1 Year of Major Patch Notes

Path of Exile: Version 2.4.0 (Atlas of Worlds) Patch Notes

The Atlas of Worlds:

    The Atlas of Worlds lets you track your progression through Path of Exile's map endgame. You can also use it to upgrade maps and add mods to the Atlas. It indicates which maps are connected to each other.
    The map drop rules have been changed so that connected maps and maps you've previously completed can drop from the area you're playing. As you progress towards the center of the Atlas from the four corners, the tier of maps increases.
    There are four tier 16 maps that contain the Guardians of the Void. As you defeat them, you'll earn fragments of a key that allows you to challenge the Shaper himself.
    As you complete more types of maps, you unlock a cumulative map tier bonus that is displayed on the Atlas.
    You can upgrade white or yellow maps by five tiers using a Shaper's Orb, which can be earned by completing bonus objectives on specific maps.
    You can add temporary mods to the Atlas itself using Cartographer's Sextants.
    Your progress, upgrades and mods on the Atlas of Worlds are shared between all characters on your account in that league.
    We've added thirty new maps and dozens of new map bosses.
    There are thirteen new base item types that can only be found in specific areas of the Atlas.
    Most existing maps have been revamped to have more balanced monster composition, layouts, boss fights and rewards.
    You can trade 20 Cartographer's Chisels and 5 Orbs of Regret to a vendor for an item that allows you to respec the Shaping of a map.
    You can trade 5 Cartographer's Sextants (of a specific colour) to a vendor for an item that allows you to respec the completion of a map of that colour.
    You can find out more detailed information about how the Atlas works here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1714099


The Essence Challenge Leagues:
Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!

    With 2.4.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Essence challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items.
    In the Essence league, you'll occasionally encounter groups of monsters trapped by mysterious essences. Each type of essence imbues the monsters with different powers, which you'll have to face upon freeing the monsters from their prison. If you are strong enough to defeat these foes, you can claim an essence for yourself.
    These items aren't just a trophy - their effect is similar to that of the Orb of Alchemy. Using one on a normal item will upgrade it to a rare item but with one predecided property. Each of the 25 essences types guarantees a different power, some of which have never been possible on items before.
    The top two essences of each type also act like a Chaos Orb.
    While it's tempting to use your essences to craft items, you can also upgrade your spare essences to their next power level by combining a group of three identical ones at the vendor. The 25 types of essences have between three and seven tiers of power level depending on when they occur in the game.
    One special type of essence called the Remnant of Corruption isn't used on items, but on the trapped monsters themselves. Its Vaal influence can create many possible outcomes, including special types of essences that can't be created any other way.
    Each additional player in your party adds a chance for an additional random essence to drop when the monster is killed.
    Essences ignore master metamods when crafting items.
    The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you receive the Essence Footprints Effect. At 24, you receive the Essence Back Attachment. When you complete your 36th challenge, you receive the Essence Portal Effect. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
    From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you receive pieces of the Essence Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Essence challenges you completed during the league.


Engine Multithreading:

    This patch introduces the new multithreaded engine features that should significantly improve game performance for most users. They were previously an opt-in beta test.
    To disable this feature, change "Engine Multithreading" in the Graphics Options to "Disabled". It is automatically disabled if your CPU has less than four hardware cores.
    Frame rate increases are most significant when there are a lot of entities in the scene. This means situations with large amounts of combat should have much more stable frame rates. Do not expect significant increases in frame rate in non-combat situations.
    If you are GPU-bound, you shouldn't expect significant increases in frame rate.


Other Technical Improvements:

    The particle effects system has been optimised, especially for CPUs with AVX capabilities. Particle simulation is now up to four times faster if you're using a modern CPU. This can translate to double frame rate in high-particle situations such as Burning Ground.
    We've added new texture compression which will improve loading speed and download size.
    More assets have been added to the preloading system to prevent micro-stutters.
    Reduced memory usage (and hence background loading times) by a further 300mb.


Major New Features/Content:

    Added 22 new Unique items, including nine designed by supporters of Path of Exile. Eight of these new uniques can only drop from the Guardians of the Void, and four can only drop from the Shaper himself.
    Added four new Divination Cards, including one designed by our Russian Path of Exile community.
    Added a new type of Strongbox: Diviner's Strongbox.
    Updated the Hall of Grandmasters with about a dozen additional Grandmasters and some replacements.


Minor New Features/Content:

    Friends and guild members now display the last time they were online, so that you can more easily manage your friends list and guild roster.
    Medium-size hideouts can now hold four Forsaken Masters rather than three. Large-size hideouts can now hold seven Forsaken Masters rather than four. Navali and Leo both bypass these limits.
    The party user interface now shows what area your party members are in if they're not in the current area. Players who have recently disconnected are shown greyed out for a few seconds so that you can see that it occurred.
    Added 3d art for Vis Mortis, Widowmaker, Frostbreath and the Alternate Art Demigod's Stride.
    The "Create" button is now disabled on the character selection screen if you have no available character slots. This prevents the situation where you only find out after attempting to name a character.
    Currency Stash Tabs now have dedicated slots for Silver Coins and Cartographer's Sextants.
    Flask buff icons have been remade in a consistent way.
    The spirit standing next to Haku now flies upwards when you complete the mission and get your reward.
    The "Intruders in Black" quest in Cruel now also offers a Bismuth Flask as a reward. "Mercy Mission" in Cruel now also offers Stibnite and Silver Flasks as rewards. "Mercy Mission" in Merciless now also offers Basalt, Aquamarine and Sulphur Flasks as rewards.
    The Rock Elemental pet now sometimes rolls when it moves.
    Zana, Master Cartographer has a new voice actor.
    Forsaken Masters that point to their objective now also have an arrow on the ground in that direction.
    You now automatically receive the next waypoint when you kill the Vaal Oversoul (like other act bosses).
    Significantly improved the Alien Grass in the Belly of the Beast.
    Flicker Strike no longer causes you to drop Haku's spirit.
    Added some additional dialogue to Maramoa.
    Renamed the Labyrinth item "Orb of Elemental Essence" to "Orb of Elemental Dispersion" to avoid confusion.
    Cut-throat leagues now have their own league flag art.
    Descriptions of damage ranges have been changed from "x-y" to "x to y" so that it's more clear when examining the ranges of mods that an Essence can add.
    Emerging spiders now emerge more quickly.
    Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.


Channelled Skill System:

    Added a channelled skill system. Incinerate, Flameblast and Wither are now channelled skills.
    Unlike other skills, which are used once and quickly finish, when you use a channelled skill, it doesn't finish until you release the relevant button/key. You continue performing the same skill.
    You need to pay mana repeatedly to keep the skill going. The channelled skill's mana cost must be paid again to maintain it with a frequency determined by the cast time. If you can't pay, the skill will end, just as if you'd lifted the button.
    Dying, being stunned, and other game mechanics that interrupt the use of skills will cause channelling to end as well.
    Effects which trigger when you use a skill will only trigger when you initially start channelling - regardless of how long you maintain a channelled skill, it's still the same use of the skill. You need to stop channelling if you want to use it again.


Prophecy Changes

    The Prophecy system (previously a challenge league) has been added to the core game. You can now find and rescue Navali in The Climb.
    Navali can now be invited to your hideout and she doesn't consume a slot that would be used by a Forsaken Master.
    When seeking Prophecies from Navali in your hideout, the difficulty used is now the latest difficulty in which your character has ever accessed the Twilight Strand.
    Silver Coins now drop less often than before, as Prophecy is not the main league mechanic now.
    The sealing cost for most Prophecies has been slightly reduced.
    The highest level that some Prophecies can spawn at has been reduced.
    The Normal difficulty version of the "The Forgotten Soldiers" prophecy has been made easier.
    Reduced the maximum level for some Prophecies that require you to hunt for certain rare monsters.


Immunity Improvements:

    Immunity to debuffs has been reworked to be consistent. In all cases where a player gains immunity to a debuff, they now also have that debuff removed (as opposed to just not allowing further application).
    "Cannot be" stats do not work as immunity. For example, Fairgraves Tricorne prevents you being shocked, but does not remove shock.
    In most cases, this change will not change how existing game elements behave. However some game elements have been reworded to clarify how they work.


Triggered Skill Improvements:
Since we introduced trigger gems, players have been able to trigger their skills faster and faster with each update. The performance and gameplay consequences of this extreme skill spam have finally justified a redesign of how some trigger gems work.

    For Cast on Critical Strike, Cast on Melee Kill, Mjölner and Cospri's Malice, only one skill can be triggered per trigger event. The damage of Cast on Critical Strike and Cast on Melee Kill has been increased, as described in "Active Skill Gem Balance" below.
    The spell that is triggered is determined based on the order in which it is socketed, and will cast supported spells in sequence, even across multiple attacks. These items and skills also have cooldowns which limit how often a skill is cast.
    These cooldowns apply per-triggered-skill, rather than applying to the trigger gem itself.
    All unique items that trigger skills, now and going forward, follow the rule that if a skill is triggered, it can only be used by that trigger and cannot be directly cast by the player as well.
    Previously, only the trigger support gems limited the use of the triggered skills this way, while skills triggered by unique item properties could be self-cast.
    Null's Inclination will not be affected by the Cast on Crit changes and will still trigger all minion spells on kill.


Active Skill Gem Balance:

    Frost Walls created by you or your allies are now no longer considered enemies for the purposes of projectile collision detection (your projectiles will not collide with your own Frost Wall). This intentionally fixes the exploit case where a player stacks many Frost Walls around a boss and uses a skill like Piercing Lightning Arrow to trigger an excessive amount of hits.
    Cast on Critical Strike now has a 500ms cooldown, and will now only trigger one spell per frame when you critically strike. It now has 100% chance to trigger casts when you critically strike. It now has 20% more spell damage at level 1, tapered up to 39% at level 20 (1% per level). Note that the changes described above in "Triggered Skill Improvements" affect Cast on Critical Strike - spells are chosen in the order of their sockets.
    Cast on Melee Kill now has a 250ms cooldown. Cast on Melee Kill's increases to spell damage have been replaced with 20% more spell damage at level 1, up to 39% at level 20 (1% per level).
    Many skills have had their damage increased. The increases start out low at lower levels and taper upwards. Here are the increases at gem level 20:
    Fireball: 50% more damage.
    Ice Spear: 70% more damage.
    Arctic Breath: 35% more damage.
    Cleave: 19% more damage.
    Sweep: 15% more damage.
    Ground Slam: 15% more damage.
    Sunder: 9% more damage.
    Viper Strike: 11% more damage.
    Double Strike: 13% more damage.
    Heavy Strike: 5% more damage.
    Glacial Hammer: 6% more damage.
    Dominating Blow: 6% more attack damage (not minion damage).
    Frost Blades: 15% more damage.
    Lightning Strike: 9% more damage.
    Wild Strike: 19% more damage. It now also gains 1% increased area of effect per level.
    Static Strike: 16% more damage.
    Reave: 12% more damage. Reave's base area of effect has been increased by 21%. Its per-stage area of effect has been reduced from 30% to 20%. It still has the same area of effect at the fourth stage.
    Vaal Reave's area of effect has been updated to match changes to Reave.
    Lacerate's 30% Less Attack Speed drawback has been reduced to 25% Less Attack Speed. This is a buff.
    Ice Crash's attack speed penalty is now 20% less (down from 25% less). Its secondary stage damage penalty is now 15% less (down from 20% less). Its third stage damage penalty is now 30% less (down from 40% less). This is a buff.
    Static Strike now gains 1% increased area of effect per level.
    Earthquake's aftershock damage has been reduced from 60% more (at level 1, tapered upwards) to 50% more at all Levels. Its mana cost has been increased from 6 to 10. Its aftershock area of effect has been reduced by 12%. With the wide-ranging melee buffs and adjustment to Earthquake, we expect to see a much more balanced use of melee skills.
    Blade Vortex now has a stack limit of 20 (down from 50). It now deals 63% more damage at level 20. The number of hits per second causes substantial performance problems. The skill was also deemed too strong against bosses.
    Magma Orb can now be affected by projectile speed modifications.
    Discharge now deals 35% less damage when triggered.
    Vaal Molten Shell now causes an explosion when it prevents any physical damage, rather than when it takes any hit.
    The trap/mine behaviour of Bladefall has been made more consistent with other traps/mines. The blades fall from the mine itself, not targeting the location where the monster is. (They will fall in the direction of the monster though).
    PvP T-values have been set for Contagion, Essence Drain and Vortex.


Support Gem Balance:

    Melee Splash now only has 35% Less Damage to Other Targets at level 1 (down from 50% Less). It now has 26% less at level 20 (from 31%). This is a buff.
    The damage bonus of the Less Duration support gem has been reduced. At level 1, it has been reduced from 20% to 10%. At level 20, it has been reduced from 29% to 19%. Given the strong utility of this gem, it doesn't need a damage bonus that high.
    Pierce's mana multiplier has been increased from 110% to 130%. Its damage at high levels only has been reduced. Its damage at level 20 has been reduced from +29% to +19%. Given the strong utility of this gem, it doesn't need a damage bonus that high.
    Cast when Stunned now also triggers when blocking a hit that would stun.
    Remote Mine's damage modifier no longer affects damage over time.
    Trap's damage modifier no longer affects damage over time.


Unique Item Balance:

    Rigwald's Crest: The damage of the spectral summoned wolves has been increased by 50%. Their life has been increased by 66%. You know you want to.
    The following changes do not affect existing versions of these items, unless you use a Divine Orb to reroll them.
    Reach of the Council: Its added damage has been lowered from (25-40 to 100-115) to (15-30 to 70-95). Its local increased physical damage has been reduced from (50%-70%) to (40%-50%). Given the large number of additional projectiles this bow provides, it doesn't need the incredibly large damage bonus. It essentially has a built-in GMP which you could use a damage support in place of.
    Voidheart: Its Chance on Melee Hit to Bleed has been lowered from 100% to (30% to 50%). Its Chance to Poison on Melee Hit has been lowered from 100% to (20% to 40%). We feel that this ring provided too much of a damage bonus for one non-weapon item slot.
    Mjölner: Its chance to cast socketed lightning skills on hit has been increased from 30% to 100%. Use a Divine Orb if you want your legacy one to change.


Ascendancy Skill Balance Changes:

    Unrelenting now has a 25% chance to gain maximum charges on generating an endurance charge (rather than 100%).While we do want the Juggernaut to be effective at generating endurance charges, this made it far too easy and low-effort. It's still very good.
    Headsman now grants 15% increased area of effect if you have killed an enemy recently (down from 20%).
    Impact now grants 10% increased area of effect (down from 15%).These two skills are still the best way to get area of effect for Duelists.
    Shaper of Desolation now grants different Confluxes over a fourteen-second cycle: Chilling Conflux for four seconds, Shocking Conflux for four seconds, Igniting Conflux for four seconds and then all three together for two seconds. Each Conflux means that any damage causes that Status Ailment. Elemental Conflux was too powerful. The new version requires more strategy (and doesn't need a kill to get started).
    Inevitable Judgement no longer works against other players.


Monster Balance Changes:

    Monster life has been increased in tier 4-12 maps.
    The Life Regeneration mod (and aura) for rare monsters can no longer appear until level 8, to prevent unkillable monsters early where you don't have the tools to deal with their high life regeneration
    The Allies Cannot Die aura and the Allies Deal Substantial Extra Physical Damage auras now first appear at level 12 and 8 respectively.
    The Allies have Energy Shield aura now first appears at level 12.
    Bosses that had a reduced effect of curses on them now have a multiplier rather than a reduction. Over time, more and more curse effect has been made available to players. With the boss curse effect reduction being additive, the increased curse effect available to players overwhelmed it. Temporal Chains and Enfeeble arguably still trivialise most bosses.


Other Balance Changes:

    Players at very high levels (95 and higher) now incur an additional experience penalty equal to 1 - ( 1 / ( 1 + 0.1 * ( level - 94 ) ) ). For example, a level 96 player receives 16.67% less experience than before.
    Tier 1 maps now drop from level 58 onwards in Merciless.
    Poison now deals 8% of Physical and Chaos damage as Chaos Damage for 2 seconds (down from 10%). While we have future plans to fix Poison (addressing double dipping), this nerf brings it slightly more in line until we can make those changes.
    Labyrinth Item Enchantments for Storm Call Duration have been weakened. In Merciless, the duration is 20% lower (rather than 30%). In the Endgame Labyrinth, the duration is 30% lower (rather than 45%). Nearly-instant Storm Calls were a problem. It has its delay for a reason. There are still legacy versions of this Enchantment.
    The extra map drop chance that occurs at the map boss is now on the final map boss you kill, rather than the first one.
    The cost for Vorici to guarantee three specific colours of sockets has been reduced to 120 Chromatic Orbs.
    The chance of finding a Unique Strongbox has been doubled again.
    Tormented Spirits can now only touch up to 50 monsters each. The technical issues caused by "vacuum farming" are causing too many problems for us and we have unfortunately had to disable this playstyle. This will improve server performance for everyone.
    Tormented Spirits can no longer possess Vagan, because sometimes he cannot die.


Zana League Mods Available During 2.4.0:

    There's now explanatory hover text on the map mods that Zana offers, so that you can see this data in the game client.
    Level 2: Invasion (Cost: 2 Chaos Orbs, +20% IIQ, adds one Invasion Boss/Pack)
    Level 3: Beyond (Cost: 3 Chaos Orbs, +20% IIQ, Beyond)
    Level 4: Anarchy (Cost: 3 Chaos Orbs, +20% IIQ, adds three Rogue Exiles)
    Level 5: Torment (Cost: 3 Chaos Orbs, +20% IIQ, adds three Tormented Spirits)
    Level 6: Perandus (Cost: 4 Chaos Orbs, adds three Perandus Chests, chance for Cadiro to spawn)
    Level 7: Domination (Cost: 4 Chaos Orbs, adds three Shrines)
    Level 8: Ambush (Cost: 4 Chaos Orbs, adds three Strongboxes)


One-time Passive Skill Reset:

    Due to balance changes, every existing character has been granted an optional full passive skill reset.
    This process will also reset your allocated Ascendancy points.
    To perform this operation, click the "Reset all Passives" button on the passive skill screen. Note that you must use this before allocating or refunding any other points otherwise the option will go away.


Bug Fixes:

    Fixed a bug where the Headsman Ascendancy skill prevented Poacher's Mark from awarding players with the correct number of charges.
    Fixed a bug that could occur if players managed to get -100% increased cast speed.
    Fixed a bug related to returning projectiles. They can now hit on the way out and on the way back but can't shotgun (where more than one hit the same target) in either direction.
    Fixed a bug related to how Bear Trap visually fades away.
    Strongboxes that explode corpses now do so in a wave that emanates outwards from the Strongbox, rather than using Vaal Detonate Dead. This prevents some negative situations that would previously occur.
    Fixed various problems accessing the Sarn Arena.
    Fixed a bug where the Tora mission that involves the Infected Beast would complete too early.
    Fixed a bug where Izaro couldn't be cursed by the same types of curses that his pylons could apply to him as an aura.
    Fixed a bug where Zana's Tempest mod would sometimes not actually generate a Tempest.
    Fixed a bug where having "Local Life Leech is Instant" on a weapon would also make mana leech instant with that weapon.
    Fixed a bug where the Pathfinder's "Flasks gain a Charge every 3 seconds" skill would cancel your attempt to reclaim a microtransaction every 3 seconds.
    Fixed a bug where the player light sometimes wouldn't be shown (in favour of a much dimmer arbitrary environmental light).
    Fixed a problem where Elreon's missions could fail to spawn in some areas.
    Fixed a problem that would cause the ocean water to stutter on AMD graphics cards.
    Fixed the attack speed calculation for Lacerate when dual wielding.
    Fixed a bug where you couldn't swap Sealed Prophecies around by clicking one onto the other.
    Fixed a bug where Leap Slam would do nothing if the target location was obstructed.
    Fixed a bug where the spinning active aura indicator would either stand still or only spin slowly when at extremely high frame rates.
    Fixed a bug where a Molten Shell would sometimes not disappear when its owner dies.
    Fixed a case where players with slow load times could fail Zana's limited portals mission during the load screen while in a party.
    The storms summoned by the Bloodlines mod Herald of the Obelisk now visually resume playing correctly if you go away and come back.
    Fixed an issue where some traps (specifically Rigwald's ones) would always spawn on top of each other.
    Fixed a client crash that could occur in predictive mode related to Molten Shell.
    Fixed a bug where Frost Bomb Spell Totems would persist even after the Spell Totem support gem was removed.
    Fixed a bug where Lacerate could hit with invalid weapon types if they're equipped in the off-hand.
    Fixed two instance crashes.
    Fixed a bug where multiple Offering Wards could be present at once.
    Fixed a bug where Tormented Spirits could still drop items when they expire or when they possess monsters (without being directly killed).
    Fixed a client crash that could occur when rapidly socketing/unsocketing a triggered skill at the moment it is being triggered.
    Fixed a bug where swapping out certain support gems would not update Blade Vortex's visual effects.
    Fixed a bug where completing multiple instances of the same cumulative challenge very close together would not count them correctly.
    Fixed a bug where you could gain permanent Blade Vortex stacks if you had superhuman timing. Or a macro.
    Fixed a client crash that could occur with Dominus' chilling bond totems.
    Fixed a bug where the "Kalandra's Craft" Prophecy triggered on chests when it states that it only triggers on monsters.
    Fixed a bug where you could only have one Frenzy Charge generated from Terminus Est at a time.
    Fixed a bug where minimap quest icons would reappear when they shouldn't.
    Fixed a bug where the Dweller of the Deep would leave a phantom glow effect behind after its first form died.
    Fixed a bug where Tora could spawn blocked away from the player in the Crematorium.
    Fixed a bug where Voll would drop a Deshret's Banner while still having one visually attached to his body. Now his copy is hidden. The illusion is complete.
    Fixed a bug where some Grandmasters did not use Shield Charge correctly.
    Fixed a bug where Scaeva's global critical strike mod applied like a local one (effectively granting an 80% multiplicative crit increase).
    Fixed a bug where the effect of Blade Vortex would not play correctly if you didn't see it being cast.
    Fixed a bug where the Bone Roil effect from Bonespire Talisman would be invisible if you returned to the area after it was cast.
    Fixed a bug where the tracking of several internal states (mostly related to Ascendancies) were incorrectly counted as additional buffs on the player for effects which count or increase buffs.


Updates since the initial post
Channelled Skill System:

    Added a channelled skill system. Incinerate, Flameblast and Wither are now channelled skills.
    Unlike other skills, which are used once and quickly finish, when you use a channelled skill, it doesn't finish until you release the relevant button/key. You continue performing the same skill.
    You need to pay mana repeatedly to keep the skill going. The channelled skill's mana cost must be paid again to maintain it with a frequency determined by the cast time. If you can't pay, the skill will end, just as if you'd lifted the button.
    Dying, being stunned, and other game mechanics that interrupt the use of skills will cause channelling to end as well.
    Effects which trigger when you use a skill will only trigger when you initially start channelling - regardless of how long you maintain a channelled skill, it's still the same use of the skill. You need to stop channelling if you want to use it again.


Bug Fixes:

    Fixed a bug where the tracking of several internal states (mostly related to Ascendancies) were incorrectly counted as additional buffs on the player for effects which count or increase buffs.


Active Skill Gem Balance:

    Reave: 12% more damage. Reave's base area of effect has been increased by 21%. Its per-stage area of effect has been reduced from 30% to 20%. It still has the same area of effect at the fourth stage.


Triggered Skill Improvements:

    Null's Inclination will not be affected by the Cast on Crit changes and will still trigger all minion spells on kill.
    These cooldowns apply per-triggered-skill, rather than applying to the trigger gem itself.


Monster Balance Changes:

    The Allies Cannot Die aura and the Allies Deal Substantial Extra Physical Damage auras now first appear at level 12 and 8 respectively.
    The Allies have Energy Shield aura now first appears at level 12.


Minor New Features/Content:

    Currency Stash Tabs now have dedicated slots for Silver Coins and Cartographer's Sextants.
    Friends and guild members now display the last time they were online, so that you can more easily manage your friends list and guild roster.


Support Gem Balance:

    Remote Mine's damage modifier no longer affects damage over time.
    Trap's damage modifier no longer affects damage over time.


Unique Item Balance:

    Mjölner: Its chance to cast socketed lightning skills on hit has been increased from 30% to 100%. Use a Divine orb if you want your legacy one to change.


Ascendancy Skill Balance Changes:

    Unrelenting now has a 25% chance to gain maximum charges on generating an endurance charge (rather than 100%).While we do want the Juggernaut to be effective at generating endurance charges, this made it far too easy and low-effort. It's still very good.
    Shaper of Desolation now grants different Confluxes over a fourteen-second cycle: Chilling Conflux for four seconds, Shocking Conflux for four seconds, Igniting Conflux for four seconds and then all three together for two seconds. Each Conflux means that any damage causes that Status Ailment. Elemental Conflux was too powerful. The new version requires more strategy (and doesn't need a kill to get started).
    Inevitable Judgement no longer works against other players.


Other Balance Changes:

    Players at very high levels (95 and higher) now incur an additional experience penalty equal to 1 - ( 1 / ( 1 + 0.1 * ( level - 94 ) ) ). For example, a level 96 player receives 16.67% less experience than before.


Prophecy Changes

    Reduced the maximum level for some Prophecies that require you to hunt for certain rare monsters.

Content Update 2.5.0

The Breach Challenge League:

    Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
    With 2.5.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Breach challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items.
    Tears in the fabric of reality have formed throughout Wraeclast. Engage them to expose an alternate realm and reveal those who dwell there. Slay monsters inside the Breach to keep it open long enough to reap your bounty.
    Deep in the Breach, you may draw the ire of horrific new bosses: Breachlords. The more damage you inflict on them, the more treasure they'll part with during their escape.
    Among the riches found in the Breach, you may also encounter Splinters. Combine 100 Splinters of the same type together to create a Breachstone. When placed in the Map Device, a Breachstone allows travel into a Breachlord's Domain, the one place where they are truly vulnerable.
    Monsters from the Breach drop new unique items that are specific to their Domain. When slain in their Domain, Breachlords are able to drop Blessings that allow these new uniques to be upgraded.
    There are a total of 35 new unique items specific to the Breach league.
    The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Breach Footprints Effect. At 24, you will receive the Breach Portal Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you will receive the Demonic Wings Back Attachment. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
    From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Breach Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Breach challenges you completed during the league.


New Content:

    Added 55 new unique items, 35 of which are exclusive to the Breach challenge league.
    Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity Support Gem - Cast while Channelling: While casting supported channelling skills, trigger another linked spell at regular intervals, with a small damage penalty. This support gem is available from the Sharp and Cruel quest reward in Cruel difficulty for the Witch, Templar, Shadow and Scion. It is available for all classes from Petarus and Vanja after completing The Eternal Nightmare in Normal difficulty. There's a new Channelling tag on relevant skill gems.
    Added a new Neutral Skill Gem - Vaal Breach: Creates a Breach at your location, making you vulnerable to its powerful inhabitants.
    Before her rescue, Navali is now guarded by The Faun.
    Very early areas in Act One have been cosmetically improved.
    Hellions have had their art replaced with a new model.


New Features:

    Many of 2.5.0's features including the new renderer were deployed early with update 2.4.2. Thank you for your testing and feedback.
    The DirectX 9 renderer is still the default. You can change to the DirectX 11 renderer in the options. We will make the DirectX 11 renderer the default once we're sure there are no remaining problems.
    Melee action targeting has been greatly improved.
    The challenge and achievements panel now has progress bars for numeric challenges. Your overall challenge progress and challenge reward milestones are also shown.
    Weapons now display their range on their item descriptions.
    Improved early tutorials.
    Items filters can now see whether an item is corrupted with "corrupted true".
    Added support for the slash symbol in Premium Stash Tab price fields.
    Various improvements to preloading have been made.
    Unique Maps can now drop if you have completed their equivalent base type on the Atlas.


Essence Changes:

    Added the contents of the Essence League to the core game. You can now find monsters trapped in Essences throughout Wraeclast, but at a lower rate than when it was the current challenge league.
    The rate of finding multiple essences at once has been significantly increased in maps (especially higher maps).
    At level 47 areas and above, Whispering Essences can no longer appear.
    At level 67 areas and above, Muttering Essences can no longer appear.
    The values of mods from Wailing Essences of Woe and above have been reduced, resulting in a notably lower value of all mods from higher-tier Woe essences.
    Fixed a minor issue where the Muttering Essence of Woe amulet mod granted values that were 1% too low.
    The gloves mod from Essence of Insanity now grant "Socketed gems have 16% More Attack and Cast Speed" (down from 20%). Existing items will not be changed.
    The weapon mod from Essence of Horror now grants a 16% chance to gain a power, frenzy or endurance charge on kill (up from 10%). Old versions of this mod can be updated using a Divine Orb.
    The weapon mod from Essence of Delirium now deals 750 chaos damage per second for 10 seconds (down from 1,000).


Map Mod Changes:

    A large variety of new map mods have been added to the map pool.
    The "Grounded", "Molten" and "Incombustible" map mods that granted specific elemental resistance will no longer appear on maps. They've been succeeded by a new global elemental and chaos resistance map mod with lower values.
    The "of Stasis" mod that previously prevented player life and mana regeneration will now also prevent energy shield regeneration. Existing versions of the mod will continue to prevent only life and mana regeneration.
    The "of Smothering" map mod now only affects recovery rate of Life and Energy Shield, no longer affecting mana recovery. This includes existing versions of the mod.
    The "Splitting" mod previously added multiple projectiles at yellow and red tier maps. They now only add two projectiles at all tiers. Existing mods will not update unless a Divine orb is used on the map.
    "of Hemomancy", the mod that gave all characters Blood Magic, will no longer appear on maps.
    "of Exposure" will now reduce maximum resistances by a lower amount. In mid-tier maps, it'll reduce maximum elemental resistances by -5% to -8% now. In higher-tier maps, it'll reduce maximum elemental resistances by -9% to -12%. Existing mods will not update unless a Divine orb is used on the map.
    The "of Frenzy", "of Endurance" and "of Power" mods will no longer appear, as they could cause performance issues in areas with many monsters.


General Balance Changes:

    Increased the range of all melee weapons. This is also a significant buff to the radius of Cyclone.
    In addition to the existing Forsaken Masters "quality of life" improvements made in 2.4.2, the experience progression of non-Zana Masters has been adjusted. It is now 30% easier to reach level 8 from 7, 20% easier to reach level 7 from 6 and 10% easier to reach level 6 from 5.
    The Sextant Mod for additional currency items from Nemesis monsters is now only available on red maps.
    Many monsters in end-game maps have been rebalanced, fixing cases where they did too little damage.
    Reduced the damage of the bosses in the Overgrown Ruin map and chaos Warbands leaders in general.
    Increased the damage of the bosses in the Shipyard map and lightning Warbands leaders in general.
    Reduced monster pack density in the Twilight Strand slightly.
    Increased most totem damage, totem additional physical damage reduction and totem attack and cast speed skills in the passive tree by 20-25%. This doesn't apply to the Totemic Mastery notable passive.
    Doubled all sources of totem elemental resistance in the passive skill tree.
    Bleeding effects from non-puncture sources are now affected by the same (additive and multiplicative) duration modifiers as bleeding effects from puncture sources.
    Poison from non-Viper Strike sources is now affected by multiplicative skill effect duration modifiers. Additive skill effect duration modifiers were already being applied.


Unique Item Balance Changes:

    Cospri's Malice and Mjölner now have 250ms cooldowns on triggering socketed skills (up from 100ms).
    Reduced block and spell block values on Rumi's Concoction by around 33%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    Facebreaker's critical strike multiplier has been reduced to 45%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    Grand Spectrum's increased elemental damage has been reduced to 4%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    The Aylardex now has an additional property: "80-100% increased Power Charge Duration". This change does not apply to old versions of this item. Using a Divine Orb on this item doesn't cause the new stat to appear.
    Nuro's Harp now has an additional property: "40% increased effect of Chilled Ground". This change does not apply to old versions of this item. Using a Divine Orb on this item doesn't cause the new stat to appear.
    Soul Strike's faster start of energy shield recharge has been reduced to 80%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    Energy From Within's additional energy shield has been reduced to 3-6%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.


Skill Balance Changes:

    Blade Vortex has been refactored. Instead of separate hits for each active blade, the blades now increase the frequency at which all enemies in the radius take damage, and the amount of damage they take. The skill now has a base hit frequency of 600ms and has 10% increased hit rate per active blade. Its damage has been reduced by 30% at all levels and it deals 30% more damage per active blade.
    Reduced the maximum number of Summoned Raging Spirits to 20, but we have also increased damage as the gem levels up to compensate. It's intended to be a similar damage output but with less casting needed and less effective area of effect.
    Ancestral Warchief now does 10% less damage at all levels. Fixed behaviour with the center of the slam being significantly further away than the totem's melee range. The skill now has +10 melee range at all levels, and the slam will always be centered at melee range away from the totem.
    Scorching Ray now deals 10% more damage at gem level 20, tapered down to no change at gem level 1.
    Raise Spectre now grants +30% elemental resistances to its minions.
    Decoy Totem can no longer evade and has a 4 second cooldown at all levels.
    Blade Flurry's "More attack speed" modifier has been reduced from 65% more to 60% more attack speed at all levels. Blade Flurry's targeting range has been reduced by 16.6%, and the damage radius of slashes has been reduced by 14.2%.
    Blight's damage has been increased by 5% damage at level 1 of the gem, up to 35% more damage at level 20 of the gem.
    Totems and all other minions now have 40% elemental resistance and 20% chaos resistance. This also includes minions that didn't have resistances previously, like wolves.
    Fire, Cold, and Lightning Golems now have 70% resistance to their respective element. Chaos Golems now have 60% resistance to Chaos.
    Flame Golem's damage has been increased by 140%.
    Ice Golem's damage has been increased by 75%.
    Lightning Golem's damage has been increased by 75%.
    Stone Golem's damage has been increased by 100%. Its chance to taunt on slam has been lowered. Its melee attack range has been increased.
    Chaos Golem's damage has been increased by 65%.
    Melee Skeletons from the Summon Skeletons skill now deal 25% more damage. Summon Skeletons and Vaal Summon Skeletons skills now have a cast time of 0.8 seconds, down from 1 second.
    Some triggered skills can now find targets that are farther away than they could before.
    Reduced the damage penalty on Ranged Attack Totem to match Spell Totem. At gem level 1, it has changed from -50% to -35%. At gem level 20, it has changed from -31% to -26%.
    The Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance support gem now has a multiplicative minion and totem elemental damage stat on it, scaling from 10% at level 1 to 19% more elemental damage at gem level 20.


Trickster Ascendancy Changes:

    Weave the Arcane now also reduces damage taken by 8% if you have spent a total of 200 mana recently.


Raider Ascendancy Changes:

    Avatar of the Veil's elemental damage has been increased to 40%.
    Avatar of the Chase's increase to Onslaught effect has been increased to 100%.
    Way of the Poacher now has a 20% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill or on hitting a rare or unique enemy.
    Rapid Assault now has a 100% chance to gain Onslaught on kill.
    Quartz Infusion now has a 100% chance to gain Phasing on kill.
    The minor Ascendancy skills leading up to Avatar of the Chase now grant 20% increased Onslaught duration, instead of 5% attack speed.


Flask Charge Generation on Critical Strike:

    A character can now only receive one flask charge per Critical Strike every 200ms. This is shared across all flasks.
    The Harvest and Master Surgeon now follow this rule. Instead of giving a charge to each of your flasks, they will only grant it to one.
    The Master Surgeon Node now has 100% chance to trigger (up from 15%) to help compensate for this change.


Zana League Mods Available During 2.5.0:

    Level 2: Onslaught
    Level 3: Bloodlines
    Level 4: Beyond
    Level 5: Warbands
    Level 6: Ambush
    Level 7: Perandus
    Level 8: Nemesis


One-time Passive Skill Reset:

    Due to balance changes, every existing character has been granted an optional full passive skill reset.
    This process will also reset your allocated Ascendancy points.
    To perform this operation, click the "Reset all Passives" button on the passive skill screen. Note that you must use this before allocating or refunding any other points otherwise the option will go away.


Bug Fixes:

    Fixed a bug where "Culling Strike Against Burning Enemies" only applied to ignited enemies, rather than enemies burning for other reasons (such as Scorching Ray).
    Fixed a bug where you wouldn't be able to see someone casting Blight or Scorching Ray if you entered their proximity after they had started casting it.
    Fixed a bug where Temporal Chains didn't affect Blight.
    Fixed a bug where alt-tabbing in fullscreen mode would change to windowed mode.
    Fixed a bug where Navali could grant Prophecies to players who had not rescued her yet.
    Fixed various problems with the Twinned Kaom boss fight.
    PvP spectators can no longer use flasks or perform triggered actions.
    Blade Flurry now uses the average of both main and off-hand attack speeds if using two valid weapons.
    Fixed a bug where Blade Vortex ending could end other buffs.
    Monsters that use Herald skills can no longer turn them off.
    Fixed a bug where Scorching Ray would not switch targets correctly if they were far away or if they changed to same team/party.
    Bonespire from the Necropolis boss once again deals damage over time.
    Fixed a bug where status ailments that were auras couldn't be removed from players. This prevented removal of ailments that had proliferation.
    Fixed an issue with Scorching Ray and Spell Totem where the ray could be visually separated from the totem after being knocked back.
    Fixed a bug where Scorching Ray's targeting could get stuck on item highlights.
    Fixed a bug where manually selected chat channel numbers were not being remembered.
    Fixed a bug where Summoned Stone Golems would attack enemies much further from their target location than other golems.
    The 40 quality recipe now ignores six-socket items.
    Fixed two instance crashes.


Recently Added to Patch Notes

    Unique Maps can now drop if you have completed their equivalent base type on the Atlas.
    Flame Golem's damage has been increased by 140%.Content Update 2.5.0

The Breach Challenge League:

    Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
    With 2.5.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Breach challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items.
    Tears in the fabric of reality have formed throughout Wraeclast. Engage them to expose an alternate realm and reveal those who dwell there. Slay monsters inside the Breach to keep it open long enough to reap your bounty.
    Deep in the Breach, you may draw the ire of horrific new bosses: Breachlords. The more damage you inflict on them, the more treasure they'll part with during their escape.
    Among the riches found in the Breach, you may also encounter Splinters. Combine 100 Splinters of the same type together to create a Breachstone. When placed in the Map Device, a Breachstone allows travel into a Breachlord's Domain, the one place where they are truly vulnerable.
    Monsters from the Breach drop new unique items that are specific to their Domain. When slain in their Domain, Breachlords are able to drop Blessings that allow these new uniques to be upgraded.
    There are a total of 35 new unique items specific to the Breach league.
    The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Breach Footprints Effect. At 24, you will receive the Breach Portal Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you will receive the Demonic Wings Back Attachment. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
    From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Breach Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Breach challenges you completed during the league.


New Content:

    Added 55 new unique items, 35 of which are exclusive to the Breach challenge league.
    Added a new Intelligence/Dexterity Support Gem - Cast while Channelling: While casting supported channelling skills, trigger another linked spell at regular intervals, with a small damage penalty. This support gem is available from the Sharp and Cruel quest reward in Cruel difficulty for the Witch, Templar, Shadow and Scion. It is available for all classes from Petarus and Vanja after completing The Eternal Nightmare in Normal difficulty. There's a new Channelling tag on relevant skill gems.
    Added a new Neutral Skill Gem - Vaal Breach: Creates a Breach at your location, making you vulnerable to its powerful inhabitants.
    Before her rescue, Navali is now guarded by The Faun.
    Very early areas in Act One have been cosmetically improved.
    Hellions have had their art replaced with a new model.


New Features:

    Many of 2.5.0's features including the new renderer were deployed early with update 2.4.2. Thank you for your testing and feedback.
    The DirectX 9 renderer is still the default. You can change to the DirectX 11 renderer in the options. We will make the DirectX 11 renderer the default once we're sure there are no remaining problems.
    Melee action targeting has been greatly improved.
    The challenge and achievements panel now has progress bars for numeric challenges. Your overall challenge progress and challenge reward milestones are also shown.
    Weapons now display their range on their item descriptions.
    Improved early tutorials.
    Items filters can now see whether an item is corrupted with "corrupted true".
    Added support for the slash symbol in Premium Stash Tab price fields.
    Various improvements to preloading have been made.
    Unique Maps can now drop if you have completed their equivalent base type on the Atlas.


Essence Changes:

    Added the contents of the Essence League to the core game. You can now find monsters trapped in Essences throughout Wraeclast, but at a lower rate than when it was the current challenge league.
    The rate of finding multiple essences at once has been significantly increased in maps (especially higher maps).
    At level 47 areas and above, Whispering Essences can no longer appear.
    At level 67 areas and above, Muttering Essences can no longer appear.
    The values of mods from Wailing Essences of Woe and above have been reduced, resulting in a notably lower value of all mods from higher-tier Woe essences.
    Fixed a minor issue where the Muttering Essence of Woe amulet mod granted values that were 1% too low.
    The gloves mod from Essence of Insanity now grant "Socketed gems have 16% More Attack and Cast Speed" (down from 20%). Existing items will not be changed.
    The weapon mod from Essence of Horror now grants a 16% chance to gain a power, frenzy or endurance charge on kill (up from 10%). Old versions of this mod can be updated using a Divine Orb.
    The weapon mod from Essence of Delirium now deals 750 chaos damage per second for 10 seconds (down from 1,000).


Map Mod Changes:

    A large variety of new map mods have been added to the map pool.
    The "Grounded", "Molten" and "Incombustible" map mods that granted specific elemental resistance will no longer appear on maps. They've been succeeded by a new global elemental and chaos resistance map mod with lower values.
    The "of Stasis" mod that previously prevented player life and mana regeneration will now also prevent energy shield regeneration. Existing versions of the mod will continue to prevent only life and mana regeneration.
    The "of Smothering" map mod now only affects recovery rate of Life and Energy Shield, no longer affecting mana recovery. This includes existing versions of the mod.
    The "Splitting" mod previously added multiple projectiles at yellow and red tier maps. They now only add two projectiles at all tiers. Existing mods will not update unless a Divine orb is used on the map.
    "of Hemomancy", the mod that gave all characters Blood Magic, will no longer appear on maps.
    "of Exposure" will now reduce maximum resistances by a lower amount. In mid-tier maps, it'll reduce maximum elemental resistances by -5% to -8% now. In higher-tier maps, it'll reduce maximum elemental resistances by -9% to -12%. Existing mods will not update unless a Divine orb is used on the map.
    The "of Frenzy", "of Endurance" and "of Power" mods will no longer appear, as they could cause performance issues in areas with many monsters.


General Balance Changes:

    Increased the range of all melee weapons. This is also a significant buff to the radius of Cyclone.
    In addition to the existing Forsaken Masters "quality of life" improvements made in 2.4.2, the experience progression of non-Zana Masters has been adjusted. It is now 30% easier to reach level 8 from 7, 20% easier to reach level 7 from 6 and 10% easier to reach level 6 from 5.
    The Sextant Mod for additional currency items from Nemesis monsters is now only available on red maps.
    Many monsters in end-game maps have been rebalanced, fixing cases where they did too little damage.
    Reduced the damage of the bosses in the Overgrown Ruin map and chaos Warbands leaders in general.
    Increased the damage of the bosses in the Shipyard map and lightning Warbands leaders in general.
    Reduced monster pack density in the Twilight Strand slightly.
    Increased most totem damage, totem additional physical damage reduction and totem attack and cast speed skills in the passive tree by 20-25%. This doesn't apply to the Totemic Mastery notable passive.
    Doubled all sources of totem elemental resistance in the passive skill tree.
    Bleeding effects from non-puncture sources are now affected by the same (additive and multiplicative) duration modifiers as bleeding effects from puncture sources.
    Poison from non-Viper Strike sources is now affected by multiplicative skill effect duration modifiers. Additive skill effect duration modifiers were already being applied.


Unique Item Balance Changes:

    Cospri's Malice and Mjölner now have 250ms cooldowns on triggering socketed skills (up from 100ms).
    Reduced block and spell block values on Rumi's Concoction by around 33%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    Facebreaker's critical strike multiplier has been reduced to 45%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    Grand Spectrum's increased elemental damage has been reduced to 4%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    The Aylardex now has an additional property: "80-100% increased Power Charge Duration". This change does not apply to old versions of this item. Using a Divine Orb on this item doesn't cause the new stat to appear.
    Nuro's Harp now has an additional property: "40% increased effect of Chilled Ground". This change does not apply to old versions of this item. Using a Divine Orb on this item doesn't cause the new stat to appear.
    Soul Strike's faster start of energy shield recharge has been reduced to 80%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.
    Energy From Within's additional energy shield has been reduced to 3-6%. A Divine Orb can be used to reroll the stats within this new range.


Skill Balance Changes:

    Blade Vortex has been refactored. Instead of separate hits for each active blade, the blades now increase the frequency at which all enemies in the radius take damage, and the amount of damage they take. The skill now has a base hit frequency of 600ms and has 10% increased hit rate per active blade. Its damage has been reduced by 30% at all levels and it deals 30% more damage per active blade.
    Reduced the maximum number of Summoned Raging Spirits to 20, but we have also increased damage as the gem levels up to compensate. It's intended to be a similar damage output but with less casting needed and less effective area of effect.
    Ancestral Warchief now does 10% less damage at all levels. Fixed behaviour with the center of the slam being significantly further away than the totem's melee range. The skill now has +10 melee range at all levels, and the slam will always be centered at melee range away from the totem.
    Scorching Ray now deals 10% more damage at gem level 20, tapered down to no change at gem level 1.
    Raise Spectre now grants +30% elemental resistances to its minions.
    Decoy Totem can no longer evade and has a 4 second cooldown at all levels.
    Blade Flurry's "More attack speed" modifier has been reduced from 65% more to 60% more attack speed at all levels. Blade Flurry's targeting range has been reduced by 16.6%, and the damage radius of slashes has been reduced by 14.2%.
    Blight's damage has been increased by 5% damage at level 1 of the gem, up to 35% more damage at level 20 of the gem.
    Totems and all other minions now have 40% elemental resistance and 20% chaos resistance. This also includes minions that didn't have resistances previously, like wolves.
    Fire, Cold, and Lightning Golems now have 70% resistance to their respective element. Chaos Golems now have 60% resistance to Chaos.
    Flame Golem's damage has been increased by 140%.
    Ice Golem's damage has been increased by 75%.
    Lightning Golem's damage has been increased by 75%.
    Stone Golem's damage has been increased by 100%. Its chance to taunt on slam has been lowered. Its melee attack range has been increased.
    Chaos Golem's damage has been increased by 65%.
    Melee Skeletons from the Summon Skeletons skill now deal 25% more damage. Summon Skeletons and Vaal Summon Skeletons skills now have a cast time of 0.8 seconds, down from 1 second.
    Some triggered skills can now find targets that are farther away than they could before.
    Reduced the damage penalty on Ranged Attack Totem to match Spell Totem. At gem level 1, it has changed from -50% to -35%. At gem level 20, it has changed from -31% to -26%.
    The Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance support gem now has a multiplicative minion and totem elemental damage stat on it, scaling from 10% at level 1 to 19% more elemental damage at gem level 20.


Trickster Ascendancy Changes:

    Weave the Arcane now also reduces damage taken by 8% if you have spent a total of 200 mana recently.


Raider Ascendancy Changes:

    Avatar of the Veil's elemental damage has been increased to 40%.
    Avatar of the Chase's increase to Onslaught effect has been increased to 100%.
    Way of the Poacher now has a 20% chance to gain a frenzy charge on kill or on hitting a rare or unique enemy.
    Rapid Assault now has a 100% chance to gain Onslaught on kill.
    Quartz Infusion now has a 100% chance to gain Phasing on kill.
    The minor Ascendancy skills leading up to Avatar of the Chase now grant 20% increased Onslaught duration, instead of 5% attack speed.


Flask Charge Generation on Critical Strike:

    A character can now only receive one flask charge per Critical Strike every 200ms. This is shared across all flasks.
    The Harvest and Master Surgeon now follow this rule. Instead of giving a charge to each of your flasks, they will only grant it to one.
    The Master Surgeon Node now has 100% chance to trigger (up from 15%) to help compensate for this change.


Zana League Mods Available During 2.5.0:

    Level 2: Onslaught
    Level 3: Bloodlines
    Level 4: Beyond
    Level 5: Warbands
    Level 6: Ambush
    Level 7: Perandus
    Level 8: Nemesis


One-time Passive Skill Reset:

    Due to balance changes, every existing character has been granted an optional full passive skill reset.
    This process will also reset your allocated Ascendancy points.
    To perform this operation, click the "Reset all Passives" button on the passive skill screen. Note that you must use this before allocating or refunding any other points otherwise the option will go away.


Bug Fixes:

    Fixed a bug where "Culling Strike Against Burning Enemies" only applied to ignited enemies, rather than enemies burning for other reasons (such as Scorching Ray).
    Fixed a bug where you wouldn't be able to see someone casting Blight or Scorching Ray if you entered their proximity after they had started casting it.
    Fixed a bug where Temporal Chains didn't affect Blight.
    Fixed a bug where alt-tabbing in fullscreen mode would change to windowed mode.
    Fixed a bug where Navali could grant Prophecies to players who had not rescued her yet.
    Fixed various problems with the Twinned Kaom boss fight.
    PvP spectators can no longer use flasks or perform triggered actions.
    Blade Flurry now uses the average of both main and off-hand attack speeds if using two valid weapons.
    Fixed a bug where Blade Vortex ending could end other buffs.
    Monsters that use Herald skills can no longer turn them off.
    Fixed a bug where Scorching Ray would not switch targets correctly if they were far away or if they changed to same team/party.
    Bonespire from the Necropolis boss once again deals damage over time.
    Fixed a bug where status ailments that were auras couldn't be removed from players. This prevented removal of ailments that had proliferation.
    Fixed an issue with Scorching Ray and Spell Totem where the ray could be visually separated from the totem after being knocked back.
    Fixed a bug where Scorching Ray's targeting could get stuck on item highlights.
    Fixed a bug where manually selected chat channel numbers were not being remembered.
    Fixed a bug where Summoned Stone Golems would attack enemies much further from their target location than other golems.
    The 40 quality recipe now ignores six-socket items.
    Fixed two instance crashes.


Recently Added to Patch Notes

    Unique Maps can now drop if you have completed their equivalent base type on the Atlas.
    Flame Golem's damage has been increased by 140%.

Content Update 2.6.0

The Legacy Challenge League:

    Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!
    With 2.6.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Legacy challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items.
    Path of Exile: Legacy pays homage to the leagues and items of the past. Do you want to experience the heart-stopping surprise encounters of Invasion, risk valuable items for even more valuable rewards in Talisman, or acquire powerful crafting items in Essence? In the Legacy league, you can choose your own challenges, and even mix and match them.
    You can find and equip up to three Leaguestones at once, which turn the next area you enter into a supercharged version of all of those leagues. Leaguestones can also drop with modifiers, which makes those areas both more challenging and more rewarding. If you've ever wanted to fight a triple-Essence Avian Retch holding a Talisman while a Corrupting Tempest is active, now's your chance.
    Many of Path of Exile's most desirable unique items were only available during past leagues. In the Legacy league, when a leaguestone is active, you have a chance to find unique items from that league. We have reviewed league-specific uniques dating back to the first challenge leagues and have improved many that we felt were not relevant to the current state of Path of Exile. So while Shavronne's Revelation, Headhunter, Scold's Bridle and more are within your grasp, they may not be the only ones you want.
    Players in the Legacy league may find a special item that, when placed in the map device, allows travel to a Reliquary. These treasure chambers contain a chest that can drop a Relic - a special alternate-frame version of an iconic unique item from Path of Exile's history, restored to its original balance values. There are over 40 different Relics to find, and the powerful ones are very rare. We're mindful of the impact these could have on existing legacy items, so these will be clearly identifiable and commensurately rare.
    The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Legacy Footprints Effect. At 24, you will receive the Legacy Weapon Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you will receive the Legacy Portal Effect. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
    From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Legacy Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Legacy challenges you completed during the league.


Solo Self-Found Mode

    Solo Self-Found (SSF) is common self-enforced playstyle where trading and partying are not allowed. This means that your character's progress is entirely based on your own efforts and cannot be influenced by other players.
    In Content Update 2.6.0, there are SSF versions of the existing leagues, where you can create characters by ticking a checkbox on the character creation screen.
    This mode is available once you have rescued the Scion on your account (which can be done in a previous league, so almost all existing players will already have fulfilled this).
    While playing an SSF character, you can't trade or party up with other players.
    You're able to convert your SSF characters into regular characters, moving them back to the equivalent non-SSF league. This is a one-way process and can be done by clicking the buttons to the left of the character on the character selection screen. One button moves just a single character, and the other one moves all your SSF characters in that league including your stashes, hideout, masters and Atlas progress.
    Ladders on the website record what level you reached in SSF before moving back to the regular leagues. Characters that have moved back to the regular leagues are marked as "retired".
    SSF leagues share their global chat channels with their non-SSF equivalent. They have no access to trade chat channels.


Major Features and Content

    Lioneye's Watch now has stairs.
    Added 12 new Unique Threshold Jewels.
    Added 12 new Unique Items, 6 of which are designed by our supporters.
    Added a new unique Strongbox: Weylam's War Chest.
    Added five new Rogue Exiles.
    Added four new Divination Cards.
    Added 25 new Grandmasters. Updated and replaced several others.
    Siosa now sells all quest gems once you've completed his quest and the quests required to unlock the appropriate tiers of gem rewards
    The "Purchase Items" vendor screen now allows you to highlight items by keyword.
    The Passive Skill Tree can now be searched by keyword.
    The friends and guild screens now sort online contacts alphabetically and offline contacts by last online time.
    You can now filter the friends and guild screens by name to find specific contacts.
    Improved game performance, load times and memory usage.


Minor Features and Content

    Items are now destroyed when they hit the ground in areas where items can't be dropped on the ground (such as towns).
    Tempests capable of harming a player now only spawn in the broad vicinity of alive monsters.
    Wilorin Demontamer now wears the Lightning Armour Pack.
    Some types of Shrines now affect all nearby allied players when activated.
    Changed the explosion effect of Molten Shell and Vaal Molten Shell. The new one has better performance.
    Improved the performance of the Mark of Cannibalism Bloodline.


General Balance Changes

    Unset Rings can now roll a new mod that increases the level of the socketed gem by up to three levels.
    The Nihilist's item prefix that gave +1 to socketed Chaos Gems now appears on level 4 items and above, down from level 40. Added a new mod, Anarchist's, that grants +2 to socketed Chaos Gems.
    Diviner's Strongboxes can now only spawn in maps.
    The Brinerot mod (found from Brinerot Warbands) now grants Damage +% during Flask Effect, instead of Rarity during Flask Effect. This is because the rarity mod was overshadowed by the fact you could already get rarity on Gloves and unique items. This new stat is more valuable, useable and competes with the Redblade/Mutewind mods better.
    Spectral Wolves summoned by unique items such as Rigwald's Crest and The Scourge now have 80% more life. They are now the same size as the player for the purpose of pathing or collision checks which allows them to swarm enemies better, or follow the player through tight areas. They also now have impact audio when attacking.
    The "Other Allies Cannot Die" mod can no longer appear on immobile monsters such as Eye Hatchery or Rakangos.
    The Faun now does more damage in Cruel and Merciless.
    Reduced monster Spectral Throw damage because it can hit twice when turning.
    Substantially reducing the size of Perandus Packs, for both balance and performance reasons.
    The Docks unique monster The Revenant has been renamed The Shipyard Terror.
    The Riverways unique monster Kall Foxfly has been renamed Targa, Beast Poacher.
    The Northern Forest unique monster Tailsinger has been renamed Seleslatha.
    The Sewers unique monster Spinesnap has been renamed Gloomgut.
    The Climb's unique monster Guardian of the Mound has been renamed Ungulath.


Skill Balance Changes

    Ice Crash has had its damage increased by 13% at level 1, and has slightly improved damage progression as the gem levels. The second stage now deals 10% less damage, down from 15%. The third stage now deals 20% less damage, down from 30%
    Sunder has had its primary damage increased by 40% at level 1 and has slightly improved damage progression as the gem levels. The secondary shockwave effects now deal 40% of base damage, down from 70%.
    Blade Flurry has had its damage reduced by 18% at level 1 of the gem, scaling to a 15% reduction at level 20 of the gem.
    Magma Orb's explosion radius has been increased by 28%.
    The Animate Weapon skill now has a maximum of 50 animated weapon minions that can be active at once.
    Wild Strike now converts 100% of the attack's physical damage to a random element, up from 60%.
    Flame Surge now has approximately 40% less Mana Cost at all Levels. Flame Surge previously had one of the highest mana costs per second of any offensive spell, and will now be more in line with similar skills.
    Orb of Storms now has a base skill duration of 6 seconds, down from 10.
    Raised Zombies now have a melee attack range of 9 on their basic attack, up from 4. Their slam ability base radius has been increased to 18 units (from 10), deals 20% more damage, and will be used more readily. ( Note: we previously incorrectly stated they had a 25% larger slam radius, and did not mention any damage increase.)
    Vaal Haste now gives 25% attack speed, 24% cast speed and 10% movement speed at level 1 of the gem, down from 30% attack speed, 29% cast speed and 14% movement speed. At level 20, Vaal Haste now gives 31% attack speed, 31% cast speed and 13% movement speed down from 36% attack speed, 36% cast speed and 20% movement speed. The duration of Vaal Haste has been reduced to 4s from 6s at all levels.
    Vaal Discipline has been changed to no longer provide any bonus energy shield.
    You can now only have one instance of Blade Vortex active at once.
    Shock Nova damage has been increased by 33% at level 1, scaling up to 49% increased damage by level 20. The additional damage dealt by the Shock Nova ring has been reduced from 50% of base damage down to 20% of base damage.
    Ice Nova damage has been increased by 3% at level 1, scaling up to 24% increased damage by level 20.
    Ice Shot now has 60% Physical to Cold conversion (previously 40%)
    Frost Blades now has 60% Physical to Cold conversion (previously 40%)


Passive Tree Balance Changes

    Vitality Void/Spirit Void: Moved the Mana and Life Leech combined passive to the bottom and attached it to the outside perimeter.
    The Thick Skin cluster now attaches to the outside perimeter.
    The Slashing Comeback, Fatal Blade and Brutal Blade clusters have been merged.
    The Flash Freeze cluster now has a second arc for increased Cold Damage with Weapons and converting Physical Damage to Cold.
    The Forces of Nature cluster has been moved to between the Ranger and the Shadow on the inner path.
    A new Weapon Elemental Damage wheel has been added on the South-East corner of the tree. This is a large source of weapon elemental damage to provide support to more of the ranger-orientated elemental skills.
    The area between Ranger and Shadow has been changed: a number of the more expensive weapon clusters have been reduced into 3-point clusters to be more efficient.
    The Revenge of the Hunted and Void Barrier clusters are now more accessible.
    Master Fletcher has been removed and replaced by Avatar of the Hunt.
    Blood Drinker Life Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.
    Mind Drinker Mana Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.
    The large claw wheel has been generally improved and now offers more Critical Strike support.
    Soul Raker Life and Mana Leech is now all attack damage, not just physical.
    The Nightstalker cluster now only contains a total of three passive skills.
    The Claws of the Falcon cluster now gives a higher value of Claw Critical Strike Chance and Accuracy percentage.
    The Arcing Blows cluster has been moved and is now joined with the Crackling Speed cluster.
    The Crackling Speed passive skill is now cheaper to acquire.
    Mind over Matter has been moved (it is still connected to the same passive though). A new smaller cluster has been added behind Mind over Matter providing large increases to mana.
    In the Explosive Impact cluster, it is now cheaper to acquire the notable skill. The two paths to it now differ, one is combined Increased Fire Damage and Increased Cast speed with Fire Skills.
    Zealot's Oath has been repositioned to the perimeter of the tree.
    The staff wheel to the left of Templar has been improved. A third notable has been added which focuses on improving Critical Strikes. This should be accessible to all Critical Strike-orientated staff builds.
    The Razor's Edge passive skill now grants 30% increased Physical Damage with Swords and 15% chance to cause Bleeding. This now also has +1 to Melee Weapon Range.
    Removed the passive skills behind Razor's Edge and Blade Master.
    The Blade Master passive skill and passives before it have been improved. Blade Master now grants +200 Accuracy Rating with Swords, instead of Accuracy percentage.
    Master of Force has been moved and made cheaper to acquire. This also now provides 10% reduced Reflected Physical Damage Taken.
    Ash, Frost and Storm now provides 10% reduced Reflected Elemental Damage Taken.
    Aspect of the Eagle, and the passive between it and Ballistic Mastery now give Bow Damage percentage (not just physical). This is to open up a path for non-physical bow builds.
    Revenge of the Hunted has been moved and now grants 8% increased maximum life.
    The Blade of the Cunning cluster has been improved.
    The Hatchet Master cluster has been improved.
    Prism Weave now grants 30% increased Elemental Damage with Wands (from 20%).
    Soul of Steel is now cheaper to acquire. The two paths to it now differ, one is now combined. Increased Armour +% and Elemental Resistances.
    Celerity now has 5% increased Attack and Cast Speed.
    Blast Cascade now has 15% chance to gain a Power Charge when your Mine is Detonated.
    targeting an Enemy.


Map Mod Balance Changes

    The 'of Rust' Map mod now has 20%, 25% or 30% less Armour at Low, Mid and High Tier Maps respectively, down from 30%, 40% and 50%.
    The 'Hexwarded' Map mod now has 40% and 60% less Curse Effect at Mid and High Tier Maps respectively, down from 50% and 75%. The Low Tier Hexwarded mod is unchanged.
    The 'of Drought' Map mod now has 30%, 40% and 50% reduced Flask Charges gained at Low, Mid and High Tier Maps respectively, up from 20%, 25% and 30%.


Threshold Jewel Balance Changes:

    Unique Threshold Jewels that applied to specific skills have had their attribute requirements reduced to 40, from 50. They also no longer require those attributes to be allocated.
    The "Steel Spirit" unique threshold jewel now grants 5% increased damage to Spectral Throw projectiles for each enemy hit, up from 4%.
    The Rapid Expansion unique threshold jewel now grants a 35% increased angle for Ground Slam. It also has a 25% chance to grant an Endurance Charge when you Stun an enemy with Ground Slam, and is now limited to 3.
    The Growing Agony unique threshold jewel now also has a 10% chance to grant Unholy Might when for each poison stack on an enemy you hit with Viper Strike. It is now limited to 1.
    The Spirit Guards unique threshold jewel now allows up to 8 ranged weapons to be animated, and is now limited to 2.
    The Spirited Response unique threshold jewel is now limited to 2.
    The unique threshold jewel The Vigil now fortifies you and nearby allies for 20 seconds, and is now limited to 1.
    The Unending Hunger unique threshold jewel now grants spectres a 50% chance to gain Soul Eater on kill, and is now limited to 2.
    The Volley Fire unique threshold jewel is now limited to 3.
    The Weight of the Empire unique threshold jewel is now limited to 2.
    The Winter's Bounty unique threshold jewel now grants a 50% chance for Cold Snap to grant a power charge on kill. It is now limited to 2.
    Note that there are some other Threshold Jewel changes listed in the Area of Effect Balance section below.


Weapon Balance Changes:

    All One-handed weapons have had their base damage increased. Lower-level weapons, weapons with lower critical chance, and weapons with lower-value implicits have had their damage increased by a higher value.
    Local Added Physical Damage modifiers to One-handed weapons have had their values increased by 10%. Using a Divine Orb will cause existing mods to be updated to the new values.
    Weapon critical strike chances have been adjusted. Most critical chance values have been reduced on base types that could have over 6.5% base critical chance. This is to create a more distributed choice of weapon types for critical strike characters.
    Two-handed swords have had their weapon speed increased by 0.1 attacks per second, and their base damage reduced to compensate. This makes them the highest average speed two-handed weapon type.
    Many one-handed and two-handed swords now grant additional flat accuracy as their implicit mod, replacing percentage increases to accuracy. Existing copies of these swords will not be updated.
    Dagger implicit mods have been reduced. Daggers now grant 30%, 40% or 50% increased global critical chance, down from 40%, 60% and 80%. This will automatically apply to existing copies of these weapons.
    Lower-level claw base types that previously granted life leech now grant life gained for each enemy hit. Cat's Paw now grants 8 life on hit, Timeworn Claw now grants 19 life on hit, and Fright Claw now grants 20 life on hit.
    Maraketh claw base types (Double Claw, Twin Claw and Gemini Claw) now have separate life and mana on hit values, as they now grant more life on hit (15, 28 and 38 life on hit respectively).
    Maraketh thrusting swords have a higher chance to bleed, going from 8%/12% to 15%/20%.
    Using a Blessed Orb will update existing Maraketh thrusting swords to these new values.
    Thrusting swords that granted Critical Multiplier now grant +25%/+35% Critical Strike Multiplier, down from +30%/+50%. Using a Blessed Orb will update existing thrusting swords to these new values.
    One-handed maces now grant 10%/15% stun threshold, instead of 20%/40% stun duration.
    All staves have had their block values increased. Previously, staves granted either 12% block chance or 18% block chance. They now grant 18% and 20% respectively. Using a Blessed Orb will update existing staves to these new values.
    Maraketh Two Handed Axes now have 50% increased local Critical Chance, up from 25%/25%/40% on Talon Axe, Dagger Axe and Fleshripper


Area of Effect Balance Changes

    In this update, we are removing the concept of "Increased Radius of Area Skills" and replacing it with "Increased Area of Effect" for all skills, items and passives. The broad impact of this change is that early increases to area of effect will be significant and impactful, while every subsequent point will be less and less noticeable. Previously, each point spent towards increasing the radius of area skills was better than the last, making accumulation of the stat far too desirable.
    Players who went out of their way to get as many sources of increased radius of area skills as they could will see significant reductions in their skill area of effect.
    With this change we are hoping to make increasing the area of effect for skills a meaningful, and eventually costly, decision.


In light of this change, area of effect skills have been reviewed and the base radius of many skills has been adjusted:

    Static Strike's radius has increased from 16 to 19 units.
    Earthquake's initial hit radius has been reduced from 20 to 18 units.
    Shockwave Totem's radius has increased from 20 to 24 units.
    Blade Flurry's radius has gained 2 units on all of its ranges. (The damage area has increased from 12 to 14 units, the channelling targeting area has increased from 15 to 17 units and the release targeting area has increased from 17 to 19 units.)
    Blast Rain's radius has increased from 20 to 24 units.
    Contagion's radius has increased from 18 to 20 units.
    Righteous Fire's radius has increased from 14 to 18 units.
    Ball Lightning's radius has increased from 16 to 20 units.
    Glacial Cascade's radius has increased from 10 to 14 units.
    Blade Vortex's radius has increased from 14 to 15 units.
    Kinetic Blast's radius has increased from 10 to 14. Kinetic Blast's spread of explosions has also been increased to avoid overlapping with the primary target as a result of the changes to the explosion radius.


Skills which used to gain increased area of effect radius as they levelled no longer do. Instead, the following skills gain additional base radius at certain intervals:

    Cleave gains 1 additional unit of radius every 3 levels.
    Ground Slam gains 1 additional unit of radius every 3 levels.
    Sunder gains 1 additional unit of radius every 3 levels.
    Fire Trap gains 1 additional unit of radius every 3 levels.
    Lightning Tendrils gains 1 additional unit of radius every 3 levels.
    Storm Call gains 1 additional unit of radius every 3 levels.
    Shrapnel Shot gains 1 additional unit of radius every 4 levels.
    Lacerate gains 1 additional unit of radius every 4 levels.
    Cold Snap gains 1 additional unit of radius every 4 levels.
    Righteous Fire gains 1 additional unit of radius every 4 levels.
    Static Strike gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Sweep gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Caustic Arrow gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Blade Vortex gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Rain of Arrows gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Blight gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Reave gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.
    Fireball gains 1 additional unit of radius every 6 levels.
    Vaal Reave gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.


Support Gems:

    Melee Splash Support now gains 3% more area of effect per level (from 1% radius per level).
    Increased Area of Effect Support now grants 30% increased area of effect at level 1 (from 20% increased radius of area skills), up to 49% increased area of effect at level 20 (from 39%). This is a significant reduction to the area of effect provided by the gem.
    Concentrated Effect Support now has 30% less Area of Effect for supported skills (from 25% less Radius) and now grants 35% More Area Damage at Level 1 (from 40%) to 54% More Area Damage at Level 20 (from 59%).


Other skill changes:

    Static Strike no longer has any variance in the size of the explosion between uses.
    Reave and Vaal Reave now gains 50% more area of effect per stage, instead of 20% more radius per stage.


The following passive skills have been adjusted:

    Bone Breaker now grants 8% increased area of effect.
    Amplify now grants 10% increased area of effect.
    Blast Radius now grants 10% increased area of effect.
    Leadership now grants 50% increased aura area of effect.
    Volatile Mines now grants 8% increased area of effect.
    Hex Master now grants 40% increased curse area of effect.
    Champion of the Cause now grants 20% increased aura area of effect.
    Explosive Impact now grants 8% increased area of effect.
    All of the increased area of effect bonuses on the tree on all non-notable passive skills now grant 8% (up from 5%).
    All of the increased aura area of effect bonuses on the tree on all non-notable passive skills now grant 20% (up from 12%).
    Unstable Munitions now grants 8% increased area of effect.
    All of the increases to trap trigger radius and mine detonation radius have also been changed to increased area of effect. As a result, all of these values have been doubled on the passive tree.


Ascendancy Skill Changes:

    Endless Munitions (Deadeye) now grants 50% increased area of effect.
    Impact (Slayer) now grants 20% increased area of effect. The non-notable skill preceding Impact now grants 10% increased area of effect.
    Illuminated Devotion (Hierophant) now grants 40% increased area of effect.
    Bomb Specialist (Saboteur) now grants 8% increased area of effect for each Mine.
    Chain Reaction (Saboteur) now grants 20% increased area of effect for Traps.
    Pendulum of Destruction's area of effect modifier is unchanged.


All items which previously granted increased radius of area skills now instead grant increased area of effect at the same values. We will monitor the impact of this change closely.

In addition to the change to increased area of effect, the following items have also had their values modified (a Divine Orb can be used on existing items to receive these changes):

    Star of Wraeclast now gives 60% increased area of effect of curses, instead of 30% increased curse radius.
    Victario's Influence now has 20-40% increased aura area of effect, instead of 10-20% increased aura radius.
    Victario's Charity now has 20% aura area of effect, instead of 10% aura radius.
    Hair Trigger now has 40-60% trap trigger area, instead of 20-30% trap trigger radius.


Threshold Jewels (Divine Orbs cannot be used for this change):

    The Rolling Flames jewel previously granted up to 50% increased radius to fireball projectiles as they travel. New copies of the jewel grants up to +4 radius. A shared limit of 2 Rolling Flames jewels in the passive tree has been imposed on both existing and new copies of the jewel. Existing copies will now grant 50% increased area at maximum distance, instead of radius.


In most cases, monster area of effect remains unchanged. There will be some cases (such as monsters using Reave, which will start with a larger area but grow less per stack) that will experience minor changes.

The following changes have been made to map mods which granted increased radius of area skills to monsters. Despite these values being much higher, they will have the same impact as the original mods. Existing maps with these mods will have a much smaller impact on the area of effect of monsters:

    Of Giants now grants monsters 45% increased area of effect on tier 5 and lower maps, 70% increased area of effect on tier 6 to 10 maps, and 100% increased area of effect on tier 11 and higher maps.
    Titan's now grants the unique boss 45% increased area of effect on tier 5 and lower maps, 55% increased area of effect on tier 6 to 10 maps, and 70% increased area of effect on tier 11 and higher maps.


League-Specific Unique Item Changes:
The following changes can be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb:

    Vaal Caress: Cold Resistance mod increased to 40%. Maximum Life mod increased to 50-70.
    Brinerot Whalers: Increased Movement Speed increased to 25%. Maximum Energy Shield mod increased to 120-150.
    Mutewind Whispersteps: Increased Movement Speed mod increased to 25%. Critical Strike Chance with Spells increased to 50-70%. Added Cold Damage to Spells mod increased (25 to 30)-(40-50)
    Valako's Sign: Chance to Shock mod increased to 10%. Increased Damage versus Shocked Enemies mod increased to 40%
    Berek's Grip: Increased Cold Damage mod increased to 25-30%. Added Lightning Damage mod increased to 1 to (50-70) to attacks and spells. Now has Damage Leeched as Life against Shocked enemies instead of Frozen enemies. Now has Damage Leeched as Mana against Frozen enemies instead of Shocked enemies.
    Berek's Pass: Increased Fire Damage mod increased to 25-30%. Added Cold Damage mod increased to (20-25) to (30-50) to attacks and spells.
    Ylfeban's Trickery: No longer creates Shocked Ground when hit at a 10% chance. Now has a triggered spell called Shock Ground that casts when you are hit. No longer casts random curse on hit. Now has 20% chance to curse uncursed enemies on hit.
    Reach of the Council: Number of Additional Arrows reduced to 2.


The following changes cannot be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb:

    Brinerot Flag: No longer has Mana on hitting a Taunted Enemy. No longer has 8-12% Increased Attack Speed. Now has 8-12% Increased Cast Speed. Now has the property Gain 2 Power Charges on Using a Warcry. Increased Level of Socketed Warcry Gems mod increased to +3.
    Redblade Banner: Maximum Life mod increased to 50-60. No longer has additional Level to Warcry Gems. Now has 80-100% Increased Armour. Now has 2% Attack Damage Leeched as Life against Taunted Enemies. Now has 50% increased Warcry Cooldown Recovery. No longer has Endurance Charge Duration.
    Mutewind Pennant: No longer has 20-30% Increased Chaos Damage. No longer has Additional Level to Warcry Gems. No longer has Onslaught on Killing Taunted Enemies. Now has 25% Increased Warcry Effect. Now has 80-100% Increased Evasion. Now has the property gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on using a Warcry.
    Redblade Tramplers: Now has 50-70 Maximum Life. Increased Movement Speed mod increased to 25%.
    Tasalio's Sign: Cold Damage up to (7 to 10)-(15 to 20) and now added to attacks and spells. Chance to Freeze mod increased to 10%. No longer has physical damage added versus frozen enemies. No longer has 20% reduced chill duration on self. Now has 40-60 added cold damage against chilled enemies. Now has 50% chance to avoid chill.
    Ngamahu's Sign: Chance to ignite mod increased to 10%. Added fire damage now added to attacks and spells. No longer has life gain on hitting ignited enemies. Now has 20-30 Life Gained on Igniting an Enemy.
    Broken Faith: No longer has Reduced Block Chance. Now has 5% Increased Chance to Block. Now has the property gain Unholy Might for 10 seconds on Block. No longer has Increased Damage on no Energy Shield. Now has 100% increased Global Armour on no Energy Shield.
    Trolltimber Spire: No longer has 1% of Damage Leeched as Life by totems. Now has 0.5% of Damage Dealt by Totems is Leeched to you. Now has increased Armour of 130-150%.
    Crown of the Pale King: Now has 60-80 Maximum Life.
    Berek's Respite: Lightning Damage up to 25-30%. Added fire damage now (20-25) to (30-50) to attacks and spells. Now shocks all nearby enemies on killing a shocked enemy. Now ignites all nearby enemies on killing an ignited enemy.
    Gifts from Above: No longer has Create Consecrated Ground on Critical Strike. Now has a triggered spell called Consecrate that Casts when you deal a Critical Strike. Now has 50% Increased Damage on Consecrated Ground. Now has 5% additional Block Chance on Consecrated Ground.
    The Gull: Now grants skill Create Lesser Shrine, which triggers when you kill an enemy. Now has 30-40% Cold Resistance. Now has 60-80 Maximum Life. Now has 40-65 Maximum Energy Shield. No longer has Life and Energy Shield gained on kill. No longer has Maximum Mana.
    Edge of Madness: No longer has Life gained on kill per level. No longer has Increased Elemental Damage per level. Now has 1-2 Physical Damage added per level.
    Shavronne's Revelation: No longer has 100% increased mana regeneration on left ring slot. Now has 40 Mana regenerated per second on left ring slot. Now has 100 Maximum Mana on right ring slot. Now has 100 Maximum Energy Shield on left ring slot.
    Death Rush: Onslaught on kill duration increased to 4 seconds. Increased Armour mod increased to 260-300. Now has Maximum Life of 40-50.
    Blood of the Karui: No longer has the property of preventing life recovery during flask effect. Now has 100% Increased Life Recovery.
    The Rat Cage: No longer has -5% Maximum Fire resistance. Now has -50% fire resistance.
    Jorrhast's Blacksteel: Now has the additional property 25% chance to cast level 20 Animate Weapon on kill.
    Brutus' Lead Sprinkler: No longer has Added Fire Damage against Ignited enemies. Now Adds 2-4 Fire Damage to Attacks per 10 Strength.
    Brinerot Mark: No longer is supported by level 15 Concentrated Effect. No longer is supported by level 15 minion life. Increased Spell Damage mod increased to 20-25%. Increased Level of Socketed Golem Gems increased to +3. Now socketed golem gems have +25% buff effect. Now socketed golem gems have 20% of golem life added as Energy Shield.
    Mutewind Seal: No longer is supported by level 13 Faster Attacks. No longer is supported by level 16 increased minion Speed. Chance to dodge attacks is now 3-5%. Increased Level of Socketed Golem Gems increased to +3. Now socketed golem gems have 20% increased attack and cast speed. Now socketed golem gems grant onslaught for 10 seconds on summon.
    Redblade Band: No longer is supported by level 12 Lesser Multiple Projectiles. No longer is supported by level 17 increased minion damage. No longer has (8-12) to (20-30) fire damage to attacks. Now has Maximum Life of 30-40. Increased Level of Socketed Golem Gems increased to +3. Now socketed golem gems have a 25% chance to taunt on hit. Now socketed golem gems have 5% life regenerated per second.
    Night's Hold: Increased level requirement to 25


Other Unique Item Changes:
The following changes can be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb:

    Sin Trek: Maximum Energy Shield mod increased to 100-160
    Essentia Sanguis: Added Lightning Damage mod increased to 1-200. Now is on a Vaal Claw base type.
    Titucius' Span: Reduced Physical Damage taken from Projectile Attacks mod changed to 50-80
    Foxshade: Evasion Rating on Full Life mod increased to 500
    Taryn's Shiver: Increased Level of Socketed Cold Gems mod increased to +2
    Le Heup of All: Increased Damage mod increased to 10-30%. All Attributes mod increased to 10-30. All Resistances mod increased to 10-30%. Increased Item Rarity mod increased to 10-30%.
    Sibyl's Lament: Reduced Elemental and Physical Reflected Damage mod taken up to 40%
    Briskwrap: Increased Attack Speed mod increased to 10%
    Gang's Momentum: Increased Chance to Ignite mod increased to 10-15%. Increased damage to Ignited Enemies mod increased to 25-40%.
    Prismweave: Added Fire Damage mod increased to (7-8)-(15-16). Added Cold Damage mod increased to (5-6)-(12-14). Added Lightning Damage mod increased to 1-(30-34).
    The Restless Ward: Increased Evasion/Energy Shield mod increased to 220-250%. Maximum Life mod increased to 60-80. Life Regenerated per second per Endurance Charge mod increased to 20-30.
    The Princess: Physical Damage added as Cold mod increased to 25-30%.
    Flesh-Eater: Chance to Bleed on Hit mod increased to 30%. Life Leech against Bleeding Enemies mod increased to 3%.
    Geofri's Sanctuary: Maximum Energy Shield per 5 Strength mod increased to 2.
    Three-Step Assault: Maximum Life mod increased to 50-70. Movement Speed mod increased to 25%. Increased Evasion Rating while on Onslaught mod increased to 100%.
    Doedre's Tenure: Maximum Energy Shield mod increased to 32. Intelligence mod increased to 20. Spell Damage mod increased to 50-60%. Reduced Cast Speed mod reduced to 15%.
    Lioneye's Remorse: Maximum Life mod increased to 160-180.
    Soul Mantle: Socketed gems now supported by level 20 Spell Totem.
    Voidbringer: Increased Mana Cost mod now reduced to 40-80%.
    Kongor's Undying Rage: Onslaught duration increased to 4 seconds.
    Daresso's Defiance: Onslaught duration on Hit increased to 2 seconds per Endurance Charge
    Forbidden Taste: No longer has Increased Flask Charges used. Increased recovery of Maximum Life mod increased to 75-100%
    Asenath's Mark: No longer has 50% Increased Energy Shield. Now has 30-50 Maximum Energy Shield.
    The Peregrine: Increased Accuracy mod increased to 300. Physical Attack Mana leech is now Attack Mana leech and increased to 0.4%.
    Immortal Flesh: No longer has Reduced Maximum Resistances mod. Now has -15% to -25% to All Resistances.
    Sundance: Movement Speed mod increased to 20%.
    Rainbowstride: Movement Speed mod increased to 25%.
    The Anvil: No longer has Reduced Movement Speed mod.
    Hyrri's Ire: Added cold Damage mod increased to (50 to 60)-(70 to 80). Dexterity mod increased to 40-50.
    Windscream: Movement Speed mod increased to 15%. Increased Elemental Damage mod increased to 10-20%.
    Slitherpinch: Attack Speed mod increased to 5-10%.
    Darkscorn: Increased Physical Damage mod increased to 130-150%.
    Thunderfist: Added Lightning Damage mod increased to 1-100.
    Thief's Torment: Life Gain on Hit mod increased to 40-60. Mana Gain on Hit mod increased to 30. All Resistances mod increased to 16-24%.
    Atziri's Foible: Increased Mana Regeneration mod increased to 80-100%. Maximum Mana mod increased to 100. Increased Maximum Mana mod increased to 16-24%.
    Zahndethus' Cassock: Increased Energy Shield mod increased to 125-150%.
    Marylene's Fallacy: No longer has the property non-critical strikes deal 40% less damage.
    Ming Heart: Reduced Maximum Life mod is now 10%. Reduced Energy Shield mod is now 10%.
    Vis Mortis: Duration of Unholy Might increased to 10 seconds. Increased Energy Shield mod increased to 200-220%.
    Mark of the Doubting Knight: Chance to Bleed on Critical Strike mod increased to 50%. Chance to Poison on Critical Strike mod increased to 50%. Increased Physical Damage mod increased to 250-270%.
    Dreamfeather: Added Physical Damage mod up to (30 to 50)-(65 to 80).
    Cherrubim's Maleficence: Increased Chaos Damage mod increased to 50-80%.
    Malachai's Artifice: Reduced Elemental Equilibrium Effect mod reduced to 25%. All Resistances mod is now reduced by 20%.
    Agnerod East/West/North/South: Increased Level of Socketed Lightning Gems mod increased to +2
    Ungil's Harmony: Global Critical Strike Multiplier mod is now reduced by 25%.
    The Broken Crown: Maximum Energy Shield mod increased to 70-90.
    Maloney's Nightfall: Attack Speed no longer has a range. Chance for Smoke Cloud when Hit mod up to 25%. Increased Damage against Blinded Enemies mod increased to 40-60%. Added Physical Damage mod increased to (8 to 10)-(14 to 16).
    Surgebinders: No longer has Reduced Charge Duration mod.
    Timeclasp: Increased Cast Speed mod increased to 5-10%. Maximum Energy Shield mod increased to 15-25. No longer has Reduced Mana Regeneration mod. Now has 15% Increased Mana Regeneration mod. Reduced Temporal Chains Effect on Self mod increased to 50%.
    Shaper's Seed: Life regeneration Given to Allies increased to 2%.
    Relentless Fury: Life Leech mod increased to 2%.
    Bloodplay: Chance to Bleed mod increased to 30%.
    Deep One's Hide: Added Cold Damage mod increased to 12-15.
    Karui Charge: Increased Attack Speed mod reduced to 5-10%
    Mon'tregul's Grasp: No longer has Zombies Deal 80-100% Increased Physical Damage. Now has Zombies Deal 80-100% More Physical Damage. Zombie Maximum Life mod increased to 5000.
    Dyadian Dawn: Attack Damage Leeched as Life mod increased to 1%. Enemies ignited by an attack now burn 35% faster.
    Springleaf: Life regenerated per second up to 3%. Life regenerated per second on low life down to 3%.
    Winds of Change: Reduced Movement Speed mod reduced to 5-10%.
    Malachai's Loop: Increased Energy Shield mod increased to 210-250%.
    Heretic's Veil: Increased Level of Socketed Curse Gems mod reduced to +1.
    Ascent from Flesh: Maximum Energy Shield mod increased to 75-80.
    Shaper's Touch: Accuracy per 2 Intelligence mod increased to 4. Mana per 4 STR mod increased to 2. Energy Shield per 10 STR mod increased to 2%. Evasion Rating per 10 INT mod increased to 2%. Melee Physical Damage per 10 DEX mod increased to 2%.
    Heartbreaker: Increased Spell Damage mod increased to 60-70%.
    Pyre: Cold Damage converted to Fire Damage mod reduced to 40%.
    Call of the Brotherhood: Lightning Damage converted to Cold Damage mod reduced to 40%.
    Ichimonji: Increased Physical Damage mod increased to 80-95%. Increased Attack Speed mod increased to 20-25%.


The following changes cannot be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb:

    Wake of Destruction: Now has 15% Increased Movement Speed
    Dream Fragments: Now has the property Cannot be Chilled. Now has 30-40% Cold Resistance. Now requires Level 24.
    Lochtonial Caress: No longer has flat added armour. Now has 20-30 to Maximum Life. Now has the property 10% chance to gain a frenzy, power or endurance charge on kill. (Note: we previously incorrectly stated it no longer had reduced mana)
    Terminus Est: Increased Physical Damage mod increased to 220-260%. Now has Increased Critical Strike Chance of 50-75%.
    Ashrend: Now has Maximum Life mod of 30-50. Now has the property Socketed Gems are Supported by level 10 Added Fire Damage.
    Star of Wraeclast: Cooldown on Illusory Warp is now 3 seconds. Duration of Chilled ground is now 1.5 seconds. No longer has 30% Increased radius of Curse skills. Now has 60% Increased Area of Effect of Curses.
    Bronn's Lithe: Now has 15% Increased Attack and Cast Speed on Using a Movement Skill Recently.
    Solaris Lorica: Reduced Chaos Damage taken increased to 30-40. Now has 25% Reduced Chaos Damage Taken Over Time.
    Hrimsorrow: No longer has Increased Evasion Rating mod. Now has 40-50 Evasion Rating. Physical Damage converted to Cold mod increased to 50%. Cold Resistance mod increased to 20-30%. Now has (5-7) to (13-15) Added Cold Damage to Spells and Attacks.
    Kaltenhalt: Now has 10-15% Physical Damage Added as Cold.
    Quill Rain: Less weapon damage reduced to 40%. Now has 100% increased local physical damage. Now has 2 mana gain per hit.
    Darkray Vectors: Reduced Frenzy Charge Duration mod reduced to 40%. Now has 40-70% Increased Armour and Evasion.
    Deidbell: Now has 10-20 Added Physical Damage.
    Kaom's Roots: Maximum Life mod increased to 150-200. Now has the property Cannot Be Slowed to Below Base Speed".
    Bated Breath: Now has 20% Increased Energy Shield.
    Doedre's Scorn: Increased Level of Socketed Curse Gems mod increased to +2. Now has 100-120 Maximum Energy Shield.
    Rotgut: Chance to Gain Flask Charge on Critical Strike increased to 50%. Onslaught per Frenzy Charge increased to 2 seconds. Now has 50% Increased Duration.
    Karui Ward: Now has 30% increased Projectile Damage.
    Shavronne's Pace: Movement Speed on Full Life mod reduced to 20%. Now has 15% Increased Movement Speed.
    Shavronne's Gambit: No longer has 2% Energy Shield Regenerated on Low Life. Now has 1% Energy Shield Regeneration.
    Carnage Heart: No longer has Reduced Life or Reduced Energy Shield. Now has 30-40% Increased Damage While Leeching. Now has Increased Life Leech Rate of 50%.
    Starkonja's Head: Dexterity mod increased to 50-70. Increased Evasion Rating on Low Life up to 150%. Now has 100-130% Increased Evasion Rating.
    Chalice of Horrors: Now has 40-50 Maximum Life. Now has 50-70 Maximum Energy Shield.
    Skullhead: Now has 10-20% All Resistances.
    Incandescent Heart: No longer has 60-80 Armour. Increased Armour and Energy Shield mod increased to 220-240%. Now has 10-20% of Elemental Damage Added as Chaos. Now has Attack Damage Leech instead of Physical Attack Damage Leech.
    Hyrri's Bite: Now has 10-20 Added Cold Damage.
    Thousand Teeth Temu: Now has the property 10% of Damage Reflected Gained as Life.
    Bloodboil: Added Fire Damage mod increased to (12 to 15)-(25 to 30). Reduced Chill Effectiveness on Self increased to 75%. No longer has Longer Ignite Duration. Now has 10% Increased Movement Speed While Ignited.
    Southbound: Now has 50% Increased Herald of Ice Damage.
    Victario's Influence: Now is supported by Level 30 Generosity. Reduced Reservation Cost of Socketed Gems increased to 30%. No longer has 10-20% Increased Radius of Aura skills. Now has 20-40% Increased Aura Area of Effect.
    The Covenant: No longer has Blood Magic. Now has Socketed gems have Blood Magic. No longer has Reduced Maximum Life but has 10% Increased Maximum Life
    Rime Gaze: Increased Energy Shield mod increased to 180-200%. Gems now supported by Level 20 Concentrated Effect. No longer has Slower Start of ES Recharge, but has Reduced ES Recharge rate of 50%.
    Infractem: No longer has Cannot Leech. Now has Cannot Leech Life instead. Increased Physical Damage mod increased to 110-125%.
    Asenath's Gentle Touch: Curse with Level 10 Temporal Chains on Hit instead of Level 1.
    Auxium: Now is on a Crystal Belt base type. Mana leech per Power Charge now works for all forms of Attack Damage rather than Physical Attack Damage alone.
    The Magnate: Now has 20-25% all Elemental Resistances at 200 Strength or more.
    Meginord's Vise: Now has 2% Life Regeneration per Second at 400 Strength or more.
    Ambu's Charge: No longer has 2% Life Regeneration on Low Life. Now has 2% Life Regeneration if you have been Hit recently. Now has 60-80 Maximum Life.
    Daresso's Courage: No longer has individual resistances. Now has All Resistance of 10-20%. Now has 20% chance to Block Spells if you've Blocked an Attack recently. Now has 20% chance to Block Attacks if you've Blocked a Spell Recently.
    Chernobog's Pillar: Now has (12 to 15)-(30 to 35) Added Fire Damage to Spells and Attacks. Now has 60-80 Maximum Life. No longer has 10% chance to cast Enfeeble on hit. Now has a 25% chance to curse un-cursed enemies with Enfeeble on hit.
    Dusktoe: Now has (15 to 20)-(25 to 30) Added Chaos Damage to Spells and Attacks while using a Flask. No longer has 10-20 Maximum Mana. Maximum Life mod increased to 20-30.
    Mjolner: Now has the additional property Socketed Lightning Spells have 100% Increased Spell Damage if Triggered. This affects existing versions of the item.
    The Stormheart: No longer has the property Cannot be Shocked while Frozen. Now has cannot be Shocked while Chilled. Now has a 50% chance to Shock Chilled Enemies.
    Dreadarc: Now Curses with Level 10 Flammability on Hit instead of Level 1.
    Deerstalker: Increased Movement Speed on throwing a trap mod reduced to 15%. Now has 15% Increased Movement Speed.
    Hrimnor's Resolve: Now has 50-70 Maximum Life. No longer has Block and Stun recovery. No longer has Chance to Avoid Freeze or Chill. Now has the property Cannot be Frozen or Chilled if a Fire Skill is used recently.
    Fidelitas' Spike: Chance to Shock mod increased to 15-20%. Now has 50% increased Herald of Thunder buff effect.
    Kikazaru: Reduced Effect of Curse mod increased to 40%. No longer has (13-17) Life Regeneration per second. Now has 1 Life Regeneration per Second per Level.
    Dyadus: Increased DPS by 50%. Enemies chilled by you now take 100% increased burning damage. No longer has 100% increased chill duration on enemies when in off hand. Now has the additional property of chilling enemies for 1 second on hit with this weapon when in off hand.
    Lightbane Raiment: Desecrated Ground created on block now deals more damage (250 chaos damage per second).
    Nycta's Lantern: No longer is Supported by Level 10 Cold to Fire Support. No longer is Supported by Added Fire Damage Support. Now has the additional property +2 to level of Socketed Fire Gems. Now has additional property of 63-94 Added Fire Damage to Socketed Gems.
    Drillneck: Projectile damage is now increased by 50% of Arrow Pierce chance. This affects existing versions of the item.
    Belt of the Deceiver: No longer has Reduced Chance to Block. All Resistances mod increased to 10-15%. Now has the property of Nearby enemies are intimidated.
    Victario's Flight: No longer has 30% Movement Speed on Low Life. Now has 15% Increased Movement Speed. Now has the additional property of You and Allies have 10% Increased Movement Speed.
    Piscator's Vigil: Now has 5% Elemental Penetration with this weapon.
    Nomic's Storm: No longer has 20% Increased Physical Damage taken. Now has 15% Increased Damage taken while on Full Energy Shield.
    Coruscating Elixir: Now has 100% Increased Duration.
    Brain Rattler: Now has 20% Lightning Penetration.
    Kingmaker: No longer has 100-150 to Maximum Mana. Now has the property Insufficient Mana doesn't prevent your Melee Attacks. The aura now provides culling strike to allies, rather than culling strike to spells. Now has 30-40% Increased Critical Strike Chance.


New Zana Mods for Legacy League

    Because Legacy returns many previous challenge leagues, we're trying out a different approach to Zana mods for the next three months.
    Zana Mods now obey similar rules to the rolling of items. Monster Life, for example, cannot be applied to a map that already has a Monster Life mod.
    Area is inhabited by Spiders cannot be applied to a map that already has a mod which causes that area to be inhabited by other monsters.
    These new mods cannot be applied to unidentified maps.
    Zana still has her basic Item Quantity mods that can be applied to maps, including unidentified ones.
    Note that the Monster Life IV and Monster Damage IV provide more damage and life bonuses than you would normally be able to get on a map, but also give more Item Quantity and Rarity bonuses than normal.


Zana Level 2:

    Monster Life I, 2 Chaos Orbs: 20-29% more Monster Life, 14% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 7% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Additional Totems, 2 Chaos Orbs: Area contains many Totems, 12% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 6% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.


Zana Level 3:

    Monster Damage I, 2 Chaos Orbs: 15-19% increased Monster Damage, 16% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 8% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Area is inhabited by Spiders, 6 Chaos Orbs: Area is inhabited by Spiders.


Zana Level 4:

    Monster Life II, 2 Chaos Orbs: 30-39% more Monster Life, 16% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 8% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Additional Rogue Exiles, 3 Chaos Orbs: Area is inhabited by 2 additional Rogue Exiles, 15% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 8% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.


Zana Level 5:

    Monster Damage II, 2 Chaos Orbs: 20-24% increased Monster Damage, 18% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 9% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Area is inhabited by Blackguards, 6 Chaos Orbs: Area is inhabited by the Blackguard, 10% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 5% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.


Zana Level 6:

    Monster Life III, 2 Chaos Orbs: 40-49% more Monster Life, 18% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 9% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Monsters from Beyond, 3 Chaos Orbs: Slaying Enemies close together can attract Monsters from Beyond, 12% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 6% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.


Zana Level 7:

    Monster Damage III, 2 Chaos Orbs: 25-30% increased Monster Damage, 20% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 10% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Area is inhabited by Bandits, 6 Chaos Orbs: Area is inhabited by Bandits.


Zana Level 8:

    Monster Life IV, 2 Chaos Orbs: 50-59% more Monster Life, 22% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 11% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Monster Damage IV, 2 Chaos Orbs: 31-35% increased Monster Damage, 24% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 12% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.
    Twinned Unique Bosses, 3 Chaos Orbs: Area contains two Unique Bosses, 12% increased Quantity of Items found in this Map, 6% increased Rarity of Items found in this Map.


One-time Passive Skill Reset:

    Due to balance changes, every existing character has been granted an optional full passive skill reset.
    This process will also reset your allocated Ascendancy points.
    To perform this operation, click the "Reset all Passives" button on the passive skill screen. Note that you must use this before allocating or refunding any other points otherwise the option will go away.


Bug Fixes

    Fixed some issues with walkability being blocked in the Forge of the Phoenix map.
    Fixed a bug where after a league merge, it was possible to get into a bad state where some Shaper's Orbs could never drop
    Fixed a bug where the the lighting environment could be incorrect after completing a Zana mission inside another map.
    Fixed a bug where Ball Lighting would sometimes play its audio a second time before it expires.
    Fixed further issues with fog of war visibility on the Atlas screen.
    Fixed a bug with the Ancient Ruins where inaccessible monsters could spawn, occasionally making certain Master missions impossible.
    Fixed a bug where Labyrinth/Trial traps would do too much damage to you if your energy shield was protecting your mana instead of your life.
    Phase Run now cancels properly if a channelling skill renews
    Fixed an issue where Shield Charge had two separate damage modifiers at gem level 2 and above, which displayed as "Deals 50% base damage, Deals 101.2% of base damage". These have been combined into one modifier.
    Fixed a bug where the Shaper audio was swapped in the Phoenix and Minotaur maps.
    Removed the invulnerability buff applied to Izaro when he is waiting to flee from his arena. This fixes an issue where Izaro would attack, but couldn't be attacked back, preventing Life Leech.
    Monsters holding a Remnant of Corruption now correctly indicate that they cannot have life leeched from them.


Recently added or changed Patch Notes
Skill Balance Changes

    Shock Nova damage has been increased by 33% at level 1, scaling up to 49% increased damage by level 20. The additional damage dealt by the Shock Nova ring has been reduced from 50% of base damage down to 20% of base damage.
    Ice Nova damage has been increased by 3% at level 1, scaling up to 24% increased damage by level 20.
    Ice Shot now has 60% Physical to Cold conversion (previously 40%)
    Frost Blades now has 60% Physical to Cold conversion (previously 40%)


Bug Fixes

    Maraketh Two Handed Axes now have 50% increased local Critical Chance, up from 25%/25%/40% on Talon Axe, Dagger Axe and Fleshripper


Area of Effect Balance Changes
Skills which used to gain increased area of effect radius as they levelled no longer do. Instead, the following skills gain additional base radius at certain intervals:

    Vaal Reave gains 1 additional unit of radius every 5 levels.


Other Unique Item Changes:
The following changes cannot be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb:

    Lochtonial Caress: No longer has flat added armour. Now has 20-30 to Maximum Life. Now has the property 10% chance to gain a frenzy, power or endurance charge on kill. (Note: we previously incorrectly stated it no longer had reduced mana)


League-Specific Unique Item Changes:

    The Gull: Now grants skill Create Lesser Shrine, which triggers when you kill an enemy. Now has 30-40% Cold Resistance. Now has 60-80 Maximum Life. Now has 40-65 Maximum Energy Shield. No longer has Life and Energy Shield gained on kill. No longer has Maximum Mana.


Skill Balance Changes

    Raised Zombies now have a melee attack range of 9 on their basic attack, up from 4. Their slam ability base radius has been increased to 18 units (from 10), deals 20% more damage, and will be used more readily. ( Note: we previously incorrectly stated they had a 25% larger slam radius, and did not mention any damage increase.)

Path of Exile 3.0.0 - The Fall of Oriath

Major New Content and Features:

    Added Acts Five through Ten.
    Removed the Cruel and Merciless difficulty levels. Path of Exile is now a single ten-act playthrough.
    Added a new Character Selection Screen.
    Added a new feature - the Pantheon system: Best the ancient gods of Wraeclast in battle and you can claim a portion of their power. There are four Major god powers and seven Minor god powers to be claimed in The Fall of Oriath. You can have one Major and one Minor power active at a time, and can return to any town or hideout to change which powers are active at no cost. Later, each power can be upgraded by placing a Divine Vessel in your map device before you defeat certain map bosses.
    Added a new feature - the Help panel: As you play Path of Exile, you can unlock Help panel pages. These can be viewed by clicking on a new Help button next to the Shop button. Each panel is designed to introduce you to an aspect of Path of Exile's gameplay, and give you the tools you need to explore the features yourself.
    Significantly updated the tutorial. It is integrated with the new Help system.
    The game HUD has been updated to the Eclipse theme used throughout The Fall of Oriath.
    Added 8 Vaal Side Areas with new bosses, found through areas in Oriath.
    Added a Passive Skill Tree planning system.
    Introduced new technology for rendering water throughout the game.


New Skill Gems:

    Added a new Intelligence Skill Gem - Dark Pact: Sacrifice a portion of your skeleton minion's life to deal chaos damage in an area around it. This effect will chain to your other nearby skeletons. If you control no skeletons in the targeted area, you will sacrifice a portion of your own life and deal greater chaos damage in a larger area.
    Added a new Intelligence Skill Gem - Storm Burst: Channel to unleash a stream of projectiles that deal lightning damage and always pierce through enemies. When you stop channeling, the projectiles explode, dealing significant damage in an area around them. Additional projectiles are added in sequence.
    Added a new Dexterity Skill Gem - Charged Dash: Channel to project a mirage forward in the direction you're facing. Release to teleport towards the mirage and deal area of effect damage multiple times along the way. The area of effect grows based on the distance you travel, and the number of effects increase with faster attack time.


New Support Gems:

    Added a new Strength/Intelligence Support Gem - Ignite Proliferation Support: Causes Ignites from supported skills to also affect other nearby enemies.
    Added a new Strength Support Gem - Chance to Bleed Support: Gives your skills a chance to inflict Bleeding.
    Added a new Dexterity Support Gem - Lesser Poison Support: Gives your skills a chance to inflict Poison.
    Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Support Gem - Deadly Ailments Support: Causes ailments from supported skills to deal more damage, but causes the skills themselves to deal less.
    Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Support Gem - Decay Support: Causes supported skills to also deal chaos damage over time.
    Added a new Intelligence Support Gem - Efficacy Support: Causes supported spells to deal more damage and last longer.
    Added a new Dexterity Support Gem - Vile Toxins Support: Causes you to deal more damage to poisoned enemies, and more damage with your poison.
    Added a new Strength Support Gem - Maim Support: Gives your attacks a chance to Maim on hit, slowing the enemy's movement.
    Added a new Strength/Intelligence Support Gem - Immolate Support: Grants added fire damage against enemies that are burning.
    Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Support Gem - Unbound Ailments Support: Amplifies the effect and duration of ailments from supported skills.
    Added a new Strength Support Gem - Brutality Support: Causes you to deal significantly more physical damage, but no other types of damage.
    Added a new Strength Support Gem - Ruthless Support: Makes every third skill deal significantly more damage, and stun for longer.
    Added a new Strength/Dexterity Support Gem - Onslaught Support: Gives a chance to gain Onslaught on kill, causing you to have increased movement, attack and cast speed.
    Added a new Intelligence Support Gem - Arcane Surge Support: Supported spells have a chance to grant a buff which gives you more spell damage, cast speed, and grants some mana regeneration.


New Unique Items:

    We've added 24 new Unique Items to Path of Exile:
    9 items created by our designers.
    5 items designed by Supporters.
    6 items for the Harbinger challenge league.
    4 items for the Pale Council encounter.


Minor New Content and Features:

    Added a new vendor recipe.
    Added 36 new Achievements.
    You can now connect to a gateway in Japan to play Path of Exile.
    The game client now plays the animated Grinding Gear Games logo on startup while loading. It can be skipped once the minimum amount of data is loaded.
    Made further improvements to loading speed, memory usage and client performance.
    Monsters now use a new method for pathfinding which has less of an impact on performance.
    Added support for the camera zooming out automatically at specific events throughout Path of Exile's story.
    In item filters, you can now use PlayAlertSoundPositional rather than PlayAlertSound to play a positional version (the sound comes from where the item dropped).
    A sound is now played when you use a Cartographer's Seal on a map.
    Added a warning message when attempting to put a Labyrinth Enchantment on an item that already has an implicit mod (as it will overwrite that mod).
    Added 9 non-specific currency slots on the Currency Stash Tab (bringing the total from 5 to 14).
    The Divination Card Stash Tab now loads the card art in the background, to prevent a freeze when opening it.
    Added a master audio volume slider.
    Item filters can now play a much larger array of sounds when items drop.
    Toast notifications are now shown for Atlas Map completion and Atlas Bonus Objective completion.
    The loading screen now displays rotating gears.
    Added 3D art for the following unique items: Martyr of Innocence, Arakaali's Fang, Advancing Fortress, Allure, Essentia Sanguis, Rive, Mark of the Doubting Knight, The Consuming Dark, Light of Lunaris, Shade of Solaris, Duskdawn, Esh's Mirror, Esh's Visage, Cameria's Maul, Ahn's Heritage, Song of the Sirens, Alternate Art Carcass Jack
    Onslaught now plays an effect on the affected player.
    You can now queue up a 'detonate' action for Mines while they are arming to detonate them as soon as they have finished arming.
    The Hellions in Prisoner's Gate have come down with an irreversible case of Scary Face.
    The game client now flashes if you receive a whisper message while it is minimised.
    Added support for dynamic resolution scaling. With this toggled on, the game attempts to maintain the specified target framerate by lowering the displayed resolution during particularly performance-heavy moments. This can be adjusted in the Graphics tab of the Options menu.
    You are now warned before leaving the Labyrinth without using the Altar of Ascendancy.
    The corner minimap and overlay map has been greatly improved. The corner minimap is now shown by default for new players.
    Added a warning before exporting a Grandmaster, to prevent accidental submissions.
    Environmental changes (such as those from moving the Vaal Seal and slaying the Vaal Oversoul) now occcur over a few seconds, rather than instantaneously.
    The Dying Exile's voice acting has been rerecorded. Pretty short gig.
    Nessa's model has been updated and her voice acting rerecorded.
    Tarkleigh's model has been updated.
    Piety's dialogue in Upper Prison now changes based on the player's character (originally this was restricted to Cruel and Merciless).
    Your pets now occasionally play their other animations while they are idle.
    Added a new keyword -- Far Shot: Projectile Attacks gain Damage as they travel farther, dealing up to 30% more Damage to targets.
    Lore glyphs now continue to play across area transitions.
    Added a feature to the Challenges tab which allows you to hide challenges you have already completed.
    The Social panel now displays a different icon for your friends depending on whether they are in Part I (Acts 1-5), Part II (Acts 6-10) or Maps.
    Added a new Zana quest to help guide players into the Atlas.
    DirectX11 is now the default graphics option. This can be changed in the Options menu.
    Added a Lighting Quality option to the Graphics menu.
    The Marauder's act of self-flagellation on the character creation screen is now audible.
    The Stacked Deck currency item can now drop from monsters.
    Devourer holes now fade away after some time.
    You are no longer prompted to vote on whether to help or kill Oak, Kraityn and Alira if you are not in their arenas.
    The Stun visual effect now plays on stuns that last for 0.7 seconds or longer.
    The left and right mouse buttons are no longer referred to as 'Left Mouse' and 'Right Mouse', and are now 'Left-click' and 'Right-click'.
    Items that provide life regeneration based on a percentage of maximum life that also have a range now display the percentage value to two decimal places.
    All sources of Phasing now correctly change the character's appearance.
    The unique threshold jewel Fight for Survival's description has been updated. The functionality remains unchanged.
    The description on Weylam's War Chest has been updated. The functionality remains unchanged.
    Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.


The Harbinger Challenge League:
Challenge leagues are a great opportunity for a fresh start in a new economy. All of your old characters and items are still present in the Standard and Hardcore leagues, but you're encouraged to join the new leagues, complete challenges and demonstrate your mastery of Path of Exile!

    With 3.0.0, there are Standard and Hardcore variations of the Harbinger challenge league available, as well as solo self-found variants of both. They have the same core mechanics and items.
    In the Harbinger challenge league, mysterious Harbingers have appeared throughout Oriath and Wraeclast. These Harbingers can create and command monsters from the area, and empower them with their own abilities.
    Successfully defeating a Harbinger earns you currency shards of both existing currency types and new currency types that have never been seen before.
    One of these currency types may lead you to the source of the Harbinger incursion. If you can halt their arrival, you'll find pieces of shattered unique items that can be arranged to form powerful Harbinger-summoning uniques.
    The new challenge leagues include a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Harbinger Glowing Eyes Effect. At 24, you will receive the Harbinger Crown Effect. When you complete your 36th challenge, you will receive the Harbinger Character Effect. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.
    From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Harbinger Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Harbinger challenges you completed during the league.


Existing Characters and the New Content:

    Characters that had previously completed The Ribbon Spool in Merciless difficulty will have automatically completed all mandatory quests in The Fall of Oriath, and have immediate access to maps. These characters will not have any of the quest rewards from the mandatory quests in Acts 5 through 10, but can receive them by talking to the questgivers. No side quests will be automatically completed, and existing characters will have to receive and complete these quests to obtain the quest rewards.
    Any characters that had completed Act 4 in Normal but had not completed The Ribbon Spool in Merciless have been returned to the end of Act 4.
    All characters that had completed the Deal with the Bandits quest in Act 2 Normal now have the Eramir reward of 2 passive skill points. All bandit rewards from Cruel and Merciless no longer exist. Players who want to change their bandit reward choice have a one-time-only option to change it by talking to Eramir and taking one of his books. These books are character-locked, so if you decide later that you don't want to change your choice, you can get rid of the book by typing /destroy. This does not give you another opportunity to choose a bandit reward, so choose carefully!
    All Prophecies, Hideouts, Forsaken Masters and Labyrinth trials have been maintained and work as normal.


Rebalance around Removal of Difficulty Levels:

    The Cruel and Merciless resistance penalties have been moved to the completion of Act 5 and the completion of Act 10 respectively. Once either act has been completed, these penalties affect your character in all game areas.
    Vaal skill soul costs are increased by 50% of their base soul cost upon completion of Act 5, and increased by a total of 100% of their base soul cost upon completion of Act 10. Like the resistance penalties, these costs affect your character in all game areas.
    There is a 5% experience penalty for deaths in Acts 6 through 10, level 5 and 6 Forsaken Master mission areas, and the Cruel and Merciless Labyrinths. There is a 10% experience penalty for deaths in areas reached through the Map device, level 7 and 8 Forsaken Master mission areas, and the Endgame Labyrinth. These replace the old Cruel and Merciless experience penalties, and are only active in those specific areas. Dying in any Act 5 area (or lower) after completion of Act 5 (or higher) will not incur an experience penalty.
    The rewards from the quest Deal with the Bandits have been reworked. The rewards from the Cruel and Merciless versions of this quest have been removed. Depending on your choice, you now receive the following:
    Helping Oak grants: 1% of Life Regenerated per second, 2% additional Physical Damage Reduction, 20% increased Physical Damage.
    Helping Alira grants: 5 Mana Regenerated per second, +20% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier, +15% to all Elemental Resistances.
    Helping Kraityn grants: 6% increased Attack and Cast Speed, 3% chance to Dodge Attacks, 6% increased Movement Speed.
    Eramir grants 2 Passive Skill Points if you decide to kill all three.
    Access to The Lord's Labyrinth has been reworked. Once unlocked, each Labyrinth can be accessed from the Aspirants' Plaza. Each of the four Labyrinths are named after the old difficulties: The Normal Labyrinth, the Cruel Labyrinth, the Merciless Labyrinth and the Endgame Labyrinth. The Cruel and Merciless Labyrinths now each require the completion of three trials, as well as the earlier Labyrinths. Access to the Endgame Labyrinth now requires completion of the three earlier Labyrinths.
    Many Prophecies have been reworked for compatibility in Acts 5 and upwards. Prophecies are no longer bound to a specific difficulty and can be triggered and completed in any relevant area. Some Prophecies, such as several of the Pale Council chain steps, now take place in new locations.
    The Ancient Rivalries chain can no longer be obtained from Navali. Existing chains can still be completed. The Hinekora's Sight unique amulet now has a small chance to drop from any enemy spawned by a Prophecy.
    The Act 3 quest Piety's Pets now rewards one passive skill point instead of two. The second passive point has been moved to a later quest.
    Sarn's underground sewers have been extended and, following incidents of theft and vandalism, the exit into the Warehouse district has been permanently sealed.
    The layout of The Marketplace and Catacombs in Act 3 have been modified to fit the new Warehouses-less structure.
    The Achievements Breaking Free, Ascension, Vengeance have been renamed to Challenger, Leader and Lord, and are no longer gained by completing the story on various difficulties. Instead, these achievements are obtained by completing the first three Labyrinths.
    The Achievements Fearless, Dauntless and Indomitable are no longer gained by completing the story on various difficulties in Hardcore. Instead, these achievements are obtained by completing the first three Labyrinths on Hardcore.
    The Achievement End of the Nightmare no longer requires that you kill Malachai, the Nightmare with each class, and instead just require that you kill Malachai, the Nightmare once.
    The Achievements All Ears, No Stone Unturned, Locomancer and No Loose Ends have been updated to work with the new act content.
    The Achievement Cut Throat can now be earned by killing another player anywhere, not just in a Cut Throat race.


Labyrinth Balance

    Access to the Labyrinth has been changed. To access the Labyrinth the first time, you must complete the ordinary 6 prerequisite trials.
    To access the Cruel Labyrinth, you must complete the Normal Labyrinth and 3 prerequisite trials, and be at least level 40.
    To access the Merciless Labyrinth, you must complete the Cruel Labyrinth and another 3 prerequisite trials, and be at least level 50.
    Access to the Endgame Labyrinth requires that you complete the Merciless Labyrinth and the 6 Map trials, and be at least level 60.
    All Labyrinths are now accessed via the Aspirants' Plaza. A new user interface allows you to select which Labyrinth you wish to enter. This UI shows which trials you have and have not completed.
    Added a waypoint to the Aspirants' Plaza which can be used to access the Plaza from any other waypoint.
    Simplified and shortened the layout of the Normal and Cruel Labyrinths.
    Rewards throughout all versions of the Labyrinth have been reworked and should be more rewarding for the time invested.
    Reading the Labyrinth Map will reveal what the next chamber accessed from the nearby door contains, as opposed to just the current chamber.
    Killing Izaro now immediately disables the traps in his room.
    Added new darkshrine effects designed specifically for the Labyrinth, all of which positively affect the run in some way. All of the previous darkshrine effects have been disabled.
    Secret Passages and Argus can now only be found in the Merciless and Endgame Labyrinths.
    Additional Treasure Keys can be found in special chests throughout the Labyrinth. There are two keys guaranteed to appear in every Labyrinth run.
    Updated the description on the Offering to the Goddess to reflect that it is now used in the Aspirants' Plaza.


Many Izaro fight variations have been rebalanced or moved to later Labyrinth difficulties:

    Conduits now provide 50% less chance to freeze, shock and ignite to Izaro in the Normal Labyrinth, and 33% less in the Cruel and Merciless Labyrinths. The Endgame Labyrinth Conduit balance is unchanged.
    Gargoyles now provide 33% less of a benefit to Izaro in the Normal, Cruel and Merciless Labyrinths. The Endgame Labyrinth Gargoyle balance is unchanged.
    The Curse Fonts can no longer appear in the Normal Labyrinth and no longer apply a curse when slain in the Cruel Labyrinth. They are also less effective in the Cruel and Merciless Labyrinths. The Endgame Labyrinth Font balance is unchanged.
    The Elemental Golems can no longer appear in the Normal Labyrinth, provide 50% less added damage in the Cruel Labyrinth, and 33% less added damage in the Merciless Labyrinth. The Endgame Labyrinth Elemental Golem balance is unchanged.
    The Charge Disruptors can no longer appear in the Normal or Cruel Labyrinths. During this variant, Izaro now has a max charge count of 10, down from 15.
    Removed the traps from Izaro's final room during the Normal Labyrinth.


Character Balance

    Power Charges now grant 40% increased Critical Strike Chance per Charge (down from 50%).
    Soul Eater will no longer grant reduced physical damage taken or elemental resistances for players who have it. Monsters and minions will still benefit from both reduced physical damage taken and elemental resistances per eaten soul.
    The Silence curse now only affects the player's ability to cast spells and use warcries, and will not affect the ability for the player's totems to use those skills.
    Chill and Shock are now handled differently:
    Chill no longer slows enemies by a fixed amount for a variable duration. Now, Chill will slow enemies for a duration of 2 seconds by an amount based on the Cold damage dealt to the enemy. A purely Cold hit which removes 10% of an enemy's life will slow that enemy by 30% for 2 seconds, scaling linearly down to 0% at no Cold damage dealt.
    Similarly, Shock no longer increases the damage taken by enemies by a fixed amount for a variable duration. Now, Shock will apply to enemies for a duration of 2 seconds and increase the amount of damage the shocked enemy takes based on the Lightning damage dealt to the enemy. A purely Lightning hit which removes 10% of an enemy's life will increase the damage that enemy takes by 50% for 2 seconds, scaling linearly down to 0% at no Lightning damage dealt. Shock is still only applied by critical strikes or based on your chance to shock.
    Increased Effect of Chill and Increased Effect of Shock will increase the amount that each ailment affects whatever they are afflicting, up to their respective caps. In other words, a player with 100% Increased Effect of Chill will only have to remove 5% of a monster's life with Cold damage to slow them by the maximum 30%. Increasing the effect of Chill further will not slow the monster more, it will just make it easier to reach that 30% cap. The same is true if the player were to deal more cold damage.
    Chilled ground has a fixed slowing effect of 10%.
    Shocking ground increases damage taken by a fixed amount of 20%.
    Other non-hit sources of Shock and Chill, unless otherwise specified in the debuff, will increase damage taken by 20% and slow by 10% respectively.


These changes affect the following sources of Chill:

    Arctic Armour: Now slows attackers by 30% for 0.6 seconds.
    Essence of Horror on a Shield: Now slows nearby enemies by 10% for 1 second on block.
    Dyadus: Now slows enemies by 10% on hits with the weapon while the weapon is in the offhand.
    Chilled ground created by players: Now slows enemies by 10%.


These changes affect the following sources of Shock

    Vessel of Vinktar: The Shock aura now increases damage taken by 10%, but the Shock on the player still increases damage taken by 50%.
    Guardian of the Minotaur: Lightning beams increase damage taken by 50%.
    Malachai's Loop: 20% increased damage taken when shocked from reaching maximum power charges.
    Piety's beam during the Malachai encounter: No change during Act 4. Increases damage taken by 20% while standing in the beam in the map variant (Eater of Souls).
    All shocking ground from players and monsters: Now increases damage taken by 20%.
    Vaal Lightning Trap: Shocking ground now increases damage taken by 15%.


Damage Over Time Rework:

    Damage over Time has been reworked from the ground up, and 'double dipping' is now a thing of the past. To somewhat compensate for the loss of damage from the removal of 'double dipping', the damage of player Ignites, Poisons, and Bleeding has been greatly increased. Increases to these effects on the passive tree have been boosted as well, and additional Poison and Bleeding bonuses have been added to some weapon clusters, on top of their existing stats.
    Bleeding is also being changed for players so that it does more damage while the target is stationary, making it a more versatile source of damage. Previously it dealt only one sixth its damage while the target was stationary, but now deals half damage instead. The ratio will remain unchanged for Bleeding caused by monsters, so you will still be able to stand still to mitigate the majority of monster Bleeding damage, but monsters you inflict Bleeding on won't be so lucky.
    Skills calculate their Ignite, Poison or Bleed values as a separate damage value, taken straight from the base and added damage of the skill. This gives skills that deal fire damage a minimum and maximum Ignite Damage per Second value that is rolled on Ignites that the skill causes. Poison, Bleed and Ignite damage values are based on the base damage of the skill, and then affected by appropriate damage modifiers. Some damage modifiers affect both the hit and the Ignite, Poison or Bleed, while some only affect one.
    Bleeding and Poison are now both considered 'Ailments'. This means their durations are only affected by increased bleeding/poison duration modifiers, and the new ailment duration modifier (they are not elemental ailments, so are not affected by the existing modifier to elemental ailments).
    We now only refer to 'Ailments' rather than the longer 'Status Ailments'. The pre-existing 'Elemental Status Ailments' are now referred to as 'Elemental Ailments', and cases where 'Elemental' was left off because there were previously no non-elemental ailments have been corrected.
    There are now separate reminder texts for Elemental Ailments and for Ailments.
    Puncture and Viper Strike now have a special property of treating Bleeding and Poison respectively as Skill Effects, allowing more bonuses to their duration on top of modifiers to Ailment Duration.
    The Character screen now displays values for Ignite, Bleeding and Poison damage per second for applicable skills.
    Like previously, Bleeding, Poison and Ignite can't be inflicted if the hit contains no damage of an applicable type.
    One consequence of this change is that incoming damage over time now only checks mitigation once (as opposed to once on the hit and once on the damage over time). This means that some enemies, such as those that can Ignite players, may deal more damage than they were previously.
    The 'Elemental Damage with Weapons' stats that were found on the passive tree, items, and the Weapon Elemental Damage support have been replaced with 'Elemental Damage with Attack Skills'.
    This has two notable effects:
    These new stats now modify all of the damage dealt by Attack Skills, not just the attack damage. This means that Damage Over Time dealt by an attack skill, such as Ignite and Secondary Damage (including the explosion from Infernal Blow), will be affected as well. We've made this change to create a natural increase in Ignite damage for characters investing in Elemental Attacks, as a benefit for fire characters.
    These stats now apply to Unarmed attacks. This was a necessary result of the change, but it also opens up new avenues for elemental unarmed attack builds.


Skill Balance

    Traps and Mines are now invulnerable while they are arming and invulnerable while they are casting their skill. This means a trap thrown directly onto a monster who will detonate it cannot be destroyed before it detonates.
    All minions other than Raging Spirits deal more damage at lower levels. This damage bonus levels out to no change at minion level 70 for minions other than Raised Zombies and Summoned Skeletons. (Minion level is based on the level requirement of their gem).
    Summoned Raging Spirits now deal approximately 15% less damage at all levels.
    Summon Skeletons has been renamed Summon Skeleton, and has been reworked. Many of the passives and items that interact with it have been rebalanced. Summon Skeleton now has a base cast time of 0.5 seconds, and the cost has been reduced by approximately 60% at all levels. It now summons a single skeleton per cast and has a base limit of 5 summoned skeletons.
    The Summoned Skeleton Warrior minion's attack time has been reduced to 0.8 seconds, and its base damage has been increased by approximately 66%. Summoned Skeleton Mage minion's cast time has been reduced to 1.2 seconds.
    Summoned Skeleton Mages now deal 50% more damage at gem level 20, and significantly more damage at earlier gem levels. Their behaviour has been tweaked and they will no longer flee.
    Labyrinth helmet enchantments for Summon Skeleton now grant a 20/40% chance to summon an additional Skeleton minion. This applies to existing Labyrinth enchantments.
    Raised Zombies have had their damage increased, up to 45% more damage at level 20 than previously.
    Auras and Curses now gain base radius as they level up, as opposed to increased area of effect.
    Kinetic Blast can no longer deal explosion damage to the target it hit with its initial projectiles. This is unlikely to affect any previously existing encounters except in niche cases, and will primarily affect fights with very large entities introduced in this patch.
    Flameblast, Incinerate and Blade Flurry have had their scaling 'more damage' bonuses changed to 'more damage with hits and ailments', meaning they will still apply to the hit and ailments it causes, but not to on-hit created damage over time effects like Decay.
    Blade Vortex had its 'more spell damage' scaling modifier changed to 'more damage with hits for each blade', and separately 'more damage with ailments for each blade'.
    Flameblast now grants 55% more ailment damage and 110% more spell damage per stage.
    Fire Nova Mine's damage multiplier is now restricted to hits and ailments.
    Cyclone now gains additional Melee range as it levels, up to +3 to Melee range at gem level 20. Cyclone's additional melee range now applies to unarmed attacks. Cyclone now also uses pathfinding to determine where the skill will take the player (as opposed to moving in a direct line). Cyclone's description has been updated.
    Herald of Ash, Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder now each have the Herald gem tag.
    Herald of Ash's secondary effect no longer ignites. Instead, enemies near slain enemies are burned based on the overkill damage. The description on Herald of Ash has been updated to properly reflect what it does.
    Vortex now deals 40% more damage when cast on a Frostbolt.
    Ice Nova now deals 40% more damage when cast on a Frostbolt.
    Caustic Arrow's damage over time grows more quickly as it levels, up to 765 base Chaos damage per second at gem level 20 (up from 550.3). It is also now modified by projectile damage modifiers.
    Contagion deals 10% more damage at level 1, up to 25% more damage at gem level 20, and now has a 0.6 second cast time, down from 0.85 seconds. Contagion now gains +1 base area of effect radius every 5 levels.
    Essence Drain deals 43% more damage at gem level 20, scaling upwards at higher levels.
    Blight deals 25% more damage at gem level 20.
    Righteous Fire now deals 20% less damage to enemies at all levels. You now deal 20% more spell damage while Righteous Fire is active with a level 1 Righteous Fire gem (down from 40% more spell damage), up to 39% more spell damage at gem level 20 (down from 58% more spell damage).
    Fire Trap's damage over time grows more quickly as it levels, up to 701.2 base Fire damage per second at gem level 20 (up from 518.8).
    Scorching Ray's damage has been reduced by 15% at level 1, down to 25% less damage at level 20. Scorching Ray now does not lock onto targets if you are holding your standing-attack key.
    Temporal Chains is no longer affected by its own duration-modifying stat. The duration has been modified to account for this change.
    Discipline now grants less Energy Shield from gem level 2 onwards. At level 2, Discipline grants 69 additional Energy Shield (down from 70). At gem level 20, Discipline grants 217 additional Energy Shield (down from 303). Discipline now also grants 30% increased Energy Shield Recharge Rate.
    Glacial Cascade's damage has been increased by approximately 33% at all levels. Glacial Cascade now deals entirely base physical damage, and has 60% of its base damage converted to Cold. The base range of Glacial Cascade has been reduced to 12 from 14. Glacial Cascade now gains +1 range every 10 gem levels. At level 1 of the gem, Glacial Cascade is 29% shorter in length.
    The movement speed cap on players' Raised Spectres has been doubled.
    Summoned totems have 45% less life and take 45% less damage. This will impact life leeched from attacking enemy totems and the damage dealt by Righteous Fire totems.
    Projectile Weakness now causes projectiles to pierce cursed enemies (up from 50% chance).
    Shield Charge now specifically gains more damage for hits as it travels, and not for any damage over time.
    Bladefall's width is now correctly modified by increases to area of effect. Its width has been reduced slightly to compensate.
    Lightning Strike now gains 1% increased Lightning damage per 1% quality, instead of 2% chance of projectiles piercing per 1% quality.
    Puncture's description has been updated. Puncture now applies Bleeding for 8 seconds.
    Viper Strike's base damage has been reduced to 115% at gem level 1, from 130%, up to 141.6% at gem level 20 (down from 179.4% at level 20). Viper Strike has a 60% chance to poison on hit (down from 100%) and Viper Strike's poison now has a base duration of 4 seconds (from 8).
    Static Strike now has 10% Chance to Shock at all levels, and gains 1% increased Shock Effect per gem level.
    Shock Nova now has 20% increased Shock Effect at gem level 1, gaining 2% per gem level.
    Ice Spear now has 10% increased Chill Effect at gem level 1, gaining 1% per gem level.
    Glacial Hammer now has 10% increased Chill Effect at gem level 1, gaining 1% per gem level. (This is a buff)
    Cold Snap now has 20% increased Chill Effect at gem level 1, gaining 1% per gem level.
    Storm Call now has 10% increased Shock Effect at gem level 1, gaining 1% per gem level.
    Arc now has 10% increased Shock Effect at gem level 1, gaining 1% per gem level.
    The description on Summon Stone Golem has been updated to reflect that it may not always taunt.
    Vaal skills can no longer be supported by Spell Echo or Multistrike.
    Vaal Rain of Arrows now gains base radius as it levels up, up to +4 to base radius at gem level 20.
    Vaal Ground Slam now gains base radius as it levels up, up to +6 to base radius at gem level 20.


Support Gem Balance

    Added descriptions to all Support Gems to clarify what can and cannot be supported by each gem.
    Added Cold Support and Added Lightning Support have been buffed, bringing them on par with the Added Chaos support gem. Added Cold Support now does 35.1% more damage at gem level 20. Added Lightning Support now does 17.5% more damage at gem level 20.
    Melee Damage on Full Life Support has been renamed Damage on Full Life Support. At gem level 1 it now grants 30% more Damage while on Full Life for supported Attack skills. It is notably no longer restricted to melee attacks or physical damage specifically. Damage on Full Life Support now grants 1% increased Damage per 1% Quality (was 1% increased Melee Damage per 1% Quality). It now has the Attack tag, but no longer has the Melee tag.
    Melee Physical Damage Support now also grants 30% more Damage with Bleeding and Poison caused by Melee hits at gem level 1.
    Physical Projectile Attack Damage Support now also grants 30% more Damage with Bleeding and Poison caused by Projectile hits. It now has the Attack tag.
    Poison Support now grants a 60% chance to Poison on Hit (down from 100%).
    Increased Burning Damage Support has been renamed Burning Damage Support. It now provides 35% more Burning Damage at gem level 1, up to 54% more Burning Damage at gem level 20.
    Trap Support now deals 20% more Trap Damage at gem level 1, rather than more Trap damage to hits, up to 39% more Trap Damage at gem level 20.
    Remote Mine Support now deals 30% more Mine damage at gem level 1, rather than more Mine damage to hits, up to 49% more Mine damage at gem level 20.
    Weapon Elemental Damage Support has been renamed Elemental Damage with Attacks Support. It has been reduced in power at all levels, from 40% to 35% at gem level 1, up to 54% more Elemental Damage with Attack skills at gem level 20.
    Rapid Decay Support has been renamed Swift Affliction Support. In addition to other sources of Damage over Time, it now affects damaging Ailments inflicted by supported skills, and reduces their duration. It now grants 25% more Damage over Time for supported skills at gem level 1 (up from 20%) and 44% more Damage over time at gem level 20 (up from 39%).
    Innervate Support has been reworked. It now grants 20% chance to shock at all levels (up from 15). At level 1 of the gem, it grants 1-25 added Lightning damage to supported skills, up to 11-218 added Lightning damage at level 20, and grants Innervation for 4 seconds on slaying a shocked enemy with a supported skill. At level 1, the Innervation buff grants 1 to 17 added Lightning damage for 4 seconds, up to 8-145 added Lightning damage at level 20. Innervate now has a 130% Mana Cost multiplier.
    Ice Bite Support has also been reworked. It now grants 15% chance to freeze at all levels. and a 50% chance to gain a Frenzy charge on slaying a frozen enemy. At gem level 1, it now grants 8 to 12 added cold damage, up to 69-103 added cold damage at gem level 20. It also grants 2 to 3 added cold damage per Frenzy charge at gem level 1, up to 15 to 23 added Cold damage per Frenzy Charge at gem level 20.
    Hypothermia now grants 20% increased Chill Effect at all levels.
    Chain Support's damage penalty now only applies to hits.
    Chance to Ignite now grants 10% more Fire Damage at gem level 1, up to 29% more Fire Damage at gem level 20.


Pierce Rework

    Pierce has been reworked. Items and skills that used to use or provide pierce chance now instead use or provide a number of pierces. Once a projectile has reached its pierce limit, it will not pierce further.
    The following skills have changed as a result of the Pierce rework:
    Shrapnel Shot pierces 4 targets at level 1, up to 7 at level 20.
    Siege Ballista pierces 6 targets at level 1, up to 9 at level 20.
    Pierce Support now provides +2 Pierces at level 1, up to +4 Pierces at level 20.
    The following items have had their Pierce mods replaced:
    Infractem now grants Always Pierce with Arrows.
    Drillneck now grants Arrows that Pierce deal 50% increased Damage.
    Lioneye's Vision now grants Always Be Pierced.
    Voidwalker now grants +5 Pierces while Phasing.
    Poacher's Aim now grants +1 Pierce.
    Penetrating Arrow Quiver now grants +1 Pierce.
    Horned Talisman's implicit now grants +2 to +3 Pierces.
    Screaming, Shrieking and Deafening Essences of Misery now grant +1, +1, and +2 Pierces respectively. Existing Shrieking Essence of Misery mods that specifically had a 20% chance to pierce will become +2 Pierces.
    The helmet Labyrinth enchantments for Lightning Trap Pierce Chance now grant +2 Pierces from the Merciless Labyrinth, and +3 Pierces from the Endgame Labyrinth.
    The helmet Labyrinth enchantments for Lightning Strike Pierce Chance now grant +2 Pierces from the Merciless Labyrinth, and +3 Pierces from the Endgame Labyrinth.
    The helmet Labyrinth enchantments for Glacial Cascade now grant 30% and 40% Physical to Cold Conversion.
    The unique jewel Omen on the Winds now grants +5 Pierces when there is at least 40 Dexterity in Radius.
    Passive skills that previously provided Chance to Pierce now grant +1 or +2 Pierces.
    The Labyrinth enchantments Word/Edict/Decree/Commandment of Fury pierce 2, 3, 4 and 5 targets respectively.


Item Balance

    As part of the removal of Cruel and Merciless difficulties, many divination card locations and weightings have been adjusted.
    Energy Shield as a defensive mechanic has undergone a review and, generally speaking, all sources of Energy Shield on items have been reduced by approximately 20%.
    Elreon's crafted Increased Maximum Energy Shield mod can now only be crafted onto Amulets. The cost has been changed to 8 Chaos orbs (from 1 Exalted orb).
    All local Energy Shield modifiers on items, as well as the base Energy Shield of items, have been reduced at higher levels. Very low-level items will see a slight increase or no change, scaling up to a 33% reduction at the highest tier of modifiers.
    Because of Armour/Energy Shield and Evasion/Energy Shield equipment, we've had to apply this change to the local percentage modifiers on all other armour types as well. To compensate, all inherent values of base Armour and Evasion Rating on equipment are now greater at higher item levels.
    The defences granted by all body armour has been increased at higher levels by 20%.
    These changes will not apply to existing modifiers but will apply to existing base types. As a consequence, the Energy Shield values on many unique items have also been updated.
    The following mods can now be crafted at Haku's Armourer's Bench: +27-34 to Maximum Energy Shield can be applied to all Armour Slots, +35-45 to Maximum Energy Shield can be applied to Body Armour, Shield and Helmet, +56-69 to Maximum Energy Shield can be applied to Body Armour and Shield.
    Local Added Energy Shield modifiers have been rebalanced at all levels. Early mods grant more energy shield, dropping to 36%-45% less energy shield at the highest tier.
    Quests that would offer either a rare item or a 4-linked item now just offer a 4-linked rare item.
    Basalt Flasks now grant 15% additional Physical Damage Reduction (down from 20%) and last for 4.5 seconds (down from 5 seconds).
    Added new magic and rare weapon suffixes for ailments. Mods which provide Chance to cause Bleeding on Hit and Chance to Poison on Hit are local to the weapon.
    of Ignition: grants Chance to Ignite.
    of Freezing: grants Chance to Freeze.
    of Shocking: grants Chance to Shock.
    of Bleeding: grants Chance to cause Bleeding on Hit.
    of Flaying: grants Chance to cause Bleeding on Hit.
    of Hemorrhaging: grants Chance to cause Bleeding on Hit.
    of Poisoning: grants Chance to Poison on Hit.
    of Toxins: grants Chance to Poison on Hit.
    of Death: grants Chance to Poison on Hit.
    The following mods grant increased Burning Damage: of Burning, of Combusting, of Conflagrating.
    The following mods grant increased Damage with Poison: of Poison, of Venom, of Virulence.
    The following mods grant increased Damage with Bleeding: of Bloodletting, of Haemophilia, of Exsanguination.
    The following mods grant increased Poison Duration: of Rot, of Putrefaction.
    The following mods grant increased Bleeding Duration: of Torment, of Agony.
    The following Jewel mods have been modified:
    of Freezing now has 3-5% Chance to Freeze (From 2-3%).
    of Shocking now has 3-5% Chance to Shock (From 2-3%).
    of Burning now has 3-5% Chance to Ignite (From 2-3%).
    of Burning now has 6-8% increased Ignite Duration (from 3-5%).
    Added the following Jewel Mods:
    of Poisoning: grants 3-5% Chance to Poison and 6-8% Increased Poison Duration.
    of Bleeding: grants 3-5% Chance to Bleed with Attacks and 12-16% Increased Bleeding Duration.
    of Venom: grants 16-20% increased Poison Damage.
    of Haemophilia: grants 16-20% increased Bleeding Damage.
    of Combusting: grants 16-20% increased Burning Damage.
    Strength-based shields now have an implicit that grants Life.
    Dexterity-based shields now have an implicit that grants increased Movement Speed.
    The implicits of hybrid Dexterity/Intelligence shields have been reworked. They now grant either Chance to Dodge Attacks or Chance to Dodge Spells.
    Added new mods for shields which are restricted to specific shield types based on their attribute requirements. These new mods grant: Increased Elemental Damage, Increased Physical Damage, Increased Armour and Block Chance, % of Maximum Life Regenerated per Second, Life gained on Block, Mana gained on Block, Chance to Dodge, Chance to Dodge Spells, Chance to Block Spells, Chance to avoid Ailments, Increased Attack and Cast Speed, Increased Attack Damage, Chance to Avoid Stun.
    Added new prefixes for Armours. These can only appear on hybrid armours, and replace the pure added Armour, added Evasion and added Energy Shield mods which could previously appear on these armours. These mods grant the following at 75% of the values of their 'pure' counterparts: Added Armour and Evasion Rating, Added Armour and Energy Shield, Added Evasion Rating and Energy Shield.
    Added new prefixes for Armours. These are not restricted to pure or hybrid items, but can only appear on items which have the defense they provide: Added Armour and Life, Added Evasion Rating and Life, Added Energy Shield and Life.
    Added new suffixes for Body Armours, which grant: % Reduced Physical Damage Taken, Chance to Dodge Attacks, % of Maximum Energy Shield Regenerated per Second.
    Added new magic and rare weapon prefixes, which grant: Increased Fire Damage, Increased Cold Damage, Increased Lightning Damage.
    Sources of increased Weapon Elemental Damage have been replaced with Increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills.
    All unique items that previously granted Poison on Hit now only grant a 60% chance to Poison on Hit.
    Catarina's crafted mod now grants +1 maximum skeleton, down from +2 maximum skeletons.
    Catarina's crafted mod for for Ignite, Freeze and Shock Chance now grant 6-10% (Up from 2-5%).
    Leo's crafted mod now reduces the damage over time taken by 5%, down from 20%.
    Decay from Essence of Delirium now deals 500 damage per second, down from 750, and its duration has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10.
    Essence of Delirium on a Body Armour now reduces the chaos damage over time taken by 25%, down from 50%.


Unique Item Balance

    The following changes can be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb:
    Thousand Ribbons: The added fire damage, added cold damage and added lightning damage now each apply to spells as well. No longer grants 10% reduced cast speed.
    Ming's Heart: Reduced Life and Energy Shield now has a range of 5-10%.
    The Taming: Chance to Freeze, Shock and Ignite has been increased to 10%. Increased Elemental damage with Attack Skills has been increased to 30%. All Elemental Resistances has been increased to 20-30%. Increased Elemental damage has been increased to 30%. Increased damage per Freeze, Shock and Ignite has been increased to 20%.
    Hand of Thought and Motion: No longer adds 1-3 Lightning damage to Attacks per 10 Intelligence. Now grants 1-5 lightning damage added to attacks with this weapon per 10 Intelligence.
    Hand of Wisdom And Action: No longer adds 1-6 Lightning damage to Attacks per 10 Intelligence. Now grants 1-10 lightning damage added to attacks with this weapon per 10 Intelligence.
    Brutus' Lead Sprinkler: No longer adds 2-4 Fire damage to attacks per 10 Strength. Now grants 4-7 Fire damage added to attacks with this weapon per 10 Strength.
    Infernal Mantle: Increased Spell Damage taken on Low Mana has been reduced to 25%, and Increased Energy Shield has been reduced to 120-160%.
    Pyre: Increased Burn Damage has been increased to 60-80%.
    Death's Harp: Global Critical Strike Multiplier has been reduced to 100%.
    Carcass Jack: Increased Area Damage has been increased to 40-50%.
    Martyr's Crown: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to +110-130.
    The Beast Fur Shawl: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to +15-25.
    Cloak of Tawm'r Isley: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced to 150-200%.
    The Covenant: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced to 210-250%.
    Shavronne's Wrappings: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced to 100-150%.
    Voidbringer: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced to 180-250%.
    Steppan Eard: Increased Energy Shield has been reduced to 50-80%.
    Malachai's Vision: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to 150-200.
    The Broken Crown: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to 50-70.
    Geofri's Sanctuary: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to 30-40.
    Heretic's Veil: Increased Evasion and Energy Shield has been reduced to 90-110%.
    The Gull: Maximum Energy Shield down has been reduced to 30-45.
    Brinerot Whalers: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to 80-100.
    Atziri's Splendour: Maximum Energy Shield has been reduced to 70-80 on all variants that had added Maximum Energy Shield.
    Atziri's Mirror: Increased Evasion Rating has been increased to 180-200%.
    The Blood Reaper: Now has 180%-200% increased Physical Damage.
    Bloodseeker: Now has 150%-170% increased Physical Damage.
    Widowmaker: Now has (35-40) to (55-60) added Physical Damage.
    Frostbreath: Now has (26-32) to (36-42) added Physical Damage, and (26-32) to (36-42) added Cold Damage.
    Chober Chaber: Now has 200%-220% increased Physical Damage.
    Allure: Now has 110%-130% increased Physical Damage, and now grants 10 seconds of Phasing on using a vaal skill.
    Doomsower: Now has (65-75) to (100-110) added Physical Damage.
    Hyaon's Fury: Now increases damage taken by 1% per Frenzy Charge.
    Bisco's Collar: Now grants 50-100% increased Quantity of Items from slain Normal monsters, and 100-150% increased Rarity of Items from slain Magic monsters.
    Moonsorrow: Now has 250%-275% increased Physical Damage.
    Ornament of the East: Now has 150%-170% increased Physical Damage.
    Mindspiral: Now grants +100-120 Maximum Mana.
    The Searing Touch: Increased Fire Damage increased to 70-90%. Increased Spell Damage lowered to 0%.
    Emberwake: No longer prevents you from dealing extra damage with Critical Strikes.
    Heatshiver: Now grants +20-30% Fire Resistance and +20-30% Cold Resistance.
    Cloak of Defiance: Now grants +100-150 Maximum Mana.
    Maligaro's Virtuosity: Global Critical Strike Multiplier lowered to +20%-30%.
    Facebreaker: Global Critical Strike Multiplier lowered to +30%.
    Shadows and Dust: Global Critical Strike Multiplier lowered to +20-30%.
    Abyssus: Melee Critical Strike Multiplier lowered to +100%-125%.
    Grand Spectrum: Cobalt Grant Spectrums now grant 30 Mana per Grand Spectrum. Crimson Grand Spectrums now grant 200 Armour per Grand Spectrum. Viridian Grand Spectrums now grant 12% Elemental Damage per Grand Spectrum. Note that important non-divinable changes for this item can be found further down.
    Army of Bones: Renamed to To Dust. No longer grants +2 to Maximum number of Skeletons. In addition to reducing skeleton duration and increasing minion damage, it now grants 3-5% increased Skeleton Movement Speed, 7-10% increased Skeleton Attack Speed, and 7-10% increased Skeleton Cast speed.
    Ring of Blades: Now grants 5 additional Projectiles for Ethereal Knives, down from 10.
    The Wise Oak: Elemental Damage Penetration lowered to 10-15%.
    Witchfire Brew: Increased Damage over Time lowered to 25-40%.
    Taste of Hate: Physical Damage added as extra Cold Damage lowered to 15-20%.
    Lion's Roar: More Physical Damage lowered to 20-25%.
    Atziri's Promise: Physical Damage added as extra Chaos Damage lowered to 15-20%, Elemental Damage added as extra Chaos Damage lowered to 10-15%.
    Vessel of Vinktar: No longer has Lightning Damage Leeched as Mana during Flask Effect. The Shock aura now increases the damage taken by enemies within it by 10% (down from 30%).
    Dying Sun: Increased Area of Effect lowered to 15-25%.
    Kiara's Determination: Reduced Flask Duration increased to 60%.
    Breath of the Council: Now grants 80-100% increased Chaos damage.
    Choir of the Storm: No longer grants -30% Lightning Resistance. Note that important non-divinable changes for this item can be found further down.
    Dead Reckoning now grants the ability to summon an additional 5 Skeleton Mages, up from 3.
    The following changes CANNOT be obtained by rerolling the item's mods with a Divine Orb and will only appear on new versions of these items:
    Glitterdisc: Now grants Always Ignite while Burning.
    Atziri's Mirror: Now has 10% additional Chance to Block while not Cursed. Now has 20% additional Chance to Block Spells while Cursed.
    The Dark Seer: No longer grants Mana or Energy Shield on kill. Now grants two of: 1 Maximum Life per level, 1 Maximum Mana per level or 1 Maximum Energy Shield per level.
    Bloodgrip: Now found on a Marble Amulet base type.
    Emberwake: 65% slower Burn with Ignites. No longer prevents you from dealing extra damage with Critical Strikes, and no longer grants 80% less Burning Damage.
    Heatshiver: No longer grants +1 to level of socketed Fire and Cold gems. Now grants 20-30% increased Cold Damage if a Fire skill was used recently, and 20-30% increased Fire Damage if a Cold skill was used recently.
    Mindspiral: Now grants Gain 5-10% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield.
    The Searing Touch: No longer grants increased Spell Damage.
    Ornament of the East: Now supports socketed gems with level 10 Faster Attacks.
    Moonsorrow: Now supports socketed gems with level 20 Blind.
    Cloak of Defiance: No longer has 40-50% increased Mana Regeneration. Now has an additional 1% of maximum Mana regenerated per second. Now has 10% of damage taken from mana before life.
    Asphyxia's Wrath: No longer has 40% reduced area effect of curses. No longer has 20% of physical damage converted to cold damage. Now grants 20% of physical damage added as extra cold damage. Now grants level 5 Frostbite. Doubled the radius at which curses can spread.
    Lioneye's Glare: Now grants Far Shot.
    Sidhebreath: Now grants 10-15% reduced Mana Cost of Minion Skills.
    Al Dhih: Now grants Trigger level 1 Abyssal Cry on hit.
    Doryani's Fist: Now grants the Doryani's Touch skill.
    Death's Oath: The chaos damage-over-time aura is now a skill that activates on equipping Death's Oath, and is modified by socketed support gems as well as modifiers that affect auras, area of effect, damage over time and chaos damage. It now also grants +60-70 Maximum Life, and the Physical Attack leeched as Life is now Attack Damage leeched as Life.
    The following changes affect existing items automatically:
    Sacrificial Harvest: Now limited to 1.
    Grand Spectrum: Now limited to 3. Note that this limit is shared across all versions of Grand Spectrum.
    Dead Reckoning: Now limited to 3.
    The Consuming Dark: No longer grants increased Spell Damage. Now grants 40-60% increased Fire Damage.
    Queen's Decree: now grants +1 to maximum number of Skeletons, down from +2.
    Alberon's Warpath: now grants +1 to maximum number of Skeletons, down from +2.
    Midnight Bargain: now grants +1 to maximum number of Skeletons, down from +2.
    Prismweave: Increased Weapon Elemental Damage while using a Flask has been replaced with Increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills while using a Flask.
    Essentia Sanguis: Ghost Reaver has been replaced with Life Leech is applied to Energy Shield instead. This does not change the functionality of Essentia Sanguis at all.
    Atziri's Acuity: Now grants Gain Life and Mana from Leech instantly on Critical Strike (can no longer instantly leech to Energy Shield).
    Growing Agony: Now grants 2% increased damage with Viper Strike hits and Poison per Poison on the enemy while the threshold is met (as opposed to just increasing the attack damage).
    Vessel of Vinktar: The original versions now grant Gain Life and Mana from Leech instantly (can no longer instantly leech to Energy Shield).
    The Dancing Dervish: Improved the behaviour of the Manifested weapon minion.
    Sentari's Answer: Now ignores your curse limit.
    Praxis: The Damage Taken gained as Mana when Hit now occurs over 4 seconds.
    Mindspiral: The Damage Taken gained as Mana when Hit now occurs over 4 seconds.
    Victario's Flight: The Damage Taken gained as Mana when Hit now occurs over 4 seconds.
    Spirited Response: The Damage Taken gained as Mana when Hit during Rallying Cry now occurs over 4 seconds.
    Voice of the Storm/Choir of the Storm: No longer grants increased Critical Strike Chance based on your Uncapped Lightning Resistance. Instead, it grants increased Critical Strike Chance based on your Lightning Resistance (which is typically capped at 75%).
    Emberwake: Now only allows 1 additional Ignite. No longer grants 80% less Burning Damage. Instead, 65% slower Burn with Ignites (to get the 65% value you will have to use a Divine orb).


Items that Inflict Bleeding or Poison:

    All weapons which previously inflicted Bleeding or Poison on hit (or critical strike) now only inflict Bleeding or Poison on hits (or critical strikes) with that specific weapon.
    Goredrill: Melee Critical Strikes cause Bleeding has been changed to 50% chance to cause Bleeding with Melee Critical Strikes with this Weapon.
    Slivertongue: Now has a 50% chance to inflict Bleeding with Piercing arrows (down from 100%).
    The Blood Reaper: Now has a 50% chance to inflict Bleeding on hit (down from 100%).
    Kondo's Pride: Now has a 50% chance to infliuct Bleeding on Melee Critical Strike (down from 100%)
    Many other weapons which previously inflicted Bleeding on hit with a 100% chance now only have a 25% chance to inflict Bleeding. This affects the following weapons: The Blood Reaper, Atzir's Disfavour, Jack, the Axe, Rigwald's Savagery, Rive, Uul-Netol's Kiss, Uul-Netol's Embrace, Slivertongue, all weapons with Vagan's crafted mod, all weapons with Tora's vendor mod, .


One-time Passive Skill Reset:

    Due to balance changes, every existing character has been granted an optional full passive skill reset.
    This process will also reset your allocated Ascendancy points.
    To perform this operation, click the "Reset all Passives" button on the passive skill screen. Note that you must use this before allocating or refunding any other points otherwise the option will go away.


Passive Tree Balance

    Due to the significant changes made to Damage over Time, many bleeding-, burning- and poison-focused passive skills have been readjusted. New clusters have been added for bleeding damage and poison damage, and many existing passive skills have also gained stats that affect damage over time:
    Passive skills that granted melee attacks a chance to cause Bleeding now grant that chance to all attacks (not just melee).
    All weapon passive skill clusters except those for wands and staves now grant some increased Damage with ailments from Attacks.
    Added a new Keystone between the Scion and the Shadow - Perfect Agony: Modifiers from Critical Strike Multiplier also apply to Damage Multiplier for Ailments from Critical Strikes at 30% of their value. 30% less Damage with Hits.
    Added a new Keystone near the Duelist - Crimson Dance: 50% less Bleeding Damage. Bleeding can be stacked up to 8 times. Bleeding doesn't do extra damage while the target is moving.
    Dirty Techniques, near the Duelist, now specifically provides increases to Bleeding and Poison damage and chance.
    Added a new cluster near the Duelist which enhances Bleeding and Poison chance and damage, with a notable named Dirty Techniques.
    Added a new small cluster between the Duelist and the ranger which enhances Poison chance and damage, with a notable named Toxic Strikes.
    Holy Fire near the Templar now grants 60% increased Burning Damage (up from 40%), and the passives preceding it now grant 20% increased Burning Damage (up from 15%).
    The first passive skill on the Razor's Edge branch near the Marauder now grants 10% chance to cause Bleeding with Attacks.
    Cleaving, near the Marauder, and the passive skills preceding it now grant a total of 25% chance to cause Bleeding with Attacks.
    Two of the passive skills leading to Heavy Draw near the Ranger now grant a total of 25% chance to cause Bleeding with Bow Attacks
    The passive skills leading to Brutal Blade near the Ranger now grant a total of 20% Chance to Poison on Hit.
    The passive skills leading to Bloody Bludgeon, between the Marauder and Duelist, now grant a total of 25% chance to cause Bleeding with Attacks.
    Added a small cluster with a notable named Red Storm near Iron Grip. It grants improves Bleeding and Physical damage.
    Added Master Fletcher between the Duelist and Ranger. It grants chance to Poison on Hit with Attacks and increases to Bow damage.
    Added a new notable at the back of the Shadow's Claw wheel: Poisonous Fangs. It and nearby passives grant a 20% chance to Poison on Hit, and increased Physical Damage with Claws.
    Martial Experience between the Templar and Marauder now grants 30% increased Damage with Bleeding instead of Accuracy, and the passives preceding it now grant 10% increased Damage with Bleeding.
    Fencing between the Duelist and Ranger now grants 30% increased Damage with Bleeding, and the passives preceding it from the south now each grant 10% increased Damage with Bleeding. The Accuracy with One Handed Weapons passive in this cluster has been changed to One Handed Critical Strike Chance.
    Breath of Flames near the Witch now grants 10% increased Ignite duration on Enemies, 30% increased Burning Damage, and 5% chance to Ignite. The passive skills preceding it now grant 20% increased Burning damage rather than 10% increased Fire damage.
    The Bloodletting cluster near the Duelist has been expanded and now specifically only increases damage with Bleeding. The Increase to Damage with Bleeding on the notable has been ...increased... to 70% (from 30%), and the increased Attack Damage against Bleeding Enemies is now 40% (up from 25%).
    The Fatal Toxins cluster near the Shadow has been expanded, and the notable now grants 70% increased Damage with Poison (up from 50%).


Due to the changes to Shock and Chill, the following passive skills have changed:

    Breath of Rime now grants 10% chance to Freeze (up from 5%), 12% increased Cold Damage (up from 10%), and 15% increased Chill Effect. The preceding skills have also changed: the first now grants 12% Increased Cold Damage (Up from 10%) and the rest now grant 8% increased Cold Damage, and an additional bonus to either Chill Duration, Freeze Duration, Chill Effect or Chance to Freeze.
    Breath of Lightning now grants 10% chance to Shock (up from 5%), 12% increased Lightning Damage (up from 10%) and 15% increased Shock Effect. The preceding skills have also changed: the first now grants 12% increased Lightning Damage (Up from 10%), and the rest now grant 8% increased Lightning Damage, and an additional bonus to either Shock Duration, Shock Effect or Chance to Shock.
    Fingers of Frost now gives 10% chance to Freeze Enemies which are Chilled (rather than 5% chance to Freeze), 12% increased Cold Damage, and 10% increased Chill Effect. The preceding skills have also changed: They now all give 8% Cold Damage and an additional bonus to either Chill Duration, Freeze Duration, Chill Effect or Freeze Chance.
    Fangs of Frost now grants 10% increased Chill Effect.
    Arcing Blows now grants 10% increased Shock Effect.
    Flash Freeze now grants 10% increased Chill Effect.
    Celestial Punishment now grants 30% increased Burning Damage and 15% increased Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments.
    The Cold Damage passive skill leading to Storm Weaver now also grants 10% increased Chill Effect.
    The Lightning Damage passive skill leading to Storm Weaver now also grants 10% increased Shock Effect.
    Elemental Focus near the Shadow now also grants 10% increased Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments.
    Static Blows near the Witch now also grants 15% increased Shock Effect and 12% increased Lightning Damage.
    Crackling Speed between the Witch and Shadow now also grants 10% increased Shock Effect.
    Mind over Matter now applies to Damage over Time as well as Hits.
    Passives which granted increased Weapon Elemental Damage or increases to specific elements with weapons now grant increases to those elements with Attack Skills instead.
    Several of the passives which granted Chance to Pierce near the Shadow now grant increased Projectile damage.
    The passive skills behind Chaos Inoculation have been removed.
    Assassination near the Shadow has had its Critical Strike Multiplier reduced to +35%.
    Adder's Touch near the Shadow has had its Critical Strike Multiplier with Daggers reduced to +30%, Chance to Poison on Critical Strike with Daggers increased to 40%, and it now grants 40% increased Poison Damage.
    Heartseeker near the Ranger has had its Critical Strike Multiplier reduced to +30%.
    Lethality near the Ranger has had its Critical Strike Multiplier with Bows reduced to +30%.
    Serpent Stance between the Witch and Templar has had its Global Critical Strike Multiplier while wielding a Staff reduced to 35%.
    Lord of the Dead now +1 skeleton, down from +2.
    Herd the Flock no longer grants +1 skeleton.
    The location of the Heart and Soul cluster near the Witch has moved to above Practical Application and grants 5% increased Maximum Life and 8% increased Maximum Mana per passive on the smaller passives, and 8% increased Maximum Life and 12% increaed Maximum Mana on the notable.
    Arcane Focus near the Witch has been rearranged to integrate the notable into the path through it.
    The Annihilation Spell Critical Strike Chance cluster, and the Blast Radius Area of Effect cluster, both near the witch, are now closed loops.
    Ghost Reaver now grants 50% less Energy Shield Recharge Rate in addition to granting leeched Life as Energy Shield.
    Vaal Pact now only applies to leeched life.
    Moved the Exceptional Performance cluster (near the Scion) slightly away from the projectile damage and resistances wheel next to it.
    Battle Rouse between the Duelist and Marauder now grants Damage Taken gained as Mana when Hit over 4 Seconds.
    Alchemist near the Witch now grants 10% increased Flask effect (down from 14%) and 10% increased Flask duration (down from 12%).


Ascendancy Tree Balance

    The Pathfinder's Master Herbalist skill now grants 60% chance to poison while using a Flask.
    The Juggernaut's Unflinching skill now grants a 30% chance to gain an Endurance Charge when you are Hit (up from 20%).
    The Chieftain's Tukohama, War's Herald skill now grants Totems Reflect 15% of their maximum Life as Fire Damage to nearby Enemies when Hit (up from 8%).
    The Deadeye's Powerful Precision skill now grants Projectiles Pierce Nearby Enemies, and 100% increased Critical Strike Chance for Piercing Projectiles. It no longer grants chance to Pierce that slowly drops based on the distance the Projectiles travel, or increased Projectile Critical Strike Chance based on Arrow Pierce Chance.
    The Inquisitor's Sanctify skill now grants a 30% chance to create Consecrated Ground when hit, as well as a 30% chance to create Consecrated Ground on kill (both up from 25%).
    The Inquisitor's Pious Path skill now grants 6% of Maximum Energy Shield and Mana regenerated per second while on Consecrated Ground (up from 4%).
    The Inquisitor's Righteous Providence skill now grants 20% increased Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments.
    The Hierophant's Sanctuary of Thought skill now grants 30% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield (up from 25%).
    The Hierophant's Pursuit of Faith skill now grants 6% increased Damage per Enemy Killed by you or your Totems Recently, and 10% increased Attack and Cast Speed while you have a Totem (up from 4% and 8% respectively).
    The Hierophant's Ritual of Awakening skill now grants 7% less Totem Damage per Totem (down from 8%).
    The Trickster's Patient Reaper skill now grants 70% increased Recovery Rate of Life, Mana and Energy Shield if you've Killed an Enemy affected by your Damage Over Time Recently (up from 60%).
    The Trickster's Swift Killer skill now also grants +1 to Maximum Power Charges, and 5% increased Damage over Time per Frenzy and Power charge.
    The Assassin's Toxic Delivery skill has been reduced to 30% more damage with Bleeding and Poison from Bleeding and Poison inflicted by Critical Strikes (down from 100%).
    The Assassin's Deadly Infusion skill no longer grants +0.5% Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge. It now grants +1 to maximum Power Charges, and +2% to Critical Strike Chance while at maximum Power Charges.
    The Necromancer's Commander of Darkness skill now grants 3% increased Attack and Cast Speed to you and Allies per aura (down from 5%), and 30% increased Damage for you and Allies affected by your Auras (instead of 10% increased Damage for you and Allies per aura).
    The Elementalist's Beacon of Ruin skill now grants 20% increased Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments.


The Ascendant has been heavily modified:

    The Ascendant's Path of the Marauder, Duelist, Ranger, Shadow, Witch and Templar skills now each grant 2 passive skill points in addition to allowing you to place passive points at their respective starting locations.
    The Ascendant's Juggernaut skill now grants a 20% chance to gain an Endurance Charge when you are Hit (up from 10%).
    The Ascendant's Berserker skill now grants 20% increased Attack, Cast and Movement Speed if you've taken a Savage Hit recently (instead of 25% increased Attack and Cast Speed if you've taken a Savage Hit recently).
    The Ascendant's Raider skill now grants a 10% chance to gain a Frenzy Charge when you hit a Rare or Unique enemy (rather than on kill) and 10% increased Movement Speed (rather than 25% chance to avoid elemental status ailments).
    The Ascendant's Deadeye skill now grants Projectiles gain Damage as they travel further, dealing up to 50% increased Damage to targets (up from 30%). The Deadeye also now grants 30% increased Projectile Speed, but no longer grants 15% chance to cause Bleeding with Attacks. As part of the Pierce rework, the Deadeye's 30% Pierce chance has become +2 Pierces.
    The Ascendant's Pathfinder skill now grants 30% increased Damage while using a Flask (up from 25%), 10% increased Movement Speed while using a flask, 10% chance for your Flasks to not consume Charges, and a 50% chance to gain a Flask charge when you deal a Critical Strike. It no longer grants 50% increased Flask Charges gained, 50% chance to avoid Freeze, Shock, Ignite and Bleeding while using a Flask, or 4% reduced Elemental Damage taken while using a Flask.
    The Ascendant's Elementalist now grants Elemental Conflux for 6 seconds when you kill a Rare or Unique Enemy (up from 4 seconds), Damage Penetrates 6% of Enemy Elemental Resistances (up from 5%), +1 to the number of Golems you can have active, and 50% reduced reflected Elemental damage taken. It no longer grants 30% increased Damage of each Damage Type for which you have a matching Golem, or 4% reduced Elemental damage taken.
    The Ascendant's Necromancer skill now grants 30% increased damage for You and Allies affected by Auras you Cast (up from 15%), +20% Chaos resistance for You and Allies affected by Auras you Cast, and 20% increased Skill Effect Duration. It no longer grants 15% increased effect of Offering spells.
    The Ascendant's Slayer skill now grants 40% increased Damage to Rare and Unique Enemies (up from 30%), 50% reduced reflected Physical Damage taken, and Life Leech does not stop at Full Life. It no longer grants 10% of Overkill Damage is Leeched as Life.
    The Ascendant's Gladiator skill now grants 5% additional Block chance (up from 3%), and Attacks have 20% chance to cause Bleeding (up from 15%).
    The Ascendant's Champion skill now grants 20% chance to Fortify on Melee Hit (up from 10%), 30% increased Damage for you and nearby Allies while you have Fortify (up from 15%) and 5% reduced Damage taken from Taunted Enemies (up from 4%).
    The Ascendant's Inquisitor skill now grants 30% chance to create Consecrated Ground on Kill (up from 20%), and 25% increased Elemental Damage (up from 20%).
    The Ascendant's Hierophant skill now grants 50% chance to gain a Power Charge when you place a Totem (up from 20%).
    The Ascendant's Guardian skill now grants You and Allies affected by your Auras have 10% increased Attack, Cast and Movement Speed (instead of 12% increased Attack and Cast Speed for You and Allies affected by Auras you Cast), 5% additional Block chance for you and Allies affected by your Auras (up from 3% and no longer simply affecting you), and 25% reduced effect of Curses on you. The Ascendant's Guardian no longer removes Curses and Ailments from you every 5 seconds.
    The Ascendant's Assassin skill now grants 20% chance to gain a Power Charge on Hit against Enemies that are on Full Life (up from 10%), and +1.5% to Critical Strike Chance (up from 1%).
    The Ascendant's Trickster skill now grants 50% increased Recovery Rate of Life, Mana and Energy Shield if you've Killed an Enemy affected by your Damage Over Time Recently (up from 30%), and 15 Mana Regenerated per second if you've used a Movement Skill recently (rather than 100% increased Mana Regeneration if you've used a Movement Skill Recently).
    The Ascendant's Saboteur skill now grants 10% increased Movement Speed if you have placed a Mine or thrown a Trap recently, and Trap and Mine Damage Penetrate 6% Elemental Resistances. It no longer grants 6% Elemental Resistance Penetration if you've detonated a Mine recently, or 20% increased Trap and Mine cooldown recovery speed.


Monster Balance

    The crabs in the Coast in Act 1 have been cured of their infestation... for now.
    Dreadwheel monsters can now be found in The Climb in Act 1.
    Scarecrow monsters can now be found in the Old Fields in Act 2.
    The Touch of God skill used by Dominus now deals damage in an area that more accurately matches its visual effect.
    The Pale Council encounter has been rebalanced and is, in general, more difficult. Defeating the Pale Council will earn you one of four new unique items exclusively available from them.
    Monsters that are created as part of a Prophecy now use the Prophecy-holder's level to determine their level, up to a cap of level 70 in non-map areas. In map areas, monsters created by Prophecies will be the same level as the map area.
    Many unique monsters which were previously immune to Ailments have had their immunities removed, with the exception of Freeze. Notably, this includes several Beyond Demons, the Atziri Trio, Atziri herself, The Shaper and his Guardians, among others.
    The Volatile Flameblood, Volatile Iceblood and Volatile Stormblood Nemesis mods have been disabled and replaced by Volatile Core. Volatile Core monsters create an entity on death which pursues players until it explodes.
    The Banshee monsters in the Crystal Veins have been renamed Shriekers.
    The damage dealt by the Lightning Orb skill used by rare monsters in Esh breaches has been reduced by 8%. The Lightning Orbs can no longer stun players.
    Increased the life of all Invasion bosses by 50%.
    The Bloodlines mod Bonds of Chaos has been disabled.
    Rhoas in the Mud Flats now enrage if you destroy their nests.
    Pale Blackguards now enrage when below 75% life (up from 50%).
    Plague Retch has returned from his sabbatical and once again taken up residence in Chamber of Sins while he works on his memoirs. We are excited to hear all about his journeys.
    Slaying Hillock will guarantee that he drops a three-socket, three-colour starter weapon for your class.
    Marceus the Defaced has had his item drops greatly reduced due to his proximity to the Marketplace waypoint.
    Tormented Spirits no longer possess hidden monsters.
    The average experience per monster has been slightly reduced at high levels.


Map Balance

    Map boss life has been adjusted. In general, map boss life has increased significantly, and most map boss encounters within the same tier will have similar total life pools The gap between the life of tier 15 map bosses and the tier 16 Guardians is much smaller. The life of the tier 16 Guardians remains unchanged.
    Added new mods which can roll on all map tiers as prefixes. These mods cause Solaris fanatics, Lunaris fanatics and Ghosts to inhabit the map.
    Breaches can now be encountered in 10% of maps by default. A sextant mod has been added which guarantees a Breach in the affected maps but does not override the 10% chance to find a Breach naturally.
    The Shaper now prevents players from opening portals while fighting him. Zana has 50% more life during the Shaper encounter. The grace period when re-entering the Shaper encounter mid-fight has been reduced to 3 seconds.
    Lair of the Hydra: The Hydra's Teleport Shot cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds (from 20). Reduced the damage dealt by the Hydra Turrets by 10% and reduced their firing rate by up to 30% as the Hydra's life drops. Increased the damage of the Hydra's Barrage and Doom Arrow by 20%.
    Overgrown Ruin: The boss room's orientation has been flipped, making it safer to approach the boss. The boss has been moved further back into the room.
    Armoury: Now has its own secret chest, instead of using the Labyrinth's.
    Lycius, Midnight's Howl and The Cursed King: Increased the cooldown on the Wolf Barrage from 10 seconds to 15 seconds, and reduced the damage reduction the boss gains during the Wolf Barrage (he will take more damage during the barrage than previously).
    Rigwald, the Wolven King, Lycius, Midnight's Howl and The Cursed King: Now correctly kill most entities created during the fight on death, without killing other monsters.
    Promenade: The Blackguard Tempest unique monsters have a longer cast time for their Lightning Thorns skill. This is to give players an opportunity to stop attacking.
    The Goddess of Justice: Now uses her warp ability more conditionally.
    Guardian of the Vault: Now uses his Hide ability less frequently.
    It That Fell: Now uses his Hide ability much less frequently.
    Monsters that use Blinding Gaze in maps now use it much more quickly.
    Porcupine Goliaths in maps now have a 70% chance to release spikes on death (down from 100%).
    Bog and Arid Lake: Defeating the map boss while it is enraged is now more rewarding.
    Added 15 Grandmasters to the Hall of Grandmasters and replaced 2 existing Grandmasters with updated versions. Balance changes to charges, ailments, damage over time and pierce have been propagated out to the Grandmasters. Several Grandmasters have been adjusted as a result of these balance changes.
    Temple: The portals in the boss room no longer have massive hitboxes that extend far beyond the portals themselves.
    Mesa: The location where players appear in the boss room has been moved farther away from the exit. The boss has been moved slightly farther away to prevent players from accidentally engaging the boss from this new spot.
    Burial Chambers: The boss's cauldrons have been moved farther away from each other.
    Further balanced the monster density of end-game maps. Some have been lowered and some have been raised.
    You can no longer appear in the middle of a pack of monsters on a fresh Barrows map.
    The Quay map has been renamed Port.


Zana League Mods Available During 3.0.0:

    Level 2: Onslaught (costs 2 Chaos Orbs): Monsters have 20% increased attack and cast speed, 20% increased quantity of items found.
    Level 3: Bloodlines (costs 3 Chaos Orbs): Magic monster packs each have a Bloodlines mod, 25% more Magic monsters, 20% increased quantity of items found.
    Level 4: Beyond (costs 3 Chaos Orbs): Slaying enemies close together can attract monsters from Beyond, 20% increased quantity of items found.
    Level 5: Ambush (costs 4 Chaos Orbs): Areas contain 3 extra Strongboxes.
    Level 6: Perandus (costs 4 Chaos Orbs): Areas contain 3 extra Perandus chests, and there's a chance for Cadiro Perandus to appear.
    Level 7: Nemesis (costs 5 Chaos Orbs): Rare monsters each have a Nemesis mod, 50% more Rare monsters, 20% increased quantity of items found.
    Level 8: Breach (costs 6 Chaos Orbs): Areas contain 2 extra Breaches.


PvP Balance:

    PvP premade characters have been updated to work with the current Passive Skill Tree.
    Skills linked to Cast While Channeling now do 70% less damage in PvP.
    Scorching Ray now assumes a cast time of 4 seconds for calculating damage in PvP, down from 30 seconds. This will result in significantly reduced damage in PvP.


World Balance:

    A Waypoint has been added to The Solaris Temple Level 1.
    The Waypoint in Chamber of Sins Level 2 has been moved to Chamber of Sins Level 1.
    The Waypoint in The Marketplace has been moved near Marceus the Defaced.
    The Waypoint in The Ebony Barracks has been moved closer to the entrance to the sewers.
    Blackguards and Ribbons in the Battlefront now fight each other.
    The exit portal in Piety's boss room in Lunaris Temple Level 2 now stay active until you have engaged Piety.
    Several Prophecies have been updated to work with monsters introduced in The Fall of Oriath.
    Increased the likelihood that the Prophecy 'Ambitious Bandit I' would trigger in Act II areas.
    The Vaal Side Area in the Battlefront will no longer spawn within sight of the waypoint.
    Reduced the number of monsters that appear in the Dried Lake.


Bug Fixes:

    Fixed a bug related to the behaviour of the Bonespire Talisman monster effect when you leave and re-enter its vicinity.
    Fixed a bug where cloned characters (via Blink/Mirror arrow for example) would only have one cloned pet rather than two.
    Fixed a bug where gems transformed into Totems/Traps/Mines would not highlight the correct Support Gems when hovered over.
    Fixed a bug where map bosses that are already possessed occasionally showed the Tormented Spirit as you enter the arena.
    Fixed a bug where monsters could turn to face a nearby chest when taunting.
    Fixed a bug where some looping sounds would occasionally not play.
    Fixed a bug where attempting to drop an item with a cosmetic skin would ask if you wanted to destroy it, when that wouldn't actually occur due to the presence of the skin.
    Fixed rounding issues with Support Gem mana cost multipliers. You can no longer influence the final result by putting the gems in a different order.
    Fixed bugs where some on-kill Prophecies would trigger when player minions die.
    Fixed a bug where Blink and Mirror arrow clones would have Energy Shield protecting their life if your Energy Shield was actually protecting your mana.
    Fixed an evasion sync bug that could occur with Blade Flurry.
    Fixed various display bugs that could occur if you left and rejoined the Rigwald encounter.
    Fixed desync that could occur in Pit Fights.
    Fixed a bug where PvP-only characters could get bandit reward books stuck in their inventory.
    Fixed a bug where the name of certain Russian players was not correct on the overlay map.
    Fixed a bug where a character's name on the social screen can clip into the level/class display.
    Fixed a bug where the Gloom Wings microtransaction behaved incorrectly on the Ranger and Duelist.
    Fixed typos in several story glyphs.
    Fixed numerous typos and formatting issues across Brazillian Portuguese, Russian, Thai, and English texts.
    Fixed a bug where the unique jewel The Vigil would grant Fortify to nearby allies from any source of Fortify, not just Vigilant Strike.
    Fixed a bug where the unique body armour The Covenant would cause spontaneous hair growth or a severe case of having-no-face when combined with certain Microtransactions on the Witch and Scion.
    Fixed a bug where removing Headhunter would not remove the buffs being granted by Headhunter.
    Fixed a bug where Skeleton Beasts in the Library would be off-centre on their plinths.
    Fixed a bug where monsters could spawn outside of the walkable terrain in some areas.
    Fixed the spelling of Ezomyte on the Ezomyte Shell fish hook.
    Fixed a bug where Rek'tar, the Breaker would use the incorrect idle animation.
    Fixed a bug that would cause some of the dart traps in the Labyrinth to misfire.
    Fixed a bug where bodies would spawn embedded in the stairs leading to Piety's boss room in the Temple of Lunaris.
    Fixed a bug where Fireball's audio would not play at very close distances.
    Fixed a bug where Jikeji would play its death audio too loudly.
    Fixed a bug where items could fall into inaccessible areas in the Vault map.
    Fixed a bug where you could potentially lock out the ability to obtain prophecies on a character.
    Fixed a bug which prevented Ambrosia in the Cavern of Anger from using her Fireball and Firestorm skills.
    Fixed a bug which prevented your language settings from appropriately placing you into a chat channel.
    Fixed a bug where certain guild tag text colours appeared incorrectly.
    Fixed an exploit where vendor inventories could be predictably repeated by deleveling a character.
    Fixed a bug where non-monster entities could in some cases potentially use the wrong level value when calculating damage.
    Fixed a bug where you could take an unconnected passive point.
    Fixed a bug where more than the allowed number of players could spectate a PvP match.
    Fixed a bug where you could force other players into a PvP match.
    Fixed a bug on the Mao Kun map which caused items to be generated at the wrong level.
    Fixed a bug where clicking parts of the master crafting bench windows would close the window and cause your character to move.
    Fixed a bug where allocating and then unallocating Eldritch Battery would cause the UI to display the wrong Energy Shield value.
    Fixed a bug where skills that dealt chaos damage over time would add their damage over time values to any Decay they also applied.
    Fixed a bug where certain buffs from Tempests would cause the player to have extremely high or low values on some stats.
    Fixed a bug where the Item Requirements reminder on the passive skill tree would ignore the Reduced Attribute Requirements from Atziri's Foible.
    Fixed several interactions with The Perfect Form, Arctic Armour and other sources of mana reservation that could cause incorrect behaviour.
    Fixed a possible source of desync with Blink Arrow and Mirror Arrow.
    Fixed multiple bugs around changing screen resolutions and windowed/full-screen modes.
    Fixed a bug where sources of increased Golem Maximum Life were not taken into account when showing minion life values.
    Fixed a client crash that could occur when post-processing was turned off and a breach was activated for computers with AMD processors and video cards.
    Fixed a bug where stats with the "while stationary" condition would erroneously stay active in certain cases while using Cyclone.
    Fixed a bug that prevented Tolman from screaming when entering the Crematorium.
    Fixed a bug where Flame Surge was not being affected by some modifiers to Area of Effect.
    Fixed a bug where Righteous Fire could snapshot the effects of Concentrated Effect and increases to area damage.
    Fixed a bug where, on the character select screen, the Join button for races would not be greyed out if you were at your maximum character capacity.
    Fixed a bug where you could be disconnected from chat channels that were full while changing areas.
    Fixed a bug where Essence monoliths would fail to spawn when an area's monsters had been overridden.
    Fixed a bug where a character with an expired name could cause bad interactions with other characters that use that name.
    Fixed a bug where a returning projectile could sometimes incorrectly hit a monster more times than it was allowed to.
    Fixed a bug where placing a Lightning Warp remote mine could prevent you from interacting with NPCs.
    Fixed a bug where Ichimonji could prevent you from being affected by your own Consecrated Ground.
    Fixed a bug which prevented The Baron from properly leeching to your Energy Shield if you had Ghost Reaver.
    Fixed a bug where Berek's Respite could cause you to be shocked with an infinite duration.
    Fixed a bug where killing a monster which changed teams on death with an Ignite could cause it to die and grant experience twice.
    Fixed a bug which could cause the Phoenix map boss to be locked in place.
    Fixed a bug where sources of Ignite/Shock Nearby Enemies on Kill could cause those ailments to persist indefinitely.
    Fixed a bug where Wild Strike's lightning could chain to enemies farther away that it was meant to.
    Fixed a bug where Fairgraves in the Mao Kun map would kill monsters in Essence Monoliths and others that he was not meant to. Shame on you, Fairgraves.
    Fixed a bug where Lightning Warp would sometimes not play an effect or would make the player character become invisible if triggered from Cast while Channelling Support.
    Fixed the ordering of some stats in the Character panel.
    Fixed a bug where some attack-only stats would show for spells in the Character panel.
    Fixed a bug where some enemies had small amounts of chaos resistance when they weren't meant to.
    Fixed a bug where channeled spells supported by Cast while Channeling would say 'You cannot Cast this Spell directly' when you could.
    Fixed a bug where some Mesa maps could generate with broken layouts.
    Fixed a bug where unequipping then re-equipping a Righteous Fire gem while Righteous Fire was active would cause the visual effect to disappear, despite the damage persisting.
    Fixed a bug where skills would not correctly convert damage when the total amount of damage being converted exceeded 100%.
    You can no longer wander into Oyun's cages in Highgate.


Thanks for your continued and generous support! We can't wait to play in the Harbinger League with you this weekend!

EDIT: Please note, we incorrectly stated existing characters would have the new version of their chosen Bandit reward. This is not the case -- all players will have the Eramir reward (2 passive skill points) by default. You can change this for free once by talking to Eramir. Sorry for the confusion.

Recently Changed

    Emberwake:No longer prevents you from dealing extra damage with Critical Strikes.
    Emberwake: Now only allows 1 additional Ignite. No longer grants 80% less Burning Damage. Instead, 65% slower Burn with Ignites (to get the 65% value you will have to use a Divine orb).
    Kondo's Pride: Now has a 50% chance to infliuct Bleeding on Melee Critical Strike (down from 100%)