History YMMV / PathOfExile

* GuideDangIt: One could say the ''whole game'' could be considered this mostly due to the sheer number of options it gives players. There are so many mechanics, spell/stat interactions, and strategies to contend with that it can be very easy to get lost and make a terrible build through no fault of your own. The infamously gigantic skill tree doesn't exactly help either. However, as players learn the mechanics, builds, the metagame, and ways to make currency effectively to buy and trade for items, the game opens up and becomes considerably more manageable. Best illustrated by the following ''Webcomic/NerfNow'' [[https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/940 comic.]]
** Several maps can be very annoying to travel through if you're not aware of the "tells" or "hints" that they have to help players navigate. For a few examples;
*** The Western Forest, Act 2: From the waypoint, the way to get to Alira is the side of the road where the torch is.
*** The Lunaris Temple, Act 3: The correct way to go is always upstairs.
*** The Grain Gate, Act 7: The exit is through the warehouses with the dead Blackguards sitting next to their entrances.
** Getting proper defenses and knowing which types of defense take priority can often mean the difference between success and frustration. In particular, getting your Fire, Cold, and Lightning elemental resistances to the 75% soft cap is ''extremely'' important for surviving (Chaos resistance also to a lesser degree, although very few enemies use Chaos attacks). In contrast, armour and evasion typically doesn't do anywhere near as much to keep you alive.
** The "% increased damage" modifier is '''not''' the same as "% more damage" modifier and has a different effect on damage.
** Several gems are much, much more useful if they are left unupgraded, because upgrading them also will increase their mana cost/damage threshold to proc. For example, connecting level 1 Cast When Damage Taken with level 1 Immortal Call will result in Immortal Call being procced ''every single time you are hit'', which is extremely useful against spiky enemy damage and oneshots.

* 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!

** Proposed changes to trading have also been controversial. GGG has repeatedly denied adding any "auction house"-like systems to the game, stating how drastically it can affect the in-game economy. While there are players that agree it's for the best, considering how much it negatively impacted ''VideoGame/DiabloIII''''s endgame, some players would still like to see some form of automated trading so that they can buy items in bulk without messaging players who put up listings that they never respond to, or vice versa. A common argument against automation is its potential to be exploited by price fixers and how it could be a slippery slope into more automation.

** The Act 2 quest to kill off the three Bandit Lords was considered to be annoying because you couldn't reach the northern Bandit Lord, Oak, until the Exile made his/her way through the Vaal Ruins, which was blocked off from entering until the Loratta tree blocking the entrance was killed. But in order to kill Loratta, the player had to journey to the Chamber of Sin and Weaver Spider home first to collect items needed to kill said tree. The 2.0 patch fixed this by moving the Wetlands zone with Oak in it to come before the Vaal Ruins instead of after it. Another noticeable change for this quest was getting rid of the Blackwood zone so that the journey to the western Bandit Lord, Alira, would be a bit shorter.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Quite a lot, actually ! The Solaris Temple music in particular is very popular.

** 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 (This number can exceed 40 maps if luck is not on your side) and 4 other boss fights at an *absolute minimum* to get another chance at fighting him.

* 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 (This number can exceed 40 maps if luck is not on your side) and 4 other boss fights at an **absolute minimum** to get another chance at fighting him.

** 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.

*** In the Heist league, syndicate characters that aren't or are no longer members of the syndicate can randomly show up as background [=NPCs=] in Rogue's Harbor, which means the player basically freed them to live their own lives. Maybe not so heartwarming when it's Gravicus or Camaron there (in which case they'd kinda be [[KarmaHoudini Karma Houdinis]]), but at least they aren't in Catarina's grasp anymore.

*** In the Heist league, syndicate characters that aren't or are no longer members of the syndicate can randomly show up as background NPCs in Rogue's Harbor, which means the player basically freed them to live their own lives. Maybe not so heartwarming when it's Gravicus or Camaron there (in which case they'd kinda be [[KarmaHoudini Karma Houdinis]]), but at least they aren't in Catarina's grasp anymore.

** 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 survivabilibty 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]].

** Similarly, the large slate of {{Nerf}}s that came with the Expedition league split the player base. GGG and supporters of the nerfs felt that player power creep had gotten out of hand and that it needed to be reined in, while opponents say that player power and speed was what made the game fun for them. The league saw a large drop-off in player counts, compared to previous leagues.

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

** Vagan's greeting, "Let me bend your ear for a moment!". Helps that it's [[{{Mondegreen}} 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.

** Porcupine Goliaths shoots out spikes in a nova when killed, each dealing an obscene amount of damage, even from normal versions. They're especially devastating on builds that lack physical damage reduction. Getting too close to a pack of them and killing them can nearly or downright kill you. The only 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 with a remove bleed effect on hand. Monsters with Elemental or Physical Thorns can also be a huge pain for any build that deals damage in huge chunks. 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.

** 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, doing respectable damage. Easy to avoid... if you can see where the circles are.

** The Abyssal 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.

** 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 with a remove bleed effect on hand. Monsters with Reflect Elemental Damage can also be a huge pain for casters relying on elemental spells. 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.
** 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 slightes 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. Frost and Storm Bearers get an honorable mention, as each one spawns a circular AoE that explodes a few seconds after killing them, doing respectable damage. Easy to avoid... if you can see where the circles are, which is not possible on some maps.

*** 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.
-->''Do you not have nets, exile?''
*** 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.

** 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.

** What's one of the deadliest attack in the game? Any big [=AoE=] blast or slam? Sure, but you can easily see them coming. The Shaper's bullet hell spam? That you can hide away from. Not unlike one of Baran's basic attacks, where he fires three blasts of lightning at the ground towards you. Just getting hit by one of these deals massive damage. He will just casually delete ''your entire life bar'' if you get hit by it. His own big slam attack on average will deal ''less damage'' than this.
** Generally, players don't like the boss's invulnerability phases, but Sirus's takes the cake. At around each quarter of health, he goes invulnerble and creates a Deatomization Storm underneath him, forcing you out of the small circle that acts as the boss arena. Getting even near one is extremely lethal and it's huge. Then, you have to wait for the storm to slowly move out of the general area until it's no longer covering Sirus, then run up to him to start the next phase, all while he uses his FightingSpirit to bombard your general direction. Dying in this phase is [[ContinuingIsPainful especially painful]] because you have to walk back from the entrance through multiple storms scattered across the stage. It was even worse when the storm he created was homing, which could actually ''brick the entire fight'' if you let it go in the wrong direction. Also, ''never'' leave the circle around Sirus or he will use this attack.

* 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 [[GuideDangIt extremely specific actions]] at several 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.

* GuideDangIt: One could say the ''whole game'' could be considered this mostly due to the sheer number of options it gives players. There are so many mechanics, spell/stat interactions, and strategies to contend with that it can be very easy to get lost and make a terrible build through no fault of your own. The infamously gigantic skill tree doesn't exactly help either. However, as players learn the mechanics, builds, the metagame, and ways to make currency effectively to buy and trade for items, the game opens up and becomes considerably more manageable.

** The bombastic, climactic theme of the Kitava bossfight and the creepy ''Diablo 2''-esque music of the Abyssal Depths are also highly regarded.

* 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'' and ''{{VideoGame/Wolcen}}''.

* GoodBadBugs: Similar to ''Diablo II'', Path of Exile is notorious/beloved for the interesting and weird bugs it has had over the years.

** 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.

** 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. It was eventually reworked extensively, notably changing it so the player didn't need to land the killing blow.
** 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.