Path of Exile 2 Is Buffing the Sorceress and Other Classes

Summary

Path of Exile 2 update brings buffs to classes like Sorceress for player balance.
Sorceress changes include increased spell power and Frostbolt explosion radius.
Other improvements include crafting adjustments, endgame rare visibility, and monster speed tweaks.

The developer behind Path of Exile 2 has confirmed a host of sweeping buffs for several of the game’s classes, including the Sorceress, in the upcoming update. The action RPG by Grinding Gear Games was released late last year and quickly built up a dedicated following. For many fans, its deep character customization, loot-driven progression, and dark, gritty setting position Path of Exile 2 as the spiritual successor to the Diablo series. The game offers plenty of classes for players to customize their builds, and now it seems many of them will be getting buffs.

Path of Exile 2 is the follow-up to the original game that launched in 2013. The sequel brought in a host of new features, including a bevy of new Ascendancy classes and a complete gem system overhaul. Post-launch, Path of Exile 2 became hugely popular on Steam, cruising past half a million players on its second day and placing it in the rarefied air of popular titles like Apex Legends. The new round of buffs aims to balance gameplay and improve the experience for its active player base.

path of exile 2 dawn of the hunt league art.

Path of Exile 2 Responds to Dawn of the Hunt Criticism

Grinding Gear Games releases an official statement following the backlash regarding Path of Exile 2’s latest update, Dawn of the Hunt.

As recently revealed on the official Path of Exile website, the game will receive a suite of upcoming changes set to come into effect in the coming days, which are focused primarily on achieving better player balance through buffs. The classes receiving buffs include the Sorceress, Huntress, Warrior, and Ranger. The update will also introduce a new support gem and make several adjustments to crafting. Additionally, it aims to reduce the speed of swarming monsters, which many players have cited as too difficult, along with plenty of other improvements.

Many of the class buffs are targeted at the Sorceress, one of the Intelligence-focused classes in the game. For many players, the Sorceress is one of the more popular classes, with the planned buffs aiming to boost her power to improve overall balance. Sorceress builds in Path of Exile 2 can be super effective, and when done right, they can deal massive amounts of damage while maintaining a high degree of survivability. One of the many upcoming buffs includes doubling the explosion radius of the Frostbolt projectile spell.

Path of Exile 2 has a solid roster of classes for players to choose from, each with different stats, abilities, and Ascendency classes. The upcoming update will also seek to readdress the power of the Warrior, Huntress, and Ranger classes with a range of buffs, such as increasing Ranger Lightning Rod damage by 30% and making the Warrior Shield Wall detonatable with Warcries.

The recent Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt update introduced a massive number of nerfs, which many players felt made the game feel slower and less balanced. On the official site, the developer addressed these concerns, stating that it had listened to player feedback regarding the nerfs and that the upcoming buffs are being deployed in part to help rebalance the game in response to player complaints.

Path of Exile 2 Upcoming Class Buffs and Other Improvements

Sorceress Specific Changes

Arc now does a lightning explosion when it hits a shocked enemy but can no longer shock. It does not consume the shock.
Eye of Winter now gains bonus elemental damage when passing through other elemental orbs like Solar Orb, Orb of Storms or Frost Bomb.
Incinerate’s exposure duration has been increased to 8 seconds from 2 seconds.
Mana Tempest can now be used with all spells, and has been changed to cause empowered spells to split to additional targets instead of chaining or forking.
Frostbolt explosion radius has been increased by 50%.
Ice Nova’s freeze buildup has been increased significantly.
Frost Bomb exposure duration has been increased to 8 seconds from 5 seconds.
Mana remnants has been changed to work with other elemental ailments than just shock.
We are lowering the delay for Ignites spreading from sources such as the Wildfire support to 1 second from 2 seconds, but the radius has been decreased slightly.

Bleed/Chaos Innoculation

Energy Shield no longer prevents bleeding from being applied.
Chaos Innoculation now prevents bleeding.
The passive clusters that grant you additional stun threshold based on your maximum energy shield now also increase your ailment threshold so you will no longer be ignited/chilled/frozen/shocked as often while using CI if you take these passives.

Huntress Specific Changes

Parried enemies can no longer evade your attacks.
The spear stuck in enemies by Rapid Assault now always bleeds on hit when you detonate it, the AoE has been increased by 20% and the detonate does 67% more damage.
Spearfield’s spear duration has been increased to 10 seconds from 6 and had it’s damage growth increased, dealing 30% more damage by level 20.
Herald of Blood no longer deletes the corpses of Rares or Uniques, allowing you to use Ritual Sacrifice on the rares.

Warrior Specific Changes

Temper Weapon on Smith of Kitava now adds 3 empowerments per strike of your weapon, and is 25% faster. The damage might need to come down a little.
Shield Wall is now detonatable with Warcries.
Armour break being applied to players by monsters no longer has the 20% extra physical damage modifier that was intended to only be a buff to players, and we have also reduced its duration to 4 seconds from 12. In addition, there was a bug where partial armour breaks were never removed on the player.

Ranger Specific Changes

Stormcaller arrow now proliferates shocks to nearby enemies in a small radius and has had its AoE radius increased by 50%.
Lightning Rod damage has been increased by 30%, and their duration has been increased to 20 seconds.
Lightning Arrow has had the radius at which it arcs to targets increased by 50%.
Tornado Shots maximum duration has been increased to 15 seconds

New Support Gem

New support gem called Inhibitor that prevents charges being consumed but increases the damage of the supported skill by 4% for each type of charge you have.

Delirium Changes

Delirium encounters now last approximately 2.5x longer.

Crafting

Added several Artificers Orbs to fixed locations throughout the campaign allowing you to craft with them more often.
Added runes for attributes allowing you to fix early game requirement issues.
Updating all runes to also apply to Wands and Staves. This work will require adding specific mods for these items. We are unsure if Soul Cores and Talismans will be able to be added at the same time, but it is our intention to attempt to make this change.

Finding Rares in Endgame

During endgame a common issue is missing a Rare in the corner of the map that you didn’t happen to explore. In order to mitigate this issue, we have changed rares to show up on the minimap at all times.

Matlan Waterways

We have made a change to Matlan Waterways to merge some sections of water together, reducing the average number of levers that you will encounter while playing it by 6 levers.

Monster Speed

One of the issues that is often reported is getting swarmed by monsters. We are currently doing a pass to investigate this issue and can probably talk about specific changes tomorrow, but the changes are likely to be targeted at specific monsters that are too difficult, especially in zones that have a lot of fast monsters.