The quickest participant in Path of Exile 2 appears to be like like he’s taking part in 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 accordance with the official leaderboard. Expertise features 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 appears to be like 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 critical shock harm and pace. The place different courses need to danger 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 ability 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 ability tree scare you. It’s really fairly easy: Every thing runs on mana. One in every of PoE 2’s passive abilities overloads your shock harm based mostly on how a lot mana you’ve got, and the Thoughts Over Matter node within the ability tree turns your mana into your life. Without having for normal life anymore, Biessener can be working with the node that reduces it to 1 and makes you resistant to chaos harm, the scariest harm sort within the recreation. He’s successfully extra mana than sorceress.
There are 5 different sorceress gamers within the prime 10 who’re utilizing an analogous, if not equivalent, construct. Such is the ability of discovering a single attribute — in a recreation overflowing with them — that does all of it. Fortunate loot drops aren’t even an element at this degree of play. Shopping for gadgets off different gamers is the one manner you’re going to search out the right gear, which suggests the race is essentially a marathon of clearing by dungeons as quick as doable. One Reddit consumer tallied up all of the totally 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 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 report tempo 60 hours in with a degree 66 witch, however there’s all the time subsequent time.
Path of Exile 2 is accessible in early entry on PlayStation 5, Xbox Collection X, and Home windows PC.
