The quickest participant in Path of Exile 2 seems to be like he’s taking part in as a music visualizer. Lightning bolts ping-pong throughout the display screen 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 stage, and the competitors is fierce.
Andrew “TidesofTime” Biessener is stage 98, simply two ranges shy of the end line at stage 100. And so are the eight different gamers proper behind him, in line with the official leaderboard. Expertise positive factors are glacial this far into the sport, however he may 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 to be like at this stage in early entry, and it appears to be a display screen stuffed with lightning bolts. His Stormweaver sorceress is a conduit for severe shock injury and pace. The place different courses must threat getting hit whereas aiming arrows or charging into monsters, Biessener’s construct does the work for him so he can teleport by means of maps effectively. All he does is spam the Spark talent and watch hundreds of blue bolts clear the dungeon for him.
Biessener took a brief break on Thursday to run by means of his setup on stream, however don’t let his sprawling talent tree scare you. It’s really fairly easy: All the pieces runs on mana. One among PoE 2’s passive abilities overloads your shock injury primarily based on how a lot mana you will have, 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 at least one 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 prime 10 who’re utilizing an identical, if not similar, construct. Such is the facility 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 stage of play. Shopping for objects off different gamers is the one method you’re going to seek out the right gear, which implies the race is basically a marathon of clearing by means of dungeons as quick as potential. One Reddit person 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 received’t cease,” Biessener stated 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 file tempo 60 hours in with a stage 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.