Path of Exile - Preview of Rebalanced Unique Items in Path of Exile: Harvest

Preview of Rebalanced Unique Items in Path of Exile: Harvest

Posted: 08 Jun 2020 05:21 PM PDT

In Path of Exile: Harvest, we're rebalancing over 50 unique items. Some have received numerical buffs, while others have received new mods and mechanics. We're really excited about the possibilities that many of these unlock. While we plan to reveal more of these over time, we're prepared a preview of 10 rebalanced uniques to whet your appetite.

Rigwald's Savagery & Rigwald's Command

Rigwald's Savagery no longer grants increased attack speed with swords or chance to bleed, but now has a new mod that increases your maximum Rage by 25 while wielding a Sword. Rigwald's Command no longer grants increased physical damage with axes or chance to gain a Frenzy Charge on kill, but now grants a multiplier to your bleeding damage equal to the amount of Rage you have while wielding an axe.

Originally these weapons were only available as a rare drop from the Rigwald encounter and they've lost their edge as time has passed. We've sharpened their rage-fuelled identities with new mods that synergise with each other (though of course you're also free to use them separately) and evoke the Rigwald fight.

Broken Faith

Broken Faith now has its original -10% block chance mod instead of +5% block chance. It now grants Unholy Might[pathofexile.gamepedia.com] while you have no energy shield, instead of temporarily when you block. While holding it you now create Profane Ground instead of Consecrated Ground. This new ground effect reduces all enemy resistances as well as making them more likely to be critically hit, but does not provide the life regeneration that Consecrated Ground does.

The first version of Broken Faith added to the game had below-average defensive stats for a shield in exchange for access to powerful damage. We're trying to return it to that role with new mods that offer large amounts of damage, but the weak block chance of the original. Profane Ground also has all-new visual effects that echo the theme of the item.

Ungil's Harmony

Ungil's Harmony now causes your critical strikes to deal no extra damage at all instead of -25% to critical strike multiplier, but provides up to 350% increased critical strike chance instead of the old 100%.

We've doubled down on the existing stats of this item, giving it an unparalleled amount of critical strike chance but now making your crits deal no extra damage at all. Builds that care only about dealing critical strikes now have a way to do so much more consistently, even at quite low levels.

The Blood Dance

The Blood Dance now gives 0.8% life regeneration per Frenzy Charge (from 0.5%), and up to 30% increased damage against enemies on low life per Frenzy Charge (instead of 6%). In exchange, it now reduces the attack and cast speed granted by Frenzy Charges by 4% (up from 3%).

The frenzy-charge-transforming nature of these boots has found uses over the years, but more than ever they now turn you into a blood-crazed fiend. The life regeneration per frenzy charge has been substantially increased, and with investment you can receive a massive amount of damage against enemies who are near death. They even make your frenzy charges themselves drip blood now!

Wildfire

Wildfire no longer grants Molten Strike additional projectiles or area of effect. Instead, it now allows Molten Strike projectiles to chain and gives them +1 chain, but halves the number of projectiles created.

Some of Path of Exile's "threshold jewels" encourage different playstyles for the skills they interact with. Others just buff the skill. We're slowly moving towards the former type, making changes to existing threshold jewels that feel mandatory for their skill. Wildfire used to provide a large, almost-free boost to Molten Strike's damage. It has now been completely redesigned to create a new playstyle for Molten Strike, covering much more area with bouncing magma balls but dealing lower single target damage. Molten Strike's damage has been buffed to compensate for the loss of old Wildfire. The distance travelled by its projectiles also properly scales with projectile speed now, letting you control their spread as much as you like.

Uul-Netol's Embrace

The Bone Nova skill granted by Uul-Netol's Embrace now triggers on hitting a bleeding enemy instead of killing a bleeding enemy.

A Breach-exclusive unique upgraded by defeating the mighty Breachlord Uul-Netol should be suitably intimidating, but the build-around potential of Uul-Netol's Embrace was always hampered by not being able to trigger its signature Bone Nova against strong enemies. So we've changed it so that it now also triggers at the location of the enemy you hit, instead of firing from the player's location (and will still hit the enemy you triggered it from!).

Hotfooted

The movement speed while ignited granted by Hotfooted has been increased from 10–15% to 10–20%, and attack and cast speed mods added with matching values.

Builds that set themselves on fire have been around for a while, but they've never exactly broken the meta. We want to give pyromaniac exiles all the help they can get.

Brain Rattler

Brain Rattler now grants 50% chance to shock enemies instead of 15%, and shocks as if inflicting 300% more damage in order to cause stronger shocks.

Another boss-exclusive weapon that has never quite seemed to live up to the fantasy it offers, Brain Rattler is a weapon for people who want to go all-in on shocks with a melee build, as opposed to the spellcasters who traditionally invest in shock. We've powered up its shocking capability so that it can appropriately reward these builds.

The Dark Seer

The Dark Seer's global damage bonus has been increased from 30–50% to 40–60%, its chance to blind enemies on hit has been increased from 7% to 10%, it now prevents blind from lowering your accuracy rather than making you completely immune to blind, and it lets you inflict the powerful Malediction debuff on enemies if you blind them while you, the player, are blind yourself. How are you going to blind yourself? That's for you to work out!

New and Changed Warcries in Path of Exile: Harvest

Posted: 07 Jun 2020 08:31 PM PDT

In Path of Exile: Harvest, we're adding four new Warcry skills, one new support and are reworking three existing ones. We've generally improved the options available for those who want to utilise Warcries in their builds. Today's news post reveals new skills and what to expect in terms of changes.

Changes to Warcry Skills

Some time ago we decided that it would be good to do a balance pass that focused on two-handed weapons and the "slower but stronger" playstyle. While we were exploring how best to achieve this, it became clear that giving Warcry skills some long overdue improvements could be of great help.

Our first step in doing this was to define for ourselves what a Warcry should be and what function it fulfils. We found that Warcries should:

Release a shockwave that taunts enemies.
Apply either a buff or debuff where its power is based on nearby enemies.
Exert (or "power up") your next few attacks with special properties.

These rules can be flexible but provide a base starting point of what Warcries should look like within the new system. We started by reworking existing Warcries to fit into this set of rules, and as we made new ones to fill in any gaps we felt were present.

We also changed the mechanics of 'nearby enemies' to care about the power of these enemies. In the old system, five small monsters would provide five times the Warcry benefit compared to a single unique boss. This felt wrong. The new system now counts magic, rare and unique enemies proportionate to their power so that your Warcry scales more effectively with the content you're facing. Currently this works by counting normal monsters as one, magic monsters as two, rare as ten and unique as twenty.

Enduring Cry

Enduring Cry received a relatively minimal rework but we wanted to see if we could improve various aspects of this skill while we were reworking the others.

It still generates endurance charges based on the power of nearby enemies, but also provides a short burst of very powerful healing. It also temporarily gives you additional resistance and physical damage reduction for a short duration.

Unlike other Warcries, Enduring Cry does not exert your next few attacks; its benefits are purely defensive.

Intimidating Cry

Previously, Intimidating Cry was only obtainable through a unique item. In addition to it now being available as a skill gem, it has undergone a full rework to be a lot more punchy and exciting.

Its benefits are purely offensive. It achieves this by intimidating nearby enemies and exerting your next few attacks to deal double damage. It also provides a buff that lets you ignore some of your enemies' physical damage reduction based on nearby enemy power. (Note: we'll reveal what number of exerted attacks each Warcry creates closer to launch)

It's intended to be the offensive counterpart to Enduring Cry. It should work in a wide variety of builds to make your next few attacks feel really powerful.

Ancestral Cry

This is a new Warcry which was designed to work well specifically with strike skills. It causes your next few strikes to also target nearby enemies, similar to the Ancestral Call support.

It also provides a buff based on the power of nearby enemies which both increases your melee range as well as providing bonus armour.

It's intended to be a well-rounded Warcry that generally provides benefit to anybody interested in playing strike skills.

Seismic Cry

We've created a new category of skills known as 'slam skills' and wanted to make a Warcry that synergises well with these skills. It causes your next few slam skills to have an increased area of effect and more damage which both increase with each attack until you reset the Warcry or your exerted attacks run out.

It knocks enemies back and interrupts them when it taunts them. It then grants you a buff based on nearby enemy power which reduces enemy stun threshold, making it easier to stun enemies with your hits.

Rallying Cry

Rallying Cry has been reworked and given a new identity. It has traditionally worked well with support-style builds and we designed it to provide a new way to support allies.

It causes nearby allies to gain a buff that grants them a percentage of your main-hand weapon's damage based on the power of nearby enemies. It also exerts your next few attacks to deal more damage based on how many allies you have near you. Unlike most other Warcries, the power of the buff comes from both the power of both nearby enemies and allies.

This is a rework to an existing skill to give it a new identity. This obviously seemed to fit a very supportive-type of role, but we wanted to do a new way to support allies.

It works well with minions or to support a full party of allies.

Infernal Cry

This was previously known as Abyssal Cry and has received a full rework. We aimed to keep its old features while providing some new exciting ones to refresh its appeal.

It covers enemies in ash, a debuff that scales with the power of nearby enemies. It also causes enemies that are affected by this debuff to explode with fire damage when they are slain.

It also exerts your next few attacks to trigger Combust when hitting an enemy. Combust is a triggered Area of Effect attack skill granted by the Infernal Cry gem. It scales with attack damage modifiers and can benefit from your supports.

General's Cry

This is an intense new Warcry that has been designed to be very open-ended in how it can be used. It's a Skill/Support hybrid which melee attack skills can be linked to. This Warcry summons ghostly mirage warriors from corpses near you. These ghosts use one of the linked skills once before dissipating.

The number of warriors you summon is based on the total power of nearby enemies as well as the power of nearby corpses.

General's Cry lets you summon your own legion of warriors to destroy your enemies using a large selection of skills.

Check out these Warcries in action in the video below!

In addition, we are adding a new support gem that speeds up your Warcries in exchange for a slightly longer cooldown.

We have also added a keystone to the Passive Skill Tree that makes Warcries instant but causes them to share a cooldown (by default Warcries no longer share cooldowns in order to promote builds using multiple Warcries).