Stat Stacker Changes
Being one of the more popular and powerful archetypes in the meta, this was bound to happen.
Gemling Legionnaire’s Enhanced Effectiveness Ascendancy now has a 20% penalty to total Attributes. Where we’d normally have 100 Attributes, we now have 80. It’s a significant blow to this archetype in particular, as this was the most popular Ascendancy for it.
The Falcon Technique Notable Passive is now 1% Attack Speed per 25 Dexterity, up from 15. Polymathy also grants 7% All Attributes, down from 10%. Spaghettification now grants +13 All Attributes, down from 7%.
Hand of Wisdom and Action are nerfed, requiring double the Intelligence threshold per flat Lightning Damage and grants less Attack speed per Dexterity threshold, with a slightly lowered threshold. This doesn’t kill the item, but it massively cuts down the damage it provides.
Morior Invictus was also rebalanced to provide 3 modifiers. However, Rarity, Life, Mana, and Attributes per socketed Rune or Soul Core no longer roll. Spirit, Global Defenses, and Elemental Resistances now also roll in a range, rather than being fixed at 10. Seven New modifiers were added to the pool for this item.
Ingenuity now has a range of 20-30% increased effect of rings, and rolls the left and right ring slots independently. This means it’s weaker overall, and has far more roll variance. It’s still significantly better than most Rare belts, but it has competition within the Unique Belt options. But hey, at least it gets some Charm bonuses, maybe those will be useful, but probably not.
Pillar of the Caged God now provides 1% Attack speed per Dexterity and 1% AoE per 10 Intelligence (both previously 2%). Attack Damage is now granted as 10% per 10 Strength, up from 5 Strength.
The on-kill effects of Herald skills can no longer be triggered by Herald kills, and have a reduced AoE radius. A very expected nerf to the Herald chaining tech used in many builds. Herald of Plague now also requires a Martial Weapon for consistency with other Heralds.
Finally, the last change we’ll cover here is that Limit skills now share a limit across multiple copies of a gem. This seems to have only been applied to Tempest Bell primarily, but may affect other skills as well.
Mana Stacker Changes
Another popular Archetype, particularly with Stormweavers and Spark.
Stormweaver’s Force of Will Ascendancy is now 15% Arcane Surge Effect per 25 Mana, up from 15 Mana. Additionally, Strike Twice now reduces Shock Magnitude instead of Shock Duration. Stormweaver’s small Ascendancy nodes grant Mana Regeneration instead of Maximum Mana.
Archmage now grant a flat 3% Damage as Extra Lightning Damage per 100 Mana at all levels, costs 6.7-6.1% Mana per cast (from 5.3-5%), and Quality now reduces reservation instead of increasing the Lightning Damage it provides.
Alongside this, Arc is losing its inherent Damage per remaining chain bonus and gets less of it from Quality. As compensation it has a base of 6 Chains at level 5, up to 8 at Level 20. Spark also is losing projectiles at 4-9 from level 1-20, down from 6-14, quality now also provides Projectile Speed instead of extra projectiles.
Eldritch Battery now doubles our Mana Cost. Mana Blessing no longer grants 5% Maximum Mana and instead grants 20% Mana Regeneration.
Alongside the nerfs to Everlasting Gaze mentioned in the Energy Shield Changes. Dream Fragments also only grants 10% Maximum Mana, down from 20%. Melting Maelstrom, the unique Mana Flask, no longer fully recovers our Mana as well.
Finally, most Mana Affixes on gear have been reduced substantially, most losing 1-2 tiers of the Mana Affix, reducing the maximum on gear by around 30-50 per item slot.
Skill Tree Changes
New clusters have been added for the following keywords: Blind, Volatility, Ranged and Melee, Hazards, Companions, Presence and Aura, Parry, Banner, Bleeding, Thorns, Quiver.
New Keystone Passives have been added: Crimson Assault and Trusted Kinship, both south east of the Ranger and Huntress starting area. Crimson Assault sets the base Bleed Duration to 1 second, but Bleeds are always aggravated.
Trusted Kinship allows us to have two Companions of different types, grants that 1 Armour, Evasion, or Energy Shield for every 2 we have, but also means we have 30% less Defenses.
12 Jewel Sockets have been removed from the passive Tree, or roughly half of them. Likely, these will primarily be removed from the Outer ring of the passive tree, so as not to reduce the usefulness of Time-lost Jewels or other radius Jewels.
The Unhindered Notable Cluster now grants a total of 20% reduced Movement Speed Penalty while attacking. Previously, this was Movement Speed and reduced effect of Slow.
The following Notable Passives have been removed: Break Focus, Hold Focus, Lasting Concotions, Potent Concontions, No Escape, and Pinned Down. These also can no longer be Instilled, but currently Instilled version will continue to function.
Break Focus, Hold Focus, and No Escape were part of a Mark Cluster, and provided Increased Mark Effect and Duration, and Marked enemies have 15% reduced Accuracy.
Lasting Concoction and Potent Concotion were part of a Flask Cluster, and provided Flask Duration and Flask Effect.
Pinned Down was part of a Pin Cluster, providing increased Pin buildup.
Skill Changes
There are far too many changes to skills to summarize all of them, so we’ll primarily cover the more popularly used skills that apply to more players to keep it brief.
Many skills have had their damage or damage growth per level updated, but not listed in the patch notes. All Attack, Marks, and Warcries also had their Mana costs reduced, particularly at higher levels. Minions have Less damage and health at higher levels, particularly past Level 20.
Invocation Spells are getting adjusted Energy rates. Barrier Invocation now only counts enemy hits and grants 1 energy per 10 Energy Shield damage. Elemental Invocation gets 10 energy per Freeze, 2 energy per Ignite, and 1 energy per Shock. Reaper Invocation has been buffed to 15 energy per melee kill, up from 10.
Some Meta gems are also getting Energy changes. Cast on Shock grants 1 energy per per of enemy shocked, down from 2. Cast on Block from Svalinn now grants the intended 25 energy per block. Cast on Minion Death now only counts minion deaths, and provides less energy if their level is lower than the area level. This seems to be removing the interaction with Sacrifice Skill.
Travel Skills, which includes Blink, now have a shared cooldown. This means Blink and Shield Charge cannot be used in quick succession for faster traversal. This also prevents Blink from being used to cancel the ending animation of Shield Charge.
Resistance-reducing Curses have been weakened as well, in addition to curses having a base activation delay of 1.5 seconds. The range for most of theses curses has been reduced to 25-29% reduced Resistances, down from 32-36%. Despair is reduced to 20-24%, down from 32-36%.
Item Changes
Ventor’s Gamble now has a roll range of -25% to 25% for its stats, changed from -40% to 40%. A Smaller roll range is nice, but the top end makes it less exciting as an item, especially paired with the Ingenuity changes.
Jeweller’s Orbs of all types now set the number of support sockets to their specified value. This means Greater and Perfect Jeweller’s Orbs no longer require the previous tier(s) to be used to gain the sockets.
Advanced and Expert Base items now have distinct names. Nice quality of life change, likely done as a result of all the unique being added and wanting to use these base types.
Runes now have three Tiers with the addition of Lesser and Greater Runes. The Reforging Bench can upgrade runes through each tier, instead of providing a random Rune when reforging.
Jewels, are getting some changes to their affixes, with new modifiers being added to match the new clusters added to the Passive Tree. Sadly, Basic Jewels will be losing access to Aura Effect as a modifier.
Time-Lost Jewels are also getting several nerfs to some of the modifiers they roll. In particular, the Magnitude of Damaging ailments, the Faster Damage of Ailments, and Energy Generation has been reduced. Warcry Buff Effect is removed as a modifier.
If you have the time and desire, you can read the full patch notes for Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt update.
