The Death Penalty and XP Gains in PoE 2 my feedback after 400+hrs

The death penalty in Path of Exile isn’t too bad—at least not until you hit level 90. The real problem is that after that point, you earn almost no XP per hour, which just feels terrible. This is similar to how Diablo 2 used to be before Diablo 2: Resurrected fixed it by adding higher-level monsters. Originally, Blizzard didn’t intend for leveling to be so slow; they just never released the additional zones with higher-level monsters. Players were stuck farming Ubers for XP. PoE has the same issue, but it’s even worse, mostly because of all the on-death effects, poor visibility, and how punishing progression is when you die.
I like a good challenge and having difficulty in a game, but it’s extremely rare that I die to a mechanic that feels avoidable. For example, I really enjoyed fighting the Act 3 boss. That fight feels fair—there are clear telegraphs for one-shot mechanics, and the boss gives you opportunity windows to deal damage. When I die in that fight, I can say, “Yup, I was greedy and didn’t move to avoid that, now I’m dead.” It feels like my mistake, and I can learn from it.
Unfortunately, that’s not how most of the game feels. Many monsters, elites, and bosses have mechanics that either never give you a window to deal damage or have poorly designed telegraphs. I’ll die to something, get frustrated, go back and watch a replay, and still have no idea what killed me or how I could have avoided it. As a player, that feels terrible. It makes deaths frustrating, not challenging, and leaves no room to improve because I can’t even figure out what I did wrong. Any attack that does massive damage or has the potential to one-shot absolutely needs a clear telegraph or a pattern that I can learn and avoid.
This is why fights like Pinnacle Bosses are so frustrating. You only get one try, and if you die, not only do you lose the chance to complete the boss, but you also lose several hours of XP and, even worse, the hours of grinding it took just to get the requirements to fight that boss. For example, I farmed my first breachstone, which took me about 8 hours of grinding maps and breaches. I went into the fight, got one-shot because I had no idea what the boss mechanics were, and lost the breachstone along with several hours of XP. So, I grinded several more hours, got another breachstone, improved my defenses, made myself tankier, and tried again—only to die again. At that point, I was even further back than when I started. It became really hard to even play anymore. I ended up starting a new character and almost gave up on endgame entirely because the punishment was just too much.
The visibility issues don’t help. Many one-shot mechanics are poorly telegraphed, with only a few exceptions. Add on all the on-death effects, and it gets even harder to avoid dying because you can’t see what’s happening. This is made worse by the fact that map sustainability issues force players to run heavily juiced maps, which just increases the chance of dying. There are also a lot of overtuned mechanics in the game right now. For example, the sheer amount of stun, CC, and poorly balanced interactions can feel completely overwhelming.
Take rituals, for instance. They often spawn in very tight areas and trap you with mechanics like tornadoes that move faster than you and always target you. At the same time, mobs rush you, stun-lock you, explode on top of you, and then, just for good measure, a hag casts an AoE slow that you can’t escape because you’re already surrounded. Yesterday, I died four times at level 91, and every single time it was in a situation like this where I felt completely helpless to avoid the damage. And this is with capped resistances and 8k energy shield. The only way I’ve found to survive is to just not engage with league mechanics at all.
But that creates another problem: If I avoid league mechanics to survive, I’m stuck farming unmodified maps for hundreds of hours, which means I miss out on all the good loot. So, my choices are to either play it safe, avoid the fun content, and never get any valuable drops—or engage with the game and never actually gain levels because I keep dying. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Then there are boss fights, like breach bosses. These fights can be incredibly punishing. One boss fills the entire screen with ice projectiles that freeze you, which leads straight into the “Hand of Death.” If you die, you lose your breachstone and several hours of XP. It’s incredibly demoralizing. I’ve basically had to grind out an entire level just so I can attempt bosses when I have no XP to lose. Losing the breachstone is bad enough, but losing all that XP on top of it feels awful.
I think there needs to be a better system for handling deaths in boss fights. Maybe give players 6 attempts but still take XP on death, or allow only 1 attempt but don’t penalize XP. Both penalties together—losing XP and losing access to the content—is too harsh. People who want that kind of extreme punishment already have Hardcore mode. The current system in Standard feels unnecessary and just isn’t fun.
The way things are now, all my friends have either quit the game or are taking breaks because of how demoralizing the death penalties and XP progression are. I’m losing interest myself because of how hopeless it feels to make meaningful progress. When you combine all these issues—poor visibility, one-shot mechanics, on-death effects, map issues, and punishing boss fights—it’s no surprise that players feel defeated. Something needs to change to make endgame progression more rewarding and less of a grind without removing the challenge that makes PoE 2 great.

Agreed on all points. I've started to look for other games to spend my time at this point, I was addicted up to 88, and the slow grind resulting from all your points has broke my addiction to the game. I suppose I should be grateful for that, get back to real life for the new year.

They've stood firm on their stance on this for over 10 years, do you think making another post about it is gonna change anything?

Not that I agree/disagree, there's just no point complaining about it. It's like asking FromSoft to put a difficulty slider in their games.

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stalkingjackal#2441 wrote:

They've stood firm on their stance on this for over 10 years, do you think making another post about it is gonna change anything?

Not that I agree/disagree, there's just no point complaining about it. It's like asking FromSoft to put a difficulty slider in their games.

Im not complaining about it, simply giving my feedback and suggestions on how it could be improved while still making deaths have meaning.

I stopped playing after the first death that made me lose XP. I'm not going back as long as that exists.

I have to agree with breaches and rituals (I haven't found a citadel yet). Both of these mechanics are extremely better suited to builds which have high AoE clear damage in all directions due to the 360 degree swarm. It is no surprise that Stormweaver Sorc is the highest played.

Breach seems by far to be the most rewarding and I'm getting to the stage where I don't die (as much) to these, but I can't clear them out wide distances before they start contracting. That said, every time I come across a breach or a ritual, I am weighing up whether I want to take the risk against the exp penalty if I die, as if I get unlucky with the elite affixes, I'm having a bad time.

There is definitely a snowball effect, it would seem, where you reach a certain level of power and just keep going, as better clear = more drops = more upgrades over time = more power, and so on.

I leave rituals and breaches until I've cleared the map objectives currently, then I think about whether I want to risk it. If once the map objectives were cleared, there'd be no exp penalty, I'd certainly try my luck at them more.

Rituals are extremely claustrophobic tbh and I enjoy those the least.

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clarebunny440#7952 wrote:

I have to agree with breaches and rituals (I haven't found a citadel yet). Both of these mechanics are extremely better suited to builds which have high AoE clear damage in all directions due to the 360 degree swarm. It is no surprise that Stormweaver Sorc is the highest played.

Breach seems by far to be the most rewarding and I'm getting to the stage where I don't die (as much) to these, but I can't clear them out wide distances before they start contracting. That said, every time I come across a breach or a ritual, I am weighing up whether I want to take the risk against the exp penalty if I die, as if I get unlucky with the elite affixes, I'm having a bad time.

There is definitely a snowball effect, it would seem, where you reach a certain level of power and just keep going, as better clear = more drops = more upgrades over time = more power, and so on.

I leave rituals and breaches until I've cleared the map objectives currently, then I think about whether I want to risk it. If once the map objectives were cleared, there'd be no exp penalty, I'd certainly try my luck at them more.

Rituals are extremely claustrophobic tbh and I enjoy those the least.

Yeah i had a ritual last night that spawned in a hallway that was about 10% larger than the ritual so everything spawns right on top of you there is no way to move out of anything and it had the tornado that took up almost the entire area. It definitely needs some improvement to the randomized spawn location tileset to ensure there is always enough room for the player to avoid these mechanics.

Sorry not meant to brag, but it's funny how you guys are complaining about XP penalty so much while I'm just like ... What, I'm lv 90 already? But I've just played for a few hours after campaign, lmao. And I'm not even following the "meta" builds of ES/MoM/CI/Spark or ice strike monk etc.

https://imgur.com/uphknVp

XP Penalty is fine, just don't die. Learn to play the game better, farm currencies to upgrade gear, then you'll level up even faster than you'd imagine, instead of focusing on XP only. Your power is 99% from gear, 1% from level. If you have good gear/build, you will level up 10x faster than others, and not dying. Again, learn to play the game better if you're dying so much that you can't even level up.

And it will only get better because they're adjusting monster damage, build diversity, improving visual clarity, add more gems and supports into the game. If you're giving up just after a few dozens of deaths, then you're too weak for this game actually.

A few leveling tips:
- Always use the Omen to fully heal you when you reach low life (30%), it's cheap as 6-8 ex.
- Always use the Omen to reduce XP penalty to 2.5% instead of 10% after lv 90. They're quite expensive, about 60-80 ex.
- Always use the Thawing charm. It gives immunity to freeze, and freeze is what most likely will kill you if you get it.
- Aim for maps with prefix, never do maps with suffix "Monsters deal X% more damage", "Monsters deal X% damage as extra Y damage", "Monsters penetrate X% elemental resistance", "Players are cursed with elemental weakness" or "players have - X% maximum resistance" unless you're confident of not dying.
Since you know, 50% resistance receive double damage (50%) from 75% resistance (25%).
- Read map mods and categorized them into doable and not doable maps. Depend on your build, avoid maps with "increased elemental threshold" (which means you'll have a hard time apply poison/bleed/shock/ignite/freeze on mobs) or "monsters have increased move speed + attack speed/critical hit chance + damage" or "players have less energy/life regen" etc.
- Maps with burning ground is dangerous. Also, maps with shocking ground will debuff you with 20% more damage taken, which literally means reduce your HP/ES by 20%.
- After lv 90, you MUST have a good defensive build, but also still have to maintain clear speed. You will be swarmed if you don't have enough dps to clear, but you will be one-shot sometimes if you don't have enough defense.
- Acrobatics/MoM/CI helps a lot. I'm not following ES, but you might find some guides everywhere on Youtube on how to improve your ES. Acrobatics with 75-80% evasion with enough clear speed allow you to get hit only a few times per maps, but you still need HP/res/dmg reduction to avoid one-shot. Also you'll want to have blind/maim on your herald, mark/curse on your aura (cast on X, blasphemy, etc.) to reduce damage and speed of dangerous mobs.
Armor might be better after next patch though.
- If you don't have CI, 75% chaos res is almost a must to avoid one-shot sometimes. Chaos damage hurts.
- If you don't have enough damage to one-shot everything, or don't have enough AoE to do screen-wide clear, try to rely on ailments to disable them. As mentioned above, blind/maim/mark/curse. Chill, Freeze, stun, eletrocute also are very good in disabling mobs, not letting them to hit/cast spells on you before they die.
- Never stay in one spot, keep moving. Never backtrack where you killed the mobs. For on-death effects, instead of waiting, move straight through them and backtrack to loot again after you've clear the whole breach/area (Of course only when you're fast enough). It's much safer than kill > loot > kill > loot. You'll almost never get hit by on-death effects if you just keep moving past the dead mobs, because they have delays. And most of the off-screen skills of mobs will just miss you because you moved.
- Higher movement/attack speed definitely helps.
- Stacking breach tablets and maps with "Increased Experience gain" help.
- If you are focusing on EXP, get the passive nodes on Atlas tree with Shrines, they help a lot in clearing the maps and sometimes you can get the Enlighten Shrine which gives a lot of extra exp. Save it for later, clear the map, come back to take it then run to the closest Breach. Bam, level up.
- Area level is important. If you're strong enough, do T16 maps in nodes with +2 level (some people called this T18 - with irradiated and corruption on the map node). And white/blue T15 map gives much more experience than fully corrupted T10 map, especially at lv 80+. If you're not confident, you can even run white/blue T15 maps with good mods on it, instead of risk to die running fully juiced ones.
- Learn which map is small and which map is big, which map is good for breach and which map is not. Use good waystones on good map nodes only, don't waste them.
- Learn how certain types of mobs have special trait, not just mindlessly clicking on everything clickable. Like mushroom monsters which are the only ones that will go boom after death almost without any delay, so don't walk over their corpse. The green skeleton warriors that will shoot chaos bolts to you if you shoot projectiles at them from range, so don't spam click but walk near to them first. Etc.
- Don't blindly follow "meta" builds on Youtube if you don't understand it. Some builds are purely on offensive because they are only bossing and they can one-shot them, or they know the game well enough to avoid getting hit at all while doing maps, or they're just recording the runs where they don't die and they don't care if they die sometimes. Because recording them one-shot something will always give more views than recording them not dying. But to level up, you need to not die, not one-shot bosses.
- Better run lower tier maps and not dying and farm for currencies to upgrade your gear to be stronger to run higher tier maps, than just headbutt into high tier maps when you're still weak and risk of dying and lose XP/lose mechanics on map node/lose drops on the ground.
Same as citadels. Better run 100-200% waystone maps on them, and receive 1-2 fragments instead of run 400-500% waystone maps on them and die.
If you take the risks, don't complain if you die.
If you want to be good at the game, put some effort to it.

This turned out to be much longer than I intended to, sorry for the wall of text lol.

You are hilarious. I agree it is fast to level to 90. The problem is when you hit 90. Bro the XP omen is like 60ex man not worth it. I definitely don't make 60 ex often enough to make that a viable strategy, but the devs said they are buffing omen drops so maybe it becomes a viable strategy. All this info would of been helpful when i first got to 90 but i know about the affixes and which to avoid. It still didn't help. After watching the dev stream alot of what is killing me has been bugs related to monsters or boss mechanics, so when these things are fixed the death penalty wont be so awful. Once this update goes live i will update my feedback.

I definitely agree, literally all my deaths since 90 haven't even been "my fault" from what I can tell looking back. Every time it's been a case of getting one shot or instantly frozen/stun locked into a slow death (or quick death in the case of a mana drain sitting just out of range of me as I'm forced to helplessly watch it happen). The only "solution" I can even think of is to constantly waste portals to refill my charms after being frozen. What gets me is the duration of these stuns and freezes with no DR.

I've had to walk away out of frustration so many times I'm running out of alt characters to level.
And while I'd love to upgrade my gear I don't think it would help any of these cases that have killed me. Not that I could afford to anyway. My gear is already pretty good, the cheapest upgrades I've found are 10+ div and would require shuffling other pieces to keep res capped which would cost just as much.

EDIT - I'm at 300+ hours myself.