A Suggestion Regarding Item Rarity

Hello GGG Team,

I’ve been playing Path of Exile for many years, and more recently Path of Exile 2.
I’m writing to share feedback regarding the “Increased Rarity of Items Found” modifier on gear.
I would like to respectfully suggest reconsidering the “Increased Rarity of Items Found” modifier on player gear.

I strongly believe that item rarity as a player stat negatively affects
the current state of the game for several reasons:

1. It Distorts Party Play
Currently, one of the main incentives for party play is stacking rarity on a dedicated character.
This creates “rarity culler” setups where one player focuses entirely on item rarity while others carry the damage.
The result is that players join parties not for cooperation, synergy, or fun — but purely for economic optimization.

This leads to:
Players following a single carry without meaningful engagement.
Party play being economically mandatory rather than enjoyable.
A gameplay loop that feels exploitative rather than cooperative.

2. Performance Issues Make It Worse
The current visual and performance intensity of PoE 2 makes large party play extremely demanding.
Many players with mid-range PCs experience heavy frame drops in full parties. This creates a situation where:

Players with weaker hardware are economically disadvantaged.
Optimal play requires hardware investment, not just skill or game knowledge.

3. Economic Imbalance
High-rarity party groups generate significantly more valuable drops and currency.
This affects the market in a way that disadvantages solo players.
Those who cannot or do not want to participate in optimized rarity parties
struggle to keep up with inflation and rising item prices.

The gap between optimized party farming and solo play becomes too large,
and it feels less like a choice and more like a punishment for playing solo.

4. Party Play Lacks Identity Beyond Loot Scaling
At the moment, parties feel meaningful primarily because of loot scaling and rarity stacking.
I believe party play should instead be rewarding due to:
Unique group mechanics
Cooperative boss mechanics
Shared progression systems
Synergy-based combat interactions

Removing item rarity from gear could:
Reduce economic distortion
Reduce exploitative culler setups
Make solo and party play more balanced
Encourage GGG to design deeper cooperative systems instead of loot multipliers

I truly love the game and want to see PoE 2 become the best version of itself.
I hope you’ll consider revisiting the design philosophy behind player-based item rarity.

Thank you for your continued work and dedication.

P.S.

As a smaller additional suggestion: it might also be worth reconsidering
the “Free For All” and “Short Allocation” party loot options.
These systems can create unhealthy social dynamics in public parties
and sometimes encourage loot-sniping behavior.
If the goal is cooperative gameplay, fully allocated
or improved shared-loot systems may better align with that philosophy.

If I remember corectly one of the main devs said that eventualy they would like to drop IRR as gear modifier just dont have idea design how and with what to replace it.

Hate it also.

Personally I love the stat as a solo player, because it is an always beneficial filler stat. But I do find the group play with IIR culler kinda dangerous for playerbase mentality.

My biased solution would be to average the IIR on monster based on the characters that affected the monster. As a goal you should not feel ashamed for having IIR instead of damage for faster clear, with the effect that IIR always benefits the party. For example one player hits and second player curses a monster, with both player IIR value added together and divided by 2 on the monster.

Sorry if the idea was badly explained, but many other ways I could imagine it working results in an abusable mechanic that resembles the current IIR culler group play. Currently this idea has been relatively abuse free in my opinion.