Check out our guide on Path of Exile’s MetaMorph Challenge League
Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas will be bringing in a ton of new content, and it has fans pretty excited. The biggest changes aside from the brilliant tweaks to maps, are of course the complete overhaul of ranged skills. Everything from bow skills, wand attacks and anything else to do with ranged abilities is getting some kind of attention in Path of Exile 3.9. Even new support skills have been announced for the expansion. Grinding Gear Games just revealed a new batch of skill reworks coming to various bow skills. We’ve included the full rundown for all the skill reworks below.
Shrapnel Shot
Shrapnel Shot is now called Galvanic Arrow, making the Lightning theme more obvious and differentiating the skill from the new Shrapnel Ballista. The range of the skill has been reduced, with a cone of damage now applied. The skill has a new mechanic that lets Projectile Speed modifiers apply to its Area of Effect. It’s now meant to be a close-range skill with very effective damage that scales wickedly well at high levels.
Explosive Arrow
Previously, Explosive Arrow could have up to 5 arrows in a target, refreshing the duration each time an arrow hit the target. Now, there is no limit to the number of Explosive Arrows in a target, and the duration can’t be refreshed. This increases DPS uptime as you no longer have to wait for explosions to proc. The radius of the skill has been tweaked, widening damage application. The skill no longer deals Secondary damage with its explosion, instead, each explosion now accounts for a portion of the total damage. The secondary explosions are now a function of the base weapon damage with added fire damage.
Burning Arrow
Burning Arrow has a new mechanic that applies an additional stacking Burning effect whenever it ignites, dealing a portion of the ignite damage. This can stack up to 5 times, and lets you get more damage against a target that survives multiple arrows. The goal of this change is to improve the skill’s single target damage. The new stacking burning effect can’t proliferate, as it doesn’t count as an Ignite.
Tornado Shot
Tornado Shot has been a ubiquitous bow skill for some time now, with its mechanics allowing both high single target damage and large area spread, while being very flexible in how it is built. We’d like to keep the flexibility, while making sure the skill doesn’t excel in every aspect. To that end, we’re making the secondary projectiles into limited range projectiles. This will mean the secondary projectiles won’t travel as far from the target location unless you’ve invested heavily in Projectile Speed, giving the skill’s high area more of an opportunity cost.
Ice Shot
Ice Shot is having its chilled ground removed, with new calculations of the related status effect making it easier to apply. Chilled Ground effects are also being reworked so that they have a much wider AoE. The Chills will also be more powerful.
Blast Rain
The number of Blast Rain explosions is now affected by the number of projectiles the skill fires. This means that additional projectiles are now a significant damage multiplier, similar to how additional projectiles affect Barrage. Overall, these changes should lead to a massive DPS buff.
Scourge Arrow
Scourge Arrow’s base weapon damage has been lowered, but the skill now deals added Chaos Damage that grows as the gem levels. The skill was often used with builds adding elemental damage, so this change is intended to give it a greater reward to Chaos damage based builds while also improving its usability while leveling.
Split Arrow
Split Arrow now has added physical damage on the gem that grows as it levels, with slightly lower base damage. This makes it more powerful while leveling, being less dependent on having a powerful bow.
You can find a video preview of the skill changes below.
Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas is due for PC, Xbox One and PS4 on December 13th. Blight League content will end on December 9th. That content is set to be migrated to Standard on PC when MetaMorph launches. Console versions of Blight League as a core mechanic will come later.
In other Path of Exile news, GGG has revealed tons more information about Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas. The expansion will not only completely overhaul the mapping and Atlas systems, but the new MetaMorph League will also tweak all of the existing boss mechanics and the way they fight. This should help break up the monotony of leveling for veteran players.
Brutus is getting a new slam, the Vessel of the Vaal is getting a much scarier rockfall attack, and so much more. GGG also published a video showcasing some of these changes, which you can find below. These boss reworks are laying the groundwork for a full revamp of the existing campaign in Path of Exile 2, otherwise known as Path of Exile 4.0.
