Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[DakaSha]

The company is called GRINDING GEAR GAMES and people think the game is gonna be a deep rpg

The gameplay mechanics are actually very deep.

Real deep man.

 

[abija]

Ofc they're VERY deep when you barely scratch the game then go all wet and start a forum campaign about the incline.

I was hoping the game would have better progression once you get through the main content. Maps aren't very fun, although admittedly much better than D2 or D3, are still very repetitive. It's fun in a mindless way but I feel like they could have designed the endgame better.

You were hoping, you feel... how about you fucking think for a second.
What exactly gave you any reason to hope/feel the game should be anything different than what it is?

 

[Aothan]

I've noticed in my current play through that one area of noticeable progress comes from GGG's continued attempts to balance defensive customisation; as many would know the game has gone through a series of 'calibrations' in an ongoing effort to produce feasible balance between defensive styles and levels of health. A pressing issue that gradually became apparent throughout the playerbase is how effective focusing on life could be for the majority of the game, this had the counterintuitive effect of making armour types and thus itemisation somewhat redundant at times when it was primarily the life value and resistance properties rather than the armour type itself that determined a specific item's value. The curbing of life values from the passive skill pathways in conjunction with adjustments to armour values and monster damage has accomplished a better sense of viable defence selection as with a more balanced approach between armour and character health. Whether that holds true in the later stages is yet to be seen but it shows that GGG's efforts have at least managed to improve assumptions about feasibility and proportion for defensive customisation.

my character is now in Cruel act 2 in the Onslaught league and starting to feel the challenge of not being ably equipped for the challenges at hand, which in my opinion is a good thing in itself since it requires more judicious playing along with the need to find a few select items in the trade channel. As usual I'm playing with the same essential character design but making innovations as my character advances in level, I'm trying to incorporate armour+energy shield, with Zealot's Oath combined with Vitality but I'm not sure if the regeneration will naturally restore energy or if there is a delay and thus only applies after the cooldown period. If the latter then the combination of active and passive skills would not be practical for the league's conditions.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/06/21/p...ture-events-including-brand-new-mode-descent/

Now this will make me come back.

 

[Aothan]

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/434870

that is the official explanation of the design of the coming leagues, which is actually a lot more interesting than what I initially assumed, in particular

Our random level generation system allowed us to easily string together a new set of levels and build a minigame around it - the Descent league. It's an alternate shorter version of Path of Exile designed specifically for our race events.

In a Descent event, you start in the outskirts of the Phrecian Forest and must search out a forgotten cathedral. As you descend into its depths and explore dungeons, caves, ruins and more, you encounter challenging combinations of monsters and bosses from all areas of Path of Exile.

although I'm wary of what the same means for my own habit of returning to town to restore flasks as I usually if not almost always do against the act bosses. That said these are one hour races whereas I would have preferred a week long or similar league design but Chris addresses questions on this point by specifying

I should note: many people have described Descent as an "Endless Dungeon", but it has a total of 15 levels....but it's not easy. Once players get that far, the competition is in getting as much experience as they can before they hit the final boss.

which sounds novel enough for a new league season primarily consisting of these events.

I'm practically in stasis in the current Onslaught league, remaining in Cruel act 2 for over a week now. Primarily because I want to finally exchange the Brightbeak hammer that I traded for and have used for the last 24 levels. It is a reliable unique for early game but at this stage 280 dps is quite lacklustre and even I tire of the time it takes to progress through packs of monsters. Also I've probably over-specialised in the last few levels without accomplishing the outcome intended, which was multiple simultaneous auras. It seems I have enough passive mana -potential- but will need to include additional mana bonuses from items for those passive skills to have the intended effect. Then there is my 66% or so accuracy which is most likely the least accuracy I've ever had but I cannot expend too many other skills points into passives other than life increasing values at this time (having focused ten or more levels into aforesaid energy shield followed by areas focused on developing mana capacity) and will need to begin preparing for the Oversoul encounter.

 

[Qatesh]

Downloaded the game yesterday, playing as a Bitch...err Witch on Europe Server.
IGN: Perduta

 

[dibens]

Gave the game a spin after the long hiatus and took advantage of the full skillpoint reset offered after the ranger tree rework. Ended up with 100 less hp and 100 less dps

 

[Hoaxmetal]

So, how's the game nowadays?

 

[dibens]

So, how's the game nowadays?

Is good. Tons of new, interesting skills and items being added in, the release of the game is not far off, which will add the proper ending to the act 3 (the scepter of god and the real bad guy, Dominus). The big Onslaught and Anarchy races are ending very soon, so it's a good time to start thinking up new builds to take for a spin on the next ones. The dumping of the race stuff into the perma economies bring exalted orbs to an all time low prices, so its a perfect time to stack up on them. Smaller weekly, daily and hourly races are still happening all the time.

Desyncs are still a problem.

 

[Gerrard]

Is melee not shit yet?

 

[Blaine]

Is melee not shit yet?

Welcome to practically every Diablo clone ever made. Designing escalating difficulty levels that don't eventually require running away from enemies/kiting at all times seems to be a task beyond the ability of mere mortals.

 

[dibens]

The new Reave, Multistrike and Melee Splash gems made melee much more fun and versatile, but yeah, unless you're soloing, high level content as a close combat character will hurt.

 

[dibens]

News on the upcoming official release of the game on 23rd of October.

• A preview on ONRPG:

http://www.onrpg.com/articles/editorial/path-of-exile-1-0-launch-preview/

• The Gamespot interview:

http://www.gamespot.com/shows/now-playing/?event=path-of-exile-2-20131004

• A snapshot of the new skill tree (not the final version). Also, the existing characters are getting full passive reset.

• Gameplay of the new Scion class

 

[Eyeball]

Nice new skills, but a new class really is not going to play very differently, it seems to me. The classes already have identical skill access once you hoard some gems and the only difference is in their stats.

PoE is getting better all the time. It is well worth picking up every once in a while.

 

[Minttunator]

On one hand it's weird that they throw out months of balancing like that, but on the other hand completely switching it up every once in a while does keep the game interesting. I might even pick it up again to check out that new class.

 

[empi]

ya PoE is pretty damn good imo, a while ago I had a level 80 something die in onslaught, been a bit busy to play it recently, will definitely play more in the near future, looks like there's always gonna be balance changes/new leagues/race seasons etc. to keep things interesting

edit: Just saw full release is coming later this month, awesome stuffs

 

[Gregz]

It's a great system, but after the grind and maps it just didn't hold me.

Maybe I've outgrown these types of games? Because I loved Diablo I and Diablo II, so I'm a bit confused...is it me or the game?

 

[Minttunator]

It's a great system, but after the grind and maps it just didn't hold me.

Maybe I've outgrown these types of games? Because I loved Diablo I and Diablo II, so I'm a bit confused...is it me or the game?

I completely understand what you're saying - I love PoE but I don't think I've played it as much as D1/D2, either. I suppose it's probably me, rather than the game - I've played a bunch of Diablo clones (such as Titan Quest and the Dungeon Siege games) over the years as well and I guess after a while I've begun to get tired of the entire genre, since these games are, after all, pretty similar at their cores. That's probably the main reason why I'm not super excited about Grim Dawn as well.

 

[DeepOcean]

It's a great system, but after the grind and maps it just didn't hold me.

Maybe I've outgrown these types of games? Because I loved Diablo I and Diablo II, so I'm a bit confused...is it me or the game?

I completely understand what you're saying - I love PoE but I don't think I've played it as much as D1/D2, either. I suppose it's probably me, rather than the game - I've played a bunch of Diablo clones (such as Titan Quest and the Dungeon Siege games) over the years as well and I guess after a while I've begun to get tired of the entire genre, since these games are, after all, pretty similar at their cores. That's probably the main reason why I'm not super excited about Grim Dawn as well.

Not, only you. The brown and grey enviroments + generic jungle + generic enemies really don't help. Grinding for items would be more tolerable if fighting in itself was less repetitive . Diablo I still is more fun, even being terrible simplistic in comparison. The whole genre got frozen in time with Diablo II, with other games only making small improvements here and there. I really hope that Grim Dawn bring something new.

 

[Cyberarmy]

It's a great system, but after the grind and maps it just didn't hold me.

Maybe I've outgrown these types of games? Because I loved Diablo I and Diablo II, so I'm a bit confused...is it me or the game?

We got burned out after long hours of D1-2 gameplay I guess. After completing merciless with my templar I didnt had any desire for grinding in PoE, same thing happened in Torchlight 2.
Maybe Diablo 3 killed my interest in genre...

Grim Dawn's alfa was fun, I give them that. I hope later maps are less linear and have more stuff to do.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I wouldn't mind grinding as much if they would do away with Magic Find altogether. It kills build diversity, which is supposed to be the games biggest strength. I hate the fact that if I make my character as powerful as they can be I'm hamstringing my ability to get good drops.

And yeah, there's is definitely something lifeless about the environment in this game. PoE is missing a certain bombastic flavor that other ARPGs seem to have. Just gets dull after awhile.

 

[dibens]

I wouldn't mind grinding as much if they would do away with Magic Find altogether.

I feel there are many ways to get MF without sacrificing your build too much. First off, the maps. The harder modifiers you roll on them, the more MF you get. Chances are, the characters decked out in MF gear won't be able to take on the maps a min-maxed character can. Second, you can get the gold amulets and rings without sacrificing much efficiency, since the MF is an implicit stat on them. And third, support gems. Just link Item Quantity and Item Quality gems to a secondary skill and use it to finish off rare and unique monsters for that extra boost in MF. Also, play hardcore, motherfuckers. That will make the decision between +% Item Quality and +% Armor quite obvious one.

 

[dibens]

Incoming 1.0 release balance changes that will adress non-map farming, MF and aura stacking, fusing links and 2-h weapons.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/540498

End Game Parity: Maps, Farming and Boss Runs
In the 0.11.6 version of Path of Exile, end-game Maps are the best place to play. They have a very high economic and attention cost associated with playing them, which some players are less interested in engaging with.

We've rebalanced some of the various end-game options as follows:

• Boss Runs: We're roughly doubling the rate of item drops from important bosses in Merciless difficulty. We want Vaal, Piety and Dominus runs to be a great way to stock up on rares and Unique items. While you won't find the absolute best top-tier gear from these bosses, they're probably the most time-efficient way to get a lot of wealth that can be traded with mappers.
• Farming: Many players want to kick off their shoes when they get home from work and farm The Docks (or similar areas) for hours without having to think about the difficulty of running Maps or Bosses. While this strategy obviously can't yield the best items in the game, we've decided that players should be able to get to level 100 eventually by playing these areas. We're changing the experience equation so that you don't encounter as much experience dropoff farming late Merciless difficulty. This won't make it any faster than it currently is for players to get to level 100, but it will open up area farming as a way to get there (so that you don't have to be part of a 74+ mapping group to have a shot at the upper ladder).
• Maps: Maps are the best place to find end-game base types and high Unique items. This is appropriate because they're gated behind high currency requirements (to reroll the mods you want). In addition, the highest ones are great for experience gain. They also offer the highest challenge levels for extreme players who want to test themselves against brutal combinations of mods.

After these changes, there should be far more options that are equally appealing for end-game players to spend their time on.

Auras
We had two problems with Auras:

• Using various tricks like Blood Magic, end-game builds would run six or more auras at once. This resulted in very little aura diversity or interesting party synergies.
• Their effects were not impactful enough. If you had six active ones, it was a big difference, but each individual aura wasn't incredibly meaningful.

To solve this, we're making auras more powerful but are increasing their mana reservation costs. There are new aura cost reduction passives that allow you to specialise in having many auras if you still want to be a full-on aura character. Now each aura that affects you can really be felt and there's a lot more diversity in aura loadout. When we're testing high level characters it's amazing how different they feel when different combinations of auras are selected.

Item Quantity and Rarity
Far too many items drop towards the end of the game. You've all seen the screenshots from maps where the ground is literally plastered in items.

The party bonus to item drops is being changed so that it is more in the direction of Item Rarity and doesn't have as much affect on Item Quantity (you still find the same rate of Magic/Rare/Unique items as before). We're making sure that it has its full quantity effect on the drop rate of Skill Gems and Currency Items. The Item Quantity Support Gem and Item Quantity mods on magic/rare items do not spawn in the new Domination and Nemesis leagues (they still appear on Unique items). The results of this experiment will help us determine how much Increased Item Quantity should stay in the game.

We have globally altered the diminishing returns values for Increased Item Quantity and Increased Item Rarity so that they are a little less effective. It's not a major change - MF characters will still be quite useful, but will feel less mandatory.

Note that while this may seem like a strict nerf to item acquisition, we've made these changes in conjunction with other changes like doubling the drop rate of act bosses in Merciless and the addition of Rogue Exiles to the core game (which drop a lot of items). There's slightly less emphasis on personal MF values and more on environmental ones. We believe that's a good thing.

Damage over Time
We've added the ability to scale Damage over Time effects. This means that you'll have more tools available to specialise in this class of skills, but has also resulted in rebalancing of all DoT effects. Some may be weaker until augmented, which is appropriate considering skills like Poison Arrow and Viper Strike were powerful without support gems.

Socket Fusing and Level 40-55 Quest Rewards
These two topics may not appear related, but we're improving both as the result of a specific observation: some players have a very tough time after around level 40 and often fail to get to the end-game.

While it's completely intentional that poor character builds should struggle (to encourage people to plan a better character), we found that many players were giving up because their item progression was stalling their progress. We're making the following changes to address this:

• It's approximately 233% easier to obtain four linked sockets.
• It's approximately 25% easier to obtain five linked sockets.
• Quest rewards for Cruel difficulty onwards have been improved so that you receive more rare items as rewards.

We're specifically targeting these two areas because we believe that giving people easier access to (the relatively mandatory) four linked sockets and supplementing their progression with more random rares will help them keep up with the harsh character progression demands that these difficulties impose. We've purposefully picked changes that don't interfere with the end-game. Note that even after these increases, you may still get junk from quests rewards and take quite a few Orbs of Fusing to roll the sockets you want!

Improved Two-Handed Weapons and Mods
We feel that there should be more incentive to use two-handed weapons and to be exposed to additional combat risk by not having a shield.

We've increased the damage of all Two Handed Weapons and have introduced a new set of two-handed physical and elemental damage mods that they can receive.

The two-handed damage increases also affects bows. They now receive the new two-handed physical damage mods and the old one-handed elemental damage mods. In addition, the slowest high level bows have been given implicit mods to provide a more interesting tradeoff against fast bows.

Staves can now receive new two-handed spell damage mods.

Sweet, sweet all-round.

 

[dibens]

1.0.0 release patch Notes

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/545523

Version 1.0.0
Notes:

• Due to substantial balance changes, every existing character has been granted an optional full passive reset. To use this, click the "Reset all Passives" button on the passive skill screen. Note that you must use this before allocating or refunding any other points otherwise the option will go away.
• The new Scion character class requires that you've rescued her in the Sceptre of God once before she can be used. This is an account-wide setting. We've enabled the Scion on any existing accounts that have finished Normal difficulty before.
• Path of Exile's Terms of Use have been updated for release. When you log into the website or game client you will be able to read and accept them.

New Four-Month Challenge Leagues:

• Four month challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start. All your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new economies, complete challenges and climb the ladder!
• The new challenge leagues include a set of eight new challenges! If you complete all of them, you'll receive an exclusive Domination/Nemesis challenge shirt. 61 players completed all the challenges in the last pair of four-month leagues.
• Domination: A variety of powerful Shrines now spawn throughout Wraeclast, surrounded by large groups of monsters that are influenced by their power. These monsters receive substantial bonuses or are protected by their shrine's effects in some way. If you are able to tag the shrine, you receive these powers for a short time. It's often very risky to run in and try to claim the shrine, but it is a gamble that can pay off. One of the new challenges is to tag each of the shrine types.
• Nemesis: Nemesis is a Hardcore league (characters who die are coverted to Standard characters). Rare monsters have one guaranteed mod from the Nemesis Pool, which makes the fight substantially harder. One of the challenges is to kill a rare with each of the Nemesis mods.
• The new challenge leagues have introduced five new base types of items - four new Flasks and a Ring.
• The Prismatic Ring cannot drop as a base type in Domination and Nemesis league but it can be created with a new vendor recipe. Unique Prismatic Rings can still drop in these leagues.
• There are six new Unique items that can drop in either challenge league, plus one that can only drop in Domination and one that can only drop in Nemesis.
• The Item Quantity Support Gem can not be obtained in these Challenge leagues.
• Increased Item Quantity mods cannot spawn on Magic and Rare items in these leagues.

Content - Major:

• Added the Scion, Path of Exile's prestige character class. She is aligned with all three core attributes (Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence) and starts in the center of the passive tree. She's only available once you've unlocked her by playing through Normal difficulty and rescuing her. Existing accounts that have finished Normal difficulty before start with her unlocked.
• Added six new world areas (in all three difficulty levels) across three new tilesets. There are three new quests.
• Added a grand finale boss fight.
• Added eight new end-game Maps including a new tier of level 78 maps.
• Added 11 new Unique Items, three of which are designed by our community and eight which can only drop in the Domination and Nemesis leagues. Six of those eight appear in either challenge league, but there's also one that is exclusive to each league.
• Added two new Halloween Microtransactions - Demon Hand Pet and Decapitation Helmet Skin. They're for exclusively for sale until the end of November 1.
• Added six new monster types, three of which are exclusive to the new areas. The other three appear in previous areas also, such as the Cannibals who have replaced the Scavengers in early Act One.
• Many existing monsters have received new abilities when added to the new world areas.
• Added a new Rogue Exile - Xandro Blooddrinker, based on member of our community who won the "Well Dressed Exile Competition".
• The Eternal Laboratory has been visually revamped and is now present in the Solaris Temple. In Normal and Cruel difficulties, it contains lore.
• Added a new curse, Silence, that monsters can use on you.

Content - New Skills:

• Added a new Strength/Dexterity Skill Gem - Spectral Throw: Throws a spectral copy of your melee weapon. It flies out and then returns to you, in a spinning attack that strikes enemies in its path.
• Added a new Strength/Intelligence Skill Gem - Animate Guardian: Animates a melee weapon or armour, attaching it to an invisible Guardian that fights by your side. Animating multiple items attaches them to the same Guardian. Guardians killed in PvP areas will not lose their items.
• Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Skill Gem - Animate Weapon: Animates a melee weapon to fight by your side. There's no limit on the number of weapons you can animate.
• Added a new Dexterity Support Gem - Slower Projectiles.
• Added a new Strength Support Gem - Reduced Duration.
• We've added Trigger Gems, a new type of Support Gem that causes linked skills to be cast automatically on certain conditions. This patch includes six of these, with more coming in subsequent updates.
• Added a new Intelligence Trigger Support Gem - Curse on Hit.
• Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Trigger Support Gem - Cast on Crit.
• Added a new Strength/Intelligence Trigger Support Gem - Cast on Melee Kill.
• Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Trigger Support Gem - Cast on Death.
• Added a new Strength/Intelligence Trigger Support Gem - Cast when Damage Taken.
• Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity Trigger Support Gem - Cast when Stunned.
• Added a new Keystone Passive Skill - Mind over Matter: When hit, 30% of damage is taken from mana before life.
• Added a rebalanced Keystone Passive Skill - Avatar of Fire: 50% of your physical/lightning/cold damage is converted to fire damage. You can't deal non-fire damage.

Features - Major:

• Added an achievement system. Achievements are somewhat easier than Challenges and can be completed in any league. We expect to add at least one new achievement per two-weekly ongoing content patch.
• Added new Player Profile pages on the website. These list your current/historic accomplishments in many categories (races, PvP, challenges, achievements) and allow you to pin the results you're proudest of.
• The development team and Gold/Diamond/Exalted/Eternal/Ruler supporters are now listed in the game's credits. These are displayed upon completion of the game.
• Waypoints, quest locations and story glyphs have been updated to have nicer graphical markers on the minimap.

Features - Guilds:

• We've added Guilds! To create one, use the Social screen. Guilds can initially hold 30 members, but more slots can be purchased.
• There are three membership tiers - Leader, Office and Member. Leaders can change permissions. Officers can invite people to the guild.
• There's a guild chat channel (bound to the & symbol). It spans across leagues.
• Powerful guilds can obtain tags that appear next to their members' names in chat. This requires sacrificing a set of end-game Maps, each of which corresponds to a letter or symbol in the tag. Tags are unique and some symbols are much rarer than others.
• You can purchase Premium Guild Stash Tabs which allow you to store your guild's wealth. You can set permissions for different tiers of members to view, add items and remove items.
• Guild purchases are handled by the guild leader. Players can visit their guild page on pathofexile.com to donate points to their guild.
• Guild Challenges are coming very soon!

Features - Player vs. Player:

• We've added a Capture the Flag PvP mode. It's available at Greust (and now Maramoa in Merciless) like normal PvP. Supported team sizes are 3v3 and 6v6.
• Rapid-fire PvP tournaments will start with PvP Season One (which is approximately three weeks after Release). There may be some experimental ones before that. More PvP balance and usability changes are on the way.
• Dueling will be enabled very soon!

Features - Minor:

• Magic and rare monsters now have new effects to indicate their presence. Lights have been removed from many rare and unique monsters.
• The Path of Exile logo on the title screen is now 3D.
• Improved the visual appearance of metal in the graphics engine.
• Changed the colour of the Twitch chat text to turquoise because Guild chat is grey.
• The graphics engine has had several performance optimisations.
• Players now cannot spend or reserve their last point of life with Blood Magic.
• Chaos damage now has its own section on item display popups.
• Improved markup of terrain to prevent players catching on some objects as they run past.

Content - Minor:

• Merciless PvP is now handled by Maramoa rather than Greust.
• Some of the previously drop-only Skill and Support Gems are available from a new side quest. The new Trigger Gems are also available in this quest. The other new side quest offers utility flasks and rare items.
• The "Sharp and Cruel" and "Sever the Hand" quests in Merciless now offer rare items as rewards, rather than Skill or Support Gems.
• Some monsters now have "Far Shot" causing them to do less damage to closer targets and more damage to farther away targets.
• The Crematorium has been reduced to one level in size.
• The Slums waypoint has been moved to the Crematorium. If you previously had the Slums waypoint, you will be awarded the Crematorium waypoint.
• The Solaris Temple has been reduced to two levels. If you previously had the Solaris Temple Level 3 waypoint, you will be awarded the Solaris Temple Level 2 waypoint.
• The Shock and Horror boss in the Torture Chamber map has been revamped.
• The Starkonja's Head and Hyrri's Ire Unique items now have their own 3D art.
• The effect for Infernal Blow has been improved.
• Added new portal effects including special Map portals.
• Some world areas have been renamed.
• The Coast (formerly The Terraces) now has new types of chests.
• The new Ground Ice looks awesome.
• Removed some carts from the Arsenal Map.
• Adjusted the size of the Jungle Valley Map.
• Adjusted the size of the Spider Forest Map.
• Adjusted the density of monsters in the Promenade Map.
• Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.

Balance Changes - General:

• The experience equation has been changed so that the minimum experience you receive when too high or too low level is 2% (before it is split among the players). This means that farming non-Map areas until level 100 is actually plausible now.
• Characters now receive 8 life per level rather than 6.
• Increased the monster life bonus per additional player by 25% in Cruel and 50% in Merciless.
• Shock has been reduced to 30% increased damage taken per stack rather than 40%.
• Blinded players now have minimum light radius.
• The damage reflection auras have been reduced to 15%.
• Starting attributes for each character class now add to 60 rather than 58.

Balance Changes - Items:

• 40% of the item quantity bonus for additional party members is now shifted towards item rarity. Gems and currency items still receive the old item quantity bonus.
• Diminishing returns for player item quantity and item rarity have been changed so that they are slightly less effective.
• Item drops from Merveil, Brutus, Vaal Oversoul, Piety and Dominus have been substantially increased in Cruel and Merciless difficulties.
• When using Orbs of Fusing, you're now 233% more likely to roll four linked sockets and 25% more likely to roll five linked sockets.
• The implicit resistances possible on the Prismatic Ring have been reduced slightly.
• The damage of two-handed weapons has been increased.
• New higher physical and elemental damage mods have been created for two-handed weapons.
• Bows also receive the increased damage and the new two-handed physical damage mods, but only have access to one-handed elemental damage mods.
• Staves have received new higher two-handed spell damage mods.
• Some of the rarest Unique items can now only drop from end-game Maps.
• The drop rate of the Glassblower's Bauble has been substantially reduced.
• When traded to a vendor, three Bazaar maps now become an Academy Map, instead of a Precinct Map.
• New implicit mods have been added to the Maraketh Bow (Weapon Elemental Damage) and the Harbinger Bow (Local Crit Chance).
• The Resplendent mod can no longer spawn on shields.
• All shield defences have been reduced by 17%.

Balance Changes - Unique Items:

• The following Unique items have been directly buffed. Using a Divine Orb on an existing version will roll new mods in the new ranges.
• Kaom's Primacy: Increased Physical Damage has been increased.
• Malachai's Simula: Increased Mana Cost of Skills has been reduced.
• Hrimnor's Hymn: Increased Physical Damage has been increased.
• Rigvald's Charge: Attack Speed has been increased.
• Hyrri's Ire: Increased Evasion has been increased. Acrobatics now also grants a better dodge chance than before.
• Ondar's Clasp: Attack Speed on Full Life and Movement Speed on Low Life have both been increased.
• Kaltenhalt: Reflected Cold Damage has been increased.
• Ambu's Charge: Increased Armour and Energy Shield has been increased.
• Devoto's Devotion: Attack Speed has been increased.
• Ungil's Gauche: Block While Dual Wielding has been increased.
• The Covenant: Increased Energy Shield has been increased.
• Pillar of the Caged God: Increased Physical Damage per 10 Strength has been increased.
• Lightbane Raiment: Increased Armour and Energy Shield, Chaos Damage reflected to melee attackers and the Chance to Create Desecrated Ground have all been increased.
• Zahndethus' Cassock: Added Lightning Damage, Chaos Resistance and Chance to Create Consecrated Ground have all been increased.
• The following Unique items have been nerfed. Using a Divine Orb on an existing version will roll new mods in the new ranges.
• Facebreaker: More Unarmed Physical Damage has been reduced.
• Soul Taker: Increased Physical Damage has been reduced.
• Wondertrap: Increased Movement Speed has been reduced.
• Rainbowstride: All Elemental Resistances has been reduced.
• Shavronne's Wrappings: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced.
• Thunderfist: Lightning Damage has been reduced.
• Auxium: Weapon Elemental Damage has been reduced.
• The following Unique items have had more complex changes:
• Kaom's Heart: Increased Life has been reduced to 500. Increased Fire Damage has been added. A Divine Orb used on an existing version would only update the life.
• Bramblejack: Melee Damage Reflect has been increased. It also now has additional life. A Divine Orb used on an existing copy will only reroll the Melee Damage Reflect.
• Sadima's Touch: Now requires character level 11 to equip.
• Rat's Nest: The flat Evasion bonus has been changed to Increased Evasion percentage. Existing ones will have the new property, but the old value. Using a Divine will reroll the value to the new one. Additionally, its Increased Global Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed have been improved.

Balance Changes - Monsters:

• Piety the Empyrean in the Shrine Map and the Shadow of the Vaal in the Maze Map now have significantly higher item quantity and rarity.
• Monster skill costs and mana pools now increase proportional to their level in a more natural way.
• The descriptions of properties on magic and rare monsters have been made more concise so that they're easier to read in combat.
• The Unwavering monster accuracy prefix has been renamed to Precise.
• Map Bosses now have 60% reduced curse effect (up from 50%).
• Act bosses now have 70% reduced curse effect (up from 40%).
• Rogue Exiles now have 50% reduced curse effect (up from 0%).
• Grapplers will now discharge when they have any kind of Charge, not just Power Charges.

Balance Changes - Active Skills:

• The following skills have had their mana costs reduced: Ethereal Knives, Flame Totem, Searing Bond, Fire Trap, Detonate Dead, Shock Nova, Firestorm, Arc, Split Arrow and Whirling Blades.
• The following skills have had their mana costs increased: Discharge, Elemental Hit and Dual Strike.
• Elemental Hit: Damage progression past level 1 has been reduced.
• Spark: Damage is increased at lower levels. Spark duration has been heavily reduced.
• Bear Trap: Damage at high levels has been reduced by around 40% at level 15.
• Fire Trap: Damage at high levels has been reduced by around 30% at level 15.
• Arc: Damage has been increased by around 23%.
• Flame Totem: Damage at high levels has been reduced (around 10% less damage at level 15).
• Lightning Trap: Damage at high levels has been reduced (around 10% less damage at level 15).
• Devouring Totem: The life leech from has been rescaled and adjusted. It now also leeches mana when a corpse is consumed. It will now consume corpses when you're missing either life or mana.
• Righteous Fire: The damage bonus now starts at 40% instead of 30%, but only increases by 1% per level, instead of 3%.
• Cleave: The dual wielding penalty for Cleave is now multiplicative and includes elemental damage.
• Critical Weakness: The bonus to Critical Multiplier has been reduced by a flat 20% at all levels.

Balance Changes - Auras:

• For all Auras: Base area of effect has been increased. The area of effect bonus from quality has been doubled.
• The mana cost for all auras except Clarity has been changed to 60% reservation. Edit: Blood Magic is very strong because the auras are so powerful and the mana reservation can be mitigated very heavily using passives, items and the support gem.
• Anger: Damage has been increased.
• Wrath: Damage has been increased.
• Hatred: Damage increase has been increased.
• Purity: Maximum resistances provided have been reduced.
• Haste: Attack Speed, Cast Speed and Movement speed increases have been increased. Haste now follows the same progression of area of effect changes as other auras.
• Vitality: Life Regeneration has been increased.
• Discipline: Energy Shield granted has been increased.
• Grace: Evasion granted has been increased.
• Clarity: The mana regeneration has been increased by around 15% at all levels.

Balance Changes - Support Gems:

• Weapon Elemental Damage: Mana cost reduced. Damage reduced by 21%.
• Spell Totem: Damage reduction increased from 40% to 50%.
• Ranged Attack Totem: Damage reduction increased from 40% to 50%.
• Remote Mine: The quality bonus has been changed to Mine Laying Speed.
• Trap: Damage increase has been reduced at all levels by a flat 5%.

Balance Changes - Passive Skill Tree:

• Two new Keystone Passives described under "Content" above have been added.
• The centre of the tree has been significantly reworked to facilitate the Scion.
• Several clusters and Keystones have had their locations moved.
• Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics have been increased to providing 30% dodge chance.
• Most percentage based life passives have been increased by 2%. Several life passives have been removed from the tree or integrated into nearby nodes.
• Small chaos resistance nodes have been removed or integrated into nearby passives.
• Several damage clusters have had defensive bonuses added to them.
• The early Shadow tree has been given more access to mana. Flat mana has been added to one of the life nodes and Mental Acuity now offers 20% mana regeneration.
• The early Marauder tree has had the Strength bonuses from early melee notables increased. The versatility cluster also offers mana cost reduction.
• The early Witch tree has had life flask bonuses changes for nodes that provide general flask effect improvements. General Spell damage nodes have been improved.
• Several Notable Passives have been renamed.
• A new notable called Arcane Vision has been added which adds accuracy and "Light Radius is based on Energy Shield instead of Life".

Bug Fixes:

• You now can't use an Orb of Fusing on a fully linked item or a Jeweller's Orb on a fully socketed item.
• The client can now patch when its Content.ggpk file is marked as read-only. This used to be a problem if you downloaded it from a torrent.
• You can't drop items in PvP areas any more.
• Fixed a bug where you could apply cosmetic skins to an item if it had already been skinned with a Skin Transfer.
• Eternal Orbs can no longer destroy items stored with Skin Transfer.
• Transferred skins now display correctly when the item is linked in chat.
• Firestorm will no longer drop fireballs out of line-of-sight of the target location.
• Fixed problems related to when Tempest Shield's sound plays.
• Fixed a bug where linking microtransaction items on the forums wouldn't work correctly.
• Fixed a bug in the Way Forward quest where the spikes in the Prisoner's Gate would not be raised if you had the Seal key but hadn't seen Piety raise them.
• Fixed a bug in Arc where the first arc in the chain would attempt to re-target to things outside its maximum range.
• Fixed a bug where the Client can permanently stop rendering anything when a Windows "move" command is issued.
• Rare degeneration bears that generate with an aura from a mod now cast their degeneration aura properly as well.
• Fixed a bug where the life gain per hit from spells when using Cybil's Paw displayed incorrectly.

 

[Aothan]

that is an impressive list of additions and changes for the official release, some are certainly interesting for the effect they will have for both individual play and the community as a whole. The new experience changes are curious since it would sound to be a fairly significant revision of maps as the exclusive mode for end-game playing. I'm mostly interested in the changes to Ondar's Wraps and the new trigger gems, to see how the 'early' game is affected and perhaps revitalised for those who tend to make characters every so often and cannot grind for extended periods. Actually I would like to see how the new levels feel since a good level can warrant extended hack n slash play and I've never really been drawn to play maps extensively.

whilst I don't play too often anymore I'll be starting a new character in the coming Nemesis league and depending on how long that venture lasts might finally try a dedicated mage in Domination (if I have the right name). What remains to be seen is how well they can now finally start to refine the pvp aspects of the game, since I would say the potential there is incredible if GGG can manage to attune skill gems and itemisation into a feasible degree of balance.