History YMMV / PathOfExile

* TierInducedScrappy: [[TierInducedScrappy/PathOfExile page here]]

* Memes (MemeticMutation): [[MemeticMutation/PathOfExile page here]]

** Both modes can be combined into Hardcore SSF, which adds an extra "screw you" of losing your hard-earned gear if you lose your character.

[[folder: A-M]]

* DemonicSpiders: There are a few enemies no player likes seeing:
** Porcupine Goliaths shoots out spikes in a nova when killed, which deal an unusually obscene amount of damage, even from normal versions. They're especially devastating on builds that lack physical damage reduction, and getting too close to a pack of them and killing them can nearly or outright kill you. The only effective counterplay is to use an effect that destroys enemy corpses on kill like freezing them.
** There are a few monster mods that can down players quickly. For example, Corrupted Blood inflicts the bleed status effect and can sap your health in seconds unless you have a flask that can remove it on hand. Monsters with physical or elemental reflect were able to kill builds that dealt big damage in huge chunks by just getting hit, which prompted them to be nerfed by shooting a delayed projectile that deals reflected damage instead. On the same vain, Volatile Fire/Ice/Stormblood were able to one-shot melee builds instantly when dying, and were turned into a delayed tracking explosion. Piling on a load of Storm Calls or fully charging a Flame Blast can lead to an OhCrap moment when you discover that the monster you're about to nuke is going to reflect that right back at you. Proximity Shield is just annoying for any non-melee builds.
** With the introduction of the Talisman league, which spawned monsters holding the aformentioned talisman, giving them a unique effect and rewarding the player with one if they managed to kill it, one particular type quickly gained infamy to the point of getting nerfed: Bonespire. Monsters holding the Bonespire talisman sporadically created spiky areas on the floor which both damaged and applied a stacking dot that can't be removed like bleed or circumvented like puncture. Problem was the damage was way too high, to the point of even the slightest of delayed reactions meant certain death and even then portaling back to town was the only real counter to its stacking [=DoT=]. This was quickly nerfed in a patch, almost not even a day after the league started.
** Monster packs with Bloodline mods can be horrifically dangerous. Bearers of the Guardian causes the pack to summon an Animated Guardian that cannot be killed until the pack is exterminated. Voidspawn of Abaxoth summons a BonusBoss unique demon when the last pack member is killed. Heralds of the Obelisk leave behind lightning-spell spamming untargetable obelisks until the last member of the pack is killed. Flame, Frost, and Storm Bearers get an honorable mention, as each one spawns a circular AoE that explodes a few seconds after killing them, which are easy to avoid, but used to have a visibility problem that made dodging hard. Necrovigil is a removed mod that made fighting the pack extremely annoying by making each of them leave a ground effect that makes other monsters in it unkillable.
** The DemonicSpiders factor can be compounded by enemies with multiple modifiers. A rare monster with a Nemesis mod, possessed by a Tormented Spirit, and bearing multiple Essences will probably drop some nice loot, but fighting it is going to be a real bad time.
** The Harbinger league throws the titular Harbingers at you: EnemySummoner foes who are invincible on their own and spam devastating spells at the player. The only way to kill them is to slay their minions, as each dead minion drains a little more of their health. Unfortunately, the minions are also powerfully-buffed as well. Rounding a corner and coming face to face with a glowing blue Harbinger and it's backup turns a normal dungeon run into a surprise round of desperate kiting and minion-slaying against an enemy just as dangerous as most bosses.
** The Abyss leagues has the titular Abysses, which love to spawn extremely tough rare monsters with very, very high health regen and potential one-shot abilities. The ones with scythes are the most notorious, thanks to having an extremely fast spin attack that can oneshot basically ''any'' build with bad mods.
** Pretty much everything in the Azurite Mines are various flavours of annoying, but there are two creature types in there that are especially problematic. The first are the Cavestalkers, which are long-armed, monkey like creatures with monstrously powerful voices. They can weaponise this in two ways - Letting out a roar that temporarily knocks the Crawler offline, making you take heavy damage over time and rendering all enemies invincible, or they can let out a sonic scream forwards, which is utterly deadly and difficult to see in the chaos. The other enemy to watch out for are the Chimera-like enemies. These things are extremely agile (one of their favorite moves is to blitz through you then smack you with their tail, causing heavy damage both times), are quite relentless in chasing you, and are 'immensely' durable, which given the fact you are constantly having to chase the Crawler, makes them nightmarish to keep on top of.
** The members of the Immortal Syndicate are the most universally agreed upon example in years. Its officers can be more powerful than the bosses of the map (including end-game bosses like the Guardians), use abilities that deal tremendous amounts of damage (with many of them doing very high Chaos damage) and are sometimes difficult to see, and the locations make it worse - Research makes you rush through a horde of minions on essentially a timer first, Fortification spawns an infinite stream of monsters from clouds of smoke that cover the Syndicate officers' telegraphing attacks, and Intervention features the officers simply ambushing you out of nowhere. A few instances had the players being killed with attacks off-screen.

** Neversink is renown for their widely used and highly customizable loot filter.
* GameBreaker: The game has had a few of them over the years. Many many different types of builds can be very powerful with the right gear and skills, but some have been so obscenely powerful that they've shaped the meta for years at a time on occasion.
** Before patch 3.0, Energy Shield was the dominant defensive setup in the game for a very long time simply because of how quickly it could scale with gear, to the point where it was possible to gain so much Energy Shield as to make characters functionally invincible
** Patch 3.0 massively buffed Vaal Pact, turning it into a must-have for most melee builds thanks the sheer amount of life leech it gives you - Marauders especially benefit from it thanks to their Ascendancies like Cloaked In Savagery, which has excellent synergy with Vaal Pact. This gets even more ridiculous when combined with the also-buffed Mind Over Matter node, which makes 30% of the damage you take drain your mana instead of health. It was eventually nerfed in patch 3.1.
** Well-made summoner builds are this in some players eyes. Since minions are completely automated, they allow the player to focus on avoiding damage which makes surviving the bosses much easier. This also means that Reflect, one of the most dreaded effects in the game, is utterly useless against a minion summoner. Several Witch Necromancer Ascendancy nodes - in particular Mistress of Sacrifice, which allows your Offering gems to apply to you as well as minions - make them even stronger and faster. However, minion builds are finicky in actual game play, difficult to gear properly due to the mechanics of the spells/abilities, and often considered boring by many players due to the passiveness of the gameplay, so summoner builds are relatively rare and they are often described as DifficultButAwesome rather than game-breaking. Mistress of Sacrifice was also nerfed in patch 3.2 to only give 50% of the Offering effects to the player, forcing Necro summoners to keep a much closer eye on their own well-being.
** Also with summoners, the new acts introduced in ''The Fall of Oriath'' also added new enemies. Of particular note are the Tukohama's Vanguards[[note]]Act 6, which drop extremely damaging Scorching Ray totems[[/note]], Solar Guards[[note]]Act 8, which throw multiple fireballs in an arc[[/note]], Frost Sentinels[[note]]Also Act 8, which are the same as the DiscOneNuke Fire Sentinels in Act 3 except they can freeze enemies too[[/note]] and Wicker Men [[note]]Act 10, which have a spell similar to Righteous Fire that burns enemies around them[[/note]]. They're all DemonicSpiders when you fight them, but for summoner builds, these enemies are incredibly powerful as Spectres with proper Spectre gear[[note]]Bones of Ullr, Vis Mortis, Victario's Charity/Tukohama's Fortress (for Vanguards), + minion helmets[[/note]], capable of utterly melting endgame bosses like the Guardians while the player runs around like ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' thanks to Flesh Offering and tanking huge damage thanks to minion passive nodes/Bone Offering. It's one of the primary reasons why the Necromancer is by far the most popular Witch Ascendancy.
*** Before then, the Act 4 Stygian Revanants and the aforementioned Fire Sentinels were this as well.
** Tabula Rasa is both this and/or a DiscOneNuke depending on your build. Tabula is a white chest armour piece that has six-linked gem slots and has no level requirement, with the tradeoff that it also has no stats on it whatsoever. This is ludicrously powerful, since most of your damage comes from support gems linked to attack gems, making it easily the best leveling item in the game - to the point where it can take some builds all the way to the endgame. It's also typically inexpensive and is rather common to drop from enemies (and barring that, it can also be farmed with Humility divination cards). This gets taken UpToEleven if you're lucky or rich enough to find one with a "+ level to Socketed Gems" corruption or double Vaal corruption.
** With ''War for the Atlas'' the new mods for Shaped and Elder items can get disgustingly powerful, especially since you can roll multiple special mods on the same item. Rolling multiple "Socketed Gems are supported by [Support]" affixes can turn an item into a pseudo 7-link or 8-link (see the above note about Tabula Rasa). This gets especially ridiculous with offhand gear like one-handed weapons and quivers, particularly ones with ''"Gain % of physical damage as extra (element) damage"'' suffixes.
** The Headhunter belt is best-in-slot item for the majority of builds in the game, as it allows you to gain all of a rare monster's mods after you kill it for 20 seconds. It's also one of the rarest and most valuable items in the game, selling for dozens of Exalted Orbs. Even the divination cards that you can collect to get one (The Doctor, The Nurse, and The Fiend) are worth a pretty penny in orbs.
** Loreweave is a very powerful chestpiece for a single reason; it can increase your maximum resistances over the 75% cap up to 80%. Due to the way resistances and damage scaling work in this game, this increases your defenses exponentially and makes you ''significantly'' tankier against any form of non-physical damage. As an added bonus, it also gives you a fair amount of extra damage and life.
** Indigon makes mana costs and spell damage of spells rapidly increase with every spell cast in quick succession. Zerphi's Last Breath heals you for 8 times the mana cost of spells cast by you. Poet's Pen casts a spell every time you attack, but you do not actually 'spend' its mana cost. Before nerfs, the resulting build could accelerate to dealing up to 60 times the damage while outputting so much uncounterable self-healing it could not die to 'anything' that did less than its total effective health pool in one hit.
** The introduction of cluster jewels in the Delirium league (special items used to further customize your skill tree) lead to a build which, thanks to allowing the repeated use of notables, allowed the player to use all heralds and a good amount of auras to grant the player incredible damage output and survivability before even taking gear into account. To put it into context: Without reducing the amount of mana they reserve, you can't use more than four heralds, and a single aura can take up to ''half'' of your total mana. This instance is special in that, while the developers usually refrain from patching out exploitable builds while the league is ongoing and even announced at first that this would be the case with this build as well, they have since [[https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/frkwdp/how_come_ggg_nerfed_herald_of_agony_virulence/flyaj6g/?context=10 reconsidered this position]].

* MemeticMutation:
** "Skillgrimage."
** Vagan's greeting, "Let me bend your ear for a moment!". Helps that it's easy to mishear as "Let me bend your ''rear'' a moment," and Vagan is [[CasanovaWannabe the kind of guy]] who would probably think that's a suave come-on.
*** Became an AscendedMeme in the Betrayal League; one Syndicate member has a reaction to Vagan asking if he wants to "kick my rear or bend it."
** "Where there is a [adjective] key, there must be a [adjective] door."[[labelnote:Explanation]]Whenever the player picks up a key in the Labyrinth, Izaro will chime in with some form of the above line. Fans quickly latched on to the line's exploitability and CaptainObvious nature.[[/labelnote]]
** "WE TOUHOU NOW LADS!" [[labelnote:Explanation]]From the ''Atlas of Worlds'' expansion onwards a lot of new boss fights have involved BulletHell - style attacks and stage hazards. [[/labelnote]]
** [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Pathmon]] [[labelnote:Explanation]]The announcement of the Bestiary expansion (introducing a new mechanic that requires capturing monsters) immediately lead to a lot of Pokemon jokes[[/labelnote]]
** T H I C C J U G G [[labelnote:Explanation]]A common nickname of the Juggernaut Ascendency, which is known for being ''extremely'' tanky, especially after it was buffed in Patch 3.2.[[/labelnote]]
** Pants of Exile [[labelnote:Explanation]]Very few of the armor or armor sets in the game (other than MTX) have pants, which has been noticed by the playerbase over the years.[[/labelnote]]
** Almost ''all'' of Einhar Frey's voice lines are memes on the POE Reddit.
*** "Haha! You are captured. Stupid beast." [[labelnote:Explanation]]Usually used as "Haha! You are x. Stupid y."[[/labelnote]]
*** "We will be best friends, beast. Until we slaughter you! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
** ''[[ThatOneAttack THE TOUCH OF GOD!]]'' [[labelnote:Explanation]]High Templar Dominus yells this before unleashing an extremely powerful slam attack on the ground that has huge AOE and almost invariably insta-kills players, making it notorious in the Hardcore community. Often used in remix videos.[[/labelnote]]
*** "This world is an illusion, exile..." [[labelnote:Explanation]]A line Dominus says when he switches phases. Often quoted as a reaction to glitches or bizarre things in the game.[[/labelnote]]
** "Too. Much. Clutter." [[labelnote:Explanation]] This is the Witch's response to picking up an item with a full inventory, said in a very irritated deadpan. This is a line that is very often quoted when people experience the loot piles generated by Abysses or Breaches, as the sheer amount of items can cause a screen literally full of text. [[/labelnote]]
** [[YouBastard One monster remaining.]] [[labelnote:Explanation]] The /remaining chat command shows the number of enemies left in the current zone. The community has applied this message to some of the ethically dubious actions exiles can do like sacrificing beasts or going back in time to slaughter Vaal laborers.[[/labelnote]]
** "Just in time." [[labelnote:Explanation]]Alva says this every time you encounter her in a map. Became a common StupidStatementDanceMix and led to her being nicknamed "Justin Time"[[/labelnote]]
** Krangled [[labelnote:Explanation]]A reference to [[https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/g1ksx2/what_returning_after_a_few_years_feels_like/ this]] infamous Reddit post, which satirizes the game's increasing level of complexity over the years. Used both as mockery of the game's complexity, and as a synonym for "corrupted" or "ruined", with second use becoming more prominent in/after ''Scourge'' league, where it was the FanNickname for the league's item modification mechanic.[[/labelnote]]
** WHAT IN DAMNATION HAVE YOU DONE [[labelnote:Explanation]]Bannon's first line of dialogue, reacting to the Exile defeating Innocence. It was picked up as a response to anything bizarre due to how loud and hammy it is compared to Bannon's normal voice.[[/labelnote]]
*** BY THE MUSCULAR GOLDEN ARSE OF INNOCENCE, WHAT WAS THAT [[labelnote:Explanation]]Kirac's reaction to Zana's map device blowing up, used similarly.[[/labelnote]]
** I AM THE X! [[labelnote:Explanation]]Innocence prefaces nearly all of his attacks with some variation of "I am the..." Considering how [[ThatOneBoss notoriously difficult he is]], you will be hearing this phrase a ''lot''.[[/labelnote]]
** Le Toucan[[labelnote:Explanation]]Originally a Twitch copypasta, it became popular to post "le toucan has arrived" ASCII art in the game's global chat, prompting other players to "PRAISE" it. Eventually it became punishable by temporary mute for disrupting the chat, and later impossible altogether, but the Toucan remained as an unofficial SeriesMascot.[[/labelnote]]
** This is a buff[[labelnote:Explanation]]A recurring phrase from patch notes. Most often used sarcastically by the community.[[/labelnote]]
** Tested extensively[[labelnote:Explanation]]In patch 3.18, Archnemesis mods went core for Rare monsters to make them more of a threat. However, after the patch released, players noted that some Rares were unbeatable ''as soon as The Mud Flats'', with certain mods completely killing certain builds without any chance of counterplay aside from skipping the monster. The changes also upset the balance of Blight and Metamorph which were both balanced around the more mundane Rare monster mobs. In [[https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3266571 a public apology]] announcing the first nerf to the new mods ''a few hours'' after release, Chris Wilson noted "we tested it extensively", which the fanbase latched onto. Many more nerfs followed in the following days.[[/labelnote]]

* ScrappyMechanic:
** After completing Act 5, the game (without warning) subtracts 30% from all your resistances[[note]]The resistances are against fire, cold, lightning, and chaos damage. The game subtracts a flat percentage from your resistances, so if you have 50% cold resistance at the end of Act 5, you'll be reduced to 20% when you begin Act 6. Unlike the 75% upper limit for resistances, there is no lower limit, so it is possible to get negative percentages in your resistances, meaning you take extra damage from elements[[/note]]. After Act 10, the game subtracts another 30% from all your resistances, for a total of 60% permanent resistance reduction. If you're wondering why you suddenly start taking more damage than before, this is why. This mechanic is in place to make people pay attention to keeping their resistances up and upgrading gear as necessary. The permanent resistances decreases at the end of Acts 5 and 10 coincide with the in-game story element of [[spoiler: killing the BigBad Kitava each time]], lending some lore to this mechanic. However, the game does not tell you that they do this and there is no in-game indication that your resistances are lowered as you play through the acts, unless you check your resistances in the status window for your character. If you're a new player, you'll likely never even know of this mechanic and will curse the game for its DifficultySpike and FakeDifficulty.
** After completing the main story content, you lose 10% of your experience towards the next level every single time you die. This makes trying to level up in the map system especially painful as enemies gradually get to the point where they can easily kill you, so an unlucky death can potentially set you back ''days''. Getting to level 100 is nearly impossible for most builds, and even progressing through 90s can be tricky.
** Synthesis contained several Scrappy Mechanics at once. Decaying memory islands meant you could get stranded after a mistake, and randomly appearing new islands could suddenly block your planned path. The Synthesizer required massive effort to get even a chance at a good bonus, and gave nothing to non-crafting-oriented players. It got so bad that the developers actually came forward and apologized for how half-baked the systems were and that they would not be implemented into the core game in future leagues, at least not in their original iteration.
** Path of Exile is notable for being a free-to-play MMORPG whose devs [[https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2025870 try their hardest]] to make it difficult to have convenient trading options. The PC version does not have an auction house like other games of its kind; the closest thing [=PoE=] gets to having one is buying a premium stash tab and making it public to third-party trading websites (which the {{Microtransactions}} shop [[GuideDangIt doesn't tell the player]]), and listing things to sell on the Xbox One and [=PlayStation=] 4 versions' in-game Trade Market similarly requires a public premium stash tab. The only other options after that are spending a good chunk of time holing up in in-game chat on PC or posting and monitoring forum posts, then hoping someone bites.
** Enemy death effects. The developers state they're the only way for mobs that get killed in a single hit to actually affect the players, but some players think they're punishing builds for being good at killing enemies, and they're responsible for many deaths that seem to come out of nowhere.
** Sirus's death clouds in their first iteration. [[SequentialBoss Between phases]], he would summon giant clouds that floated around the arena and slowly followed the player. The player had to herd them around to get back to the boss, and after dying you could suddenly discover that the clouds had blocked the entrance, effectively making the fight {{Unwinnable}}. Needless to say, this was not received well, and eventually the clouds were changed to follow a fixed movement pattern.
** One type of Heist missions (Perception) has a unique obstacle - "observer totems" that increase alert level if they catch you nearby. They are always placed in maze-like corridors and can't be damaged until your companion comes close, so you have to either wait around each one, or rush through and hope you don't raise too much alert (meaning less treasure).
** The rework for magic and rare monsters that accompanied the Sentinel league is generally seen as particulary bewildering. The thought process was that magic and rare monsters proved to be too uninteresting following all the changes the game made over the previous decade, so the affixes would be replaced by the ones used in the Archnemesis league. The issues with that are numerous - the Archnemesis modifiers worked because in that league, players could pick what modifiers these enemies would get and were also guaranteed certain drops. Now, these modifiers can easily end up with monsters that are considerably sturdier than the bosses in the same level with modifier combinations that may prevent your build from doing its job at all ''and'' the rewards from these enemies are at best scaled up minimally at best as to make people question whether they drop more items ''at all''. As of this writing, which is just shy of two days after Sentinel league has been launched, GGG has issued ''three'' emergency statements detailing changes to make these modifiers less egregious, though they moreso served people to wonder how the developers couldn't catch how overtuned this mechanic was just from the numbers alone despite claiming to have done 'extensive testing'. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking It also ended up nerfing Headhunter.]]

* ThatOneBoss: Many, often different for each character-build.
** Oak in Act 2's bandit quest. He's incredibly strong, and he has a leap attack that instantly sends him to his target. This leap attack has almost no cooldown either, so expect to see him leaping around like a rabbit the entire fight. He's even harder to deal with if you like using a lot of fire skills. Expect to find yourself joining random parties just to deal with him. He's actually become even worse as the years went on, because buffs to how warcries worked affected him too, resulting in him becoming borderline unkillable to some builds.
** Merveil, the end boss of Act 1, is this for some players, especially those who are new to the game. At first, it seems like she just attacks the player with many powerful [[AnIcePerson frost-based]] magic attacks, but upon defeating her, her ''true'' form appears and she not only completely regenerates her health, but also becomes a [[TheMinionMaster summoner-type]] boss (alongside being an ice-mage) that will endlessly spawn {{Mooks}} to [[GodDamnedBats constantly annoy you]]; some even being suicidal-bomber types which will instantly destroy a chunk of health if the player let even one get too close. To top it all off, she has a shield that will regenerate if players hold off on attacking for too long, and in the second fight against a summoner-ice-mage, expect it to happen A LOT. Long story short, players are in for a long, drawn-out, fight against Merveil if they're not stocked up on cold-resist, or they're short on any area-of-effect type attacks to keep the summoned pets at bay.
** In the earlier days of the game, Kole in the Lunaris Temple was a known Hardcore run killer. He's a PaletteSwap of Brutus, and hits like a massive truck on higher difficulties. Fortunately, he's a skippable enemy.
** Players disappointed with Piety's relative ease have had [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor complaints answered]] with High Templar Dominus. BossRush as first ''and'' second phases, FlunkyBoss while being no slouch himself in third and fourth, and in said fourth phase, he can call a bloody death mist that instantly kills you unless you stand ''right next to him'' and his powerful melee attacks.
** Your first fight with Piety in the city ruins. She spams a spell (Chain Lightning) that causes a huge ball of energy to careen across the screen firing thunderbolts at anything nearby. If you have low lightning resistance, she's a nightmare.
** Piety in Act 4 is brutal for new players and the archenemy of any minion-dependent class. Still has all the things that make her frustrating in earlier acts, but she gains 6 assisting enemies that activate over time and begin spawning huge numbers of adds unless killed immediately. Further she gains a new lightning beam attack that sweeps the entire area, does enormous amounts of damage, and has no safe place to hide from it. You're meant to keep running in circles around her while she uses it, which often stops you from attacking (letting her energy shield regenerate) and ''will'' kill all your summons, spectres, and totems. And sometimes she'll be next to a wall when she does it so you can't run behind her either, requiring you to jump the beam with a dash. What really makes her a bane though is that, because of the level design and mechanics, you have to fight her every time you go through the area and, unlike most major bosses, the next waypoint is ''not'' by the start of the next area but in the ''middle'' of it, requiring a good slog through one of the game's tougher areas just to find it. Until you do, you're not done with Piety.
** [[TrueFinalBoss Malachai]] can make Dominus seem like a walk in the park, at least when it comes to tactics. He rarely gives any breathing room in his attacks, constantly spawning projectiles and creating stuff on the floor that damages you if you stay there, forcing you to be one the move during the whole fight, and if you do find a safe spot then he'll just teleport to you and unleash a devastating shockwave if you don't move away. There's only one attack that gives you an opening and even then you need to mind all the damaging stuff he spawned beforehand.
** Izaro in the Endgame Labyrinth, especially in the final room. Izaro himself is tough, since he charges at you, fires shockwaves at you, or has a screen-sized ground slam, depending what weapon he's wielding that day, and the ground slam especially is a guaranteed one-shot kill against all but the most durable characters. He also has a phenomenal amount of health, taking most characters a long time to wear down. The Goddess is even deadlier, chiming in with her mortar bombardment, which is quite capable of instantly killing more fragile characters if they get caught in the middle of it, and will occasionally teleport anyone close to Izaro into a large number of traps. Further, unlike Izaro, she cannot be distracted or taunted and will never target minions or totems, always aiming for the player. And in the final room he may or may not have impossible-to-remove buffs from his two previous fights and the arena is covered in traps, decreasing the space you have to get out of the way. This is one of the most-complained about fights in the game for a reason.
** Innocence is a pretty good introduction to [[DifficultySpike what you're in for]] in regards to the bosses in ''The Fall of Oriath''. While High Templar Avarius was manageable, Innocence is basically the Shaper Lite, constantly filling the screen with [=AoE=] attacks, almost all of which can do ''over 900 damage'' even on characters with the most armor you can have at that point in the game, meaning that he can nearly-one shot even characters who heavily built their characters around life. You ''will'' be hearing the words "I am the ___" many, ''many'' times before you finally kill this bastard. What really makes Innocence stand is, aside from Doedre the Vile and Kitava (both mentioned below), none of the new Act midbosses and end bosses are ''nearly'' as hard as he is.
** Doedre the Vile is an unholy fusion of PuzzleBoss and DamageSpongeBoss. She has by far the biggest Energy Shield of any enemy you've encountered thus far, and due to the main gimmick of constantly switching the cauldron fluid she uses to attack, she will always become invincible for several seconds as she absorbs the fluid, meaning that the already massive energy shield is constantly regenerating. Said gimmick? The cauldron in the middle of the arena is constantly filling with either a red, green or purple fluid. The red fluid causes Doedre to spam her exploding blood orb attack, the green fluid causes her to spawn hard hitting zombies, and the purple fluid continuously spawns [=AoE=] clouds that rapidly drain your health. You think you can just leave the cauldron on one phase the whole fight so Doedre doesn't go invincible? ''Nope''. Every few seconds like the current fluid is active, you're slapped with a steadily increasing debuff that effectively doubles the damage you take from all sources, and the only way to remove it is to change the cauldron's fluid. Thankfully her massive energy shield was nerfed considerably in subsequent updates, but you still have to deal with that damn cauldron.
** The final battle against Kitava. Even the most hardcore players agree that this fight is absolutely ridiculous. While all of his attacks are telegraphed, he performs them so quickly that even those with max move speed will be struggling to avoid them. As the fight goes on, he will start constantly summoning minions who are just as capable of shredding your health as he is. Finally, when he's done to the final phase of the fight, he'll start spamming an incredibly powerful flame [=AoE=] that, due to both the incredibly small arena and how the attack blends into the arena itself, is very difficult to determine where it will hit. This fight is even more difficult than most early map bosses, up until the Conquerors.
** Patch 3.1 introduces the Abyssal Lords, two rare bosses that can be randomly found at the end of the Abyssal Depths. Both of them are utterly harrowing fights, demanding good single-target and clearing damage under rather strict time limits with destroying Stygian Spires in order to defeat. They also love to shield themselves and summon veritable armies of abyssal enemies to assist them.
** Synthesis introduces five boss encounters, the hardest of which is The Cortex. Four back-to-back boss encounters with brand new mechanics, seperated by a challenging minion phase is bad enough. However, the way that the map mods for the Cortex are generated means it is extremely likely to get very punishing combinations, such as triple Extra Damage as (Element), curses, and so on, with no way to reroll them. This results in a boss fight that is almost impossible unless you look up footage of it first, as the attacks are very difficult to avoid if you don't know they're coming, and a triple-mod will oneshot all but the tankiest classes.
** Sirus, the Awakener has become extremely notorious within the playerbase for how difficult and broken he is. Even at the best of times, he hits incredibly hard and many of his abilities have a multitude of unpleasant status effects, to the point where people deem a Corrupted Blood Immunity Jewel - a semi-rare corruption outcome - to be outright mandatory to fighting him. However, several attacks are seen as straight up unfair, such as dropping a rain of meteors on you with no audio warning and only a half second of visual warning, or his fan-dubbed "DIE Laser" - An extremely strong laser beam he has no compunctions about blasting you with from offscreen. He is also infamous for being extremely prone to glitches, such as unavoidable attacks, becoming straight up unhittable, his lasers firing in directions they shouldn't, and in some cases, dropping an extremely damaging storm on the door you enter from, rendering it impossible to retry the fight. To top that all off, the way that he is engaged means that you need to complete 24 high level maps and 4 other boss fights at an '''absolute minimum''' to get another chance at fighting him (This number can exceed 40 maps if luck is not on your side).
** Urmod, the Fiend of Flood, despite being the boss of a mere tier 3 map, is more than willing to punish any player that underestimates him. His arena is constantly, well, flooded with water orbs that deal high damage and slows you if they hit you, and one of his main attacks, a quick blast of water jets, is capable of dealing more than ''3k+'' damage even on players with max armor and resistances. And he can ''chain'' up to three of these jet attacks in a rapid fire that will shred you from the complete opposite side of the map!

* TierInducedScrappy:
** Several [[{{Commons}} spell gems]] usually get this reaction due to higher level gems being perfect upgrades in comparison. A good example is the ''Fireball'' gem you acquire right at the start of the game, but then gets replaced by the infinitely better ''Firestorm'' gem that can be used a couple level-ups later.
** In general, parts of the high-tier endgame map system are only viable with certain build- and equipment-choices (in Hardcore at least). Otherwise, expect to be killed almost instantly on a regular basis because you didn't have the foresight to have both massive energy shield / life and life leech to stay alive past one or two hits. It is especially annoying to have invested into a character only to find them useless, and it's more likely that most people will simply give up rather than start over entirely.
** The Ascendency system also had plenty of issues with this, with several of the available Ascendancies being flat-out worse than alternatives (Champion, Occultist, Hierophant), mechanically broken (Saboteur, Guardian), or both (Elementalist). Inversely, several of them were so powerful (Necromancer, Slayer, Inquisitor) that you would be gimping yourself if you tried to play anything else. GGG attempted to rectify this with Patch 3.2, reworking all of the Ascendencies in order to balance them and buff the weaker ones up to viability.
** While skills get rebalanced with each major release, Dominating Blow has been a bottom-tier scrappy for a really long time. The skill requires you to kill enemies with a melee attack to turn them into minions, but minion builds and builds that are effective in melee are quite different. Essentially the only thing that could've made it viable is the unique claw The Scourge, which makes adjustments to minion damage apply to your own damage as well. Dominating Blow got rescued after getting reworked, notably giving it the ability to summon minions without having to land a killing blow, as well as new passive skills that grants character bonuses scaling with minion bonuses.
** Dominating Blow's cousin, Conversion Trap, on the other hand, is still left behind gathering dust. Like old Dominating Blow, it's completely useless in boss fights, and temporarily converting enemies to your side for a short time is just not as efficient as killing them. There's even less support for trap/minion hybrid builds and it's extremely inconsistent for damage or clearing anyway. It's worse than any other minion skill. Even Mirror Arrow Traps/Mines have better potential than Conversion Trap, which can at least kill bosses.
** Devouring Totem has been almost totally ignored since ''2012'', and sits at a combination of so many terrible factors only an absurdly high power boost or revamping it unrecognizably would likely fix it. It eats corpses to leech health and mana to the player. Because it's a totem, the player has to stop to put it down, it doesn't count as the player consuming a corpse, and it stops working against most bosses unless the player is generating corpses constantly, in which case they probably have better things to do with them. It counts against the totem limit, so a player who has invested in totems will want to use a different one, and one who hasn't will find it slow to place and fragile. As a leech effect it applies over time, wastes any excess at full health or mana, and is redundant for anyone who leeches already (which is most players), especially because the amount isn't that impressive anyway. The only thing it offers is it's probably the only source of mana leech still available to spellcasters...because it's so worthless no one bothered to remove it when the rest were purged. Similarly, Rejuevnation Totem is just about as neglected for most of the same reasons.
** On the support gem side of things, Chance to Flee. Not only is the mechanic completely unreliable, it grants absolutely nothing else. No damage, no extra utility, nothing, not even from gem quality. The gem is a relic from the extremely old days of Path of Exile and will likely remain untouched forever. In fact, its alterate quality gem is the only one that gives a ''purely'' negative bonus.

** After completing Act 5, the game (without warning) subtracts 30% from all your resistances[[note]]The resistances are against fire, cold, lightning, and chaos damage. The game subtracts a flat percentage from your resistances, so if you have 50% cold resistance at the end of Act 5, you'll be reduced to 20% when you begin Act 6. Unlike the 75% upper limit for resistances, there is no lower limit, so it is possible to get negative percentages in your resistances, meaning you take extra damage from elements[[/note]]. After Act 10, the game subtracts another 30% from all your resistances, for a total of 60% permanent resistance reduction. If you're wondering why you suddenly start taking more damage than before, this is why. This mechanic is in place to make people pay attention to keeping their resistances up and upgrading gear as necessary. However, the game does not tell you that they do this and there is no in-game indication that your resistances are lowered as you play through the acts, unless you check your resistances in the status window for your character. If you're a new player, you'll likely never even know of this mechanic and will curse the game for its DifficultySpike and FakeDifficulty.

** Krangled [[labelnote:Explanation]] A reference to [[https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/g1ksx2/what_returning_after_a_few_years_feels_like/ this]] infamous Reddit post, which satirizes the game's increasing level of complexity over the years. Expect any discussion about the complexity of the mechanics to be met with discussion of "krangling".[[/labelnote]]
** WHAT IN DAMNATION HAVE YOU DONE [[labelnote:Explanation]]Bannon's first line of dialogue, reacting to the Exile defeating Innocence. It was picked up as a response to anything bizzare due to how loud and hammy it is compared to Bannon's normal voice.[[/labelnote]]