[0.5] POE 2 Balance is Horrible (10+ Mirror Build = 1 Div Twister Build???)

Summary

• Core Issue: There is a severe lack of dedicated balance oversight in Path of Exile 2, leading to massive power discrepancies between various skills and ascendancies.
• The Disparity: High-investment builds costing multiple mirrors are currently underperforming significantly compared to low-budget, meta-compliant builds.
• Skill Interaction Failure: Specific mechanics, such as the Living Weapon (Manifest Weapon) skill, fail to interact correctly with items like Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler, preventing intended power scaling.
• Design Feedback: The current state of number tuning discourages experimentation, as off-meta skills suffer from a lack of developer attention, resulting in a stagnant gameplay experience.

Balancing Challenges and Resource Allocation

GGG has cited time constraints as a reason for limited balancing, focusing instead on producing new content. However, this approach ignores the wide power gaps between different skills and ascendancy nodes. These discrepancies—often reaching into the thousands of percentage points—suggest a need for dedicated personnel to focus on numerical tuning rather than just content creation.

Case Study: Living Weapon and Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler

The current state of Living Weapon exemplifies the game’s balancing issues:

• Intended Synergy: The skill duplicates the player’s weapon, scaling damage based on Strength and Dexterity. It should theoretically synergize perfectly with Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler, which provides flat damage based on Strength.
• Mechanical Failure: The Molten Shower proc associated with Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler fails to function when triggered by Living Weapon. Because Living Weapon strikes at a high attack speed, this interaction would have significantly increased the build’s viability.
• Performance Metrics: Despite utilizing extreme-budget, legacy gear—including a perfect Megalomaniac and highly specialized jewels—the build struggles. While it manages to clear white monsters, it takes approximately 30 seconds to defeat bosses with only 1.5 million HP.

The Disconnect in Gameplay Expectations

There is a fundamental misalignment between the current state of top-tier builds and the intended difficulty curve:

• The Power Gap: While a six-second kill time on a rare monster might be a reasonable goal for a balanced game, top-end meta builds currently clear entire screens instantly.
• Investment vs. Output: A character with an investment of 10+ mirrors should, at a minimum, be outputting millions of DPS. Instead, the showcased build functions at a level equivalent to a 10-divine melee build, performing thousands of times worse than if the player simply avoided the companion-based mechanics entirely.
• Conclusion: The blatant disregard for under-played skills and lack of functional interactions between items and skills makes build experimentation frustrating, as players are forced into a narrow set of viable choices.