The quickest participant in Path of Exile 2 seems like he’s enjoying as a music visualizer. Lightning bolts ping-pong throughout the display in sync with the breakneck beats he’s been blasting for the previous 9 hours on Twitch. He’s racing to be the primary participant on this planet to hit the motion RPG’s max degree, and the competitors is fierce.
Andrew “TidesofTime” Biessener is degree 98, simply two ranges shy of the end line at degree 100. And so are the eight different gamers proper behind him, in response to the official leaderboard. Expertise beneficial properties are glacial this far into the sport, however he might take the crown over the weekend if he retains going at this tempo.
A former skilled Dota 2 and Hearthstone participant, Biessener is defining what skilled PoE 2 seems like at this stage in early entry, and it appears to be a display stuffed with lightning bolts. His Stormweaver sorceress is a conduit for severe shock injury and pace. The place different courses need to threat getting hit whereas aiming arrows or charging into monsters, Biessener’s construct does the work for him so he can teleport by maps effectively. All he does is spam the Spark talent and watch 1000’s of blue bolts clear the dungeon for him.
Biessener took a brief break on Thursday to run by his setup on stream, however don’t let his sprawling talent tree scare you. It’s truly fairly easy: Every thing runs on mana. One in all PoE 2’s passive abilities overloads your shock injury primarily based on how a lot mana you’ve gotten, and the Thoughts Over Matter node within the talent tree turns your mana into your life. Without having for normal life anymore, Biessener can also be operating with the node that reduces it to 1 and makes you resistant to chaos injury, the scariest injury sort within the sport. He’s successfully extra mana than sorceress.
There are 5 different sorceress gamers within the high 10 who’re utilizing an identical, if not equivalent, construct. Such is the ability of discovering a single attribute — in a sport overflowing with them — that does all of it. Fortunate loot drops aren’t even an element at this degree of play. Shopping for objects off different gamers is the one method you’re going to search out the right gear, which implies the race is essentially a marathon of clearing by dungeons as quick as attainable. One Reddit consumer tallied up all of the completely different courses within the leaderboard of the highest 1,000 gamers and it’s overwhelmingly Stormreaver sorceress.
However second place is definitely an Invoker monk who’s round an hour behind Biessener, pushing him to maintain going. “I can’t cease as a result of the Invoker gained’t cease,” Biessener mentioned on his stream Friday.
If Biessener’s Steam profile is any indication, it’s taken him over 260 hours to get this far. I’m not fairly world report tempo 60 hours in with a degree 66 witch, however there’s at all times subsequent time.
Path of Exile 2 is out there in early entry on PlayStation 5, Xbox Sequence X, and Home windows PC.