PoE Sanity

Path of Exile 2 Buff / Nerf Index

By CaptainLance9Watch videoDuration: PT7M12S

Summary

  • Analysis of league start performance for various builds in the .5 patch, using the Doryani boss fight as a standardized benchmark.
  • Identification of “unethical” builds—those that trivialized content through high damage or mechanical skips—including Infernal Legion, Bows, and Shield Wall.
  • Comparison of kill times (seconds) against total progression time (hours) to differentiate between high-player skill and raw skill power.
  • Discussion on the extreme disparity between “easy mode” top-tier skills and “miserable” bottom-tier skills during the campaign.

Methodology of the Buff-Nerf Index

The Index is a data-driven graph mapping the performance of league start builds found across YouTube and Twitch. The primary metric for comparison is the kill time (in seconds) for the first phase of Doryani.

  • X-Axis (Kill Time): Measures how long it takes to phase the boss. The fastest times recorded are approximately 5 seconds, with “fast” being 10 seconds and “reasonable” being 15–20 seconds.
  • Y-Axis (Progression Time): Measures how many hours the player has spent in the campaign.
    • Speedrunners: Players like EnGormas or GuyThatDies typically reach the boss in 2 to 2.5 hours. Their fast kill times are a combination of player skill and choosing the most powerful baseline skills.
    • Completionists: Players like Phox may take longer (e.g., 6 hours) but arrive with better gear due to interacting with league mechanics or side areas like Vaal Temples.

Analysis of “Unethical” Builds

Several builds demonstrate performance levels that bypass intended game difficulty, categorized here as “unethical.”

  • Infernal Legion (Spectre): This is the most egregious outlier. By using a Spectre with high HP (approx. 40,000) and scaling damage based on that health, it produces DPS that is incomparable to standard skills like Essence Drain. Players can weapon swap to ignore the gem’s downsides, leading to a recommendation that this skill should be heavily nerfed.
  • Bows (Ice Shot / Barrage): Utilizing Ice Shot to freeze bosses followed by Barrage allows players to ignore almost every boss mechanic in the campaign through pure damage and crowd control.
  • Grenades: These allow for significant “pre-firing” damage. When combined with the Bear Roar trick to generate early Rage, they can instantly wipe boss health bars.
  • Shield Wall: Demonstrated by EnGormas, this build can stun-lock Doryani almost instantly, leading to a sub-10-second kill time.

The Performance Disparity

There is a massive gap between the “peaks” and “valleys” of skill viability in Path of Exile 2’s current state.

  1. The Unplayable Zone: Many skills are so weak that players do not even record their runs. These skills result in a “miserable” campaign experience where players struggle against every mechanic.
  2. The “Easy Mode” Zone: Top-tier skills allow players to skip mechanics entirely, cruising through the campaign with minimal resistance.
  3. The Ethically Good Zone: A middle ground where skills are reasonably powerful and efficient but do not break the game’s fundamental challenge.

The primary differentiator in these runs is the baseline damage of the skill itself. During the campaign, most builds follow similar paths on the passive tree (grabbing the nearest damage nodes), meaning “tech” choices matter less than the raw numbers of the chosen gem.

Proposed Balancing Philosophy

To even the playing field, a specific threshold of performance should be established:

  • Builds falling below a certain kill-time-to-playtime ratio (the “unethical” outliers) should be scaled back.
  • Skills currently residing in the “horrendous damage” category require buffs to ensure they are at least viable for a standard campaign run.
  • The goal is to reduce the delta between the strongest and weakest options so that the campaign difficulty remains consistent regardless of skill choice.

Key References