UI and Gameplay Feedback

I play Path of Exile 2 on Steam with a controller. So most UI feedback is mainly about controller, but maybe keyboard players can confirm/support some of this. I also play HC SSF, so some points may be less relevant in other modes.


QUALITY OF LIFE


Move the Passive Tree tab (left or right)

Move the Passive Tree tab so that Character / Skills / Inventory are positioned next to each other in a logical order.

Reason 1:
Switching between Character and Skills causes the screen to visually rebuild the tree and flicker. These menus are structurally similar, so the transition feels unnecessary and visually unpleasant.

Reason 2:
When changing gear (especially rings), you often need to check resistances and damage multiple times. Constantly switching between Character and Skills causes extra clicks and screen flicker. It interrupts decision-making ("resist or damage?").



Show cooldown time additionaly in seconds

Add a numeric cooldown timer (in seconds) on skill icons. Cooldown recovery speed can change (faster/slower) based on buffs or debuffs. During intense fights, reading the circular animation is hard.

Seeing the cooldown in seconds would:
Be more intuitive
Help plan rotations
Help understand how many extra casts are possible



Inventory auto-move with right stick

When using the right stick, the item moves to the furthest available position.
This only feels good when inventory/stash is empty. Otherwise, the item overlaps another item and you still have to manually reposition it cell by cell. Often this is slower and more frustrating than manual placement from the start.


Item “Lock” option in inventory

Add item locking to prevent moving or sending items to stash by accident.
After mapping, when quickly dumping loot, you can easily misclick important items like:

Scrolls you always carry
Crafting orbs you use frequently on maps not in safe zone

You then have to take them back from stash repeatedly. This happens a lot and becomes very annoying.


Preset item filters (like Passive Tree search)

Add predefined quick filters for items, similar to passive tree filters:

Examples:

Normal / Magic / Rare
Fire / Cold / Lightning / Chaos resist
Quality etc.

Typing manually on controller every time is uncomfortable.
Preset filters would cover 95% of inventory searches.



Separate / Visually Differentiate HP and Energy Shield Bars

Improve the visibility of HP and Energy Shield bars above the character. I had a situation where I was bleeding, but due to bright Energy Shield visuals and intensity of the fight I didn’t notice my HP dropping behind ES, and it cost me the character.

Suggestions:
Visually separate HP and ES more clearly
Improve color contrast / clarity

Or allow players to toggle:
Combined bar
Separate bars
Custom visibility options


Temple Planning – Clear Per-Level Room Descriptions


When setting up the Temple, please add detailed descriptions for each room per level, not only the minimum or current tier. Right now, sometimes you don’t clearly know what modifier the room will have at higher levels. You often have to search online to understand what you are actually building.

It would be much better to:
Show full level scaling (Tier I / II / III effects)
Make the information available directly in the UI

Ideally, add a Temple Planner mode:

First: freely arrange rooms and preview full effects
Then: press Confirm to lock the layout

This would prevent mistakes and reduce the need for external research.



GAMEPLAY / BALANCE


Separate support gems per weapon set

Especially on HC SSF, 4+ socket Jeweller’s Orbs are rare.
Often you die before finding your first 4-link, not even talking about 5-link.
Skills also gain quality, so maintaining two fully upgraded versions of the same skill is hard.

Example (Ranger):

Mapping: Lightning Rod + Magnified Area
Bossing: Lightning Rod + Concentrated Area
Or Fork vs Chain, etc.

Also, keeping many support gems in inventory and manually swapping them before every boss fight (and back again) is cumbersome. Sometimes rare monsters are strong enough that you would want to switch setup instantly — not open inventory and reorganize gems.

Allowing different support setups per weapon set would be a huge improvement.


Balance (HC SSF perspective)

Right now, in HC SSF, real survivability mostly comes from stacking Energy Shield.

Low damage + high ES = safe but slow boss fights
High damage = high risk, eventually something kills you

Warrior armor builds can tank maps, but bosses can still one-shot full armor characters. Meanwhile, ES characters survive even heavy hits. As a result, HC SSF becomes less about build diversity and more about rushing ES scaling.

HP nodes are mostly:

Regen
Flask recovery
Life leech

Evasion and Armor feel strong only against white/blue mobs, but unreliable versus bosses and rare mobs.
This pushes meta heavily toward ES instead of diverse defensive options.


Boss / Rare target snapping (Controller)

During boss fights, smaller mobs often stand between you and the boss.
On controller, manually switching target can be difficult. Add target snapping to Bosses or Rare monsters (for example on R3 press), at least as a priority target. Even without hard lock-on, just prioritization would help. Throwing a small AoE or Mark at a boss but hitting a random mob instead (triggering cooldown) can be deadly in HC SSF.