The 0.2 difficulty outcry was Mandela effect caused by the streamers. Game Feedback

0.2 was never harder than 0.1.
While the numbers on most skills are lower 0.2 also added more support gems which allowed most skills to get more damage than before, also the mob armor was nerfed across the board, everything to do with physical damage and bleed was buffed, Tame Beast allows any class to receive a haste aura from a friendly gorilla. In 0.2 most classes straight up got more power from the get go.

The perception of the higher difficulty was created by the fact that every streamer started playing Huntress as their first character rather than a twink, and the Dex Melee Martial really is a lot more gear dependent than spellcasters. Back in 0.1 almost everybody were starting some variation of Spark Flamewall plus SRS so they didn't even feel what a martial class feels without two iron rings and damage gloves. POE 1 and 2 have Weapon, 2 rings and gloves as the source of your attack damage, and you are expected to have all of them. The spear skills aren't even numerically weak, the Martial scaling simply expects you to have 4 damage items rather than 1. The streamers started their game the hard way chasing the new content, and their viewers followed, all ended up having a bad time.
Meanwhile:

* Warrior is just straight up better than before.

* Monk got reasonably nerfed but still very strong, nobody even tried playing monk.

* Ranger is mostly the same, good as ever

* Witch - SRS is still good, the nerf was reasonable. Chaos spells are INSANE, put poison on chaos bolt with contagion and DESTROY the Grelwood werewolves, literally just blasting screens even before you get Essence Drain.

* Mercenary(Witchunter) - HUGE ONE, was good before, received sweeping buff across the board, the class entirely unplayed this patch for no reason. Mob explosions and culling strike, I heard you wanted a faster campaign? People complained about the mob clear and nobody tried to play the class focused on exploding entire screens.

The entire outcry was caused by the streamers chasing the content. They jumped onto a brand new class they didn't know or prepare for and all picked the Amazon ascendancy which only gives the lategame DPS, while Ritualist's third ring is a massive buff in the early game. Yeah the ring is damage, and life, and resistance, at LVL 20 it's far more valuable than Crit. Then they proceeded to have a collective meltdown along with their viewers and bully GGG into issuing a sweeping nerf to the entire game that was entirely unnecessary.
This is actually a very bad incident because if it continues, GGG is going to completely trivialize the game. No POE 2 isn't super mega difficult, the problem is that the POE 1 veterans are refusing to learn the new systems and try new things, like disenchanting the loot for the regals and recycling the sockets for artificer's orbs, gamble all their money away and then complain they don't have gold, not GGG's fault.

I have been one shotting mobs white and blue for a very long time with my Mercenary. Rare 2-3 shots to kill them

Also I have been using the same Xbow since act1 cruel I am now at act 3 Cruel and still killing everything at the same pace.

Game doesn't feel too hard, just perfect.

My only complaint is not enough new gear pieces I wish I would have the excitement to have new gears more often, tho I don't need new gear I'm already feeling strong enough.

I don't think Nelson Mandela or streamers have anything to do with the objective fact that basically everything was nerfed across the board in 0.2, or the debatable but imo true undisclosed loot nerfs we got

GGG isn't making changes based on the opinion of streamers lol.

They might bring attention to certain things but thats gonna result in GGG looking at data and working off of that.

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SlamBradley#2238 wrote:

I don't think Nelson Mandela or streamers have anything to do with the objective fact that basically everything was nerfed across the board in 0.2, or the debatable but imo true undisclosed loot nerfs we got

We certainly didn't get any loot nerfs. And the new lvl1 support gems immediately make up for the reduced skill damage.

You just forgot how it was back in 0.1.
And if you're feeling that the game is hard, well maybe you should, this is a brand new videogame, just because you know POE1 doesn't mean you know POE2.

Warrior is no different from .1 to .2


Hammer was even nerfed and thats what the majority of people were using to insta cheese fights.

They had 50 pages of nerfs dude, what are you talking about? You just didn't play the characters that were the hardest hit.

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JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

GGG isn't making changes based on the opinion of streamers lol.

They might bring attention to certain things but thats gonna result in GGG looking at data and working off of that.

The latest patch was literally a sweeping nerf to everything Zizaran complained to Johnathan in the interview. He went there screaming about the Grelwood wolves swarming him in Act 1 and they just nerfed them, and introduced every single change he asked for.

I don't think this is a good development. A streamer just bullied GGG into tailoring the game for him personally.

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Cpt_Katawa#5469 wrote:

The perception of the higher difficulty was created by the fact that every streamer started playing Huntress as their first character

U r actually crazy

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Glowie_Zigger#5018 wrote:

They had 50 pages of nerfs dude, what are you talking about? You just didn't play the characters that were the hardest hit.

The only characters that really got stomped on are Sorceress and Infernalist. Well they were far too dominant in 0.1, I don't know if they are still playable or not, but most other classes got rescaled rather than nerfed. Or straight up buffed even.