The league launched three days ago and the economy is already on fire. A single Mirror of Kalandra dropped in Standard and immediately crashed trade sites for forty-three minutes. That’s what happens when Grinding Gear Games hands players an entirely new ascendancy system, six reworked classes, and over four hundred new uniques that completely break the old meta. The current ladder is a graveyard of exploded corpses belonging to anyone still running Spark or Righteous Fire.
The current king is a build the community has dubbed “Archmage Lightning Conduit Hierophant.” It abuses a previously useless support gem that converts mana spent into elemental damage, stacks it with the new Indigon helmet, and then triggers Lightning Conduit on every mana flask use. With investment, you’re looking at thirty million Shaper DPS while face-tanking Sirus beams because you’ve converted 90% of incoming damage into mana before it touches life. The entire setup costs less than ten Divine Orbs if you know which chaos recipe to spam.
Lower-budget players are terrorizing maps with a Poison Spectral Helix Deadeye that uses the new “Plaguebearer” unique to store 500 stacks of virulence in town, then instantly deletes Uber Elder the moment combat begins. Crafting has been democratized too – the new recombinator lets you slam two rares together and keep the winner, turning mirror-tier items into something you can realistically chase in week one.
GGG’s balance team is watching like hawks. Hotfixes are dropping daily, but the philosophy seems clear: let players cook until the game breaks, then patch just enough to keep it breathing. The result is the most electric launch atmosphere since Synthesis. Trade chat is pure chaos, build guides are obsolete within hours, and the phrase “wait for week two” has become a running joke. Path of Exile 2 didn’t just launch – it detonated.
