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I've put a frankly unhealthy number of hours into Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids, and it's landed in a weird place for me: it's exciting when you're messing with new toys, then it starts to feel familiar again, especially once you're chasing PoE 2 Items and trying to keep your character on-curve without turning every session into a spreadsheet.
The Druid Is the Real Win.
The Druid class is the highlight, no question. Those new Talismans are a smart idea, because they don't just hand you one gimmick and call it a day. You swap forms and your whole tempo changes. Bear feels like you're daring the game to knock you over. Wolf is all snap decisions and movement, the kind of form that makes you play faster than you meant to. Wyvern's the odd one, but in a good way—eating corpses for charges makes you plan your room clears instead of face-rolling. Best part? Talismans aren't locked to Druid, so other classes can steal the tech, and that's where the build brain starts buzzing. I've tried the new Ascendancies too: Shaman is simple power, and Oracle is the "wait, can I do that?" option that pushes you into strange passive routes you wouldn't normally touch.
Vaal Ruins: Cool Idea, Awkward Reality.
The new League mechanic, Vaal Ruins, almost had me fully sold. You find six beacons while you're out in campaign zones, then you open a run and lay out rooms with a controller like you're building your own trap-filled maze. It's one of the few things that actually nudges you to stop sprinting to the objective and look around. The prosthetic limb swaps are also pure PoE energy—gross, funny, and somehow tempting because the stats can be juicy. But then the friction hits. With the recent change, you can't pop out to stash loot and jump back in; leave the dungeon and it shuts down. So you either ignore drops or play inventory Tetris until your brain melts, which makes the whole loop feel way less rewarding than it should.
Endgame Still Feels Like a Treadmill.
Once you're past the newness, the endgame is still mostly the same old map grind. Yeah, they've tuned things—smaller packs, tougher enemies, and it's nice not having that gloomy fog smothering everything—but the rhythm hasn't really changed. Run maps, upgrade bits, run more maps. The campaign pacing is still uneven too: Act 1 flows, Act 4 feels like a palate cleanser, and Act 3 still drags like it's trying to test your patience on purpose. I'll probably finish the story on my Druid, mess around with a couple more form setups, then take a break and see what Diablo IV is doing this season, unless the devs loosen the Ruins restrictions and give the endgame a stronger reason to log in for u4gm PoE 2 Items while the hype's still warm.
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