Path of Exile 2 Players Can No Longer Use One of The Game’s Best Skills in 0.2.0

There are many things that will change with Path of Exile 2‘s first major patch since its early access debut, coming out tomorrow with the new Dawn of the Hunt release alongside the new Huntress class, several Ascendancies, and much more. As is customary for action RPGs, Path of Exile 2‘s Dawn of the Hunt update will come with a balance pass to the current items, skills, and classes while also adding several more (namely, 5 Ascendancies and over 100 Unique Items, as well as Support Gems). What is unusual is that existing elements are outright removed, but this is the case for one Skill Gem that was previously one of the best in the game, if not the.

Path of Exile 2 builds are made of many components, and Skill Gems are just one of the bigger cogs in the machine – some can be replaced, while others are “mandatory” for the build to be successful. The early access version of the game proved to be problematic when it came to some Skill Gems, to the point that some had to be nerfed soon after release, while others remained untouched until now. The patch notes for Dawn of the Hunt list all these changes, and interestingly, they also mention that Grim Feast has been removed from the game.

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Path of Exile 2 is Disabling Grim Feast For The Foreseeable Future

Path of Exile 2‘s Grim Feast was one of the strongest skills to have in any build for a simple reason: it essentially doubled one’s Energy Shield. With Energy Shield being the strongest defense in the game by a huge margin, Grim Feast could double the EHP of any Chaos Inoculation build or dramatically increase it for hybrid Life and ES builds. This is because every remnant picked up by players would add Energy Shield to the character’s total, potentially overflowing ES up to double its maximum value.

The result was that most builds benefited from going the Energy Shield route, and all builds that did were fundamentally miles better with Grim Feast. For these reasons, GGG is disabling Grim Feast from the Gemcutting options in Path of Exile 2, and all versions of the skill will be unusable for the time being. Grim Feast is not being removed from the game permanently, though, as GGG plans on making changes to it in the future. However, it’s implied that the skill will never be the same again, and players can expect a substantial rework for it.

There are various reasons why Energy Shield in Path of Exile 2 was a meta option for builds until now, including the fact that the best builds in the game featured characters with high Intelligence or casters. This made Grim Feast all the more played, especially with Chaos Inoculation being very popular due to the itemization gap it removes by taking care of Chaos Resistance on its own. For the sake of balancing the game, since a rework of Energy Shield is much more complex and time-consuming, it seems that the next best solution was to disable Grim Feast entirely.

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom For Path of Exile 2’s Best Skill

Path of Exile 2‘s future updates will still need to address defenses more broadly, such as improving Armour dramatically, given its current state, so it’s possible that the next big patch will do all this and also mark the return of Grim Feast. For now, though, players can no longer use this incredibly powerful Gem, and builds will have to adapt moving forward. With the huge amount of nerfs in the patch, it’s not impossible that a new meta will form where Energy Shield is not as dominant, which alone could bode well for the return of Grim Feast.

Path of Exile 2 is a next generation free-to-play Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Journey across the deadly continent of Wraeclast, meeting multiple immersive cultures while facing off against evil in many forms. Path of Exile 2 features twelve character classes, 240 Skill Gems, hundreds of equipment base types, a six-act campaign, more than a hundred unique boss fights, a deep endgame system and so much more. Play with your friends without losing any progress with couch co-op, cross-play and cross-progression.

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