Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt is widely known as one of the franchise’s worst patches or seasons, including over 25+ major leagues or seasons in Path of Exile 1. Some might say this is an understatement, while some refuse to believe it until they experience it.
Your experience depends on what class and build you played at the start of the patch, which is why we are seeing such mixed reactions to it.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of everything wrong with Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt and the planned changes to the season going forward.
What Went Wrong in Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt Season?
There was a lot of hype going into PoE 2’s Dawn of the Hunt or 0.2.0 patch. Path of Exile veterans know this is a major season with an economy reset, showing off over 20+ pages of patch notes before it was even revealed.
Apart from massive changes, PoE players were already divided as PoE 2 played differently from PoE 1. The divide was not caused by a difference of opinion among the community but rather by a business decision where GGG “borrowed” the team working on Path of Exile 1’s new season to work on the Dawn of the Hunt.
It has been over a year since PoE 1’s new league, the Settlers of Kalguur, became one of the most successful patches in the game’s history. The pressure on Dawn of the Hunt to be good is at an all-time high, higher than PoE 2’s early access launch since players didn’t know what would happen to PoE 1 yet, and they can easily switch back if they don’t like PoE 2’s direction.
PoE 2’s early access launch was already disappointing for some because of the lack of endgame content, but the expectations were too high anyway. Players were quick to forgive, as PoE 2’s rocky start is understandable. There were several “broken” builds, and most top-end meta builds overperformed quite a lot compared to the other builds.
GGG’s decision? Nerf almost every popular or “meta” build to the ground. Players were mainly fine with it as GGG reassured them that every skill gem would get a change, meaning some other skills could become the new “meta.”
While that was true, GGG hiding all the gem statistics before the Dawn of the Hunt update left build creators lost. Everyone was scrambling to create a build guide for players to follow. Most Path of Exile players rely on these talented creators to curate builds and follow them to enjoy the game.
Most leveling or starting builds were “smart guesses,” and only a few actually worked. The nerfs were all felt at the start and some players, through no fault of their own, took hours to defeat a single boss because some classes don’t perform well at certain points of the campaign.
Player power is at an all-time low, which is not ideal. PoE 2’s main point is to lower the “entry point” for new ARPG players since PoE 1 was already too complicated. The campaign became too hard for players, causing massive disappointment.
Even lifelong PoE supporters stopped playing after the grueling campaign. Some creators, like Empyrean, even refrained from playing PoE 2 after seeing the patch notes, foreseeing what would happen.
Related: Should You Play Amazon or Ritualist in PoE 2 Dawn of the Hunt?
GGG’s Response to Put Out The Fire for the Dawn of the Hunt Season
To give GGG some credit, they are always fast when it comes to hotfixes and balancing changes early in the patch.
Day 1’s patch notes already had massive changes:
- All non-unique monsters have less life, tapering from 100% to 75% of what they had between levels 8 and 15. All monsters between levels 15 and 46 now have 25% less Life. All monsters between levels 46 and 64 now have less life, too. This results in all monsters in the endgame having the same Life as before this change. Their thresholds for Crowd Control and Ailments have been adjusted proportionately by the same amount.
- Rogue Exiles have had their Life reduced by 40% (on top of the change above).
- The “of the Hydra” (Life Regeneration) Monster Modifier now only appears at Level 65+.
They nerfed almost every good build to the ground. Now they’ve nerfed the monsters. Most players would think “You nerfed good builds and now nerfed the monsters, so we’re basically where we started again.” Technically, the monster nerf is only significant during the campaign, where most players have a problem.
Since GGG’s main concern was that builds would become too strong and the economy would be broken in the first few days, they wanted to maintain the nerfs for the endgame. This is a great change, but many players already feel left behind.
After putting out the fire for now, there’s still the lack of loot in the endgame, and the overall reception is still pretty much the same as PoE 2’s 0.1.0 endgame.
Their main goal is to fix the Huntress. The class’s power is locked behind the parry mechanic, and players don’t want that.
As a fix, they are giving Frenzy charges without parry through the new Cull the Weak skill, which awards Frenzy charges when killing a monster with the skill. Personally, this change may sound okay, but it is a little bit out of touch.
You’ll have to play the Huntress to know that gaining Frenzy charges through executes doesn’t really change much because you need the Frenzy charge to deal damage. That’s the case, at least for the campaign.
Apart from these planned changes, the rest seemed great. Minion damage should and would get a buff; monsters are still too strong, and map sizes are too big for players.
There is no news about changes for the endgame yet. At the time of writing, there’s even an “exploit” where you can infinitely reroll Ritual windows with the new unique tablet when you reduce the deferral fee through three overlapping towers.
That is quite rough because it isn’t a technical bug that causes this problem. Even with some of the fixes, it could be safe to say that things are still not looking good for PoE 2’s Dawn of the Hunt.
On the bright side, the 100+ new unique items in the 0.2.0 update still leave much to uncover. Several strong builds could yet emerge in the endgame, and only time will tell until we see them in action.
Published: Apr 7, 2025 8:20 PM UTC