Feedback on Recent Patch Changes - Let's Make PoE 2 the Best It Can Be

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share some feedback after spending 90 hours in PoE 2 and absolutely loving it so far. The increased difficulty, the engaging boss mechanics, and the overall depth of the game have been incredible. As a longtime PoE 1 player, I’ve been taking my time learning the new systems, planning out my build, and thoroughly enjoying the process.

However, after logging in today, I found that my entire build is broken due to a massive nerf to one of my key abilities. I get that balance changes are necessary, and I want to help test and improve the game, but the extent of this nerf, combined with the lack of tools to recover from it, has left me feeling frustrated.

Here’s what happened:

1. I planned my build around cast-on effects, like casting on freeze and fire. It wasn’t a meta build but something creative I was excited to play.
2. The patch made my main ability essentially unusable, and the changes weren’t clearly explained in the patch notes.
3. I tried to respec to adapt, but the cost is astronomical. I had 40k gold, sold every item I owned in frustration, and still couldn’t recover all my points. I calculated that I’d need around 180k gold to fully respec, which feels impossible given the current economy.

I even went back to earlier acts to farm gold, but the returns are minimal:
- Yellow items sell for ~1,000 gold (rarely drop).
- Blue items sell for ~200 gold.
- To get enough gold, I’d need to grind hundreds of items, which feels like busywork rather than meaningful progression.

I understand this is Early Access, but this kind of sudden, sweeping change without tools to adapt is disheartening. It reminds me of the backlash in Diablo IV when similar nerfs happened, and it hurt the player base.

Here’s my suggestion:

**Temporarily reduce respec costs during Early Access.** This would allow us to experiment with builds, adapt to changes, and provide better feedback for balancing. Right now, the high cost discourages meaningful testing and forces players to either start over or quit. Neither option feels good, especially after investing so much time into a character.

I’m not here to cry or complain. I love this game, and I upgraded to the highest package because I believe in supporting Grinding Gear Games. But changes like this feel like a slap in the face to dedicated players who want to help make PoE 2 the best ARPG it can be.

Let’s work together to improve the experience for everyone. Early Access is a testing phase, and players need the tools to adapt and test effectively. Lowering respec costs—even temporarily—would go a long way toward achieving that.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this feedback helps. Let’s make PoE 2 the masterpiece we all know it can be!

**TL;DR:** Love the game, but sudden major nerfs without tools to adapt (like affordable respecs) make testing builds incredibly frustrating. Please consider reducing respec costs during Early Access to help players provide better feedback.

Looking forward to hearing thoughts and seeing improvements!

Cheers,

+1

inb4 "gitgood", "you deserve to be bricked for copying a streamer", "its EARLY ACCESS what did you expect"

Nerfs weren't even nerfs. They just removed meta gems from the game. Stupid as hell.

I didn't follow any guides or streamers.

Not to mention, doing your own build, realising you're having fun with it and then you start to worry about it getting nerfed into the ground like all the others.

"

spardaknightz#4852 wrote:

I didn't follow any guides or streamers.

I didn’t follow any streamers too. From day one, i was playing around Cast on Ignite. I reached the endgame on Saturday, got some currency, and started a new build on Deadeye. I’m fine with nerfs, but not when they make a build completely unplayable. My Cast on Ignite build is now useless. I have tons of gold, so respeccing isn’t a problem for me, but i think about lower level players who chose a 'meta' build. If they were in Cruel or close to the endgame, they’d have to make a new character because they don’t have enough gold to respec.

Thats my biggest worry now. So i spend several more hours theory crafting then login and find out my build is bricked because it was broken strong with some other streamers build. I want to have fun make builds and help balance the game. But this is like a stab in the back. I switched from diablo games years ago. The final straw was this exact thing with d4 early access. Week 1 patch massive nerf. My druid shockwave nefed couldn't kill anything. I had to run around picking up trash to vendor to try and respec. This is even worse i would need about 300 blue items to vendor to respec. I need 180k. I planned my build out had just final started doing good damage. Now i need to go what spend hours re doing everything? I am here helping support the game. We need to balance and i want to help. I understand in poe we dont get to respec normally. But normally big massive nerfs dont happen during leagues its in between. So why punish players who discover things the devs missed. Reward us with a free respec so we can help make the game balanced.

"

Shidiwen1990#4491 wrote:

Nerfs weren't even nerfs. They just removed meta gems from the game. Stupid as hell.

This. They were removed completely. On top of that, they also removed my ascendency that gives me +45% energy gain, it has also been rendered useless.

There wasn't evne any useful spell-casting gems to begin with, this was like the only working way to deal any kind of decent damage. Now it's gone and none is left with any gold to respec, not that I would do it anyways, I'm just trying to prove a point.


GGG simply got desperate, panicked and nerfed it by over 90% for no reason whatsoever. There really was no reason to rush the nerf so hard. They could've done a slight nerf and analysed the change. Or they could've asked us players how they should go about it.

The build was even far from perfect to begin with. I had to invest a lot into mana regen, mana pool and crit chance sacrificing defenses. All that only for it to require me to hit 9 times on average to proc my cast-on-crit.

Now they made it so I have to hit on average 290~ times.
Well done. Well done.

I do expect an apology.

I agree that they are shooting their own foot with high respect prices. People would way more prone to attempting different variation with lower/no gold cost during EA. They could put it back later or at release but give people a break from grinding gold when you’re pushing changes that require people to play a totally different build.

This is a real problem and can really kill people's motivation to play the game. If the respec costs weren't so damned high, this wouldn't be as much of an issue.