The new Path of Exile league Delve is only a few days away and the developers are planning a number of balance changes in addition to the new Endloss Dungeon.
Here are the skill highlights:
- After arc traps dominated almost the entire Incursion League, the damage and the number of various traps is reduced.
- Finally there are skills that can be worked immediately, before even skills with 0 seconds cast time had a short “stop time”.
- Improvement in movement skills such as shield rush, flame sprint and lightning teleportation.
You can find the first half of the official patch message below:
Path of Exile - Delve League Changes
Trap time, multiple traps, trap compound, minefield
In our opinion, traps, and to a lesser extent mines, are too strong in combination with certain skills and thus lead to an imbalance in other skills. We have increased the time it takes to throw traps and the damage reduction in Support: Multiple Traps and Support: Minefield, and have reduced the number of traps thrown by Support: Trap Compound by one. We're going to be increasing the damage of trap skills like Lightning Trap and Fire Nova Mine to compensate for this loss of damage.
Immediately cast skills
“Immediately” when casting a skill now means that the skill can be used while you are performing other actions. However, the skill cannot be used if you are unable to take another action (for example your character is stunned or frozen).
We've adjusted a number of effects that are now cast immediately, mainly buff effects. Most of these are effects to reserve life or mana to make your Auras and Heralds faster to apply, but we've also applied these changes to Lava Shields, Scheme Sprint, Bloodlust, Gathering, and Atonement Fire .
Except for the addition of a short cooldown, most of these skills have not changed, except that Lava Shields mana cost has been increased at low levels. We will keep an eye on these skills and will make sure that new skills that are cast immediately are used consciously instead of using them every time after the cooldown time.
Blocking spells
We have changed the way spell blocking works so that the chance of spells to block can only be obtained through additive modifiers. All existing modifiers that converted blocking attacks into blocking spells have been adjusted accordingly. Spell blocking is now also available in additional places in the skill tree, with higher stats that were not previously available. A gladiator's ascendancy skill gives you the chance to block attacks as well as a chance to block spells.
This change was made to address design-related restrictions, but also to allow all characters to block spells. Otherwise, this would have favored certain characters with very high Blockchance and disadvantaged characters who would not have invested so much in Blockchance.
Movement skills
Movement skills play an important role in Path of Exile's gameplay, both for survival and for moving forward more efficiently. We tried to reduce some of the discrepancies between the various movement skills so that builds have different ways to accommodate the mobility theme. First of all, this is a first step. We plan to gradually make further changes in the future without taking the wind out of your sails, which gives you certain freedoms.
Shield rush
The part that relates to movement in Shield Charge is no longer affected by local weapon modifiers that affect weapon speed. The attack time of the weapon still determines the start and end animations of the skill, but the time of the path covered is only influenced by the movement speed and the global attack speed. This greatly reduces the use of the skill in conjunction with certain weapons (such as 'Golden Beak'), but this balances out other weapons. We'll look at how attack speed affects this skill in the future, but we're only adjusting this one aspect of the skill for now.
Flame spurt and lightning teleportation
Flame Dash and Lightning Teleportation are the two main movement skills for characters who specialize in spell casting, and they lag behind in effectiveness when compared to other movement skills such as Leap Slam, Shield Charge, and Whirling Blades 'compares. We're decreasing the cooldown time of Flame Dash as well as the casting time, and increasing the range that can be covered in order to align it with other skills. The cooldown accelerates the more the gem is upgraded. Lightning Teleportation now has a shorter cast time, starting at level 1 with a 20% reduced duration that scales more slowly as you level up. This is meant to make the skill feel less slow at low levels.
Smashed
The skill 'Smash' is a very powerful skill during the leveling phase, which grants very good (area) damage from a safe distance. While the damage done has stayed the same, we've reduced the length of the rectangular damage area by 20%. Do not despair, Sunderboi.
Kinetic explosion
The Kinetic Blast skill had some mechanical quirks that made it a very powerful skill for special boss encounters and when cleaning up areas. The skill now deals 35% less area damage (was 25% less). We've also made changes to the placement of the explosions. These are now placed in areas of equal size around the central impact so that they cannot overlap. In certain cases these cannot be placed at all if a wall is in the way.
Vaal preservation of the soul
We have adjusted all Vaal skills that are labeled with the keyword 'Duration'. The permanent modifiers now also affect the gem's 'no soul preservation' duration. So if you increase the duration of 'Vaal-Hast', you will also increase the duration in which soul preservation is not possible. As a result, certain skills with a long duration will no longer be able to be recharged during this phase and at the same time, skills such as 'Vaal Thunderstorm Summon' and 'Vaal Earthquake' will benefit from this change, which are likely already affected by a reduced duration will.
Vaal atoning fire
Vaal Atonementic Fire will now subtract the combined value of the sacrificed life and energy shield from the energy shield first in order to better support low-life characters using Vaal Atonement Fire.
Earthquakes and Vaal earthquakes
The aftershock damage multiplier is now at a constant level throughout all levels and is equal to gem level 20. This should make the skill more suitable for the leveling phase before you have the opportunity to invest in it.
Support: Physical Projectile Attack Damage
The skill "Assistance: Physical Projectile Attack Damage" has been renamed to "Assistance: Malicious Projectiles", increasing the readability by 70%. It now grants supported skills more Chaos and Attack Damage instead of Bleeding and Poison damage. The damage over time component of Corrosive Arrow and Toxic Rain also benefits from this.
Path of Exile - Delve Challenge Rewards
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There are also changes to the Path of Exile skill tree, The focus was particularly on the passives Creatures influence. Templar and Witch even got completely new creature passives near their starting positions.
There are new passives in the ascendency classes Guardian and Girl Scout or previous ones have been replaced. Here are the details:
Changes to the skill tree
We've made some major changes to creature passives. The witch and the Templar received new creature passives at their respective starting points. We have also given the Templar a new wheel with creature passives above the wheel with elemental damage and revised the creature cluster near the Templar starting point. This new cluster allows increases and decreases in creature damage and creature attack speed to affect your character as well. We also added some passives to increase creature accuracy.
The starting area of the Templar has been heavily revised. Not only the bonuses but also the paths of the nodes have been improved and now open up a hybrid build of creature and attack skills.
In the witch's starting area, the mana and mana regeneration paths have been replaced by creature passives. The mana passives have been placed a little above the path for energy shield passives. There is also a new passive for mana, which grants increased mana, mana regeneration per second and mana restoration from flasks.
The Guardian's significant passives that affect War Cry have been removed and placed in the skill tree. A cluster between the Templar and the Marauder grants your character and allies increased attack, casting and movement speed if you've recently used a War Cry, removes its mana cost and grants other minor bonuses. The other cluster between the Marauder and the Duelist causes the war cries to trigger immediately, reduces their cooldown and also grants other smaller bonuses.
Ascendant of the Guardian
The Guardian has received two significant new skills that reward him for using creatures while himself being right in the fray. The new 'Herald of Purity' is also reinforced by the new passive.
Ascendant of the Girl Scout
The Girl Scout's two poison passives have now been replaced with four new passives. This path grants better bonuses to poison, chaos attack damage, chaos skills in general, and the new Herald of Agony. These are intended to work well with the new Chaos Bow skills and any attacking characters that specialize in poison damage.
Bow passives now affect damage over time
Almost all weapon passives previously granted damage from ailments with attack skills while carrying a certain weapon type. They now grant a damage over time bonus instead, increasing the damage done by Corrosive Arrow, Toxic Rain, and Aid: Decay.
Secondary damage
Sources of secondary damage, such as those from Corpse Explosion or the explosions from Explosive Arrow, can now be blocked or evaded. The type of avoidance mechanic needed is based on the source of the secondary damage. On the one hand, this should make it easier to mitigate 'Explosive Arrow' in PvP. On the other hand, it means that certain monster skills (such as corpse explosion) can no longer bypass the defensive of characters that are based on blocking or evading.
Frost bomb
In addition to the reduced life regeneration rate, the Frost Bomb also reduces the energy shield regeneration and recharge rate. This way, very defensive energy shield characters can be toned down, and it would also come in handy against some grandmasters.
