Ailments in PoE2: Pressure Without Purpose

Since version 2.0, GGG has continuously increased the impact of ailments on players—such as Ignite, Shock, Chill, Bleed, and Corrupted Blood. What used to be minor annoyances have become serious threats, with ailment values ramping up and new mechanics reinforcing them: monsters now frequently inflict powerful ailments, some effects can stack or scale further, and the game's faster pacing gives little room to cleanse or react. As a result, players are forced to invest more heavily into ailment immunity, reduction, or automated removal tools during character building.

This design direction serves as one of GGG’s ways to push back against power creep. As player damage and defenses continue to scale up each league, increasing the pressure from environmental effects—especially unavoidable, persistent ailments—forces players to spread out their defenses instead of going all-in on DPS or a single layer of mitigation. It stretches out the progression curve and makes character building more constrained and demanding.

Back in PoE1, every time I managed to cover ailment immunities on a new character, it didn’t feel like an achievement—it felt like paying a tax for the power I was allowed to have.



In Path of Exile 2, players have been stripped of most of the ailment mitigation and immunity tools they relied on in PoE1—automatic flask triggers, ailment immunity mods, and even core passive or gear interactions have been nerfed or reworked. At the same time, the pressure from ailments has multiplied significantly. Effects like Ignite, Chill, Corrupted Blood, and Bleed now appear more frequently, hit harder, and often stack simultaneously, creating a much higher baseline of ailment damage than in the previous game.

The problem is that these ailments are not avoidable through skillful play—you can't dodge them, and you don’t have enough tools to consistently deal with or remove them mid-combat. This results in difficulty that feels arbitrary rather than meaningful. Players aren’t dying because they built wrong or played poorly, but because the game removes most of their agency to respond. It turns the experience into something punishing without purpose.

I'm assuming this issue you're describing about also applies to maps, i.e. late-game, correct?

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chobo999#2010 wrote:

I'm assuming this issue you're describing about also applies to maps, i.e. late-game, correct?

Yes, this issue definitely applies to maps and late-game as well.

In the campaign, patch 0.2.0 effectively cut players’ ailment thresholds in half compared to 0.1.0, while monsters now inflict ailments that deal roughly twice the effect. So the early-game experience feels extremely punishing.

By the time you reach late-game, you can invest into passive tree scaling to bring that multiplier down—maybe to around 1.5x the original impact—but it still remains a major problem. And the kicker is: you're doing this in a context where nearly every build has been nerfed by 50–80% compared to 0.1.0, meaning you're forced to invest more into ailment resistance just to survive, despite having less overall power to work with.

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jojo1225#3785 wrote:

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chobo999#2010 wrote:

I'm assuming this issue you're describing about also applies to maps, i.e. late-game, correct?

Yes, this issue definitely applies to maps and late-game as well.

In the campaign, patch 0.2.0 effectively cut players’ ailment thresholds in half compared to 0.1.0, while monsters now inflict ailments that deal roughly twice the effect. So the early-game experience feels extremely punishing.

By the time you reach late-game, you can invest into passive tree scaling to bring that multiplier down—maybe to around 1.5x the original impact—but it still remains a major problem. And the kicker is: you're doing this in a context where nearly every build has been nerfed by 50–80% compared to 0.1.0, meaning you're forced to invest more into ailment resistance just to survive, despite having less overall power to work with.

From what I know (and heard..), these are essentially "tactics" from PoE1 (ruthless, perhaps?)...and moving on to PoE2.

Back then in PoE1, they wanted to "slow it down", but they tried to do this. Of course, it didn't work as it's still zoom-zoom-1-shot.

But maybe PoE2 can achieve this "better"...like we're still in 0.2...maybe they can find ways to smooth this part out more, but still have more slower methodical combat during maps/late/end-game...