Why Only Blood Mage Can Efficiently Farm the Temple, GGG? Do You Know?

Dear GGG Development Team,

In Season 0.4 "Vaal League", Curse COC Blood Mage dominates Temple farming. This is due to core design mismatches, not just numbers. Below are key issues and suggestions:

In Season 0.4 "Vaal League", there is a severe imbalance in the Temple of Atzoatl gameplay: the Curse COC Blood Mage build dominates almost all high-efficiency temple farming, while other builds struggle to compete. This imbalance is not solely due to numerical advantages; instead, it is rooted in three critical issues. We hope you will pay attention to these core problems and make targeted optimizations:

Core Issues Leading to Blood Mage's MonopolyKey Issues

1. Curse COC Blood Mage Deals High Damage and Ignores Terrain: Curse skills (e.g., Enfeeble, Despair) inherently possess terrain-ignoring, large-area AOE characteristics. When combined with the COC (Cast on Crit) mechanism, they convert high-frequency curse applications into high-damage spell bursts. Equipped with the "Ritual Curse" support gem, the skill range can cover over 6 screens, allowing the build to deal massive damage to all enemies in the room without being hindered by any obstacles.

2. Abnormally Low Enemy Aggro in Temple Rooms: The aggro range and active pursuit willingness of enemies in temple rooms are significantly lower than those in regular maps. Most enemies often "afk" in corners and do not actively engage players. As a result, players have to spend a great deal of time searching every corner to clear all remaining enemies—a time-consuming process that seriously impacts farming efficiency.

3. Other Classes' Damage Dealers Are Either Weak or Terrain-Restricted: For most other builds, their damage output methods face obvious shortcomings in temple terrain. Linear projectile skills (e.g., Lightning Arrow, Ice Spear) are easily blocked by stairs, pillars, and equipment; melee skills require constant movement to reach enemies in segmented areas, leading to low damage efficiency. These limitations make it almost impossible for other classes to compete with Curse COC Blood Mage in temple farming.

Targeted Optimization SuggestionsSuggestions

4. Low Enemy Aggro in Temple: Temple enemies often afk; Curse COC's AOE clears them without aggro, saving massive search time.

1. Curse Skills Ignore Terrain: Temple terrain (stairs, pillars) blocks most skills, but curse skills (with Ritual Curse) cover large areas unobstructed.

1. Adjust Curse Skills to Mitigate Terrain-Ignoring Advantage: Introduce appropriate terrain constraints for curse skills, such as reducing damage or range when passing through obstacles. This will weaken the build's excessive advantage in terrain-segmented rooms and align its performance with other skill types.

2. Normalize Enemy Aggro in Temples: Increase the aggro range and active pursuit behavior of temple enemies to match the standard of regular maps. This eliminates the need for players to search for idle enemies everywhere and ensures fair farming conditions for all builds.

3. Optimize Other Classes' Adaptability to Temple Terrain: For linear projectile skills, add a certain degree of obstacle penetration; for melee skills, introduce area damage bonuses or short-range displacement effects when facing multiple enemies. This helps other classes overcome terrain restrictions and improve their damage efficiency in temples.

The current monopoly of Curse COC Blood Mage has seriously damaged the diversity of temple gameplay, making most other builds unviable in this core seasonal content. Addressing the above three issues will effectively rebalance the gameplay meta, restore fair competition among different builds, and enhance the overall gaming experience for all players. We sincerely hope you will investigate these problems and implement corresponding optimizations.Blood Mage's dominance hurts gameplay diversity. Fixing these issues will rebalance the temple meta. Thank you.

4. Normalize Temple Enemy Aggro: Match temple enemy aggro to regular maps.

1. Restrict Curse Skills on Terrain: Add terrain limits (reduced range/damage) to curse skills.

Best regards,

A Path of Exile 2 Player

They already had terrain limits on curses, resulting in curse glyphs failing to spawn altogether in narrow passages or simply between 2 rocks if you had even slight curse aoe bonus.

In current temple rooms, old curses would've been unusable in 95% cases. In short, with GGG, you can only have "too small" or "too large", balance is not about these guys:)

its not curse coc, its all coc comet or arc and not only bloodmage

"High Damage and Ignores Terrain"
same goes for many more spells like entangle

"Equipped with the "Ritual Curse" support gem, the skill range can cover over 6 screens"
what about support gem magnified effect that gives 5% less?

you have little knowledge about this topic

its not only blood mage. its basically all class running comet spark. the whole thing should be nerfed to save the economy. other builds basically cant compete anywhere near. its not nerf by 100% or something. its 10x stronger. But apparently ggg has no one playing the game and letting the economy to go straight dead.

OP probably means Despair loaded with Doedre's Undoing (for cursed ground) + Impending doom + echo (or unleash) + 2 other dps gems. Add windscream boots and a usual assload of spell levels and curse aoe. Then add support auras like withering presence and second blasphemy curse depending on your extra damage type.

Spark is the most well known one, sure, but curse builds work too, and are very easy to use, no piano crap.

"

xile#8001 wrote:

its not only blood mage. its basically all class running comet spark. the whole thing should be nerfed to save the economy. other builds basically cant compete anywhere near. its not nerf by 100% or something. its 10x stronger. But apparently ggg has no one playing the game and letting the economy to go straight dead.

That's exactly the case—this game imposes terrain restrictions on players in many areas: the stairs and narrow alleys in the Temple, and the chasms in the Abyss gameplay, forcing players to abandon a large number of skill options.

only bloodmage can farm all content LOL.

simpliy the amount of healing accessibility is way better than leeching or life regen on gear for other characters.

At the same time do other characters with mid gear able to do other contents for example delirium? They cant unless you have super decent gear and probably only 100 splinter level maybe you can win the 15 rounds.


This is a proof the balance in the game is poof.

To be honest, it's not just the temple.
The Blood Mage has been dominant for several seasons.

Ugh, guys, GGG have given up on this league. You can see the patch notes and what is going on. Hopefully they are working on the next PoE 1 league and ignoring the massive 0.4 mess.

Blood Mages are like GGG's favorite daughters.

Just like Mages in World of Warcraft are like his favorite sons.