Balance in Path of Exile: Synthesis

God damn GGG, I know I have no right to demand that the obvious be pointed out to me, but I didnt realize we would loose access to our Jun mods with the merge and now I have a really good sceptre with a crafted flat fire dmg to spells here and cant put the extra non chaos as chaos on it and feel like I shot myself in the foot.

Also if you are trying to make playing Trickster, Saboteur (please dont forget to adjust Ascendant accordingly!) or Occultist appealing in 3.6, it's working.

Might as well do an in depth review of this.

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Tomorrow we're releasing the full patch notes for Path of Exile: Synthesis. In the meantime, we'd like to talk about some of the major balance changes we've planned for the expansion and what our intentions are. The balance changes mostly focus on handcasting spells, though many of these changes do affect other systems in the game.

Spells
For a number of leagues, the majority of builds that use spells have used proxies like Totems, Traps or Mines to cast skills for them. There has also been a focus on skills that do their work automatically over a long duration. For this expansion, we've focussed on putting power back in the hands of casters, rewarding players who cast skills directly. In addition to a number of new support gems, we've made changes to almost every damage spell in the game.

Did you guys start calling it "handcasting" to be able to say "putting power back in the hands of casters"? Even if not originally intended, good to see the wordplay.

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We've reviewed and adjusted the base damage and effectiveness of almost every primary damage spell. We've also included some traps, mines and totems in these adjustments. These changes have focused on separately balancing low and high levels. Many skills have only required power increases at low or high levels, depending on where they naturally excel.

We've also reviewed Vaal Skills and skills from items. A small number of spells that we consider too powerful for their ease of use, like Brands, Winter Orb and Blade Vortex have had their damage lowered. We'll be revealing the full list of changes in the patch notes.

Great that the base damage and effectiveness is being looked at across all levels.

Yes, Brands, Winter Orb, and Blade Vortex are indeed so easy to use that they're a problem that's hindering further interesting designs and options. I hope GGG is making notes for the future on how these also auto-damage skills have played out. And now I'm curious how many times BV has been changed now... In terms of major overhauls, it's potentially getting its 4th iteration? Something like that. I'd like to hear how Neon and others feel about how difficult the skill has been to work with.

"

Mana costs of many skills have been adjusted to make the mana cost per cast time of skills much more consistent. Most skills that were adjusted have had their costs lowered. There are a few exceptions to the cast time equivalent mana cost rule; Channelled skills are slightly cheaper, while Curses are more expensive than other skills of equivalent cast time. We will include a list of specific changes in the patch notes.

Glad to see mana getting made more consistent though I am wondering how curses are going to fare if they're getting made more expensive. Are we going to see curse resistance on bosses be lowered to make it justified to curse them? And/or some sort of retuning how Curse Effectiveness works?

Ah, it's down below. Good, I'll make notes there then.

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Many spells that had cast times higher than 0.75 seconds have been lowered, and their damage adjusted to match. These skills were often too unwieldy to cast yourself, and their high effective hit damage made them very powerful with Traps, Mines and Triggering effects. Here are a few examples of cast times after these changes: Discharge (0.75 sec from 1 sec), Glacial Cascade (0.7 sec from 0.8 sec), Arc (0.7 sec from 0.8 sec) and Ice Nova (0.7 sec from 0.8 sec).

I'm glad you guys are realizing spell cast speed (or lack thereof) is a killer for handcasting. I hope you also apply this thinking to melee skills and attacks in general, especially given the huge disparities between slow and fast weapons. Perhaps the new Spell Focus gem is also a test to see how something similar fares for melee?

Something to note for comparing spells and weapons: If a spell has a .75 cast time that's equivalent to a 1.33 speed weapon. If .75 is the new baseline then I'm hoping all weapons get bumped to at least a 1.25 baseline which would be equivalent to a .8 cast time and still allow for attack speed to be given out more than cast speed.

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Some skills that had lower areas of effect than other skills without a good reason have either had their area increased, or now gain additional radius as their gems level. Combined with new options for increasing spell area of effect, this should help these skills be more enjoyable to use. You'll find new sources of increased area of effect on the passive tree for casters. (Note that we'll be giving similar bonuses to Attack skills in the future, just not in 3.6.0.)

So you guys nerfed AoE hugely several patches ago and are now coming back around to realizing AoE is kinda necessary in order for various skills to actually feel usable? I'm glad it's finally being done and I hope that can apply to some attack skills as well (particularly Melee Splash).

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We've made a few other changes to various spells, like lowering the cooldown on Convocation, having Spark be able to re-hit a target it has pierced after a shorter delay and having Unearth projectiles fly much faster. These are buffs. Arc also has a lower chain distance now, so it won't bounce between distant packs of enemies.

Yes, Convocation definitely needs a CD boost. I'm guessing about 4 seconds now? Other quality of life things for more spells are welcome and addressing how powerful Arc can be due to its chain length ought to help keep it from dominating.

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Support Gems
A number of support gems that have fallen behind others in power and utility are receiving some numerical and mechanical adjustments. Chain Support, Fork Support, Spell Cascade and Innervate have had values improved. Arcane Surge Support now has a damage multiplier at higher gem levels. Onslaught Support and the Summon Phantasm Support now have effects on hitting Rare and Unique Enemies.

Finally seeing love for Chain and Fork! Hang on, when did Fork get improved to only 11% less damage? Eh, still sucks compared to Pierce. And Chain being 31% less really kills it especially when you've already got chains from other sources.

Innervate has been in an odd position and a little buff to put it in line with Added Lightning might work I guess, but it works best on a secondary skill to gain Innervate for something it's not linked to.

Spell Cascade also get killed by having 31% less damage. Glad these are getting looked at.

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Curses
Powerful bosses, especially the Elder and Shaper, previously had significantly less effect of curses on them, to stop Temporal Chains and Enfeeble trivialising their encounters. We've now lowered this curse effect reduction to let damage curses provide more worthwhile bonuses against bosses. Temporal Chains and Enfeeble now have a separate value of damage reduction and slow for Normal and Magic enemies compared to Rare and Unique enemies, with Rare and Unique enemies having about half as much effect. The accuracy reduction on Enfeeble has also been reduced.

If I'm reading this right it's specifically Enfeeble and Temp Chains that have their separate values vs rare and unique enemies, yes? And all other curses apply their full effect? If that's the case then I love it! Finally we can rely on damage curses to actually work against meaningful content.

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Energy Shield Leech
We've added multiple sources of Energy Shield Leech to the game, both on a new Support Gem and for spells on passive skills.

Energy Shield has a lower cap on maximum restored per second than Life Leech (10% of maximum energy shield per second), but the dedicated Energy Shield Leech passives will let you increase this number. Ghost Reaver now doubles your maximum energy shield per second in addition to turning all Life Leech into Energy Shield Leech and lowering your shield recharge rate. This makes it good for pure Energy Shield casters as well as letting Attacks have easy Energy Shield Leech access.

It's good to see ES leech come back to a decent spot and having ES leech itself on the tree independent of life leech is also nice. Should allow for more hybrid builds as well.

Question: How will this work with Soul Tether?

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Leech Length Nerf
Previously, there was no upper limit on how much an individual leech effect could restore. This meant that a very high damage hit with enough leech could last minutes, if not longer, if you had an effect letting your leech remain on full life. Now, there is a limit of 10% restored per leech effect, so each individual leech effect can't last more than 5 seconds. For the Ascendant's Slayer Passive Skill, this is 5% lower.

10% of max life per leech effect? I have a bad feeling about this, but I'm not experienced enough with leech's mechanics to say anything more than that. I do think it's crazy how leech could easily counter RF for example, but going this far seems a bit much.

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The Passive Tree
We've made a large number of changes to the passive tree to provide more diverse sources of power and other interesting mechanics to spellcasters.

Good to see the passive tree get some more additions and reworks.

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Energy shield Leech
We've added a number of sources of Energy Shield Leech for spells on the passive tree, both on specialised clusters (that also boost your damage in a few different ways) and as part of the Fire, Cold, and Lightning "Heart" notables. The Shadow area of the tree also has a small amount on a new Evasion and Energy Shield path.

The Heart notables are already quite powerful and adding on ES leech might make them damn near mandatory. But I guess I'll hold judgment until I see the other ES leech nodes.

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Caster Weapon Passives
We've added and adjusted a number of passive tree clusters that affected Staves, Dual Wielding and Shields for casters. These provide powerful bonuses to spells that were previously only found on very generic skills, including a lot of Cast Speed for casters that are Dual Wielding, a lot of damage and defences for those using Shields and bonuses to Area of Effect for staves. We've also made various additions and improvements to some underutilised passives that affect spellcasters.

Staves: I'm hoping you added another wheel for staves since they only have 3 while other weapons get at least 4 or 5. Hell, even wands have 4 wheels. Making staves be the AoE weapons might help bring them up but I'm not holding my breath on them being something we'd normally weigh against the stats DW or certain shields can provide.

DW casters: Right now in 3.5 the only DW caster wheel is Dark Arts which grants a total of 20% cast speed. All other DW wheels with a notable are exclusively for attacking, so I hope you guys give Gemini or Duality a little love for casters.

Shield casters: Straight up damage and defense sounds good to me for shield casters.

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Elemental Damage Wheel
The Elemental Damage wheel of passives to the left of the Templar's starting area now has fewer Elemental Damage skills and a single powerful Elemental notable that combines some of the power of the two previous Elemental notables. It now includes two new notables that work very well with the new spells that convert physical damage to Fire or Lightning.

Elemental Damage wheel being the Celestial Judgment and Celestial Punishment nodes I'm guessing? If so, it is good to see it get a bit of a reworking since it always looked a bit odd. I'm hesitant about the damage conversion nodes and skills, even with the non-chaos gained as chaos nerfs mentioned later.

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Shadow Starting Passives
We've adjusted connections to the tree on the Shadow's starting area to be more consistent with other classes, and changed the defensive passives and projectile passives to have a simpler, widely useful set of bonuses. A notable passive providing Evasion, Energy Shield and Energy Shield Leech takes some of the old bonuses and places them to the right side of the tree, shifting the mana path so it is now parallel to the jewel node and now granting a small amount of increased mana regeneration.

Yeah, the Nullification and Sniper wheel are weird. In combination with the Mind Drinker and Blood Drinker wheels they also form something of a cock and balls and have been the subject of many jokes. I'm hoping the rework makes those damn triangles go away or at least look better.

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Channelling Passives
We've added two new passive tree clusters that provide damage bonuses for Channelled skills as well as some defensive properties while channelling, like stun avoidance and physical damage reduction.

I like this news about Channeling support on the tree. If the tree keeps the other stun avoidance nodes then there will be some nice new options instead of having to take all of Practical Application, Nimbleness, and Heart of Oak and their minor nodes.

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Trickster
The Trickster's Ghost Dance and Escape Artist notables have been reworked significantly, with the goal of providing a unique and very powerful reward for specialising in Evasion and Energy Shield. Ghost Dance now creates a Ghost Shroud every second, up to a maximum of 3. After you're hit, a Ghost Shroud is consumed, restoring Energy Shield based on your Evasion Rating. Ghost Dance and Escape Artist now have other bonuses based on your Ghost Shrouds.

We've also added Frenzy and Power Charge generation while Channelling to the Swift Killer notable, to let a Channelling Trickster generate charges during tough encounters.

Good to see Trickster channeling getting some support. I'll have to wait and see what the new Ghost Dance and Escape Artist look like, but they have been a bit odd, yes. If Escape Artist is getting rid of the ES per chest evasion then I'll be a bit sad since I had wanted to try a Fox's Fortune CI Trickster. Granted, with the way I play that'd probably never come to fruition anyway so I guess I'm not really out much.

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Inquisitor
We've reworked the Consecration based Notables of Sanctify and Pious Path to greatly improve reliability of Consecrated Ground for the Inquisitor, instead of just giving powerful bonuses when you manage to be on Consecrated Ground. Sanctify no longer creates consecrated ground when hit or on kill, and instead will always create consecrated ground around you while you're stationary. Pious Path now lets the effects of Consecrated Ground linger for 4 seconds after you, allies or enemies would no longer be affected by the ground. Other effects have also been changed or improved.

These changes work well with a change to all Consecrated Ground that causes hits against enemies in it to have 100% increased critical strike chance.

It's interesting to see the notes about being stationary. I suppose giving us bonuses while not moving is one way to slow us down in a way we don't get too ornery about. But Pious Path will definitely be fun to use because allowing us to keep those buffs while moving but still having to stop every 4 seconds sounds good to me.

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Other Changes
Critical Strike Chance
Previously, an effect that could critically hit was capped at 5% minimum critical chance, and 95% maximum critical chance. We've set both of these caps to 0% and 100%.

Effects that gave enemies an additional chance to be critically hit have all been changed to instead increase the chance of critical hits against them, or give additional critical chance before modifiers, as if the attacker had critical bonuses against the target rather than an additional chance added on top.

I'm glad you guys are finally getting rid of D&D's 1 and 20 rolls for crits. And the rework of extra crit vs targets helps with that.

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Non-Chaos as Extra Chaos Damage on Weapons
The interaction of the Non-Chaos Damage with Hits as Extra Chaos Damage stat and multiple damage conversions made this stat far more powerful for very specific setups than a single stat should be. We've lowered the value of this stat on the combined craftable "Spell Damage and Non-Chaos Damage with Hits as Extra Chaos Damage" modifier on weapons.

The Veiled mod that only grants this modifier has now been split into four versions, Fire, Cold, Lightning and Physical. These modifiers are now available as a mod on many caster weapons above level 60 at a higher value, making it a powerful effect to find when creating the perfect element-specific caster weapon.

Existing items will be not be affected by this change. We'll be looking at other sources of the stat like unique items and the Trickster's "Harness the Void" notable in future.

Yes, this mod can be absolutely insane and you're right to split it up and tone it down.

Question though: With the number of ways we can get elemental added as chaos, what is GGG's current stance on items that do elemental to chaos conversion? It'd be nice to get Voltaxic back to its 100% conversion because goodness knows chaos itself has been getting shat on.

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+1 Maximum Totems Veiled Mod
This modifier is no longer available as a Veiled craftable modifier. Instead, it now appears as mod on Shaper shields. The modifier was too powerful to be able to easily apply to an already strong Rare shield, so now you've got to get it earlier in the process of crafting an item.

Yeah, I suppose Shaper shields works since it's a prefix and Shaper doesn't have as many there as Elder.

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Unique Nerfs
We've made some adjustments to a few unique items that were problematic. Details will be in the patch notes tomorrow.

As there should always be some tuning passes on uniques each league.

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Damage Immunity
We've made a few changes to prevent total immunity to specific damage types, as these could be used to completely trivialize some encounters:

• Player Maximum Resistances now can never go above 90%. Any maximum resistance you have above this value will have no effect. This is especially important as Synthesis introduces other sources of Maximum Resistances.
• Vaal Impurity auras now provide Less Damage Taken of their element, and have less aura effect per level.
• The Gluttony of Elements skill now also provides Curse Immunity, to prevent interactions with Temporal Chains letting it last far too long. Technically, this is a buff.

I assume you guys are not changing CI to be 90%, correct? Otherwise that entirely defeats the purpose of the keystone.

As for other damage types, based on resistance being mentioned I'm guessing (and hoping) Immortal Call isn't being affected by this? Elemental being the go-to for actual damage because it's most easily balanced around seems like the best course of action and I support a cap on max resistances. Kinda wish it was 95%, but 90% at least feels like an investment to get into from the baseline 75%.

Could you guys be a bit more specific on what you mean when you say Vaal Impurity auras "have less effect per level"? I'm hoping you mean their effectiveness doesn't increase as much for higher levels instead of the other reading which could mean the aura itself has some sort of Less effect on it.

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There are plenty of other changes on our hit list for the future. Attacks need the same level of attention (if not more) that spells are getting in 3.6.0, as well as changes to Abyss Jewels and Physical Weapon Damage, but we'll be spacing these changes over 3.7.0 and beyond to make sure they get the time and attention they deserve.

We look forward to sharing the full patch notes for Path of Exile: Synthesis with you tomorrow!

I'm glad Abyss jewels are on your radar. They are indeed pretty crazy, though I have a feeling when they get looked at amusing things like Sire of Shards Spectral Throw will get killed. But until that happens I'll try to roll a DW Last Resort Juggernaut to see how it fares.

My wife proactively left me.

I was considering running a CI build this league, and I may still do that. My guess is that CI will supersede the resist cap, but I suspect we'll likely find out tomorrow.

Going to be an adventure. Slayer seems a bit rough, but we'll see how it plays out. Very interesting changes with ES leech.

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Fishnuggets99 wrote:

Looks like CI and lowlife builds are going to make a comeback.

A comeback?

Surely you jest.

"We will not nerf the build so it is unplayable"....... GJ Bex Man of you word. Dont say what you aint gonna do pls.

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Raxed wrote:

"

Fishnuggets99 wrote:

Looks like CI and lowlife builds are going to make a comeback.

A comeback?

Surely you jest.

Ikr, it's been meta since Delve League's crazy es fossil craft with 5 es mods. (3 prefix ES, 1 suffix es, and int plus 30% quality).

Look at all those low life 16k+ es Occultists/ Jugg roaming around occupying 1/3 of playerbase.

How out of touch can he be to not know that?

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Raxed wrote:

I’m absolutely gobsmacked by the decision to nerf an Ascendancy that 1% of the playerbase use, whilst giving Occultist everything it could ever want.

Nerfing Scion-Slayer, that would be justified, but actual Slayer? I just... why?

Has to be said, it really makes less than no sense... its literally the opposite of what they would do in any sane universe. Occultist was already great... better as a melee ascendancy even (Howa Occultist shits all over any life build thats possible in the game in terms of tankyness and one shot avoidance. while shitting all over any melee damage that any Maurader or Dualist (except maybe blade flurry champ but thats got half the HP) could possibly do at the same time.

It feels like there's very little actual awareness of whats actually going on in the game right now, like there's people in charge of melee who are purely clueless while people in charge of other aspects of the game are literally trying to make the game a faceroll for spells and ES builds.

I mean tell me the same people on the same wavelength in coordination with each others did this from the last two major patches:

Made Brands the most stupidly OP objectively mechanically superior skill over all other skills in every important aspect.
Gave Occultist massive buffs after it was one of the best ascendancies in Delve
Gave ES buffs after Delve proved ES is once again superior objectively to Life
Nerfed almost unplayed Slayer
Nerfed Cyclone's already bad AOE.


The only sane way I can explain this is that the guy doing Slayer and Cyclone work hasn't played POE since 2.0 or GGG wants melee to be bad because they consider it "the bad card that shows us what good cards look like" and they wont admit it publicly.

Arguably the designer of Brands is actually trying to ruin the game for any other skill LOL but thats another post.

RIP my beloved slayer.


BTW the term 'hand casting' sucks.