As part of the build up for Path of Exile 3.9, GGG has been pretty good about teasing a ton of changes and reworks. With a major focus on ranged skills in MetaMorph League, the developers want to bring bows and wands to a more equivalent level of power to other weapon types. GGG will also be taking a look at the underlying damage types in some builds to help balance out the power curve.
The goal of this development manifesto is to tease what GGG has planned for the patch. The patch notes for 3.9 are due shortly, but this new release should give players time to plan around the Path of Exile 3.9 balance changes and get their builds ready. Speaking of getting ready, it’s very much advisable to take a look at our other guides for POE 3.9. Be sure to start by checking out our new players guide to POE for this patch. Then make sure you have your loot filter sorted with our recommendations. And be on the lookout for our Catalysts guide on patch day.
Check out full manifest below. We now did our skill changes rundown, here’s the best and worst skills overview. Also,here are our other Path of Exile 3.9 Guides:
- POE MetaMorph Mechanics Guide
- Catalysts Guide
- POE New Players Guide
- Vendor Recipes Guide
- MetaMorph Starter Builds
- MetaMorph Loot Filter Guide
Path of Exile 3.9 Balance Changes Breakdown
In this section we’re going to go over a few of the most notable changes, with more details down below. If you’re just looking for a basic rundown of what Path of Exile 3.9 has planned, here you go.
- All ranged attack skills have been reviewed, with most receiving numerical adjustments, mostly buffs.
- Unique bows balance has been adjusted, some bows that were too common have been adjusted in drop rate.
- A handful of passive tree nodes and Keystones have been reworked to help beef up bow skills.
- Some Minion bonuses on the passive tree, like movement speed, have been lowered.
- The effects of these ailments now have a higher minimum damage too, making them much more powerful, especially when scaling.
- New passive clusters have been added to improve the new Ballista skills, which replace Ranged Attack Totem skills.
- Boss resistances have been beefed up, mostly to accommodate for the increased power of player builds. A regular map boss now has 40% elemental resistance (up from 30%) and 25% Chaos resistance (up from 15%). A very strong boss like the Shaper now has 50% elemental resistance (up from 40%) and 30% Chaos resistance (up from 25%).
- Monster armour has also been buffed, expect a bit more physical damage reduction in this and future expansions.
- “Enemies have -x% to Total Physical Damage Reduction against your Hits” is being added to compensate for the aforementioned addition.
- The life of all unique monsters in the game has been increased by 10%. Many other bosses have also been buffed in some way.
Skill Changes
- Orb of Storms, Lightning Spire Trap, Onslaught Support, Smoke Mine and Stormblast Mine are being reduced in power at low levels, but will be around as effective late game.
- Chill, Freeze and Shock have been given pretty big buffs. Damage applying these effects is much more effective, and the effects are more powerful.
- Arc, Soulrend, Molten Strike, Shattering Steel, Lancing Steel, Venom Gyre and more have been buffed.
Item Changes
- Some modifiers no longer appear on Shaper or Elder items, like the “increased Physical Damage and Socketed Gems are Supported By” modifiers on Two Handed Weapons. Hello more Cyclone nerfs.
- The “Can have multiple crafted modifiers” mod has been changed, now granting “Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers”. WHOA!
Source: POE Site