The Path of Exile 3.14 Ultimatum Manifesto dropped earlier today, and has a lot of stuff packed in. The game has a lot of players up in arms over the nerfs, but most players are pretty OK with it. The game is in a tumultuous state, and these nerfs have their place. And it would appear that certain build archetypes, like Bleed and Poison, have been heavily nerfed due to being OP.
The vast majority of these changes are nerfs, pure and simple. A few buffs and gameplay changes are mixed in. One change is that skills have been refactored to make it clearer what their mana costs are. Reservation skills no longer have an associated cost by default, so you can swap out Auras much faster, for example. Here’s a quick rundown of the basics of the main changes. We’ve covered the patch notes, check out our guides on that and more PoE 3.14 content below.
Other Path of Exile 3.14 Guides:
- Path of Exile 3.14 Ultimatum League, All Reworked Skills
- Path of Exile 3.14 Ultimatum League Starter Builds
- Atlas Passive Trees Explained
- Update your Loot Filter for Ultimatum League
- Making Currency in Path of Exile
- Vendor Recipes Guide
Nerfs For Everyone
- A big change is that the Low-Life, Low-Mana and Low-ES are now triggered at 50% of their respective values. This will have the impact of making it so the effects that rely on triggering these states trigger earlier and last longer.
- Corrupted Blood has been rebalanced to be less abusable by certain Bleed playstyles, and sources of the damage stacks have been buffed to make the modifier even more dangerous for players.
- Chainbreaker builds that relied on not hitting (Traps, Mines, Totem, etc) are getting a big nerf thanks to major changes to the node.
- Flesh and Stone now reserves more Mana.
- Bladestorm builds were a focus of heavy nerfs in Path of Exile 3.14. Even to the point that Elder modifiers that granted a chance for Poisons or Bleeds inflicted have been removed and replaced with a weaker local mod.
- Explosion chest modifiers have been nerfed with a chance to explore, rather than 100% of the time.
Build Specific Changes
- Blade Vortex, Blade Blast, Toxic Rain, General’s Cry with Channelled skills, Seismic Cry, Carrion Golem, Vaal Righteous Fire and Vitality all got nerfed in some way. All Damaging Vaal Skills got numeric buffs. A bunch of other skills got nerfed
- Modifiers that allow your Hexes to affect Hexproof Enemies (such as the Cospri’s Will unique Body Armour) no longer allow your Hexes to affect yourself while you have Hexproof (as you are not your own Enemy).
- The Sextant modifier which granted players increased Damage and Movement Speed for each Poison on them has been removed. This has neutered certain Poison-stacking builds from high-end farming.
- Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Multiplier, Damage over Time Multiplier and Chain modifiers on quivers now only apply to Attacks or Bow Skills.
Generic Gameplay Changes
- Delirium got a huge nerf. As the overall maximum of Item Quantity and Rarity has been lowered. The overall cap is 50% for Quantity, and double the inbuilt Rarity of monsters, and caps at these values when you reach maximum Delirium. So in effect, you now have to run much more dangerous maps to get the full effect, which is also lowered.
- Harvest has also had the base monster life of encounter monsters lowered by 30%-50%, which means the more common encounters will be easier to run.
- Atlas missions are now harder to sustain as well, as the bonus from Atlas completion has been removed,
Other nerfs revealed in previous gameplay showcases focus on crafting as well. We all know that GGG has decimated Harvest crafting, but the Bestiary splitting recipes have also been nerfed. Items imprinted via Bestiary recipes now have a modifier that restricts their overall use. No more duplicating items. Items that have Fractured Fossils used on them also gain this modifier.
Passive Tree Changes
Immortal Ambition and Corrupted Soul were both heavily nerfed. This combination allowed for what GGG feels was too great a powerful buff to the regeneration of various defensive layers. Immortal Ambition Keystone’s ‘Life Leech effects Recover Energy Shield instead while on Full Life’ stat is now limited by ‘Maximum total Energy Shield Recovery from Leech’ instead of by ‘Maximum total Life Recovery from Leech’. Corrupted Soul has had five percentage points of its Maximum Life as Extra Maximum Energy Shield removed, now down to 15% overall.
Other passive tree nerfs include numerical nerfs to several Cluster Jewel notables which granted Area of Effect, Skill Effect Duration, Aura Effect and Projectile Speed. Any builds using these to scale damage just got knocked down a peg. So traps, explosions, Cyclone and so many more got hit.
Source: GGG