History YMMV / PathOfExile

** Hardcore leagues have FinalDeath rule, sending dead charctes back to Standard. This makes defense much more important.

** Synthesis was a whole league of nothing but Scrappy Mechanics. Conceptually the idea of exploring memories was a sound one, but what it eventually turned into was a more cumbersome and less rewarding Delve. More cumbersome because you had to place pieces on a board to form a path while hoping that the pieces that would be fixed on the board wouldn't screw with your pathing while you were progressing, and you had to run nexus pieces multiple times which lead to a whole lot of repetition. Less rewarding because the way the Synthesis mechanic worked meant that even if you were doing everything right, the items it would generate still had a very high chance of turning out underwhelming. 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.

** 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 if you get stun-locked (which is often), so an unlucky death can potentially set you back ''days''. Getting to level 100 is nearly impossible for most builds, let alone past 90 or so.
** It's also noted that past Act 5 you'll lose 5% of your experience when you die, and if you're the kind of determinator to kill a boss, you can set yourself back a while. Mitigated by the fact you have easier methods of gaining levels in Part 2 as opposed to the post-story content.
** Synthesis was a whole league of nothing but Scrappy Mechanics. Conceptually the idea of exploring memories was a sound one, but what it eventually turned into was a more cumbersome and less rewarding Delve. More cumbersome because you had to place pieces on a board to form a path while hoping that the pieces that would be fixed on the board wouldn't screw with your pathing while you were progressing, and you had to run nexus pieces multiple times which lead to a whole lot of repetition. Less rewarding because the way the Synthesis mechanic worked meant that even if you were doing everything right, the items it would generate still had a very high chance of turning out underwhelming. It got so bad that the developers actually came forward and apologized for how halfbaked the systems were and that they would not be implemented into the core game in future leagues, at least not in their original iteration.

* ThatOneAchievement: All Ears. This achievement requires you to, on one character, hear every optional line of dialogue in the game. Not only can you [[PermanentlyMissableContent screw this up]] within ten minutes of making the character, but it requires you to take an [[GuideDangIt extremely specific set of actions]] at several multiple points of the story. A guide of who to talk to, at what time, and in what conditions is mandatory due to the extremely limited time windows of some dialogue choices.

** 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.

* ThatOneAchievement: All Ears. This achievement requires you to, on one character, hear every optional line of dialogue in the game. Not only can you [[PermanentlyMissableContent screw this up]] within ten minutes of making the character, but it requires you to take an [[GuideDangIt extremely specific set of nonsensical actions]] in Act 2 across all three difficulties that require a rather expensive item to finish. A guide of who to talk to, at what time, and in what conditions is mandatory due to the extremely limited time windows of some dialogue choices.

---> Haku: "I do not wish to be here any longer, exile. The Ancestors whisper in my ear. They tell me that I am needed back home in Ngamakanui. Have you the mercy to let a man return to his family?" If you accept: "It will be good to see my family again..."\\
Elreon: "All this time, all this bloodshed, I kept telling myself that the ends justify the means. But I can't stop asking myself: [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone what if I'm wrong? Have I damned myself?]] Reckon it's time I took a sabbatical. I'll retreat from all this and wait for a divine sign." If you agree: "Go with peace, exile. And if you see God somewhere on your journey, tell him I'm waiting to hear from him."

---> Memory: I cannot escape the feeling that I am being cooked by the sun in a cauldron made of sand. As I dream of water, walking, dying, I see it: an oasis. I slake my thirst with chill liquid that sparkles in the sun. I dunk my head, then lie down, exhausted and exhilarated. Today, I get to live.\\
Cavas: Even if I could remember my life, Exile, I am certain no single drink would ever have tasted so good.\\
Zana: At long last, a memory that didn't make me want to curl up into a ball and weep!

** The various lost memories you explore in the Synthesis league are, a lot of the time, just as nightmarish as the rest of the game. However, there are a few flickers of hope. Depending on your progress through the story, the lost spirit Cavas or the familiar Zana will commentate on this if you manage to find a fully formed memory (4-pointed).

** The unique bow Incrafctem is a shout-out to ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' both in its name and its description. Years later, ''Minecraft'' would get its own ARPG spin-off in the form of ''Minecraft Dungeons''.

*** Became an AscendedMeme in the Betrayal League; if you defeat a Syndicate member and Vagan together, they'll ask Vagan if he wants to "kick my rear or bend it."

* HilariousInHindsight: The ''Betrayal'' patch introduces the player going after the mysterious enemy known as the Immortal Syndicate. This new content patch was announced just a few days after the controversy surrounding Blizzard Entertainment regarding their announcement of the ''Diablo: Immortal'' mobile game. According to WordOfGod it was completely unintentional (the Betrayal league had already been in development for a month and a half before Blizzcon), but humorous nonetheless.
** To make it even funnier, one of Einhar's new voice lines mirrors an infamous statement from said reveal, as well as poking fun at the much-maligned Net system from the previous iteration of the Bestiary.

** And if that wasn't enough, in 2019, GGG announced that they too are also working on a mobile version of their ARPG. However, the reaction was far less negative given that they priotized other major announcements (such as Path of Exile 2) first before this one.
* HolyShitQuotient: The typical reaction when someone sees this game's skill tree for the first time. Fans call it a skill ''forest'' for a reason!

** While skills get rebalanced with each major release, Dominating Blow has been a bottom-tier scrappy since it was released. 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 can make it viable is the unique claw The Scourge, which makes adjustments to minion damage apply to your own damage as well.

** The developer's ah, ''controversial'' decision to stick with non-instanced loot.
*** Now that they've implemented an option for permanently allocated loot, it's more broken between StopHavingFunGuys who think that free-for-all loot should be the only way to play and that the developers shouldn't have added the option, and everyone else who just plays with the option they prefer.

** Getting rid of Act 3's Sewer Waterway in the 2.0 patch. For some, people are glad that it was cut since there was already so much sewer content to deal with that the amount of sewer zones to go through just got tiresome after awhile. On the other hand, the loss of the Sewer Waterway is felt to be a loss of some game immersion as it was a journey to travel under the river to get to the Ebony Barracks. As a result, the new sewer entrance to the Barracks being just shortly after the Warehouse Sewer's Undying Wall has been felt to be a tad out-of-place.
** Come the 3.0 patch, the massive nerfing to Energy Shield builds has also raised some heckles.

* 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.

* DemonicSpiders: Rogue Exiles are hostile [=NPCs=] that are exiles like you and have a chance to spawn pretty much anywhere. They have access to the same skills as you do and can be very dangerous, especially in the higher difficulty levels. Bumping into one unprepared can lead to a swift death.

* DuelingGames: With Diablo 3 (and perhaps Torchlight 2) as the prime action-rpg of this time-period. Marvel Heroes is sometimes brought into the conversation as well. More recently with ''VideoGame/GrimDawn''.
* EarlyBirdBoss: Most sub-bosses in Act 1 on normal difficulty, primarily Hailrake (see below).

** Hailrake is brutal in both normal and merciless difficulties. In normal you fight him at about level 2 when you have no real gear, skills, or passive points and you're just getting the hang of the game. His primary ability is both extremely powerful and fairly counter-intuitive if you don't already know what it does (at short range it's harder to dodge, but at long range it's 7 times more likely to completely freeze you which is more or less a guaranteed kill at this level). On merciless you know what to expect, but the map he's on is level 58 and directly adjacent to level 53 maps with no warning that's the case. He is in fact higher level than the mid act boss Brutus and about the same as the end act boss Merveil.

** The BonusDungeon carrion-beetle boss, the Sunburst Queen. Powerful fire-spells coupled with the the Queen's never-ending spawning of 50 to 100 suicidal-bombing carrion beetles makes for a rather difficult fight. It's almost like dealing with a fire-version of Merveil...[[UpToEleven only a hundred times worse]]!
** With the introduction of Act 4, another slew of tricky unique monsters also followed. While most areas are tricky, but manageable, people come to dread a certain area because of its uniques alone: Kaom's Dream segment.
*** The first area has Torchoak Grove, a unique totem enemy accompanied by other totems. All of them can bombard the player with mortar-like projectiles which outrange practically any ranged attack at this point, being able to hit from over a full screen away, and way too high damage per projectile compared to the area, usually one-shotting unwary players unfortunate enough to get caught in too many of the blasts. It was later revealed that the high amount of damage was a bug and was fixed in patch 2.1, making them a lot more manageable.
*** The second area has Triskeriaki, a unique rakango enemy with the ability to spawn three tentacles to fire a volley of spikes instead of just one like the regular version. One volley is bad enough, although survivable with sufficient defense, but if you get caught in the crossfire of two or, heaven forbid, all three tentacles, then prepare to see your precious character get slaughtered in a manner of seconds if you don't get out in time. Unlike Torchoak Grove, this boss isn't bugged; it's actually meant to do this much damage.

** 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. And the kicker? As of version 3.0.1, the fight suffers from a GameBreakingBug that will occasionally cause Kitava's defeat to ''fail to register''.

** Back in the day, ''The Battlefront'' of Act 3 used to be this. The worst part of this zone was when you came across the mage variants of the Black Guards who constantly use a thorn-type of spell that causes any form of damage taken from the player to be copied back at said player. It was ''absolutely'' brutal to player builds not dumping their skill points into increasing their health or shield, which usually resulted in instant death. Overtime, the Blackguard mages received nerfs to the amount of damage returned to the player that it's hardly noticeable anymore.

* ThatOneSidequest: Some of the missions for the Forsaken Masters can be very difficult or almost impossible depending on a characters skillset. For example, it is quite hard to solve Vorici's missions of only killing certain enemies, if your character heavily specializes in AreaOfEffect-skills. Haku's missions are considered to be especially hard for almost everyone, because they are very strict [[TimedMission Timed Missions]] of quickly reaching a certain place in narrow, monster-infested caves, in a game that often forces the player to proceed carefully. Oh, and it also throws indestructable Totems into the mix, that attack the player with elemental damage. There's a good reason why they were largely scrapped in the Betrayal League.

** The Marauder got some flak as this. As the pure Strength class, he focuses on powerful melee attacks and armor that is purely defensive. The problem is that, towards the end of the game and ''especially'' the higher difficulties, you pretty much ''need'' some form of ranged attack and evasion/an energy shield to stay alive without having to guzzle potions every other second. However, come 3.0, he was massively buffed thanks to [[GameBreaker Vaal Pact]], making him extremely powerful in the endgame.

** Chaos Inoculation and Energy Shield. This pair has been, for several leagues, the hands-down best defensive option in the game with nearly every quality build making use of it. It is capable of getting more than ''triple'' the equivalent hit points of a Life build with similar levels of gear while also regenerating much faster and making a player immune to the nastiest damage type. This is widely hated by poorer players because the popularity and effectiveness has made good Energy Shield items incredibly expensive. It's also hated because of the fact that [[SerialEscalation as these builds gain more energy shield they require enemies who deal more damage to kill]], which leads to enemies dealing higher damage and players who aren't using this mechanic getting [[OneHitKill one-shotted]] with increasing frequency.

** 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 if you get stun-locked (which is often), so an unlucky death can potentially set you back ''days''. Getting to level 90 is nearly impossible for most builds, let alone past 80 or so.

** Path of Exile is notable for being a free-to-play MMORPG whose devs 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.

* ScrappyMechanic: 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 if you get stun-locked (which is often), so an unlucky death can potentially set you back ''days''. Getting to level 90 is nearly impossible for most builds, let alone past 80 or so.

** Guff "Tiny" Grenn, one of the Immortal Syndicate members, is quite popular because of his lines when you beat him.
--> You hit me in the eyeball! Why the eyeball, exile?

* Just walk around Lioneye's Watch and see how many people are running with Tabula Rasas and Goldrims. The two items are very useful in starting a character, so almost anyone doing a second character in a league will buy them before starting.

** '''Einhar Frey'''. He immediately became a FountainOfMemes in Bestiary (often considered the best part of that league) for his narm-tastic voice acting, his hilariously blunt dialogue, and his CloudCuckoolander personality. In the Betrayal League, he was brought back as a Master specifically because of fan demand with [[TookALevelInBadass several dozen new levels in badass]] to boot.

* ThatOneDisadvantage: Endgame Mapping uses the suffix/prefix modifier system, but a few of the modifiers are absolutely destructive to some builds, that having one or more can turn the Map Unwinnable for your character, at which you'll be forced to reroll or enlist another's help to clear them. Chief among these are Reflect Physical / Elemental Damage, No Regeneration, and No Leeching.
** Which mods count as ThatOneDisadvantage depend on build. For instance a DamageOverTime, totem, trap, or minion build would be completely unaffected by reflect or no leech mods.

*** Actually subverted, as many low-level spell gems can be extremely effective if combined with the right support gems, thanks to their low mana cost and versatility.