Overall Feedback for 0.3 Patch

This got a lot longer than i originally intended. I have a google document, but the Moderators in the Forum dont let me post it so here it is. Sorry for formatting, this Forums formatting is basically nonexistent.
Disclaimer: Everything is just my opinion!

This Document is for Feedback regarding Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.3 (Date: 11th September 2025)

Campaign
Campaign Length
The Campaign overall is simply too long. That is a very frequently discussed topic and some people like the length others don't. For me the campaign is fine the first time you do it, maybe second and third is also fine, but I have done the campaign so often it's just tedious. It becomes work instead of enjoyment. There are a couple reasons for that.


Points of Interest/Optional Bosses
Points of interest aren't really interesting. They barely help the player complete the Campaign. Unless you get a permanent Buff it's not worth going to the Poi or Boss. Having those makes Maps Larger while not helping the player. I can see 2 solutions remove points of interest which i dont think will happen so here is my suggestion. Optional Bosses and poi should drop significantly more Gold and Loot than they currently do. I have one example: the sword that can be found in the Titan Grotto gives the player 1 lesser rune. That's basically nothing. It's a redundant reward. Upgrading the rune to a normal rune and giving 4-5 Runes would be way better. It would mean players might actually look for the sword and it would help the players progress faster. Do the same to other points of interest and optional bosses and you have a better campaign. Gold is so important in the Campaign. Also give more Transmutation and Augmentation Orbs.


Area Size/Area Layout
The Area Size in Acts is sometimes questionable. In act one it's basically fine. It makes no logical sense for Manor Ramparts and Oghman Manor to be magnitudes larger than the Village surrounding it, but sure it's a game. On the Map in U they look way smaller than they actually are.

In Act 2 it gets weird. Many areas in the Act are separated into two areas. I just name them first. Mastodon Badlands and Bone Pits, Dreadnought and Dreadnought Vanguard, Path of Mourning and Spires of Deshar. They could be combined into one Area. Mastodon Badlands and Bone Pits are very similar in nature and Mastodon Badlands has nothing of value except the entrance to the lightless passage. Same for Path of Mourning and Spires of Deshar. And Dreadnought and Dreadnought Vanguard are also 2 areas that can be combined. In all those cases you can at the same time shrink them as a result of combining them. Making the act smaller and faster to complete.

In Act 3 we can't really combine any areas. The changes that were made are already good and help make the Act faster. One suggestion tho. is about Venom Crypt. It's an Area that is just search and search and search. Finding the Poison is pure luck you can spend ages in the Venom Crypt.

Act 4 is the big Oof for me. You can skip many parts of the actual act. 2 Islands can be ignored Plunder and Kedge bay. But even if we don't do those two islands the act still takes really long. We basically have to ignore every optional boss and poi to make the length of the Act reasonable. I remind you the campaign is mostly done multiple times per league and at league start every time and it stays then same every time.
One area particularly annoys me. Ngakanu and Heart of the Tribe. First, why are there two areas that makes no sense. Second, why is Heart of the Tribe a massive area. That's not what Heart of the tribe means to me. It sounds very similar to Keth Sanctum. Which is basically only a boss room. Heart of the Tribe should only be a Boss room imo.
Furthermore other areas can be shrunken down. Whakapanu, Excavation, Isle of Kin. It's just too much in Act 4.

I won't talk much about Interludes here. But Interlude 3 is way too long.


Abyss in the campaign
The Abyss in the Campaign is more or less a nuisance. Yes if you do them they occasionally give good currency rewards, but outside currency i didnt see myself use anything else abyss gave me. My goal was to get through the Campaign as fast as possible to see act 4 and interludes and later Endgame. So I mostly skipped the abysses as much as possible. I just ran past them. Better rewards and more gold would be necessary for me to do them. Otherwise Abyss is just a time waste and makes the Campaign unnecessarily longer.


How Campaign is supposed to be played and how people play it
There seems to be a discrepancy between how players are supposed to paly the Campaign and how tehy actually play it. Well how most play it.

It seems the Campaign is supposed to be played with crafting in mind and discovering most of the areas. Some Abyss items have a level of 64 so they are supposed to be used in the Campaign for crafting.
Then you have Lesser, Normal and greater runes. Good addition to be honest, but they should also drop more in the campaign you go through equipment way faster in the Campaign than you do in the endgame. That means you need more runes to drop. They are almost useless later anyway, no issue arises if you increase the droprate of lesser and normal runes (can be done through points of interest as mentioned before). You can combine runes later, so 3 lesser to 1 normal and 3 normal to one greater. So lesser should drop way more often than runes did in 0.1 and 0.2, around 9 times as much and normal runes around 3 times as much.
Currency and Gold is also necessary to craft, but especially gold is surprisingly rare in the Campaign. While buying Equipment form the NPC is hilariously expensive. And currency is also pretty rare so its hard to craft when you dont have the necessary items for that. Looting and then disenchanting is not sth. you should do, it makes you so much slower its not worth it. Unless you can disenchant on the go.
A solution for the Gold problem is to simply add more gold to optional bosses and to points of interest. Also add more gold if you complete quests. Adding more optional quests would also be an option.
In Act 2 make the Statues you can sell to Oswald way more expensive. Right now they are 100% not worth to take with you.


People rush through the Campaign, to get to the maps fast. If you play Softcore. Hardcore is sth else. The goal should be to make crafting good so its worth doing it in the Campaign. Because you would be able to do the campaign faster if you craft. Thats at least my take on it.




Endgame
Waystone Modifiers

The Waystone modifier Changes in 0.3 created many issues. Now Waystones will basically always have modifiers that reall hurt. Some Builds more some Builds less. Before you had some bad Modifiers, but never this much. The issue is the amount of modifiers that you get when you fully exalt a map. Well some modifiers got weaker, others not, but even if they are weaker they still hurt a lot. Having more Bad modifiers even if they are weaker makes you die more. And some of the unchanged modifiers are extremely bad. Extra Projectiles for examples hurts. I dont like it. The old feels simply better. The issue you try to fix with this, that you dont even fix with this is Quantity and Rarity. On to that topic then.


Rarity
Rarity persists to be an issue. Some Build can build rarity easier than others. Making those Builds simply superior in the Endgame.

Then we have the Gravebind Situation. Gravebind is the most broken item in the whole game. There are 2 things that gravebind makes extremely broken. Rarity Aurabot is a really broken mechanic. It allows one person to fully focus on damage and the other fully on rarity.
The other issue is Palm of the Dreamer. As far as i understand it, it activates when you slay enemies, but in combination with Gravebind enemies count as if you slayed them. So it activates the Gleaming Gloom Effect. Both of this is straight up broken and OP. U fixed jack shit with the change on Waystones. Only getting 3 Modifiers on Waystones is also not really an option, you would lose so much pack, size rarity and quantity etc.


Infinite Atlas
For me the infinite Atlas aint it. Its the wrong form of infinite for me. An infinitely spanning Atlas is unwieldy, yes you can set bookmarks, but after hundreds of maps how many bookmarks do you want to set up? To actually find stuff on your Atlas.

Furthermore infinitely going into any direction doesnt really give you the feeling of progression. You are not completing anything, you are just going from map to map.

My Idea is as followed. You create the endgame like a Journey. Your first job in the Endgame is to clear the island you are on. From Corruption. After you have done that you get your base. From that base you can progress further to other islands. At the shore of the first island you have a harbor node. From that Harbor you travel to more islands. Those Islands can be differently modified similar to the Towers just on a larger scale. If you want to dedicate one island to Breaches for example. You get an item you drop from a specific boss. Put it in at a harbor, other islands have harbors too, and then you have an island with alot of breaches.

By zooming out of an Island you get an overview of all the islands you created, you can remove islands, you can name them etc.

Finishing an island which means clearing every ndoe gives bonus rewards. So that way you have a sense of progression and it fixes the infinite spanning across the atlas.

Thats just a rough explanation. But its more of a No Mans Sky kind of infinite not Minecraft infinite.


Towers
Honestly i dont have an issue with towers. I know many people dont like it that you have to path to them which loses potential juiced maps. I think Towers should never overlap so people dont go and hunt for these specific overlaps.


Abyss in the Endgame
Performance
The Abyss in the Endgame is honestly a bit of an issue for me. First of all it lags, Abyss lags a lot. No idea why but every time you kill abyss monsters in a map it causes extreme framedrops.


Power of the Abyss rares
Abyss rares are honestly just overpowered monsters. Map bosses hold no candle to them. Even Pinnacles are sometimes easier to beat than those rares. Those Rares are in a bulk of other enemies. They can have insanely strong modifiers and literally teleport to you. Their Abyss Modifiers are strong. And overall they have insane stats. It feels like they often just ignore Evasion.
Also they often appear in larger numbers. Which just sucks, because they are already strong on their own. One time i had 7 Abyss rares fighting me.


Ground Effects
I already wrote numerous feedbacks about this, but Ground Effects are just not fun to have. There are 2-3 Types of ground effects. The ones created by the map, then the ones created by monsters and the ones created by death effect.

The map created ones got a lot worse because its way harder now to avoid those modifiers on Waystones. Im fine with non damaging ground effects there, but for me burning ground is just bad. I can generate Energy Shield if i walk into burning ground. Burning also prevents my ES recharge. So i have significantly less eHP because of burning ground.

The Ground effects created by Monsters are mostly fine. Abyss Ground effects got already nerfed which is good.

Ground Effects on mob death are a massive issue for me. First they have a lot of damage and they hurt Melee way more than range. Thats just really bad, dont you want more people to play melee? If yes, then remove this. It becomes more of an issue even, because of visual clarity, more about that later.


Visual Clarity
That is just on hell of an issue. Often you literally cant see whats happening, because there are so many effects going on. The issue here isnt that there are so many effects. The issue is that you cant see whats on the ground. You cant see Ground effects, you cant see attacks by mobs that go through the ground. In the mansion there is an enemy that sends tendrils through the ground that explode under you. Because of the effects you cant see this attack even.

Then Maps, some areas/maps have less visual clarity. You have a lot of obstacles in your vision that sometimes even hide enemies and it can definitely hide effects and attacks.

Edit 1 (14.09.25 (EU Format) 11:44)I: One reason mroe that the Campaign is lacking is the issue of Build experimentation. Same as with Gold you dont get enough Uncut Spoirit Gems for experimentation. Uncut Skill Gems do drop, but is also lacking abit.

Edit 2 Changed the title. It doesnt reflect the text

I have nothing to add.
+1

The issue with the waystone modifiers is, GGG were specifically listening to people who
- are PoE1 players
- skip the whole mapping and gearing process (where those modifiers really hurt) by simply buying BiS stuff from trade and jumping to pinnacles, so they have no idea what they are talking about

"

Fae_Lyth#6750 a écrit :

I have nothing to add.
+1

The issue with the waystone modifiers is, GGG were specifically listening to people who
- are PoE1 players
- skip the whole mapping and gearing process (where those modifiers really hurt) by simply buying BiS stuff from trade and jumping to pinnacles, so they have no idea what they are talking about

Wait we agree with sth thats crazy

One thing you didn't do correctly is rushing through act 1-2-3 because you wanted to see Act4 and interlude and then saying campaign is too long, I mean ofc you do...you had no interest in doing Act 1-2-3.

"

Warrax#2850 a écrit :

One thing you didn't do correctly is rushing through act 1-2-3 because you wanted to see Act4 and interlude and then saying campaign is too long, I mean ofc you do...you had no interest in doing Act 1-2-3.

Of course i didnt why the fuck would i??

I literally seen act 1-3 15 times

"

Alzucard#2422 a écrit :

"

Warrax#2850 a écrit :

One thing you didn't do correctly is rushing through act 1-2-3 because you wanted to see Act4 and interlude and then saying campaign is too long, I mean ofc you do...you had no interest in doing Act 1-2-3.

Of course i didnt why the fuck would i??

I literally seen act 1-3 15 times

And how many times have you seen each type of a map?

"

Sakanabi#6664 a écrit :

And how many times have you seen each type of a map?

The difference between Endgame and Campaign is that in the Endgame i have more variety of things to do. I can run 10 maps, do pinnacles, theorycraft (thats basically not possible in Campaign, you dont have the gold or the gems for that), you trade, you can craft, sekhema, chaos trials, Atlas progress towards unique maps. Also there are way more Maps than there are Campaign areas. And you finsih maps way way faster than you finish a campaign map.

In the Campaign you have way less variety. You also cant decide what to do now. Its the same thing all the time. Go there kill that, find this and all of that on repeat without anything different for 15 hours straight. The only thing you do is go back buy sth. if you have enough gold. And then you are out of gold.

You cant just leave Campaign and do some crafting. Or trading (there isnt much to trade with) and u can start trading in act 4 basically.

Im only talking about league start here.

I wanted to add several things here.

Waystones
I now palyed more and more Waystones and it simply doesnt get better. I cant properly Juice up Maps. Several Modifiers are simply too problematic for me. And now a juiced map has double the bad modifiers as before so its also a higher chance for those Modifiers to be on a waystone.

Then we have Unstable Energy in the Atlas Tree. It eitehr benefits you a lot or outright kills you. The benefits dont outweigh the risk.
Then we have Ecological Shift. It reduces Pack Numbers by 20%. That is insane. For the benefit it gives. Its simply bad.

Tier 16. The chance to get tier 16 seems to be really low now.

gravebinds don't even work at all in 0.3

and it's not OP, it requires a whole other human to enable the build.
reward team synergies don't punish it.

Actually a baffling statement.

- Campaign: In 0.1.0, we had to redo the freaking campaign, man! Even if you hated the whole of the filler maps, it's still better than having to redo act1,2 and 3 but with worse pacing. And I am going to go around and say it: Act 4 slaps. It's really cool, the story is much better than "whoah we are in the past now!", there are actually interesting bosses like that templar boss.

- "Points of interest aren't interesting", maybe, but they are not any worse than in 0.1.0

- "Act 4 takes too long" maybe, but compared to 0.1.0, where you had to redo 3 whole acts. It's much better.

- Abyss: Okay, this is probably something that I wouldn't miss if I went back to 0.1.0. On the other hand, it does add a lot of crafting options, and lack of real crafting was a huge problem in 0.1.0

- Ground Effects/Clarity : I would say this is not different from 0.1.0, definitely something that needs fixing though.