Grinding Gear Games dropped the full patch notes for Path of Exile 2 (0.5.0) patch, Return of the Ancients, on May 21, 2026, and they are enormous. The actual league, Runes of Aldur, launches on May 29 at 1PM PDT, which means players have one week to figure out what to play and what to avoid.
PoE 2: Patch 0.5.0 Balance & Archetype Tracker
| Archetype / Mechanic | Status | Key Patch Change Details | Tactical Impact & Advice |
| Tempest Bell Monk | BUFF | Max active bells increased from 1 to 3; gains Ancestral Boost compatibility. | PREMIER LEAGUE STARTER: Deploys a triple detonation damage multiplier right from Act 1. |
| Huntress Twister | UNTOUCHED | Zero nerfs to base damage, scaling, or mechanical rotation frames. | SAFEST RUN: Retains blazing fast ~3-hour campaign speedrun pacing. |
| Snipe Dead Eye | BUFF | Mirage Dead Eye clones can now fully channel Snipe. | Automates risky stationary channeling; mirrors 0.4 endgame damage scaling. |
| Melee Minions | BUFF | Adds Minion Splash support; minion affixes added to rings/belts. | Exceptional clear-speed boost; highly synergizes with new Spirit Walker Huntress. |
| Energy Shield | NERF | Targeted 64 separate times; Mystic Stance recharge start cut to 12%. | Craters massive recharge speed stacking; forces reliance on alternative layers. |
| Resource Leech | OVERHAUL | Restricts resource pools to one active instance; hard 40k damage cap per hit. | Instantly kills instant full-bar recovery loops, devastating Blood Mage setups. |
| Poison Pathfinder | NERF | Overwhelming Toxicity yields 50% less duration; Toxic Growth cap cut to 5. | Slashes total damage output roughly in half; completely dead for league starting. |
| Infernal Legion | NERF | Tier 3 entirely removed; base life burn damage halved to 10%. | Overtuned screen-clearing life-pool minion melting builds are fully extinct. |
This is confirmed to be the final major Early Access update before Path of Exile 2’s full 1.0 launch later in 2026, so the balance changes in these patch notes are going to shape the game for a long time. If you were running one of the dominant 0.4 builds, chances are GGG already had it on a list.
Poison Pathfinder Got Completely Dismantled
This one hurts. Poison Pathfinder was already strong, and GGG came at it from every angle at once.
The Overwhelming Toxicity notable now gives 50% less poison duration instead of 35%. The running assault movement node dropped from 50% less movement speed penalty to 30%.
That is just the Pathfinder-specific side. The nerfs to poison itself made things worse:
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Poison Burst Arrow now caps poison duration at 3 seconds, down from 4.9 seconds. Quality dropped from 20% more poison magnitude to 10%.
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Toxic Growth pustule limit was slashed from 12 to 5. Quality bonuses on firing count and limit were both halved.
Put all of that together and you are looking at roughly half the damage output on a build that was already not cheap to build. Poison Pathfinder is not completely unplayable, but it is no longer a top-tier league starter by any measure.
Infernal Legion Minions Lost More Than Half Their Damage
Minion builds overall are in a good place this patch, but Infernal Legion specifically got gutted.
Infernal Legion 3 has been removed from the game entirely. The base burn damage went from 20% of minion max life per second down to 10%, and the ignite radius and damage modifier also dropped from 20% to 10%. The only trade-off GGG gave back is slightly higher fire resistance on those minions so they survive longer, but that does nothing for your damage output.
If you were running one of those screen-clearing Infernal Legion setups where everything just melted around a minion with a huge life pool, that build is gone. Regular melee minion builds are actually getting buffed (covered below), so this is a targeted kill on one specific overtuned archetype rather than an attack on minions as a whole.
Energy Shield Was Nerfed 64 Times
That is not a typo. The phrase “energy shield” appears 64 times in the 0.5.0 patch notes, and nearly every single instance is a nerf.
Here is a quick breakdown of what changed on the passive tree:
GGG also removed energy shield recharge rate small passives from the tree completely, replacing them with lower-value faster-start-of-recharge nodes. So you will have less total energy shield and it will start recharging more slowly after taking a hit.
Energy shield will still function as a defensive layer, but the days of stacking massive recharge speed on top of a big pool are over for now.
Leech Is Completely Reworked and Blood Mage Is the Biggest Loser
GGG overhauled how leech works at a fundamental level, and Blood Mage builds that relied on instantly refilling their life bar are the hardest hit.
Two major changes define the new leech system:
1. Only one leech instance per resource at a time. Life, Mana, and Energy Shield can each only have a single active leech instance. When multiple instances are triggered, only the one with the highest recovery rate applies.
2. A hard damage cap for leech calculations. If a hit deals more than 40,000 total damage, it is treated as 40,000 for leech purposes. The values of each damage type are scaled down proportionally to hit that cap.
Blood Mage’s Vitality Siphon notable was buffed to 20% of spell damage leeched as life (up from 10%), but that does not close the gap. If your Comet was hitting for a million damage before and you were leeching 10% of that, you were recovering 100,000 life per hit. Now you are leeching 20% of a 40,000-damage-equivalent hit, which comes out to 8,000. That is a massive drop regardless of the compensatory buff.
Leech still has a role in the game and GGG added new leech nodes to the passive tree. But instant full-bar recovery on every spellcast is no longer possible.
Whirling Assault and Oil Grenade Merc Also Take Hits
Two more popular archetypes got nerfed, though neither is as catastrophic as the above.
Whirling Assault is affected by a broad melee splash change: melee attacks can now only apply splash damage once per damaging area. Whirling Assault generates multiple damaging areas as you move, so this could cut its single-target damage significantly. Paired with the Tempest Bell buffs below, a hybrid Whirling Assault and Bell build could still work, but pure Whirling Assault bossing damage is weaker.
Oil Grenade Mercenary lost its screen-clearing ignite chain. Ignites applied to targets from an oil grenade that has been ignited can no longer compound with other ignites from the same skill use. Arjun’s Metal also dropped from a 100% chance to load a bolt on killing blow to just 25%. That key unique is far less consistent now unless you are killing extremely dense packs constantly.
Tempest Bell Monk Is Now One of the Strongest League Starts
Bell Monk not only survived the patch, it got buffed hard.
The two biggest changes:
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Maximum active Tempest Bells increased from 1 to 3. You can put three bells on a target right from Act 1, which is effectively a triple damage multiplier on the bell detonation.
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Tempest Bell can now be Ancestrally Boosted as if it were a strike skill. That adds a meaningful more-damage multiplier that was previously unavailable.
The shockwave trigger rate did slow slightly from every 0.25 seconds to every 0.3 seconds, and base shockwave damage dropped from 132 to 119, but neither of those changes matter much once you have three bells active simultaneously.
The new Martial Artist ascendancy for Monk was introduced in 0.5.0 as well, built around the bell and illusion playstyle. If you want a safe league start with a clear skill ceiling, Bell Monk with Martial Artist is one of the cleanest options heading into May 29.
Minion Builds (Excluding Infernal Legion) Got Genuinely Better
Outside of the Infernal Legion nerf, GGG gave regular minion builds several real upgrades.
The headline change is a new Minion Splash support gem. Melee minions like warriors and reavers previously could only hit one enemy at a time, which made clear speed a constant weakness. Now they can splash their attacks to hit nearby enemies, which scales with AoE and turns large packs of melee minions into a clearing machine.
Minion modifier affixes are also now available on rings and belts, giving more itemization options for scaling minion damage and survivability through gear rather than purely through passives.
The new Spirit Walker ascendancy for Huntress is specifically designed around summoning spirit animals and spectral companions, making Huntress one of the most minion-friendly classes heading into the new league. If you want to play a minion build in 0.5, Huntress Spirit Walker is the clearest path forward.
Snipe Dead Eye Gets a Free Clone That Does the Hard Work For You
Dead Eye players have a legitimate reason to be excited. The Mirage Dead Eye can now use channeled skills, including Snipe.
For context: Snipe is a high-damage bow channel skill that requires you to stand completely still and time a release perfectly for maximum damage. It kills most bosses in one hit when combined with Ice Shot’s freeze via the Icy Blast interaction, but the standing-still requirement makes it awkward and risky.
Now your Mirage Dead Eye handles that for you. You run around freezing packs with Ice Shot and Ice Salvo (both of which also received buffs in 0.5), and your clone fires off Snipe independently.
The Icy Blast damage held nearly flat at endgame, moving from 362 to 367 at max level. There is a slight reduction at lower levels, so the campaign will feel very slightly weaker, but endgame Snipe Dead Eye is the same or stronger than it was in 0.4.
Twisters Survived Without a Single Nerf
A lot of players were expecting GGG to nerf twisters hard given how dominant the build has been. They did not.
Twisters currently hold some of the fastest campaign-to-endgame times in Path of Exile 2, with speedrun records to maps sitting at around 3 hours. The build is strong in early campaign, strong in late endgame, and completely untouched in these patch notes.
The reason is almost certainly intentional. The new Spirit Walker Huntress ascendancy appears to be built with twisters as a core interaction. GGG presumably left twisters alone so the new ascendancy could shine out of the gate.
If you want the safest, most tested route to endgame maps on day one of Runes of Aldur league, Huntress Twister is the pick that carries the least risk.
