•This review explores passive enhancement of pool boiling using surface modification.•Examined are macrosacle, microscale, nanoscale and multiscale (hybrid-scale) techniques.•Addressed are performance goals of inhibiting incidence hysteresis and increasing both nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient and CHF.•Shown is that micro and nano surface features are susceptible to blockage and changes in performance over time. This paper provides a comprehensive review of published articles addressing passive enhancement of pool boiling using surface modification techniques. They include macroscale, microscale, and nanoscale surfaces, as well as multiscale (hybrid-scale), and hybrid-wettability techniques. Different enhancement methods are assessed in terms of underlying fluid routing mechanisms and ability to achieve three distinct heat transfer goals: eliminating incipient boiling hysteresis, increasing nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient, and ameliorating critical heat flux (CHF), especially for inert dielectric coolants that are both highly wetting and possess relatively poor thermophysical properties. While different enhancement scales are shown to provide different degrees of success in achieving the three goals, it is shown that both microscale and nanoscale surface features are susceptible to blockage, resulting in deterioration of the enhancement over time. This review also points to scarcity of sufficiently sized databases for a given enhancement scheme in terms of fluid type, surface material, size, and orientation, enhancement shape, pattern, and scale, and operating pressure. This renders available findings less-than-adequate tools for design of practical cooling systems.