Update 0.2.0f features several quality-of-life adjustments and further adjustments to enemy balance.
The next significant update for the Path of Exile’s Dawn of the Hunt Patch Cycle has arrived. This patch adds many quality-of-life changes, item adjustments, and some minor balance updates.
Ascendancy Respec
By popular demand, Ascendancy Respecs have been added to POE2. This allows us to finally change our Ascendancy Classes at will, so long as we can reclear a Trial of Ascendancy.
This does have some requirements, namely, we need to have zero points allocated into our Ascendancy Passive Tree and clear the highest tier of Ascendancy we’ve done so far, which makes this a bit tougher towards the endgame.
To offset this slightly, the Trial of Chaos now has 7 rooms at Level 55, down from 60, and 10 rooms at 65, down from 75. This makes Trial of Chaos more accessible for Respec and overall as an Ascendancy option.
To learn more about Ascendancies, check out our Trial of Ascendancy Guide. This broadly covers the information and how to ascend.
Ascendancy Respec isn’t likely to be used too often, but it saves the hassle of redoing the campaign for any reason other than rolling to a new class.
Charm Changes
Belts now roll an Implicit Affix for Charm Slots. This rolls between 1-2 Charms Slots from item Level 30-59, and 1-3 Charms Slots for Item Level 60+. This replaces the previously required Affix to gain additional Charm Slots and makes them more accessible.
Zerphi’s Genesis and Ingenuity Belts no longer roll with the increaed Charm Slot modifiers. This only applies to new items; existing versions are unchanged. Bijouborne is unchanged and retains its Charm Slots to allow it to reach 6 Charm Slots in a later patch.
Charm Affixes for Life, Mana, and Guard during Charm Effects have been buffed to provide more value. Additionally, All Charms (except Golden Charms) have had their Charges and charges per use halved, allowing them to be used more often. Stone Charm also gets a small duration buff now lasting 3 seconds, up from 2.5 seconds.
Overall, great changes for Charms. Having easier access to more Charms as well as being able to use them more often should feel more impactful.
Stash Tabs and Atlas Changes
New Stash Tab Affinities, or auto-sorting, have been added for Socketables, Fragments (including Tablets and Trial Keys), Breach, Expedition, and Ritual. Simply put, this means outside of any gear, all other items can be relegated to a specific Stash Tab for the quick deposit action (Ctrl-click for PC)
For more information on Stash Tabs and how to set their Affinity, refer to our Stash Tabs Explained guide.
Atlas Bookmarking has been added, allowing us to save and label up to 16 places on our Atlas that we can jump to at any point. These will show markers in their respective direction while off-screen, and can be viewed from a new drop-down menu as well.
This is great for marking and jumping back to cleansed areas after clearing Corruption Nexuses or returning to a set of zones we prep for different endgame mechanics.
All Pinnacle Bosses have unlimited respawn Attempts at Difficulty 0. This offers newer players plenty of breathing room during these encounters to practice the mechanics.
Tower and Hideout Maps have more Rare Monsters, and the final Rare Monster will award a map of the same tier being run, so long as we have enough Waystone Drop Chance. Additionally, Rare and Unique Monsters are now appropriately displayed on the map during these map types.
These are overall great changes. I do personally wonder how long the unlimited boss respawns will last, as that seems very likely to be abused in combination with the previous changes in the Dawn of the Hunt patch.
Crafting Changes
Less common Runes will be removed from the pool as we level now, with Lesser Runes no longer dropping past Level 31, and Standard Runes not dropping past Level 52. Past this point only Greater Runes will drop, as well as dropping slightly more often.
Rogue Exile will now always have level-appropriate Runes applied to their gear. This is still mostly irrelevant, though it will mean they deal slightly more damage than perviously.
Scepters can now be socketed with Talismans, offering various benefits to Minions. Hopefully, Minion archetypes can have a decent endgame again.
These are great Rune Changes overall, especially not being forced into upgrading them in the late game. The Rogue Exile changes still make little sense, as we cannot extract the Runes from their gear, but perhaps in the future.
Player Changes
Totems will now gain Resistances starting at Gem Level 13, reaching +75% Elemental Resistance and +35% Chaos Resistance at level 20. Additionally, Ironwood Support now increases its Maximum Elemental Resistances to 85%.
Shockwave Totem now has a base Attack time of 1.5 Seconds, down from 3. To compensate, its damage has been lower to 96-211% Attack Damage, down from 169-311%. Jagged Ground Eruption Damage is unchanged. It’s quality has been adjsut to provide a maximum reduction of 0.2 seconds base Attack Time, down from 0.55.
To supplement further changes to reducing Monster stun, a New Passive Tree Cluster for Stun and Ailment Threshold for Energy Shield has been added near Chaos Incoulation.
Shard Scavenger has been buffed to now restore one Cooldown charge for Grenade and for our Crossbow to not consume bolts for 2 seconds after consuming an Elemental Ailment or Fully Broken Armour.
Releasing Raise Shield will now Shield Bash a nearby enemy after blocking a far away attacker, if one is available. Additionally, Raise Shield can be supported by Concentrated Effect.
Fire Exposure and Lightning Exposure now clearly state that Exposure is applied to all targets, not just enemies.
Overall, a nice set of buffs for Totems, which needed it. The other changes also seem great, though it’s hard to say how impactful they will be outside of Shard Scavenger, which sounds like it might be a bit overtuned now.
Monster Changes
Monsters had their Light Stun potential reduced further, by reducing the amount of Stun Damage they dealt as well as increasing the minimum required for a Light Stun. In combination with the newly added cluster, this should greatly help Pure Energy Shield or Life and Energy Shield Hybrid builds to be safer from stuns.
This change in particular required another hotfix to work properly, as the stun damage was being increased instead of decreased.
More endgame monsters had the previous fix from 0.2.0e applied to them, preventing them from interrupting their attacks and chasing relentlessly.
Zarokh and the Immured Fury bosses no longer heavily target minions, making it easier for them to survive these encounters.
The Monster compositions for Jiquani’s Sanctum, Aggorat, Utzaal, and their Map variants have fewer ranged enemies. This reduces the frequent barrages of projectiles coming at us.
Many monsters, including the Act 3 Goliath enemies, Vaal Enforcers, Ravenous Misshapen, and Reconstrutors
Other Changes
The Gemcutting Menu has a newly added Equipped Gems section to make leveling up equipped gems faster and easier, particularly for those coming from another class.
Vendors now have a Rarity border around items, allowing their selection to be assessed at a glance.
Greater Rune of Tithing has been massively buffed, increasing its Lightning Thorn Damage to a range of 1-100, up from 1-10.
Bugfixes
While there are a number of bugfixes between 0.2.0f and its hotfixes, we’ll just highlight the important ones here.
Players no longer have 1% of Evasion Rating as Armour Rating. While this helpful bug has been fixed, it was fixed to allow Iron Reflexes and General’s Binding to grant the proper amounts of Armour.
Corruption Modifiers for Tame Beast and Bind Spectre were fixed. This prevented these gems from gaining (or losing) Skill Levels, Quality, or Sockets from Corruption, as the effects would be lost upon Binding or Taming an enemy, or resetting the Gem with the Disenchanting NPC.
Drain Ailments was “fixed” and now grants immunity to the consumed Ailment, but can now trigger any effects that consume Ailments, like Shard Scavenger. Additionally, it will now consume all of the Ailments of the type it consumes, which is more relevant for Poison, or Shock and Chill with the Stormweaver Ascendancy.
It’s not fully clear if this “immunity” prevents the same ailment from being applied to the same attack or longer-lasting immunity. If it’s total immunity for an extended period, it’s likely a change aimed at the Cast on “Ailment” meta skills, as it means preventing a cycle of removing and reapplying the ailment.
For other support gem changes, Ball Lightning can now be affected by Chain and Perpetual Charge now works on Whirlwind Lance, while Storm Lance now benefits from . This seems like a minor change overall
