Path of Exile 2: The Campaign’s Balancing Struggles and Bright Spots

With Path of Exile 2 now entering its broader testing phases, players are beginning to see the shape of Grinding Gear Games’ next evolution of the ARPG formula. While the game builds on the legacy of the original Path of Exile, it’s also clear that the campaign experience has significant balance issues — particularly when comparing caster builds to attack-based builds. Early impressions from the community paint a picture of a campaign that feels punishingly uneven, with some archetypes trivializing the content and others feeling almost unusable until deep into the endgame.

Despite this, POE2 Currency introduces promising systems like Infusions and the Abyss League mechanic, which showcase glimpses of what makes this sequel exciting. But as it stands, the early-to-midgame experience remains one of stark imbalance and frustration for certain playstyles.

Let’s break down the current state of PoE2’s campaign — the good, the bad, and the potentially fixable.

The Caster Problem: When Power Feels Missing

One of the most glaring issues in Path of Exile 2’s campaign lies in how weak elemental caster builds feel compared to weapon-based ones. Players experimenting with early-game spell archetypes — such as Fireball, Ice Nova, or Lightning Bolt — are quickly discovering that the damage output is drastically lower than that of builds centered around abilities like Lightning Rod.

To put this imbalance into perspective, the difference isn’t marginal. Lightning Rod users are reportedly dealing tens of thousands of damage per hit, sometimes one-shotting bosses, while early casters are scraping by with numbers that feel nearly 25 times weaker. This creates a lopsided experience where one player blazes through the campaign while another is stuck chipping away at monsters that take forever to die.

It’s not that casters can’t eventually become strong — they can. As with many systems in PoE, once gear, skill levels, and key passive nodes start stacking up, late-game scaling can make casters devastating. But the campaign phase, where players spend their first several hours learning systems and experimenting with builds, feels punishingly uneven.

The core of this issue stems from how PoE2 handles skill gem scaling and mana costs. In the current system, caster skills gain most of their power from +levels on gear, meaning your damage hinges heavily on finding (or crafting) specific items with those modifiers. However, stacking skill levels also dramatically increases mana costs. Players end up in an awkward balancing act: to deal decent damage, they must invest heavily in +levels, but doing so makes their mana pool unsustainable.

The result? A frustrating gameplay loop where you’re forced to sink passive points into mana sustain instead of damage nodes, only to end up with a build that doesn’t feel much stronger anyway.

Attack Builds: The Early Powerhouses

In contrast, attack-based builds — particularly those focused on melee or ranged weapon scaling — enjoy a far smoother campaign experience. The reason lies in itemization. Attack builds benefit from flat damage bonuses on early gear like rings, gloves, and weapons, all of which significantly boost their damage without the resource constraints that plague casters.

Flat damage modifiers in PoE2 are not only more common but also more impactful during the leveling process. A new sword, bow, or mace with even modest upgrades can double your effective DPS in the early acts. Combined with better sustain and access to attack-speed scaling, this creates a power curve that feels satisfying and consistent.

However, this design also introduces a new kind of frustration, especially for players in Solo Self-Found (SSF) mode. Weapon-based builds rely almost entirely on the quality of their weapons, meaning you’ll need to replace them every 5–10 levels to keep up with scaling enemies. Finding “the next best weapon” becomes a mini-game of its own — one that can feel impossible without lucky drops or strong crafting RNG.

Even worse, the Rune system — a new mechanic tied to socketing and weapon customization — exacerbates the issue. Rune drops currently feel too rare and too inconsistent. Players often find themselves flooded with low-impact attribute runes while starving for crucial damage or resistance ones. The imbalance leaves players feeling half-formed and overly dependent on RNG rather than player planning.

Simply put: if you’re playing an attack build, your damage feels great, but your progression feels tedious. If you’re playing a caster, your pacing feels smooth, but your power feels nonexistent. Neither archetype hits the satisfying middle ground.

Infusions: A Great Idea with Execution Issues

One of the bright spots in Path of Exile 2’s campaign is the addition of Infusions — temporary power-ups dropped by enemies that empower your abilities in unique ways. When picked up, Infusions can alter how a skill behaves, boost its damage, or grant new mechanics entirely.

On paper, Infusions are brilliant. They add on-the-fly variety to combat, giving you short bursts of empowerment that feel dynamic and reactive. Picking up an Infusion mid-fight to supercharge your Lightning Rod or empower your Whirlwind attack gives the gameplay a much-needed dose of excitement.

However, their effectiveness is ultimately tied to the underlying strength of your skills. If the skill itself is undertuned — as many caster skills currently are — then no amount of Infusion can make it feel good. Players quickly realized that Infusions weren’t the problem; casters were. The mechanic itself is enjoyable, but it can’t compensate for core balance flaws in the spell system.

The takeaway here is that Infusions have huge potential. If GGG rebalances base skill damage and mana costs, Infusions could easily become one of the most celebrated additions in PoE2’s design toolkit.

The Level Scaling Conundrum

Another layer of complexity — and frustration — comes from Path of Exile 2’s level scaling mechanics. The new progression system means enemies stay closer in level to the player throughout the campaign. In theory, this ensures consistent challenge, but in practice, it punishes slower or weaker builds disproportionately.

For example, an underpowered caster who already struggles to kill enemies efficiently doesn’t get the breathing room that came from overleveling zones in PoE1. The scaling keeps monsters tanky relative to your level, locking you into a loop where you’re always fighting things that feel too strong for your gear and build power.

In short: the system works well for strong builds, but it suffocates weaker ones.

This creates an uneven sense of progression — something Path of Exile has historically excelled at. Players need that feeling of growing more powerful, of outpacing content as their build comes together. When level scaling keeps you perpetually even with your enemies, that fantasy is lost.

Runes: RNG Overload

The Rune system, while conceptually interesting, currently suffers from excessive randomness and scarcity. These socketable items are intended to serve as the sequel’s equivalent to support and skill gem modifiers, offering new ways to customize weapons and armor. But right now, the drop rates and distribution feel off.

Players report being flooded with attribute or defensive Runes while barely seeing any that meaningfully enhance weapon damage. For attack builds, this means your ideal weapon setup is gated behind rare RNG luck. For casters, it means the few Runes that might boost your spell power are so scarce that you can go multiple acts without finding a useful one.

A potential fix would be to introduce Rune conversion — allowing players to transmute less useful runes into the type they need. Alternatively, increasing the global drop rate would make experimentation more accessible. As it stands, the Rune system feels more like a roadblock than a tool of creativity.

Abyss League: A Step in the Right Direction

Despite the balancing struggles, Path of Exile 2’s new Abyss League content stands out as a highlight. This is the first league mechanic that feels like a genuine evolution over PoE1’s systems. Whereas past mechanics like Breach, Expedition, and Ritual feel like watered-down carryovers, Abyss has the potential to define what PoE2 league content should feel like.

The Abyss mechanic introduces dynamic encounters that are both visually and mechanically engaging. Fissures open in the ground, spewing monsters and escalating in intensity as you chase them through the map. The rewards are solid, the pacing feels fast, and the encounters scale in a way that keeps them exciting throughout the campaign cheap POE2 Currency.

It’s also worth noting that GGG seems to have learned from some of PoE1’s mistakes here — encounter density, reward pacing, and monster variety are all markedly improved. This gives players something fresh to chase amid the campaign grind.

The same can’t quite be said for the Asmari Spirits, the spectral hunting mechanic from the prior league. While the concept had potential, the spirits feel sluggish and unintuitive. They don’t move quickly enough, they don’t naturally engage with enemies, and overall, the mechanic feels clunky compared to the fast-paced design that defines PoE2’s combat. A simple adjustment — like having spirits automatically seek out monsters or pass through them more fluidly — could easily bring this system up to par.