PoE 2: Curses Explained

Curses are Spells that apply a Debuff in Path of Exile 2.

A Note for Path of Exile 1 Players:

Curses have similar mechanics in Path of Exile 2. However, Mark skills are not considered to be Curses, and therefore do no count towards the Curse limit.

What are Curses?

Curse Spells apply a Debuff to all targets in an area after a short delay. By default you can apply a maximum of one Curse Debuff to a target at any one time.

Beira of the Rotten Pack Boss Cursed with Temporal Chains

Curse Debuffs on Monsters are indicated with a status icon below their Life bar, and a symbol that hovers above the Monster itself. If applicable, the status icon will also include a numerical value to indicate the magnitude of the active Debuff.

Note: like Exposure, negative Resistances from Curse Debuffs can lower Resistances below 0%.

Curse Activation Delay

Curse Spells create an area of effect that will cause all targets in that area to be Cursed after a delay. The application delay is not related to the Cast Time of the Curse Spell. By default the Curse Activation Delay is 1.5 seconds.

You can shorten the Curse Activation Delay by investing into modifiers to 'faster Curse Activation', such as Impending Doom. There are also rarer modifiers such as the one on the Whispers of Doom Keystone which doubles your Curse Activation delay, or the 'Curses have no Activation Delay' modifier on Windscream.

Maximum Curse Limit

A character with no additional modifiers may only apply a single Curse Debuff on each target at a time. However, you can improve your maximum Curse limit via special modifiers, such as the one that appears on Doedre's Damning. Due to how powerful Curses can be, modifiers to maximum Curse limit are very rare and often come with a downside, for example Whispers of Doom.

Note: applying a Curse Debuff beyond your Curse limit will remove the oldest Debuff in place of the new one.

Curse Debuff Duration

The Duration that a Curse Debuff lasts is determined by the level of the Curse Skill Gem. A higher level Curse Skill Gem will typically apply a Curse Debuff with a longer base Duration. The Duration of Curse Debuffs can be modified with modifiers to Curse Duration such as Lingering Whispers or Master of Hexes, but is also affected by modifiers to generic Skill Effect Duration, for example Tides of Change.

Curse Magnitude

The Magnitude of a Curse Debuff is the strength of the effect imposed by the Debuff. For example a level 20 Temporal Chains slows targets by 59%. The Magnitude of a Curse Debuff is visible numerically below the status icon indicator for the Curse Debuff on a Monster's Life bar. Modifiers to Curse Magnitude such as '18% increased Curse Magnitudes' on Master of Hexes will scale the base Curse Magnitude.

The Effect of a Curse is a rarer stat that essentially functions as a separate multiplier to Curse Magnitude. For example Impending Doom will provide 20% increased Curse Effect if at least 50% of the Curse's Duration has expired.

Note: Hexproof is a status that makes the entity Unaffected by Curses. Notably, Curse Debuffs can still be applied to the entity even though they'll have no effect.

Monsters have innate resistance to Curses applied to them based on their rarity.

Defence against Curses

Curses applied to you by Monsters can be very dangerous due to how powerful their effects can be. There are various modifiers that allow you to reduce the effect of Curse Debuffs on you, for example Inner Faith or Warding Fetish. You can also reduce the Duration of Curses applied to you by using modifiers such as the one on Thief's Torment.

Alternatively it may be more beneficial to outright remove Curses when they are applied to you. You can roll 'of Warding' suffix modifiers on Life and Mana Flasks to remove all Curses from yourself upon use. There's also external modifier that provide a similar solution, such as Warding Potions.

Soul Mantle

The Soul Mantle Unique Body Armour inflicts a Random Curse on you whenever one of your summoned Totems dies. Curses applied to you this way will ignore the maximum Curse limit.

Shackles of the Wretched

Shackles of the Wretched has the modifier 'Curses you inflict are reflected back to you'. Reflected Curses will apply an identical copy of the Curse, including any offensive scaling for Curse Duration or Magnitude. These Unique Gloves can be used to reflect Temporal Chains to benefit from the slower expiry rate modifier that it imposes, allowing you to artificially extend the duration of other effects.