Summary
- Path of Exile 2 focuses on survivability and combos over speed, with some early access flaws.
- The Ranger’s Deadeye Ascendancy class grants powerful bonuses like movement speed and evasion with Tailwind.
- Tailwind from Gathering Winds in the Deadeye class can improve the quality of life of its gameplay as well as its survivability.
Path of Exile 2 recently launched in early access, providing fans of the original game with a standalone follow-up that completely turns the experience on its head with massive gameplay changes. Where Path of Exile is often all about speed, be it how fast the character can travel across the map or how quickly they can dispose of enemy monsters, Path of Exile 2 is more about surviving and focusing on combos between skills over a single overpowered ability. Path of Exile 2‘s early access is not without flaws, between the controversial decision to have paid keys when the full release will be free and early nerfs, but one criticism is quite common among the community – and one class partly solves it.
There is no denying that Path of Exile 2 is an overall slower game when compared to its predecessor, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Players have more wiggle room to work with their builds and stats so that survivability is not thrown out of the window for the sake of clearing packs of mobs fast, for example. However, this sense of sluggish gameplay can be felt by veterans of GGG’s work and newcomers alike, and it’s how fast characters move. Luckily, the Ranger class has an optimal solution to this issue.
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Why Path of Exile 2 Players Shouldn’t Sleep on The Ranger’s Deadeye Ascendancy
Path of Exile 2‘s classes are a big part of its allure, as it not only has six classes in early access, but six more will follow when the game fully launches. On top of that, each class has two Ascendancy classes, which are essentially more specialized versions of the base character that offer new and often unique bonuses. One such example is the Ranger’s Deadeye Ascendancy class, which has the ability to pick Gathering Winds as one of its eight notable passive skill options.
Right now,
the Ranger’s Deadeye
is the only class in the game to have access to Tailwind from the tree, but things may change when other classes and Ascendancies are revealed.
Gathering Winds provides players with stacks of Tailwind whenever players use any skill, but all stacks are lost when players are hit. What makes Tailwind such a powerful ability to have is that it grants movement speed, fundamentally addressing one of Path of Exile 2‘s biggest issues passively. Tailwind is not limited to just that, though, and it provides the following bonuses:
- 1% increased movement speed per stack, a maximum of 10% at 10 stacks
- 3% increased skill speed per stack, a maximum of 30% at 10 stacks
- 15% increased Evasion Rating per stack, a maximum of 150% at 10 stacks
All these bonuses can stack up quite quickly, and players can even spam basic skills at the start of a map to get maximum stacks before dealing with any enemies. Given that it may be hard to achieve a decent amount of movement speed in Path of Exile 2‘s endgame, having access to an extra 10% from Tailwind is extremely helpful – especially when enemies start surrounding the player character, which is another pain point the community has brought up.
It’s worth noting that movement speed not only increases how fast player characters can walk and run, but also the speed of their dodge roll. The theoretical maximum movement speed attainable on boots is 35% from the prefixes plus 10% from a successful Vaal Orb corruption.
How Path of Exile 2’s Deadeye Uses Tailwind For Quality of Life and Survivability
With how valuable movement speed can be in the game, choosing Path of Exile 2‘s Ranger as a class can give players that extra edge to both have a better feeling when playing the game and make for faster escapes from pesky enemies. One could argue that Tailwind can easily be gained as it is lost, but it’s a loop that feeds into itself thanks to the increased Evasion Ration per stack, meaning that stacking this stat would both increase survivability and Tailwind uptime. Finally, the increased Evasion is even more valuable when considering that it rolls once for each incoming hit, and it rolls again for attacks that would be critical strikes – if successful, the hit is treated as a regular attack.
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