Developer Grinding Gear Games was able to stabilize the servers for Path of Exile 2's early access release but the studio is not done putting out updates.
The latest patch comes to nerf a variety of seemingly overpowered skills in the game following its somewhat troubled launch. Players found that a lot of skills have made others feel redundant, which restricted meta builds.
Path of Exile 2 Update
The developer's skill nerfs will not be the last for Path of Exile 2 throughout the game's early access duration. This means that players should expect to somewhat change their builds and playstyle to match the adjustments to skills.
In a social media post, Grinding Gear Games said that they discovered some skills with unacceptable balance. The example given was Supercharged Slam which apparently dealt too much damage, much more than intended.
This was even more concerning due to the skill's relatively short channel window in reaching maximum stages. The studio then continued to say that it would be reducing the skill's damage to put it in line with others, according to PCGamesN.
The developer added that this would not be the last skill nerf for Path of Exile 2 as the studio also plans to address other high-priority issues in the game. Grinding Gear Games noted that it was trying not to nerf skills and builds across the game.
But it added that it was important to make sure that a wide variety of skills feel viable to play and are fun to use for players. The fact that Supercharged Slam was dealing too much damage meant that other skills and builds paled in comparison, particularly in usefulness.
Popular Despite Troubled Launch
Even with the server issues that Path of Exile 2 experienced at launch, it has still become one of the 20 most-played games in Steam's history.
It peaked at nearly 500,000 concurrent players, which is more than double that of its predecessor's record of 230,000, PCGamer said.
The original Path of Exile was released in 2013 and has since become a fan favorite of the community. This helped the sequel have a favored early access period, causing it to reach more than 1 million sales ahead of launch.
The surge of players when servers were opened also caused the crash that forced Grinding Gear Games to take them down to address the issue.
The studio decided to roll out a last-minute database upgrade in order to handle the massive player count, according to Windows Central.
