# 【Player Feedback】The Devastating Impact of Eternal Youth Nerf on Chaos Inoculation Builds

As a new player who joined last season, I feel compelled to share my frustration regarding the 0.3 patch changes to the **Eternal Youth** keystone, which have effectively destroyed the **Chaos Inoculation (CI)** build my friends and I spent weeks perfecting. This balance decision not only invalidates our efforts but also raises serious concerns about the game’s direction for new players.

## A Build Ruined Overnight
Chaos Inoculation has always been a high-risk, high-reward mechanic: we sacrifice maximum life (capped at 1) to gain complete chaos damage immunity, relying entirely on Energy Shield (ES) for survival . What made this viable was **Eternal Youth**, which converted life flask recovery into ES recovery—our lifeline in tough fights.

After the nerf, this critical recovery mechanism was stripped away. Now our CI characters die instantly to even minor damage once ES is depleted. The build we invested countless hours into mastering is unplayable overnight. As new players, we lack the game knowledge to rebuild from scratch, leaving us feeling discouraged and alienated.

## Questionable Balance Priorities
What confuses us most is the priority of this change. According to POE.Ninja data, the **Deadeye** ascendancy now accounts for over 40% of player builds—a clear sign of overrepresentation . Yet instead of addressing dominant archetypes, the team targeted **Eternal Youth**, a niche keystone that supported diverse playstyles without breaking the meta.

Are小众玩法 ("niche builds") simply disposable? For new players, finding a viable build that fits our skill level is already challenging. Removing such a build without alternatives feels like a slap in the face to anyone trying to learn the game.

## Unsolvable Survival Issues Post-Nerf
The current state of CI builds is unsustainable:
- ES recovery has become nonexistent without Eternal Youth’s flask conversion
- Instant recovery belts provide negligible ES sustain, insufficient for prolonged combat
- We’re forced into Huntress/Amazon leech builds, but other classes lack comparable recovery tools
- The trade-off is now purely negative: sacrificing life for chaos immunity means nothing without viable ES regeneration

Eternal Youth has become a useless keystone. We took the risk of a 1-life playstyle for its defensive benefits, but now there’s no payoff . How are we supposed to progress when even white mobs can one-shot us?

## Impact on the Chinese Server Community
I had invited a group of friends to join the upcoming Chinese server launch, excited to share the game we loved. This nerf has shattered that enthusiasm. If GGG continues to disregard new player experiences—invalidating builds without warning or alternatives—we can no longer justify supporting the game.

## Our Requests
We urge the dev team to:
1. Reevaluate the Eternal Youth nerf and restore baseline ES recovery mechanisms
2. Provide viable alternatives for CI builds to sustain ES in combat
3. Address overrepresented archetypes like Deadeye before targeting niche playstyles
4. Consider new player onboarding in future balance decisions, with longer testing phases for core mechanics

As passionate players, we want Path of Exile 2 to thrive. But this change has left us feeling ignored and disheartened. Please listen to your community—every build deserves a fair chance to shine.

#POE2BalanceFeedback #EternalYouthNerf #ChaosInoculation

Not playing a CI build, but I too was looking for a way to apply my life flask to ES and was disappointed to see it is gone.

I don’t agree with everything you’ve said - when new seasons launch things change and some builds that were viable are no longer viable, while some builds that are no longer viable are now viable.

It’s not like because your build worked once GGG owes you that exact same build working in perpetuity forever throughout the universe. (Fair enough on the deadeye point though, they certainly need more diversity). Calling the old CI builds a high risk high reward build is also kind of funny - it was one of the top defensive builds in the game previously.

All that being said, I hope to find ways to apply life flask to ES in the future, if it doesn’t fit on the passive tree that’s fine, but some kind of unique item or flask seems like a sensible solution, even if it came with other downsides (i.e. not possible to apply any portion instantly, etc).

Convalescence

Energy recharge start/ faster recharge nodes are plentiful around where CI is

CI wasn't then and isn't now reliant on another keystone

Pre nerf, CI+EY was as prevalent as Deadeye, but accross multiple character types (Monk, Huntress, Ranger and Sorc).

Builds that function exclusively based on Key Node interactions have always been targeted over individual ascendancies, so take that into account in the future.

"

pattw555#0071 wrote:

Not playing a CI build, but I too was looking for a way to apply my life flask to ES and was disappointed to see it is gone.

I don’t agree with everything you’ve said - when new seasons launch things change and some builds that were viable are no longer viable, while some builds that are no longer viable are now viable.

It’s not like because your build worked once GGG owes you that exact same build working in perpetuity forever throughout the universe. (Fair enough on the deadeye point though, they certainly need more diversity). Calling the old CI builds a high risk high reward build is also kind of funny - it was one of the top defensive builds in the game previously.

All that being said, I hope to find ways to apply life flask to ES in the future, if it doesn’t fit on the passive tree that’s fine, but some kind of unique item or flask seems like a sensible solution, even if it came with other downsides (i.e. not possible to apply any portion instantly, etc).

After reading everyone’s comments, I roughly understand what you all mean. It’s true that I didn’t consider all the issues thoroughly—after all, I’m a new player who just joined last season, so I haven’t learned about Path of Exile 1 or the first season of Path of Exile 2. I also originally thought Chaos Inoculation was just a "high-risk, high-reward" build, but now I know it’s actually a top-tier defensive build. If it still had the recovery from Eternal Youth, it would indeed be at risk of being nerfed, and that makes sense.

I’ve already tried looking for alternative ways to play, or switching to other class ascendancies. But there’s one point I still want to bring up: earlier, I mentioned that Deadeye has an excessively high representation on POE.Ninja—isn’t that a bit extreme? That shouldn’t be the case, right? Why can’t GGG take this class’s situation into account? Will they choose to nerf it, or instead buff some extremely underused classes?

Lich is still one of the strongest ascendancys by far. You got Eternal Life and Soulless Form before that makes CI literally destroy your mana reg. You got the unholy might node that scales with mana = go MoM and scale defence with same nodes as offence which is the case in most of the best and optimal builds to have some way of doing that, or just a broken mechanic/skill makes it so u can skip one of the 2(defence or offence). This has always been the case and probably wont ever change. As CI if you really need eternal youth so bad there is shavs belt that lets u restore ES with life flask, BUT remember that ur ES pool most likely is alot higher than a HP pool so it doesnt do much anyway. Like someone before said, Convalesence and Recharge Rate is more than enough. U got curses, alot of different sources for easy mitigation to put on top of CI, ES leech, MoM or Mana Before Life investment is huge also :)

Biggest reason u see so many Deadeyes now for example is partly because all classes and skills aint out, we dont have alot to choose from. It is very easy to pick up and play, easy to gear and can do most content in the game as a league starter without having to respecc really. Its the meta and ppl are meta slaves, they see some utuber/streamer do it and hype it up then all of a sudden everyone think its the only viable thing like with LS in 0.2, sure it was bonkers but it was far from the only viable build. Now also Deadeye is great but I would argue its not the best at all, especially when starting to invest more and more. Also the LA + LR build everyone is doing isnt the best for her even, havnt checked poeninja this week but last i checked almost no1 played the real OP stuff with her cuz its only ppl with the knowledge to see it for themselves doing it and that is if they arnt doing another build.

I hope this clarify some and helped! Take it from someone doing builds for 13+ yrs in HC and never followed guides, take advantage of others being meta slave and make an OP build for a fraction of the cost while making money on selling to them! ^^ Feel free to msg me if u wonder anything or need any help with whatever it is regarding the game, never get to stuck in one build and if u do cuz u rly love it then I have very rarely during all years seen something not being able to make work good enough to do all content in the game!

"

Strangehill#1736 wrote:

Convalescence

Energy recharge start/ faster recharge nodes are plentiful around where CI is

CI wasn't then and isn't now reliant on another keystone

^

This