New Path of Exile 2 patch notes nerf the ARPG's game-breaking temples, but GGG might have gone too far

New Path of Exile 2 patch notes have just dropped from developer Grinding Gear Games attempting to tackle the most overpowered Vaal Temple layouts in its new season. PoE 2 0.4.0c hotfix 13 targets the ability to construct incredibly high-value dungeons inside the latest league mechanic, which were largely caused by carefully exploiting stacking bonuses from room modifiers. However, with a change to the way certain room types work, and a new limitation on locking anything below tier three, GGG's new update might actually worsen the divide between the richest and poorest PoE 2 players.

New Path of Exile 2 update The Last of the Druids has been a real winner for me, and it's largely thanks to just how satisfying the RPG's latest class is. Running about as a bear, werewolf, or wyvern feels weighty and impactful in just the right way. It's the most I've been invested in a PoE 2 character since the launch hype died down. I'm also a fan of the new league mechanic, which works like an evolution of the first Path of Exile's Incursion, allowing you to manually build a Vaal Temple layout that you can then farm for gear and currency. However, GGG has struggled to get the balance right, and its latest attempt takes another swing to fix things.

The new PoE 2 patch adds diminishing returns to the modifier values applied by rooms, which begin kicking in once you have four or more of a specific type. This will apply to lower-tier rooms first, meaning you should still get the most benefit from your strongest ones. Grinding Gear Games cites this as a response to "drastic server performance problems," but it'll also bring down some of the most carefully curated top-end temple layouts from stacking bonuses to bring in potentially hundreds of Divine Orbs in value per run.

Adding to this is that the rooms affected by the Golem Works and Spymaster have been swapped "to promote different varieties of temple setups." GGG notes that the recurring interactions between the Spymaster and Legion Barracks "was resulting in very repetitive temple layouts." In particular, this was popularized by PoE 2 streamer 'Milkybk_' with a strategy called the 'Spymaster Snake' where you would gradually construct one extremely long chain to prevent the rooms you want most from being randomly destroyed by the destabilization mechanic.

The patch has already seen an impact - early testing shows that runs that were previously generating hundreds of Divine Orbs are now ending up somewhere around 20 per attempt. That's a big drop, but it still puts those who have already perfected their layouts in a position to keep farming at a rate most players can't match. If you were still building your perfect temple, however, the flipped bonuses might mean you find yourself in a particularly rough spot - a problem further exacerbated by GGG's third change.

That third adjustment is that you can now only use the Juatalotli's Medallion on tier-three rooms to lock them in place and ensure they don't get broken. This change in particular is the one players have most immediately responded to, taking to the official forum and PoE 2 Reddit page alike to call on GGG to reverse it. Again, it causes a serious problem for players who are still trying to build temples, while not really having an effect on anyone who's already got a good layout set up, causing an imbalance in the playing field.

While GGG could enforce a layout reset on everyone, I don't think this is a good solution either. Many players have spent a lot of hours and dozens of carefully considered runs honing their designs to a perfect sheen, and punishing them simply for playing well feels unfair even if they've put themselves ahead of the pack. Instead, reverting the lock restriction would give everyone else more potential to catch back up to the new, lower limit and enjoy all the benefits.

Path of Exile 2 patch 0.3.0c hotfix 13 is live now. After the initially lukewarm response to the endgame Vaal Temple at launch, which quickly turned around after GGG's initial round of buffs, it'd be a shame for people to fall off it because of this small change. The work to curb top-end currency drops and subsequent inflation within the seasonal economy has been done, and that's great news, but the everyman shouldn't be punished in kind for it. Fortunately, Grinding Gear is typically quite responsive to feedback, so hopefully we'll see this lock limit lifted soon enough.