Path of Exile 2 has seen a flurry of minor patches since the Dawn of the Hunt update has released. We’ll cover what’s changed and how it impacts things.
Since its release on April 4th, the Dawn of the Hunt update for Path of Exile 2 has seen numerous Hotfixes. From squashing major crashing issues to tuning the game’s difficulty, there’s a lot to get through, so we’ll cover things a patch at a time. While they won’t be mentioned, nearly every hotfix has addressed some form of common crash.
0.2.0 Hotfixes
Launch day was plagued with a very common crash, that, while not directly stated, was believed to be caused by a recently enabled MTX. This prevented many players from even escaping Act 1 for several hours unless they avoided town as much as possible.
Somehow, to many Warriors’ dismay, Smith of Kitava wasn’t properly selectable as an Ascendancy early on either. Now, days after, they’re considered one of the strongest Ascendancies of the patch.
We have a guide for the Smith of Kitava Ascendancy, which goes over a lot of its unique interactions and combos that make it such a powerful class.
0.2.0b Patch
This patch addressed the high monster life and the Life Regeneration Modifier in the Campaign, which massively slowed progression and limited the number of build options that could handle them. This affected all non-boss monsters, reducing their life and removing the Life Regeneration Modifier until endgame. Rogue Exiles also have a similar reduction in life.
Alongside these changes, a few of the 0.2.0 nerfs were undone. Temptest Bell was reduced to requiring 4 Combo, Explosive and Voltaic Grenade were reduced to 5-second cooldowns, and all Curse Gems gain more area per level.
Overall, these changes helped the early progression and made it far smoother for many players.
0.2.0c Patch
This patch adjusted Minion Life and damage, bringing them in line with other build archetypes. Minion Life was increased early, while their damage was increased later with better Gem Level scaling.
Spear Throw was given slightly more damage. Lightning Spear, Glacial Lance, Storm Lance, and Whirlwind Lance were made faster and had their mana costs lowered to keep their mana costs similar.
Some bosses got their cooldowns reduced, making them more reliable to parry. Parry itself still needs work, but this helps a lot with early bosses.
This helped the overall balance even more, and brought some skills up that needed it.
0.2.0d Patch
It doesn’t feel like a new POE2 league without a new economy exploit. Thankfully, this one got fixed fast, AND people are getting banned for it compared to what happened last league.
Huntress received a new Skill, Cull the Weak, a melee dash attack with Culling Strike, similar to Monk’s Killing Palm skill. This also generates Frenzy Charge when it culls an enemy. This gives an alternative to Parry for early Frenzy Charges.
Elemental Sundering now pauses the Ailment and removes it when the explosion happens. This allows it to combo better with Freeze, keeping them frozen the full duration.
0.2.0e Patch
This was a huge patch, targeting a lot of the frustration some had with certain monsters. Changes were made to make them less likely to swarm us while also providing safer opportunities to retaliate.
Some Zones were also changed, particularly in Act 3, making them easier to navigate and having fewer dead-end paths to deal with. This should make the campaign much smoother overall.
This also saw the Addition of the Inhibitor Support Gem, preventing a skill from using Endurance, Frenzy, or Power Charge, but increasing their damage for each charge.
There were also several skill balance changes, bringing up several skills that were hit quite hard in the initial patch. It may not make them amazing skills, but they should at least be usable now.
For the full details and our breakdown of the notes of the initial 0.2.0e Patch, we have a 0.2.0e Changes Overview that goes more into the details.
