Facebook
Reddit
Email
Learn about all the Mechanics in Path of Exile 2 and how they work in this guide, and get a grasp on them which will help you in your overall gameplay experience.
Path of Exile 2 is an expansive action RPG set in the vast treacherous world of Wraeclast. Similar to the original game, the successor includes various complex systems and mechanics both returning and new. So, it is best to learn all the mechanics if you are either a new player or a returning veteran. In this guide, we will be going over all the mechanics in Path of Exile 2 and explaining them so that you can have a better understanding of complex systems.
Mechanics in Path of Exile 2 Explained
Path of Exile 2 includes numerous complex systems in all of its major features like combat, attributes, skills, abilities, damage, and more. While it looks like a simple execution within the game for you to attack an enemy using a skill and dealing a certain amount of damage, in the background, various complex systems are working.
We do not have to dive deep into those systems, but we do want to understand how each combat mechanic or a spell/skill damage works on all these numerous types of enemies. Moreover, if you are focused on building your character strongly, learning about the attributes and how to increase them to meet the requirements for gems and equipment is important.
Furthermore, the comprehensive combat design of Path of Exile 2 has several maneuvers like rolling, staggering, and various control and status effects. Learning these effects will help you understand how to deal with each rarity of enemies throughout your journey.
All Mechanics in POE 2
Below, you can find brief information on all major mechanics in Path of Exile 2.
| Mechanics | Description |
|---|---|
| Crowd Control & Status Effects | Crowd Control and Status Effects include the effects that hinder or inhibit a target like Freeze, Electrocute, Stun/Stagger, etc. |
| Damage Conversion | The modifiers grant extra damage to a certain damage type or completely change the damage type. Moreover, the conversion will not remember the original damage type, like in POE 1. |
| Monster Damage Categorisation | Monster Damage will no longer be categorized as spells or attacks for player defenses, removing the Spell Suppression mechanic from POE 2. |
| Culling Strike | Allows you to instantly kill an enemy if they are below their life threshold. An enemy’s life threshold varies on the enemy’s rarity. |
| Spirit | A new resource for the Reservation Skills like auras and buffs. These skills no longer reserve Mana, but Spirit. |
| Active Block | The Active Block is a new mechanic in PoE 2 that allows you to block any melee strike and projectiles mainly using a Shield (gear item). |
| Charges | Charges are the counters to empower the abilities linked to attributes. Each charge type is associated with an attribute like Endurance (strength), Frenzy (dexterity), and Power (intelligence). |
| Accuracy | Accuracy is a stat that determines the hit chance of an attack. An enemy having a higher evasion rating will most likely evade or dodge the attack. |
| Curses & Marks | Curses & Marks are debuff abilities that you can apply to a target. You can only apply a single curse on a target at a time. Applying any additional curse on a target will remove the previous debuff. |
| Dodge Roll | A new action mechanic for all classes that allows them to avoid any strikes and projectiles. However, it is ineffective against the AOE attacks. |
| Critical Strikes | Succeed in a critical hit check to land a critical strike on a target and deal bonus critical damage. |
| Ability Usage | Abilities system in PoE 2 offers moment-to-moment combat, allowing players to move freely and retarget during ability animations. |
| Attributes | Attributes are Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), and Intelligence (INT) which provide stats of their own to a character. STR provides Life, DEX provides Accuracy Rating, and INT provides Mana. |
| Energy Shield | A defensive stat that acts as a hit pool and takes damage before your actual health pool. |
| Leech | It allows you to recover resources like Life, Mana, and Energy Shield by attacking enemies. |
Crowd Control & Status Effects
Crowd Control and Status Effects include the effects that hinder or inhibit a target either cancelling their actions or slowing them down. There are various crowd control and status effects that you can apply on the enemies in Path of Exile 2. Some of the ordinary effects include Freeze, Electrocute, and Stun/Stagger.
Freeze
Attack damage like a cold can inflict targets with Freeze which can decrease their action speed by 100%. The Freeze state makes the target vulnerable to your next attacks for a short period. The Freeze itself is a non-damaging ailment effect and getting a critical strike on a target with cold damage will most likely freeze them.
Electrocute
Attack damage like lightning can inflict targets with Electrocute which cancels out any attack from the targets and makes them unable to perform any action for a short period. While in the Electrocuted state, the targets are vulnerable to your next attacks. However, similar to Freeze, the Electrocute itself is a non-damaging ailment effect. Using any lightning-type attacks can apply Electrocute on targets and the critical strikes with these attacks will most likely electrocute them.
Stun/Stagger
Stun/Stagger does not require a specific type of damage as all damage types can stun or stagger an enemy. However, melee damage based on STR (attribute) has a greater chance to inflict stun on a target. Other attacks or elemental damage types have a lower rate of staggering an enemy. Every enemy rarity type has its own stagger rate which you can see under their health bar. Filling the staggering rate with the damage will stagger/stun them.
While the target is stunned/staggered, they are unable to perform any action and vulnerable to your attacks. It is one of the best status effects in the game as it works greatly for the boss encounters. Staggering a boss will create an opportunity for you to deal potential damage to the boss.
Ailment Threshold and Buildup
You can apply the non-damaging ailment effects like Freeze and Electrocute after passing the ailment threshold on an enemy. Each hit with a certain damage type will build a certain amount which will eventually inflict the respective status effect on the target once the threshold is crossed. It is very similar to the stun/stagger feature, but you will not be able to see the buildup bar for these ailments’ effects.
Damage Conversion
Modifiers play a crucial role in Path of Exile 2 as they grant your equipment items and skills pretty great bonuses. Like increasing the damage of a certain damage type or changing the damage type completely. For you to understand these two types of Conversion Forms, you need to look for the “Converted” or “Extra” keyword in the description of the item.
The extra will add bonus damage to the original damage type and the Converted will change the damage type. Moreover, if you are going for Converted modifiers, you need to focus on achieving 100% conversion for more output damage. It is because, unlike the original game, the conversion does not remember its origin damage type. So, if your ability now scales with a new damage type, you must get a modifier with 100% conversion for efficient scaling.
Furthermore, the Extra modifiers are also valuable for your builds because these are calculated before the converted modifiers.
Monster Damage Categorisation
One of the main changes coming to Monster Damage in POE 2 is that the enemy attacks will no longer be categorized as spells or attacks for a player’s defenses. Meaning, that a player cannot lessen any specific attack/spell, like in POE 1 using the Spell-Suppression. With enemy attacks no longer categorized, the Spell-Suppression is no longer in PoE 2.
However, there are still generic tags for the attacks of the enemy. It includes melee strikes, projectiles, and area of effects (AOE). With these, other defensive maneuvers like evading and blocking have also been changed. While holding a shield in PoE 2, you can block any incoming projectile whether it is elemental or not.
For evasion, PoE 2 has a rolling mechanic that allows you to dodge both melee strikes and projectiles. However, you must time it correctly to evade the attacks. Moreover, the AOE attacks cannot be evaded or blocked if you are in the range of the attack. The game does a great job of visualizing the range of an AOE, so for you to evade an AOE, get out of the range before the attack goes off.
Culling Strike
Culling Strike is a returning mechanic to PoE 2 but with some changes. Unlike the original game where the life threshold was set at 10% for every enemy, it is different in PoE 2 for every enemy based on their rarity. However, the culling strike mechanic work is still the same. All you have to do is hit a target at or below their life threshold to kill them instantly. Moreover, your hit does not have to inflict a large damage. In fact, if there is no damage with your hit, the culling strike will still initiate.
Now, let’s take a look at the changes in life threshold for the enemies.
- Normal (Gray) Monster: ≤30% Life Threshold
- Magic (Blue) Monster: ≤20% Life Threshold
- Rare (Yellow) Monster: ≤ 10% Life Threshold
- Unique (Boss) Monster: ≤ 5% Life Threshold
Spirit
Spirit is a new resource in PoE 2 that is used to reserve the various reservation skills that grant auras, buffs, totems, minions, etc. Unlike the original game, these reservation skills will no longer cost Mana, allowing all classes to keep Mana at full and use the active skills frequently. The Spirit bar is located right around the Mana pool in yellow bar.
You can gain and increase Spirit from certain Passive Skill Tree nodes, gear modifiers, and defeating campaign bosses. All of these will increase your maximum Spirit allowing you to activate more reservation skills. Moreover, there are certain equipment items like Sceptres that grant more Spirit just from using it.
Active Block
The Active Block is a new mechanic in PoE 2 that allows you to block any melee strike and projectiles mainly using a Shield (gear item). This new action is done with the Raise Shield ability which is an implicit modifier on almost all strength-based shields. Moreover, there are other abilities as well that allow a player to enter the Active Block state.
Raising the shield will allow the players to negate any strikes and projectiles from the front. However, your character will take damage from the strikes and projectiles coming from the sides and the back. With this blocking maneuver, there is an endurance bar that works as a resource for blocking the hits. Every hit and projectile you block with the shield will consume a certain amount of endurance.
As the endurance bar depletes, the character’s movement speed will reduce. If the bar is completely depleted, the character will enter a stun state for a short period making them vulnerable to all attacks.
Charges
Charges are the counters to empower the abilities linked to attributes. Each charge type is associated with an attribute like Endurance (strength), Frenzy (dexterity), and Power (intelligence). You can see the respective charges floating around your character. Endurance charges are Red Orbs, Frenzy charges are Green Orbs, and Power charges are Blue Orbs.
Each charge type empowers the associated skills of an attribute, making them stronger. These charges no longer provide any passive stats like in the original game.
- Endurance charges enhance strength-based abilities.
- Frenzy charges enhance dexterity-based abilities.
- Power charges enhance intelligence-based abilities.
Accuracy
Accuracy is a stat that determines the hit chance of an attack. You can find this rating on the gear modifiers, and can also enhance it from the nodes in the Passive Skill Tree. The accuracy rating affects most of the attacks but it does not affect spells in any way. So, using spells on enemies will most likely hit them all the time.
However, other projectile attacks will be affected by the Accuracy rating. The minimal accuracy rating and hit chance for every attack is 5% and it can go all the way to 100%. Moreover, each enemy has its own evasion rating which allows them to evade an attack. The evasion rating of an enemy depends on its level and any relevant modifiers. The highest evasion rating for a monster is 95% so a monster cannot always evade your attack.
To increase your character’s accuracy rating, it is best to use gear modifiers that enhance the hit chance. Once such modifier is Always Hit, allowing your hits to connect every time.
Curses & Marks
Curses are the debuff spell abilities that you can cast on a target to make them vulnerable to a certain damage type or make them take additional damage, etc. Marks on the other hand do not count as curses and do not increase a character’s maximum curse limit, like in the original game. Instead, Marks now offers benefits with a duration.
More on the Curses, you can only apply a single debuff effect on a target. Applying any additional curse on a target will remove the previous debuff for the new one. However, there are certain modifiers that can help you increase the maximum curse limit on the targets. Moreover, each curse ability has an activation delay, slowing the action of the spell after casting it. You can mitigate the delay by socketing the “Blasphemy” meta gem into the curse spell.
Dodge Roll
Dodge Roll is a new default mechanic for all the classes in Path of Exile 2. This new action has no cooldown and it costs no resource like Spirit or Endurance. It is the basic maneuver for evading any melee strikes and projectiles. However, you have to time the dodge perfectly to dodge any incoming projectiles and hits. If you are in an animation of casting a spell or striking an ability, doing a roll will cancel the action and its animation, allowing you to dodge any incoming attack.
Moreover, the rolling does not increase your movement speed as its speed is similar to the character’s movement speed. However, acquiring certain nodes in the Passive Skill Tree or buff gems that affect movement speed will also affect the rolling. If you are looking to be swifter, running is still the fastest way.
Critical Strikes
A Critical Strike is a hit that deals bonus critical damage to a target on succeeding a critical hit check. There are several factors to determine a critical strike chance in Path of Exile 2. It includes spells having their own base critical strike chance, weapons having their own critical strike chance, and gems adding a critical strike chance to unarmed attacks.
For a higher chance of a critical strike on your hits, you can enhance it with Rare modifiers which then scale with the regular gear modifiers to give a total critical strike chance. The base critical damage bonus by default is 100% so landing a critical strike on a target will deal 200% of base damage by default. You can further increase the critical strike damage by using modifiers that increase the critical damage bonus and then add it to the base critical damage bonus before the multipliers.
Ability Usage
The abilities system in PoE 2 offers moment-to-moment combat, allowing players to move freely and retarget during ability animations. Most of the abilities have built-in movement triggers allowing players to perform certain movement animations during casting and attacking. With this new ability system, the canceling of an ability is also easier.
If you are using a spell ability that requires a longer period to cast and you feel a sense of danger heading your way, you can forcefully cancel the attack simply by rolling. The rolling action plays a crucial role both in evasion and keeping your character out of deadly attacks. Almost every unique or boss encounter in the game has various hard-hitting attacks that can deal devastating damage to the character.
The use of rolling will let you dodge through the hard-hitting attacks and give you time to retarget and use abilities efficiently.
Attributes
Attributes are Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), and Intelligence (INT) which provide stats of their own to a character.
- 1 STR: +2 to maximum Life
- 1 DEX: +5 to Accuracy Rating
- 1 INT: +2 to maximum Mana
Moreover, each piece of equipment in the game (weapons and gems) has a certain level requirement and attribute requirement. Without meeting these requirements, a character cannot equip the equipment items or socket the gems into skills.
All three of these attributes build character archetypes with class types based on the passive skill tree. Players can enhance their class-based attributes with the respective alignments in the passive skill tree. Moreover, unlocking the nodes of a character’s preferred attribute will eventually move to another alignment node. Unlocking the nodes here will combine the stats for both attributes.
Furthermore, there is also an attribute requirement for Support Gems in PoE 2. For every +5 of an attribute, it can increase the number of Support Gems for that corresponding attribute. It is one of the best ways to enhance your character build in a certain attribute. The best way to increase the support gems for your skills is to get the “highway nodes” in the passive skill tree. Each highway node will have a choice of adding +5 STR, +5 DEX, or +5 INT.
Energy Shield
Energy Shield is a defensive stat of a character that acts as a hit pool and takes damage from the attacks before the actual health pool. The Energy Shield recharges at a rate of 33.3% every 4 seconds only if the character does not take any damage. If a character gets hit, the recharging of Energy Shield will be interrupted. It will continue once the recharge period has passed again.
However, the Energy Shield does not block status effects like Poison and Bleeding. Unlike the original game, Chaos damage does not pass through the Energy Shield but it does double damage to it. Moreover, the Energy Shield has a built-in stun prevention mechanic. It allows the character to avoid getting stunned. However, the chance of not getting stunned is 50%.
Leech
Leech allows you to recover resources like Life, Mana, and Energy Shield by attacking enemies. Life is the most common type of Leech, but with certain modifiers, you can leech Mana and Energy Shield. Unlike the original game, the Leech mechanic is simple in PoE 2. There are mainly two different modifiers that grant a certain leech bonus on a resource along with leech resistance on monsters.
Various gear modifiers will grant you damage dealt percentage as a certain resource allowing you to leech more. To balance things out, in return, the monsters will gain a certain percentage of leech resistance. Moreover, as you level up, the leech resistance on monsters will increase.
FAQs about mechanics in Path of Exile 2 (POE2)?
What is the new Dodge Roll mechanic in POE 2?
Answer: Dodge Roll is a new default mechanic for all the classes in Path of Exile 2. This new action has no cooldown and it costs no resource like Spirit or Endurance. It is the basic maneuver for evading any melee strikes and projectiles. However, you have to time the dodge perfectly to dodge any incoming projectiles and hits.
What is a Spirit in POE 2?
Answer: Spirit is a new resource in PoE 2 that is used to reserve the various reservation skills that grant auras, buffs, totems, minions, etc. Unlike the original game, these reservation skills will no longer cost Mana, allowing all classes to keep Mana at full and use the active skills frequently. The Spirit bar is located around the Mana pool in yellow bar.
What are Charges in POE 2?
Answer: Charges are the counters to empower the abilities linked to attributes. Each charge type is associated with an attribute like Endurance (strength), Frenzy (dexterity), and Power (intelligence). You can see the respective charges floating around your character. Endurance charges are Red Orbs, Frenzy charges are Green Orbs, and Power charges are Blue Orbs.
Looking for More Path of Exile 2 (POE2)?
Thank you for reading the Path of Exile 2: Mechanics Guide. We provide the latest news and create guides for Baldur’s Gate 3, Path of Exile 2, Stalker 2, and more. Also, watch Deltia play games on Twitch or visit his YouTube channel!
