The patch notes for the new League Expedition are causing controversy because the developers are really nerfing everything. The PoE creator has now justified this decision.
On 23 July 2021, Path of Exile: Expedition, the latest league for the action role-playing game. However, the huge update 3.15 not only contains cool new mechanics, but also the huge balance patch – which is now causing a lot of discontent in the community. Many even suspect that you could be facing the worst league of all time.
Shitstorm because of massive nerfs
What’s it about? With the announcement of the new PoE: Expedition expansion, Grinding Gear Games boss Chris Wilson has hinted that you’re in for a completely new meta-game. All builds and characters are set to be around 20 per cent weaker to counteract so-called power creep.
What wasn’t clear at the time was that the developers aren’t just reducing your damage, but are also changing the mana costs and functionality of skill and support gems. The associated nerfs are clearly too high for many players, so that they now assume that the fun factor in Expedition will fall by the wayside.
Some of the biggest points of criticism that are currently being mentioned again and again:
– Due to massively increased mana multipliers, many players fear that micromanagement will now be required when it comes to mana budgeting.
– According to first calculations from the community, the damage reduction could be significantly higher than the targeted 20 percent. Depending on the gem composition, 60 to 80 percent of damage can be lost in six-link setups.
– Many chase items – valuable items worth working towards – become significantly less interesting or completely devalued by the adjustments, such as the Awakened Hextouch Support Gem. Thus a great motivating factor is lost.
– Monsters in the campaign, which many players consider just a chore before the real game, get up to 46 percent more health. Combined with the other nerfs, this further drags out the unloved storyline.
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PoE creator responds to criticism
It’s nothing new that the Path of Exile community likes to criticise a lot – after all, there are many fans here who haven’t played anything else for years and already have the game down to a science. However, this time the negative reaction is so harsh that PoE finder Chris Wilson has now had to speak out himself with a extensive post on Reddit.
This is how the developer justifies the changes: According to Wilson, power creep – the fact that characters become more powerful and old content easier with each major patch – has reached a critical point. With regard to Path of Exile 2, the balance adjustments were also absolutely necessary sooner or later, he said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve reached a limit with power creep recently and really need to address that. Meanwhile, a lot of the community is increasingly unhappy with the direction the game is going. We honestly feel that’s partly because we’ve moved further and further away from our own vision over time.
So you’re dissatisfied and we’re dissatisfied and that means it’s really time that we started to put things right. The changes we are making in Expedition are carefully thought out and sound scary, but probably have less overall impact on the way you will play the game than you suspect. These changes really open up possibilities for the future and put us in a good position to work towards the release of Path of Exile 2.
When writing to the community, I usually try to avoid saying what’s fun and what’s not (as that’s pretty subjective), but we’re very confident that the new Path of Exile will be more fun. There’s a wealth of powerful new builds out there to explore and we honestly can’t wait to see what you come up with.”
Even though the developer response seems to have appeased the community somewhat, there is still plenty to criticise. According to the players, the developers have only fixed the things they themselves are unhappy with in the upcoming update – not player criticisms such as one-shots, lengthy Atlas progression and item inflation. If GGG had also attacked one or more of these points, the patch would certainly have been better received in the first place.
