Problems that GGG needs to improve in Path of Exile 2

Since the release of the game, I’ve created all the classes, experimented with countless builds, and developed several of my own creative ideas. Along the way, I’ve identified some significant issues in Path of Exile 2. Below, I’ll outline these problems:

1. Mana Costs
The current mana cost system is extremely punishing and toxic to gameplay, especially for attack-based skills.
For example, the Monk ascendancy has a dead node (Elemental Expression) because the mana cost is so high that it’s nearly impossible to use effectively in a viable build. The passive skill tree only offers a 26% mana cost reduction, and while the Inspiration support gem adds a further 40% reduction, this still doesn’t solve the problem.
On top of this, the Inspiration gem has essentially become mandatory in most builds to make gameplay more manageable, taking up a critical sixth gem slot.
Examples of problematic skills include: Totem, Lightning Arrow, Ice Strike, and Stormwave.

2. Leech Mechanics Are Dead
Leech mechanics are fundamentally broken. Even with high leech values on gear (9–10%), the mechanic is nearly useless. Investing skill points into leech still doesn’t make it viable.
The main problem is that leech heavily depends on physical damage, yet most skills in the game convert a large portion of their damage to elemental. This makes the mechanic ineffective and outdated for the majority of builds.

3. Most Skills Are Useless
I understand that Path of Exile 2 was designed to have a slower, more deliberate pace, with certain skills focusing on utility. However, this approach has backfired badly. Many skills are so poorly designed or scaled that they’re effectively unplayable unless you’re a masochist trying to force a meme build.
Examples of useless skills include: Gathering Strike, Cold Snap, Unearth, and most of the crossbow-related skills.
Some may argue: “But someone managed to make a build with those skills!” Sure, but why would anyone invest a massive amount of resources (e.g., 1 million divines) into a build when there are plenty of other builds that perform far better with far less investment? It simply doesn’t make sense.

4. Witchhunter
The Witchhunter ascendancy is conceptually fantastic, but its design feels flawed. It seems like GGG slapped a crossbow into the ascendancy’s design purely to market the weapon.
When you look closely at Witchhunter’s ascendancy skills, they seem better suited for a playstyle focused on more frequent, consistent attacks—something that crossbows inherently lack. Perhaps with the introduction of new melee weapons (e.g., swords), this ascendancy could become more viable and engaging.
As it stands, any build using a crossbow with Witchhunter will always be inferior to the same build played with a Deadeye, which offers 100% better performance in every way.

5. Crossbows
Crossbows suffer from a significant design issue: their gameplay revolves around scaling two types of speed—attack speed and reload speed—for a “smooth” experience.
This clunky design forces you to deal with downtime due to the weapon’s inherent reload mechanic, which feels like a pseudo-cooldown that disrupts the flow of combat.
Unless GGG buffs crossbow damage to compensate for these drawbacks, most crossbow skills will remain underwhelming and relegated to gimmicks rather than viable gameplay options.

6. Life vs. Energy Shield
GGG’s decision to remove increased life nodes from the passive skill tree was a great idea in theory. However, the tree now contains several extremely powerful Energy Shield nodes, making it much easier to reach 15–16k Energy Shield with minimal effort.
This imbalance gives players little incentive to build around life-based defenses. Adding to the problem, leech mechanics (as described in point 2) are terrible, making Energy Shield-based builds even more attractive and efficient by comparison.

7° Some issues make builds practically unviable and provide zero incentive to use them.
I didn’t want to bring up this point to avoid unnecessary rage, but there are certain factors that have caused build creation in the game to follow a single direction—some due to development oversights and others, I believe, due to rushed development.
For example, the Hands of Wisdom gloves in PoE 1 are classified as a weapon. GGG had the "brilliant" idea of turning this item into a "glove" in PoE 2. The result? It makes the vast majority of attack-based builds, even those that don’t stack attributes, rely on it. You’d only avoid using it if you’re being stubborn or your build absolutely requires a specific glove (e.g., if your character has 100 Intelligence and 100 Dexterity, that's enough for these gloves to outperform most others in the game. After all, they grant 12% attack speed and 10-100 Lightning Damage).
The Eldritch Battery keystone has a description that says: "CONVERTS ALL ENERGY SHIELD." When you equip and unequip it, you realize it’s talking about FLAT values, not percentages—this in itself isn’t the problem. After all, you’re sacrificing a defensive mechanic for a different playstyle. However, the amulet The Everlasting Gaze completely ignores the description of Eldritch Battery and allows characters to gain absurd amounts of Energy Shield. This leads to ridiculous builds with 10k Mana, 10k ES combined with Mind Over Matter (essentially making them immortal).
Another example is the Archmage Spirit gem. The existence of this gem, along with its drawback, is so poorly balanced that it makes all spell-based builds in the game simply say, “Screw it, I’ll use it.” After all, with just 1000 Mana, you gain about 100% EXTRA damage. The main issue here is that the only reason to use Archmage is that the majority of spells in the game have mediocre damage and are horrible to play with (with a few exceptions like Spark and Conduit).

8 Trigger's

GGG is struggling with meta gems, and I’m not sure if they’re tweaking their functionality because the game is having trouble keeping the servers stable (causing crashes). But if they’re trying to balance abilities, they’re heading in the wrong direction. Let’s look at a simple example: "THE PROBLEM WITH TRIGGERS IS COMET."
It’s impressive how the VAST MAJORITY of trigger builds rely on the Comet ability. And do you know why? The ability’s damage is grotesque, and you don’t need much to hit numbers like 100–150K tooltip damage. And we all know that the tooltip is terrible and always underestimates the real damage of abilities.
“Oh, but Conduit...” It has the exact same problem as Comet.
“Oh, but Spark...” It also has the exact same problem as Comet.
These abilities scale absurdly well with little effort.
So I don’t believe they should nerf the number of triggers or the amount of energy gain. Instead, they need to BALANCE the abilities to create more build variety, avoiding a scenario where everyone gravitates toward Comet or Spark trigger builds.


I won’t argue with anyone in this post, and I won’t reply because I’m not here to create a debate but rather to share my perception after playing an absurd amount of hours in the game (over 500 hours).

I respect everyone’s opinion, but this is my personal view of the game at its current state.

I also apologize for my poor English—it’s not my native language.