Content Update 3.21.0 -- Path of Exile: Crucible

I came into yesterday's announcement the most hyped I've been for a league in a long time. Great announcement, exciting content, good Q&A, then...patch notes.

The league looks awesome, except that as with Sanctum, Scourge, etc. there look to be major downsides on all major upsides' nodes within weapons' new passive trees. Maybe excepting the rare top tier. I do wish this wasn't the plan. I'm hopeful but concerned this is going to be another exercise in grind and disappointment. I'd so rather have 0.01% better than 20% better in one way and 20% worse in another. Please don't make this suck. I so want to like it.

Sad to lose Saboteur as I was about to play one. It sounded so good during the reveal. Ho well.

I'm looking at the list of buffs and nerfs. I'm trying hard, but even squinting I can't quite make this look like a rebalance.

Buffs:
- Significant buffs to various unique items with niche uses, to avoid general power creep.
- Atlas passive tree routing QoL.
- Small buff to a few currency stack sizes.
- Various buffs around stun, because nobody is using it.
- Link skills buffed, because nobody is using them.
- Stances slightly buffed, because nobody is using them.
- Warcries slightly buffed, including more passive investment options in case preferable to other damage or defences.
- Recovery passives buffed to encourage more defence investment instead of damage.
- Rares with Powerful Minions were too powerful, they have been nerfed.
- Rares which spawn exploding purple crystals are now far easier to see. Since testing led to too many surviving players after this change, damage has been changed to Chaos, to increase average player deaths back to previous levels.
- Lava Lake boss fight made 1% easier, which you'll get to play in 3.22 or 3.23.
- Trigger/cooldown builds can use new Saboteur ascendancy nodes.
- Some of the lesser used levelling skills have been slightly buffed, with the intent not to make them so good as to be commonly used.
- Power Charges have been buffed with no downside, just so that something DPS related in these patch notes which many builds were actually using has a net positive change.
- Shaper's Seed is no longer a lie.
- Necromancer curses survive their death, so they can laugh hollowly at totem players' corresponding nerf.
- Ruthless has changed, which I imagine some people read.
- Item filters can now show/hide/highlight items with implicit modifiers. Just not any specific implicits, as that would be too helpful and lead to people only reading or picking things up that they actually wanted.

Nerfs:
- Small net nerf to reservation efficiency, causing more aura-focused builds to lose at least one aura.
- Devouring Diadem is now much harder to obtain. It was that or nerf it. Please stop using it as much.
- Saboteur nerfed for AoE traps and mines.
- Saboteur no longer viable for non-AoE traps and mines such as Eye of Winter.
- Pathfinder general damage and utility nerfed in favour of flask-specific options.
- Onslaught renamed, downgraded, and aimed at fewer classes.
- Endless Heist removed.
- Totem builds no longer get to watch their totems kill pinnacles bosses after their death. This was too entertaining to remain, and led to complaints from the Pinnacle Boss union reps.
- Poison Concoction and Explosive Conconction were too good and has been deleted. Existing gems will remain for sentimental value but no longer have an in-game effect.
- Infinite sextant tactic/exploit deleted. Player creativity is admirable but this was excessive.
- Abyss scarabs nerfed since Abyss is now better without them.
- Maps now roll monster chaos damage and wither. Counteract with new passives, reducing your defenses or damage.
- Molten Shell was too common without high armour investment and hence has been nerfed.
- Arcane Surge nerfed except for Heirophants.
- Bow builds nerfed to reduce arrow count. Partially counteract with new passives, reducing your defences or damage.
- Cold passives nerfed to reduce chill effect in favour of freeze.
- Fortify passives nerfed to reduce damage in favour of defences.
- Mark passives nerfed to reduce damage.
- Poison passives nerfed to reduce damage.
- Splitting Steel and Spark levelling nerfed to encourage less effective options.
- Spell build levelling tiresomeness buffed to melee levels.
- Sceptres no longer usefully attack, since they are intended for spell builds. It is advised to switch to other weapons, or resolve levelling conflicts with monsters non-violently through debate and reconcilation.
- Levelling vendors nerfed to reduce the larger probability of them having a good item, replaced with a very small chance of them having a very good item.
- Many effective and hence popular masteries deleted, replaced with less powerful alternatives for other builds. Overall power has been reduced in favour of niche build-specific power or situational advantage.
- Various edge cases nerfed when using Nimis.
- Vaal Strike skills, Corruption (wither) have been nerfed.
- Boss Kill event is Ruthless, to make it more challenging and discourage the usual participants, at the cost of relatability and general interest and raise unfounded concerns about Ruthless becoming the main game mode.

PS. Vaal Domination typo still not fixed.

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(New) 25% chance to open nearby Chests when you Cast a Spell

what?

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impulze3 wrote:

interesting patch notes, its almost exclusively nerfs and feels bad

Doubt you understood the notes then :)

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Valkuma wrote:

Why are you removing poison and explosive concoction from the game though? triple the amount of charge use?

read the notes one more time :)

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Genstein wrote:

- Many effective and hence popular masteries deleted, replaced with less powerful alternatives for other builds. Overall power has been reduced in favour of niche build-specific power or situational advantage.

give me back my 1 utility flask charge gained every 3 seconds from flask mastery :c
why the same life and mana flask mods lived and this one is gone

I didn't see anything about shortening the campaign. No thanks.

it uses a charge for every projectile thrown, which doubles or triples the charge usage in most cases , im not sure what you mean.

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hyyyben wrote:

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impulze3 wrote:

interesting patch notes, its almost exclusively nerfs and feels bad

Doubt you understood the notes then :)

No, I think you don't understand the patchnotes. The buffs are to many inconsequential and niche things. While the nerfs are to universally used things, making it overall a MASSIVE downgrade for quality of life for a huge chunk of builds, while buffing a few, barely used builds into semi viability, but also hurting them in turn with the general nerfs. So if you try to be smug, at least be right.

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RocketDragon wrote:

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(New) Hits have 25% chance to treat Enemy Monster Elemental Resistance values as inverted

Anyone can explain me that?

You just need to know that nobody will ever pick that node

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Blindfold wrote:

I didn't see anything about shortening the campaign. No thanks.

Not only that, they made it longer!