What Makes an Item Interaction Broken in Path of Exile 2
In Path of Exile 2, a broken item interaction usually refers to a combination of gear mechanics that allows a character to reach levels of damage or defense far beyond what is considered balanced. These interactions are often unintentional or poorly tuned and can lead to certain builds completely trivializing endgame content. While these combinations may eventually be nerfed by the developers, players who discover and utilize them early can dominate the economy and leaderboard. Most broken interactions result from specific synergies between item modifiers, unique item mechanics, and skill gem scaling that were not originally designed to function together in such a powerful way.
Legacy Mechanics Enhanced by New Systems
One of the most notorious categories of broken item interactions in POE 2 involves the use of legacy mechanics that scale disproportionately with new systems introduced in the sequel. For instance, skill gems that previously scaled poorly with flat damage mods can now become overpowered when combined with newly available implicit modifiers or affix combinations. A prime example would be stacking flat elemental damage to spells on multiple rare gear pieces in conjunction with unique items like Doryani’s Prototype, allowing the player to bypass enemy resistances entirely under specific conditions. This setup can result in single-hit spell damage that deletes bosses instantly, creating an imbalance in content progression.
Crafted Gear and Multiplier Abuse
Another category of broken interactions comes from rare crafted gear that takes advantage of multiplicative stacking. For example, using a rare wand with tier one chaos damage over time, increased chaos skill gem levels, and crafted +1 to all spell skill gems creates massive synergy when paired with unique items that further boost damage over time multipliers. When these gear pieces are stacked with certain cluster jewels or new passive keystones, they can result in hundreds of percent increased damage, far beyond the baseline expectations for a single item. The abuse of such interactions allows players to bypass gear progression and boss mechanics by front-loading all their power into a few sources.
Defensive Layers Combined with Item Scaling
Some of the most broken setups in POE 2 do not come from raw damage, but from overpowered defensive interactions. Unique items that grant immunity or massive mitigation when paired with condition-based triggers can effectively make a character unkillable. For example, combining a unique body armour that gives spell suppression with rare boots that convert incoming elemental damage to chaos and pairing them with chaos resistance stacking can nullify entire categories of threats. If a build becomes immune to ailments, stun, and elemental damage while maintaining solid offense, it crosses into broken territory due to how much power is condensed into a few gear slots.
Examples from the Community Meta
The POE 2 community has already discovered some early interactions that stand out as overpowered. A popular one involves stacking energy shield on hit with a particular glove enchant and unique ring combo, allowing high-speed builds to heal faster than they take damage. Another example includes utilizing the new rage and exert mechanics in combination with items that convert rage into extra damage for both melee and spell hits. These builds can scale to absurd levels, dealing millions of damage per second with very few gear requirements. While the developers may address these in future patches, they currently offer massive advantages in high-end mapping and boss farming.