My current thoughts of PoE2 End Game 0.2F

1. The most prominent issue is the underwhelming reward structure. After investing time and resources to push into endgame maps or bosses, players often receive little of value — both in quantity and quality. Drops feel disproportionately scarce compared to the difficulty and time investment required, making it feel like progress stalls unless players lean on trading or niche farming strategies. There are simply too many low level bloat items or items with affixes that shouldn't spawn with such low tiers at end game. Introduce more deterministic or semi-deterministic loot systems that reward effort, such as targeted farming for specific uniques or crafting bases that actually has a way to guarantee to get what you want with realistic odds.

2. Overtuned Monsters: The Vaal Factory Problem

Certain endgame maps introduce absurdly overtuned white monsters, and Vaal Factory is one of the most egregious examples. Certain white enemies in late maps scale in a way that punishes off-meta or experimental builds. Inflated damage spikes lead to a binary experience: either a build steamrolls content or it gets utterly stonewalled. This hurts the game’s build diversity — one of PoE’s traditional strengths. There is a serious issue with how the game handles defenses.

3. Elemental Resistances: Capped but Still Screwed

While hitting 75% elemental resistance used to feel like a milestone of basic survivability in PoE1, in PoE2 it feels more like a minimum tax you pay just to die randomly by a one shot damage spike because some enemies are either overtuned and deal elemental damage well beyond mitigation expectations.

4. Mana Shield: The Only Working Defense Layer

Currently, Mana Shield builds stand far above the rest because.
Mana Shield is often paired with auto-regen and other defenses, creating a layered defense that actually functions and it is hilariously easy to scale unlike life-based builds.

Bosses and map mobs are clearly tuned with this in mind — because life-based or evasion-based builds die too quickly, even at comparable gear levels, just simply because having 2,000 or less life is not enough to tank a random damage spike that goes over your armor and resists, while running a mana-shield build you can effectively double or triple your tank. Why can't there be max life nodes on the passive tree, especially for squishy classes like the mercenary that is relatively badly positioned to get some mana-shield nodes.

+1

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katsukai#1184 написал:

There are simply too many low level bloat items or items with affixes that shouldn't spawn with such low tiers at end game. Introduce more deterministic or semi-deterministic loot systems that reward effort, such as targeted farming for specific uniques or crafting bases that actually has a way to guarantee to get what you want with realistic odds

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It's ironic how at the endgame you feel like are gaining lower resources than at the start of the game.

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3. Elemental Resistances: Capped but Still Screwed

While hitting 75% elemental resistance used to feel like a milestone of basic survivability in PoE1, in PoE2 it feels more like a minimum tax you pay just to die randomly by a one shot damage spike because some enemies are either overtuned and deal elemental damage well beyond mitigation expectations.

Absolutely agree here. The game should be balanced around 25-50% res, and capping res to be a difficult but rewarding milestone. Also, the chaos damage is far overtuned and difficult too cap.