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Ever since its release, I have been playing Path of Exile 2 religiously. I love the game and all of the improvements the team has made. It’s become one of my most-played games recently, but there is one constant that has remained true: Path of Exile 2 is not Steam Deck friendly. There are pockets, especially in the beginning, where the game runs at the developer's target of 40 FPS. But it gets much harder to play, and I would not say the game should be rated Steam Deck Verified or Playable at this time. So, it was a bit of a surprise to see that the game had officially gotten the Playable badge from Valve, and it is another reason why the Verified system is not great.
On the Steam store page, the game is listed as Playable, with the only issue being small in-game text. While I do agree that some text is a little too small, I can't agree that the default graphics configuration performs well on the Steam Deck. In Act 1, there are not nearly as many enemies, and most of the larger areas are able to even hit 60 FPS, but there were already warning signs of what could come. Towns would drop when you go into them immediately, most likely due to asset loading and there being tons of people there, but there are also larger areas that still drop.

In Act 1, my testing ground was in Freythorn. It was semi-open, and I couldn't move around a lot due to all of it taking place in the trees, but there would be tons of enemies all in smaller spaces. This would cause the framerate to drop down to the mid 20s, and I was using lower settings than the recommended with FSR upscaling instead of NIS. There isn't a huge performance difference from NIS to FSR, but FSR makes the game look significantly better.

However, the real test is Act 2 and 3, as well as the endgame. People can only stay in Act 1 for so long, and the game gets harder to run as the story progresses. Some areas get larger with a higher volume of enemies, bosses tend to have many more particle effects floating around the screen, and I almost always saw framerate drops below 30.
One of the more prominent locations this happened was the Trial of Chaos. You can undertake different trials to ascend your character and become even more powerful, but they are very challenging. Both trials have many enemies in smaller spaces, but the Trial of Chaos stood out to me, and I can't recommend playing it on the Steam Deck. The part I wanted to test was Round 2, which has a corruption ritual. You could have almost 60-70 enemies coming at you if you can't kill them fast enough. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to Round 2 because Round 1 had dropped my performance into the mid-10s range.

Part of the framerate drop may be influenced by my character class. I chose a Sorceress, and there are a lot of different spells and effects that I can drop (which makes it very good for stress testing). But in Round 1, I didn't get to shoot any spells, and my framerate dropped almost immediately. These types of trials are a huge part of how you improve your character, and I would consider them essential. It also becomes exceptionally blurry, which gets worse if you have dynamic resolution on.
Even without that, it does highlight a bigger problem with performance. The endgame of Path of Exile 2 is filled with rituals and huge groups of enemies, yet I would consider it significantly more important than the actual campaign. While I haven't reached endgame yet to test, there's no way I could see it performing better than Act 2, 3, and the trials.

So, why would this game get a Playable rating when the lowest settings, which do need some changes, is rated Playable? Well, I am not sure. It does work really well with a controller, and shows the correct icons, but I wouldn't say this is playable on the Steam Deck past most of Act 1. The Steam Deck compatibility listing doesn't even mention that the game needs a network connection to play alone, and while it is fairly obvious for anyone who knows about the game, it's still important to mention.
Path of Exile 2 really is an amazing game, and if you have a more powerful desktop, I highly recommend it. I can't stop playing it myself. But I can't in good conscious recommend playing it on the Steam Deck due to the issues and framerate drops experienced later, and I don't think Valve should be recommending it either. I do hope there is more optimization that comes, and I can see performance being slightly better depending on the class you choose, but it is still going to be an issue regardless.

Path of Exile 2 is in early access and can be purchased for $29.99. It will be free to play when it fully releases.
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I've exclusively played on steam deck so far and, I agree the defaults suck, but changing the rendering mode and one other setting (frame rate I think?) fixed my issues. Act 2 was laggy in town, but everywhere else looked fine. The end of act 2 looked like it was lagging but I didn't feel it in the gameplay. It doesn't look good on a big screen, but I don't think that's really a surprise. I am looking forward to playing on PS5 when I can finally get in touch with support to get my account linked, but it's been perfectly playable on deck so far.
Is it possible you were using DX11?
The main problem is the Verified program does not make any framerate guarantee when many people seem to think it does.
I think part of the reason is Valve noting that any Verified game is a "Great Experience." It isn't specific and could mean many different things.
I can't agree with your assessment. I've been playing Path of Exile 2 since 6th of December on my Steam Deck and been thoroughly enjoying it. Granted it does sometimes dip below 30 fps. I think the lowest I've seen it was 24, otherwise it is highly playable. I've put the frame target at 38, resolution at 800 x 1200, low with FSR upscaling and it runs pretty well and looks pretty good. I noticed no difference in act 1, 2 or 3. I've not reached the endgame yet so can't comment on how maps work and they should be the most affected since the maps are huge! I can totally see why they gave it the playable label as it is extremely playable.
I've been wondering about this. Despite Valve being that "big store" that is being sued for its anti-competitive, monopolistic, and overcharging shenanigans, it does not seem to have that influence over game devs/publishers to release a game that is optimized specifically for the Steam Deck?
I mean, PS and XBox games run well most of the time, if not all, because the games were meant to be run on those machines. And PC looks like just an after thought.
Or perhaps the Deck is just an experiment, a showcase. With Steam Deck 2, I hope Valve can partner with/convince these devs to target the Deck 2 specifically. Ofc, having better Deck 2 specs, too, is a plus.
I guess it's a subjective thing that FSR looks better than NIS (I've also tried XeSS). I like NIS in 95% of areas. At 77% with Dynamic Res and sharpness to 0.
It just looks clearer to mee and I can see what's happening on screen better. I'm also playing Sorc with lightning that goes through flame wall and an orb and that buff skill that drains mana (so lots of things happening). All of this plus having to pay attention to what bosses are throwing down so I don't die.
I've exclusively played on the Deck and am now finishing Act 3. The problem with the trial of Chaos is the enemies loading in. That's what I think is part of it. I've successfully ascended after having the inspiration of just hitting pause when a big wave of enemies spawns out of thin air. Let the game do its thing 5 seconds then resume playing.
By the way, SDHQ, you can bind keyboard F1 to a button and it works for displaying ingame graphs (though you would appreciate this PSA)
I definitely appreciate the PSA! FSR being better is definitely subjective, I just prefer it over NIS, which looks very blown out to me. I'm glad you have a way around it though, and I will try it myself, but to have to do this mid-battle is still something I believe most people won't think to try, and it shouldn't have a Playable badge if you have to do that.
try dx12, nis, no upscale, sharpness 0%.
texture high, anisotropic 16, lighting shadows, shadows low, sun shadows low, number of lights high, bloom 25%, water low.
i prefer nis over fsr because fsr distorts picture while moving and special effects almost invisible with fsr.
i only change nis to fsr in act 1 hunting grounds because terrain here looks bad with nis.
in case there stutters while i play with my preset, i enable dynamic culling. it will disable some special effects and greatly improve perfomance.
i have much more troubles with connecrion to servers lag than with steamdeck
forgot to tell that i play merc with bombard crossbow+cluster bombs and grenadier nodes. i throw 3 grenades each cast, you can imagine what is going on on screen when i throw all explosive,gas, oil, flashbang grenades every second plus use explosive shot with additional 2 projectiles from scattershot gem. even so game runs smooth enough most of the time, and even if there microstutters i just enable dynamic culling and continue with mobs genocide
I will try it out, but no combination has been great for me so far.
also check if poe2 loading in background when game startesd. it always happens when you turn on steamdeck from hibernation and start poe2. i have to exit game and wait for poe2 to complete loading 2gb cache, otherwise game stutter like mad
I feel this, I had to crank a lot of stuff down and cap frames at 30, still have performance issues. I have no doubt they'll be able to iron this out by full release.
Got some tips,
Poe2 is CPU limited because I've it the systems maxes out over of the CPUs.
This can be made a lot better by switching from vulkan to Dx11 (haven't tried dx12 yet).
Another trick is to throttle the GPU clock allowing dirt more power to route to the CPU improving the fps