Some big news today ahead of the launch of Legion League in Path of Exile 3.7. Grinding Gear Games has just released the development manifesto for the patch detailing the major changes they’ve made to some skills, gameplay elements and class choices. The manifesto is essentially a tease of what to expect in the patch notes, which release tomorrow, so POE fans are going to be combing through this tonight.
Melee combat is of course a big area of focusing changes across the board in POE 3.7. The manifesto opens up with a tease of the revamp of the early game, including the reworks to various story bosses. The developer has teased a bunch of animation changes, including the default melee attack and many more skills, as well. And with the changes to melee attack skills like Glacial Hammer, Frost Blades, Frenzy, Flicker Strike and more that allow them to hit multiple targets, players have a ton more options to choose from this patch.
Path of Exile also gets a bunch of tweaks to popular skills and Ascendancy choices. Slayer, Champion, Chieftain, Gladiator and Berserker are all getting some pretty big tweaks this update. The goal is to increase the focus of some Ascendancy choices, further defining their role in the meta-game, while also offering increased build variety. Elementalist, Trickster and Occultist have all been nerfed pretty heavily. Occultist loses a lot of Energy Shield sources. Trickster’s Ghost Dance charges now generate at a slower rate, and provide a reduced value of attack and cast speed. Elementalist loses the proliferation from Beacon of Ruin, and no new sources of the buff are being added in 3.7.
Support skills which see common usage in melee builds, like Melee Splash and Fortify got some attention as well. As you can now hit multiple targets with a single weapon swing, Melee Splash can now create multiple splash effects each attack. To compensate, the damage reduction per splash is now higher. Fortify has now been changed to deal raw melee damage rather than just physical damage, but the potential is slightly lower.
In terms of other new items and reworks, some new support skills are being released with Legion to help out slower attack skills. While GGG is also changing some item bases like Daggers and Staffs have now been broken down into categories that either can or cannot roll caster-based modifiers. Winter Orb, Storm Brand, Bane and Soulrend have all been nerfed across the board.
There’s much more to this patch, so check out the manifesto if you want to see all the details.
In other news, GGG has also kicked off the private leagues for Legion, that way players can go ahead and reserve a server for their friends or gaming groups ahead of the launch of Legion League on June 7th. Yesterday, GGG released the new Atlas details for Legion, check those out too.
