Siege of the Atlas

• After defeating Kitava, you will meet Commander Kirac in the Karui Shores and join his militia to safeguard the Atlas of Worlds. The Envoy will inform you that two Eldritch Horrors, The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds, are approaching and will consume everything.
• By completing maps affected by their influence, you can hunt down their sub-bosses, The Black Star and The Infinite Hunger, before finally facing The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds themselves. Defeating these formidable foes yields valuable rewards including exclusive new unique items.
• The Atlas of Worlds has been revised, and regions have been removed. The regional Atlas Passive Trees have been replaced with one gigantic Atlas-wide Passive Tree that affects all maps you run. You can earn points by completing bonus objectives of maps and finishing certain Atlas quests.
• The Watchstone system has also been removed, and replaced with Voidstones which are obtained by defeating The Uber Elder, The Maven, The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds. These Voidstones raise the tiers of maps on your Atlas and can be augmented by Sextants.

The Archnemesis 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!
• Archnemesis is a challenge league that reinvigorates fights with rare monsters. It introduces around 60 new monster mods and allows you to customise your rare boss fights to control your level of risk and reward. These mods can be combined in over 35 recipes to create new, more powerful and rewarding mods. As you play through the league, you’ll discover more recipes and learn how to best utilise them to get the most valuable rewards.
• When you slay regular Rare and Magic monsters in the Archnemesis League, they sometimes drop an itemised version of a new Archnemesis monster modifier. You store these in a dedicated inventory panel so that they don’t clutter your regular inventory.
• Over the course of each area you play, you’ll encounter four monsters that are frozen in place, petrified and bound to the Archnemesis statue. When you find such a monster, you can free it by empowering it with an Archnemesis mod. If you’re able to successfully defeat the empowered monster, then you will receive the fixed reward that corresponds to that modifier.
• The mods you apply will accumulate as you play through the area. When you empower your second monster, it also has the mod you applied to the first monster. This results in a fight that has twice as many dangerous mods, and twice as many rewards. By the time you have empowered and slain four petrified monsters in an area, you will have received the first reward four times.
• More than half of the available mods are created by combining other mods together on the same monster. These recipe mods yield substantially more dangerous encounters and have more valuable rewards.
• To prevent you having to backtrack, there are more than four possible locations where you may encounter petrified monsters in each area, but only the first four you encounter can be empowered and fought.
• Archnemesis mods cannot be traded with other players. Your progress is your own.
• With 3.17.0, there are Standard, Hardcore and Solo Self-Found variations of the Archnemesis challenge league available. They have the same core mechanics and items. You can create private league versions of these leagues, with mods that make the game harder.
• The new challenge league includes a set of 40 new challenges. When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Archnemesis Ice Character Effect. Upon completing 24 challenges, you will receive the Archnemesis Weapon Skin. At 32 challenges completed you will receive the Archnemesis Lightning Character Effect. When you complete 34 challenges, you will receive the Archnemesis Fire Character Effect. At 36 challenges completed you will receive the Archnemesis Wings. Upon completing 38 challenges, you will receive the Archnemesis Prismatic 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 Archnemesis Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Archnemesis challenges you completed during the league.

Console-specific notes

Please note that this patch includes Hotfixes 1 through 6 for PC. The notes are included at the bottom of this section for your reference.

• Added league-specific keybinds that are available while both triggers are held.
• Delve Flares and Dynamite can no longer be rebound on the skill bar.
• Added a keybind for cancelling the Map Stash Tab conversion process and for closing the popup window.
• Added a small display above the flask bar that indicates when item highlighting has been turned off.
• Introduced the Archnemesis League Supporter Packs and the annual Core Supporter Packs.
• Interacting with targets that then become uninteractable will now remove your cursor from them.
• Improved the targeting behaviour for monsters, items and interactables you have line of sight to.
• Improved the user interface for socketing mode.
• Updated NeverSink loot filters.
• Fixed a bug where “repeat search” was not working on quick-searched items on the Tradeboard.
• Fixed a bug where the minimap could sometimes display incorrectly in Delve areas.
• Fixed a bug where scrolling through a Tradeboard category did not work properly when you had a filter applied.
• Fixed a bug where quick-searching non-unique items would not clear the Tradeboard fliter.
• Fixed a bug where Hydrosphere’s alternate behaviour would not consistently place the Hydrosphere behind the targeted monster.

Hotfix 1

• The Map Device now indicates if you can’t use it (due to not being the party leader) prior to you putting a map in.
• Fixed a bug where the Hyrri’s Bite Vendor Recipe did not work with its new item base type.
• Fixed a bug with the Gem and Flask Stash Tabs where newly-inserted flasks could not have price notes set.
• Fixed a bug where the new Sharktooth Quiver granted Life Gain on Hit that didn’t actually work.
• Fixed various client and instance crashes.

Hotfix 2

• Fixed a bug where specific Blood Monkey Chieftains would fail to generate charges for allies.
• Fixed a bug where some auras would not be removed when certain items were removed.
• Fixed a bug where Lilly Roth sometimes couldn’t be invited to your hideout.
• Fixed a bug where bow damage nodes on the Passive Tree were not applying.
• Fixed a bug where the Atlas Passive Tree could show a “Reset all Passives” button that affected the regular Passive Skill Tree.
• Fixed a bug where the Passive Skill Tree mastery stat that makes increases and reductions to projectile speed also apply to bow damage was calculating them incorrectly.
• Fixed client and instance crashes related to Arc.

Hotfix 3

• Fixed a bug where Invitations could be split using Beast Crafting.
• Fixed a bug where Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh Jewels could have invalid or legacy Ascendancy notables. Existing ones in this state have now been fixed to become valid notables from the same class.

Hotfix 4

• Fixed a client crash occurring in Archnemesis League.

Hotfix 5

• Fixed a bug causing an unintended increase of monster density in the Betrayal Laboratory.
• Fixed an instance crash.

Hotfix 6

• Fixed a bug where some Synthesis and Shaper Atlas Passive Tree nodes were not working when allocated.
• Fixed a client crash.

Major New Content and Features

• Added 13 new Divination Cards, designed by our supporters.
• Added 14 new Unique Items.
• Introduced Lesser, Greater, Grand, and Exceptional Eldritch Ichor, currency items that add an Eater of Worlds implicit modifier to a Body Armour, Boots, Gloves, or Helmet. This replaces any existing implicit modifiers other than Searing Exarch implicit modifiers.
• Introduced Lesser, Greater, Grand, and Exceptional Eldritch Ember, currency items that add a Searing Exarch implicit modifier to a Body Armour, Boots, Gloves, or Helmet. This replaces any existing implicit modifiers other than Eater of Worlds implicit modifiers.
• Introduced the Orb of Conflict, a currency item that unpredictably raises the strength of one Searing Exarch or Eater of Worlds modifier on an item and lowers the strength of another. Lesser modifiers that have their strength lowered will be removed.
• Introduced the Eldritch Chaos Orb, a currency item that rerolls prefix modifiers on an item if The Searing Exarch is dominant, or rerolls suffix modifiers if The Eater of Worlds is dominant. Dominance is determined by which Eldritch Horror has a higher Eldritch Implicit on the item.
• Introduced the Eldritch Exalted Orb, a currency item that adds a prefix modifier to an item if The Searing Exarch is dominant, or adds a suffix modifier is The Eater of Worlds is dominant. Dominance is determined by which Eldritch Horror has a higher Eldritch Implicit on the item.
• Introduced the Eldritch Orb of Annulment, a currency item that removes a prefix modifier from an item if The Searing Exarch is dominant, or removes a suffix modifier if The Eater of Worlds is dominant. Dominance is determined by which Eldritch Horror has a higher Eldritch Implicit on the item.
• Introduced the Oil Extractor, a currency item that destroys an Anointed Ring, Amulet or Map to gain one of the oils used to create its Anointment, chosen at random. This item can be obtained with a specialisation on the Atlas Passive Tree.
• Introduced a new type of currency, Scouting Reports, which can be used to reroll the missions offered by Kirac, guaranteeing at least one mission of a certain type.
• Introduced the Surveyor’s Compass, a currency item that allows you to store a Sextant Modifier.
• Added a new Dexterity Support gem – Mark on Hit: Trigger Supported Skill when you Hit a Rare or Unique Enemy with an Attack. Supports mark curse skills.
• Added a new Strength/Intelligence Support gem – Divine Blessing: Converts supported Aura Skills into temporary Blessings with increased effect, changing their Reservation to a one-time cost. You will only be able to benefit from one Blessing at a time. This gem cannot convert Banner Skills.
• Added a new Strength Support gem – Eternal Blessing: Supported Aura Skills lose their reservations and become Blessings. You will only be able to benefit from one Blessing at a time and while under the effect of a Supported Skill, all Non-Blessing Skills which reserve mana are disabled.

Minor New Content and Features

• It is now possible to have multiple Blight Encounters in a single Area through the new Blight Atlas Passive Skills.
• The Duelist has received audio dialogue for Part Two (acts 6-10) of Path of Exile.
• Flasks now refill upon entering or leaving the Azurite Mine Encampment.
• Raise Spectre’s most recent monster types are now saved to your character and may be Desecrated. The size of this list is capped by your Spectre limit.
• Delve monsters that glow now fade their glow on death.
• Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.

Note: Expedition shops in Permanent Leagues will be refreshed due to a number of currency item changes in 3.17.0.

Atlas and Map changes

• The following Maps have been added back to the Atlas: Bazaar, Beach, Belfry, Bramble Valley, Burial Chambers, Cage, Channel, City Square, Cold River, Coral Ruins, Coves, Desert Spring, Frozen Cabins, Graveyard, Iceberg, Infested Valley, Ivory Temple, Jungle Valley, Lava Chamber, Marshes, Mesa, Peninsula, Phantasmagoria, Precinct, Primordial Pool, Shipyard, Shrine, and Volcano.
• The following Maps have been removed from the Atlas: Alleyways, Barrows, Bog, Chateau, Core, Desert, Foundry, Fungal Hollow, Lava Lake, Leyline, Lighthouse, Mud Geyser, Park, Pit, Plateau, Primordial Blocks, Racecourse, Reef, Relic Chambers, Sepulchre, Siege, Spider Lair, Sulphur Vents, Sunken City, Terrace, Tropical Island, Waterways, and Wharf.
• Vaal Temple is no longer on the Atlas, and is now obtained from corrupting tier 16 Maps.
• Introduced a new “Synthesised Map” Base Type, which all 5 Unique Synthesis Maps now use. This Map is not found on the Atlas.
• Some of the Map Bosses you are required to defeat to upgrade your Pantheon have changed as a result of these Atlas changes.
• Crafting Recipes that were previously unlocked in Maps that have been removed are now found within other Maps currently on the Atlas.
• Favoured Map slots (formerly known as Favourite Map slots) are now unlocked upon completing specific content or defeating specific bosses.
• The Conqueror and Awakener encounters can still be accessed. If you’re lucky, Kirac may offer a Conqueror’s Map!
• Kirac can now offer missions involving Expedition, Ritual, Heist, and Ambush mechanics.
• Introduced new modifiers that can roll on Maps, Expedition Logbooks, Heist Contracts, Blueprints and Delve areas.
• Introduced new modifiers that can be obtained from Sextants.
• Maps, Heist Contracts and Blueprints can no longer roll “Players have Point Blank”.
• The Maven Orb is now called the Orb of Dominance, and no longer drops from Maven.
• The Orb of Unmaking can now also be purchased from Kirac for two Orbs of Regret.
• The Hook Divination Card has been temporarily disabled, and existing cards cannot be turned in currently.
• Added a new Harvest craft that allows you to change a Conqueror Fragment into another random Conqueror Fragment of that type.
• Added a new Harvest craft that allows you to sacrifice a Tier 14 Map or higher to create a random Conqueror-occupied Map.
• Existing Scourged Maps no longer mention any Scourge gameplay mechanics on the item, as they will now have no effect.

Content and Rewards

Rewards from Conquerors

Problem:
Awakened Gems are a significant damage boost for many builds. With Sirus and the Conquerors being moved to optional, less consistent late game content, Awakened Gems will not have a reasonable method of acquisition.

Solution:
Move awakened gems to a different drop location.

Problem:
With Conquerors being moved to secondary late-game content, Influenced items will be harder to obtain. Certain generic modifiers from Influenced items are significant improvements to damage for a large subset of builds, and locking that power behind the Influence mechanic limits both player options and pushes players to chase the secondary content more.

Solution:
Move certain powerful influence modifiers into the base item modifier pool, out of the Influence modifier pool. These modifiers will still have a high level requirement.

Rewards from The Maven

Problem:
Some of the Unique items that drop from The Maven are not powerful enough due to changes to the structure of the Endgame content.

Solution:
Improve these Uniques so they feel appropriate as a reward from an Endgame boss.

Atlas Base Types

Problem:
With Atlas Regions no longer existing in 3.17.0, there is no longer a location specific way to obtain Atlas Base Types. The new atlas has no clear distinction for how different locations could drop specific base types.

Solution:
Make Atlas Base types into regular item drops, but have a lower chance to drop.

Sextants

Problem:
Sextants were previously applied to Watchstones which you could acquire very early into your Atlas progression. Sextants will now be applied to Voidstones, which are something you’ll first encounter very deep into your Atlas progression.

Solution:
Have Sextants begin dropping closer to the time that you’ll actually have a Voidstone so that you’re not stuck with Sextants that have no use case.

Trading Sextants

Problem:
There are only 4 Voidstones that can be acquired, therefore there is no way to itemise a Sextant modifier for later by slotting in an alternate Voidstone. We like the ability to itemise a Sextant modifier for use at a later time.

Solution:
Add a new currency item that can be used on Voidstones, storing the Sextant Modifier in an itemised form, allowing for use at a later time or for trading to other players.

The Vaal Temple Map

Problem:
Corrupting into Vaal Temple wasn’t a very good outcome, even though it’s meant to be rare and special. With the removal of Regions, it would become more common.

Solution:
In order to have Vaal Temple feel more special as an outcome, we’ve added a special implicit modifier to Vaal Temple.

Blight-ravaged Maps

Problem:
Blight-ravaged Maps are generally not as rewarding as regular Blighted Maps given the time investment and difficulty increase.

Solution:
Improve the reward for increasing the difficulty of Blight-ravaged Maps.

Divination Cards and the Atlas Rotation

Problem:
With maps now constantly rotating in and out of the Atlas, some Divination Cards may no longer have a location or boss that they can naturally be obtained from. In 3.16.0 this was handled by manually ensuring that every divination card still had a map to drop in, but this is not feasible to do for every release.

Solution:
Change drop locations of many Divination Cards to drop in a specific thematically-linked list of areas. A few will drop in slightly fewer locations because of this change. Make sure every divination card that drops in maps will always have a map on the Atlas that drops it.

Problem:
A small number of divination cards turn in for specific maps. This means that either these maps have to always be present when Atlas rotation occurs, or the rewards of these cards have to be altered so that they can always give a valid reward.

Solution:
Make most divination cards that previously granted a specific map now grant a specific tier of map.

Prophecy

Problem:
Most prophecy content is not up to our modern standards of league quality or rewards, and as new systems and mechanics are introduced, older content is gradually retired.

Solution:
Remove the Prophecy mechanic from the game, and move many of its rewards to other content.

Problem:
Some Divination cards grant Prophecy-related rewards that can no longer be obtained (for example, sealed prophecies).

Solution:
We have updated some Divination Cards that previously awarded Sealed Prophecies, and temporarily disabled others that did not have a relevant update that could be made.

Betrayal

Problem:
Leaders are only able to reinforce a job in specific situations where another job member is a higher or lower rank. This can result in a player unknowingly preventing a Leader from joining, and locking out any reinforcements from joining an encounter.

Solution:
Betrayal job Leaders can now assist as reinforcements on a job if there are a total of 3 ranks worth of syndicate members in that job. This allows you to draw a leader out more easily by having multiple equally ranked members on a job, or a single rank 3 member on a job.

Delve Biome Modifiers

Problem:
Newly-introduced delve biome modifiers that forced all side passage chests to be a specific chest type (such as fossils or azurite) could be used to repeatedly farm the same section of passage to produce huge amounts of resonators and fossils.

Solution:
Change Delve biome modifiers that forced chests in side passages to be a particular chest to instead only affect chests behind fractured walls. Modifiers that made side passage chests of a particular type remain unchanged.

Problem:
Newly-introduced delve biome modifiers that caused the crawler to consume less sulphite could be used to farm experience very efficiently by finding a biome with a high value of this mod, repeatedly running the same path and logging out before completing the encounter.

Solution:
Reduce the values of sulphite-used biome modifiers

Monster Balance

Act 2 Improvements

Problem:
Many monsters in act 2 are not up to the standard of challenge and polish of other content.

Solution:
Improve the behaviour of most Act 2 monsters, raise the life of some weaker Act 2 monsters and add new monster varieties to some Act 2 areas

Tormented Martyrs

Problem:
Monsters touched by Tormented Martyrs explode on death. The danger posed by this explosion is hard to predict due to being dependent on the monster’s main hand attack damage, which varies widely between monster types.

Solution:
Change the damage dealt when Tormented Martyr-touched monsters explode to be based only on the monster’s level, meaning that every monster in a given area will deal a similar amount of damage when it explodes.

Existing Monster modifiers

Problem:
Certain random monster modifiers have outdated values, and a more diverse set of modifiers are required for Archnemesis to provide an even spread of effects on killing Rare monsters.

Solution:
Update and add to monster modifiers. Add more options for Caster monsters to allow more diverse modifier outcomes, and new enhanced defence modifiers.

Mausoleum Map Boss

Problem:
The Mausoleum Map Boss’ Detonate Dead is not very well-telegraphed, making an avoidable source of damage hard to identify.

Solution:
Reduce the number of corpses Tolman, The Exhumer, is able to explode at once and add a visual effect wind-up to the skill.

Player Balance

Hit-based Spellcasting

Problem:
Most hit-based Spellcasting builds deal too little damage and have too few defensive and mobility options when compared with alternatives like Traps, Totems, Mines, Triggered Skills or Damage over Time.

Solution:

• Adjust the hit damage growth of most spells. The majority of spells gained around 45% more damage at gem level 20, resulting in up to 60% more damage by gem level 25. Some spells have received smaller adjustments or no adjustment. These less affected spells are generally those that provide more mobility or supplemental damage through duration mechanics.
• Allow casters to obtain more cast speed through the Runic Dagger mod pool, increase some cast speed values and give rings and amulets additional tiers of cast speed modifiers.
• Give Orb of Storms more damage and a mechanical redesign to solidify it as a great supplemental lightning damage skill.
• Give Flameblast, Lightning Tendrils and Ice Spear some improvements to make them great skills for dealing high damage against a single target.
• Improve many skills that rely heavily on unique Threshold Jewels to enhance their damage and remove or change these jewels. For many such skills, this means granting more damage in exchange for efficient sources of extra projectiles. This includes skills like Freezing Pulse, Frostbolt, Heavy Strike and Cleave. For damage-focused spells, the result of these changes means that their damage has increased on top of the damage multiplier noted above.
• Lower the power of the Unleash Support. Because it is the single most impactful support for the kind of build that benefits from the aforementioned buffs, it creates limited options for these builds by feeling like the only option. With these builds otherwise being buffed, there should be more build options available than before.
• Lower the damage from Totem, Trap, Mine and Trigger effects to balance out the buff to these spells. The intention is that in general, these builds should deal the same damage at high levels as they did previously. While at face value these changes will look like nerfs, for the most part they shouldn’t be due to the buffs to spells. However, we do acknowledge there will be a small number of builds that will be negatively affected by these changes. Additionally, because we’ve adjusted some support gems that multiply the number of traps thrown, we’ve provided some compensation for this on non-cooldown trap skills like Fire Trap and Lightning Trap.
• Lower the damage of player Ignite by 28% to partially offset the damage increase that many Ignite-applying spells have received. For the majority of high level spell gems, this is a slight damage buff when combined with the above changes. Burning Arrow, Armageddon Brand, Explosive Arrow and several other skills have received changes to compensate for the lower damage of Ignite. Attack skills and a small number of spells that are not typically aligned with Ignites will have weaker Ignites as a result of this change. Introduced a mechanic for Ignite damage with melee attack skills to give some unconventional Ignite builds a new option for enhancing Ignites.

Hit-based Bow Attacks

Problem:
Hit-based bow attacks require an unreasonable amount of investment to reach competitive levels of damage. Builds that want to achieve this must utilise critical strikes and many skills can’t sufficiently invest in this mechanic without sacrificing defensive options.

Solution:

• Give bows the same local added elemental damage modifiers as two handed melee weapon modifiers do, which are much stronger than the bow-specific modifiers used previously.
• Improve the damage of bows in general, with some base types getting up to 50% more base damage than before.
• Improve the Mastery options on Bow Passive clusters.
• Added a new Keystone Passive, Precise Technique, which grants “40% more Attack Damage if Accuracy Rating is higher than Maximum Life” and “Never deal Critical Strikes”.
• Make a number of improvements to quivers so that bows can receive much more damage from rare quivers:
• We have reworked the quiver progression with new quiver types that provide a diverse set of useful implicits.
• We have greatly improve Added Physical Damage modifiers on quivers.
• We have replaced “Elemental Damage with Attack Skills” modifiers on quivers with “Increased Damage with Bow Skills” to allow quivers to roll another way to improve skills dealing Physical or Chaos damage.
• We have taken the +1 Arrow prefix off influenced quiver modifiers and added it to the core modifier pool of quivers as a suffix.
• We have added an extra tier to the Attack Speed and Accuracy modifiers on quivers.

Sources of Added Damage

Problem:
Added Cold, Lightning and Chaos Damage Support Gems provide significant unconditional added damage that outclasses many damage options available to some builds, most notably bow builds. By comparison, many other sources of added damage are relatively weak.

Solution:
Lower the strength of unconditional “Added Damage” Support Gems, and raise the strength of “Local Added Damage” and “Added Damage to Spells” on weapons.

Skill interactions with Hydrosphere

Problem:
Certain skills that have a chaining or shockwave effect can multiply their damage against single targets by also hitting Hydrosphere. These skills should not be balanced around using an off-class or off-theme skill like this. Maintaining the ability to use this interaction would prevent us from improving certain bow skills and hit damage spells without their maximum damage output being too high.

Solution:
Change Hydrosphere to have a one second cooldown before it can be hit again. This maintains the ailment mechanic on Hydrosphere to still allow for some special skill interactions but is no longer such a significant single target damage multiplier for so many skills.

Triggering Marks

Problem:
When applied through Mark-on-hit skills or unique items that trigger them, Marks are far more efficient for clearing and easier to sustain on boss fights. Builds that don’t have access to these high-end items are disadvantaged in comparison.

Solution:
Make Marks permanent so they only require a single cast for boss encounters. Add a new support gem that lets attacks trigger marks on hitting Rare and Unique targets.

Fortification and Damage Reduction

Problem:
Fortification gain being scaled by the damage dealt by a fortifying hit means that hitting monsters with very high amounts of damage reduction (such as in the Azurite Mines, the Simulacrum or against monsters that have just been spawned by certain league mechanics) can grant little to no fortification, even for builds with very high damage.

Solution:
Fortification generation now ignores the target’s damage reduction.

Attack characters and Frenzy Charge sustain

Problem:
Attack characters have limited powerful options for sustaining Frenzy Charges, forcing the use of specific skills for obtaining low opportunity cost Frenzy Charges. Marks have only one Mastery that provides an offensive effect, while the rest are Utility and Defence oriented. With Marks being easier to apply thanks to the new Mark triggering support gem, there could be a more diverse set of options for Mark investment.

Solution:
Added a new Mark Mastery: 10% chance to gain a Frenzy Charge on Hit against a Marked Enemy

Arrow Speed

Problem:
Arrow Speed is only used on one passive and a small number of gem qualities, but Galvanic Arrow’s “Increases and Reductions to Arrow Speed also apply to this Skill’s Area of Effect” stat is worded inaccurately to include the stat.

Solution:
Replace all sources of Arrow Speed with the same value of Projectile Speed

Reduced Resistances

Problem:
It’s possible to obtain high amounts of reduced resistances with uniques introduced in 3.17.0.

Solution:
Resistances can no longer be reduced by more than 100%. This does not change the cap of -200% for negative character resistances. This change affects stats that reduce resistances such as the reduced Fire Resistance modifier on Cowl of the Cryophile and the reduced Elemental Resistances modifier on The Annihilating Light.

Skill Balance

Problem:
Detonate Dead builds can gain significantly more damage by diluting the pool of Desecratable monsters with high-life Spectres. Because of how Desecrate selected monsters, the fewer monsters occurring in the area, the more damage Detonate Dead dealt.

Solution:
Change Desecrate to have a fixed chance to spawn a Spectre corpse. This means Detonate Dead’s damage should be more consistent based on which area in the game you are in. This also means there is no incentive to bring multiple different high-life spectre varieties, although you still benefit from bringing one high-life spectre into areas.

Problem:
Certain Corpses have far higher life totals than others, giving extreme survivability when used as a Spectre and very high damage of skills based on their corpse life.

Solution:
Lower the life of Spectre versions of monsters that have very high life totals. Their life is being brought down to match Kitava’s Herald monsters. This will affect their corpse when created with Desecrate.

Problem:
Seismic Trap has very high damage scaling as its damage scales with increases to Area of Effect. Increasing the area of Seismic Trap impacts greatly increases the chance of multiple large bursts hitting a target, as area increases don’t affect the area where the impacts can occur. Though this mechanic is interesting, it provides far too much damage for the investment cost and the damage of the skill would have to be lowered to by so much to offset this that the skill would be very weak without the overlapping mechanic.

Solution:
Make modifiers to Area of Effect apply to the area Seismic Trap’s bursts can target at a ratio. This will slightly improve the area coverage of the skill while lowering the damage growth from increases to Area of Effect without removing their damage benefit entirely.

Problem:
Toxic Rain has very strong damage over time and a low build cost compared to other bow builds. It also benefits from some of the quiver and Mastery changes made to improve hit-based bow skills.

Solution:
Reduce the high-level damage of Toxic Rain in order to partially negate the improvements to quivers and bring it more in line with other skills.

Problem:
Items that Summon Spectral Wolf on Critical Strike or Kill will rapidly replace wolves when reaching the minion limit, which can replace an actively-attacking wolf with one that still has yet to play its emerge animation.

Solution:
Summon Spectral Wolf now refreshes the duration and life of an active wolf if the skill is already at its minion limit.

Unique Item Balance

Problem:
March of the Legion is a very low-cost method to gain four extra auras on some builds due to the change where Mana is not being required in order to cast an aura. It also took full advantage of the Supreme Ego keystone in a way that goes against the intent of the mechanic and gained a significant amount of power in the process.

Solution:
Rework the Blessing mechanic of March of the Legion to limit the number of Blessings you can have to one. Change the skill to cost mana instead of temporarily reserving mana. The process of making this change also highlighted a number of problems with other mechanics which has led to a ripple effect of other changes being required. Release Blessing as a Support gem, to make the mechanic available to builds that are not using the unique item. This is intended to be useful for high mana-use characters who wish to leave their mana unreserved and for characters using the Blood Magic keystone. Improve the aura level granted by March of the Legion so the item excels at using a Blessing aura. Remove Mortal Conviction and the life passives from behind the Blood Magic keystone and make a Mortal Conviction-style support gem that makes an aura free, and prevents you reserving mana. It will be mutually exclusive with Blessing skills, so you won’t be able to use both simultaneously. This support gem provides slightly less aura effect to the skill than the Blessing Support but has no cost or upkeep involved. Change Blood Magic to also grant 10% more life to compensate for the removal of the efficient life passives behind the keystone. Change Supreme Ego to not limit you to one aura and instead give more aura effect based on how much mana an aura reserves.

Problem:
The Shade Form skill (granted by the Shroud of the Lightless and Replica Eternity Shroud unique items) could, with heavy investment, have its duration extended to be longer than its cooldown, granting permanent immunity to physical damage.

Solution:
Change Shade Form’s cooldown to pause while the skill is active. Reduce the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.

Problem:
The damage reduction granted by the Strength of Blood keystone (from the Lethal Pride unique jewel) incorrectly scaled with modifiers to life recovery rate, allowing it to reach 100% and for characters to be immune to damage.

Solution:
Strength of Blood’s damage reduction no longer scales with modifiers to life recovery rate.

Problem:
The Dancing Dervish unique item has no accessible way to sustain its mechanic on Boss fights, mostly due to Rampage stacks being difficult to activate in these fights and the summoned minion’s behaviour feeling sluggish while clearing.

Solution:
Change The Dancing Dervish to cause you to gain rampage on melee hits and improve its minion behaviour.

Problem:
Perfidy’s Dread Banner Fortification duration mod was causing issues with the new Fortification system that could not be reconciled.

Solution:
Replace Perfidy’s Dread Banner mod.

Problem:
The unique Voidfletcher quiver massively outclasses the single target damage bonuses of the best rare quivers for many builds. Its effective power is further improved by Bow damage changes, as it is capable of more than doubling the single target damage for many bow builds that have a large number of additional projectiles.

Solution:
Lower the damage multipliers of Voidfletcher arrows.

Problem:
The “All Attacks with this Weapon are Critical Strikes” modifier on Trypanon causes the critical strike chance of the weapon itself to display as 100%, as though it was modifying the weapon’s critical strike chance, which it doesn’t actually do. This would mean that Destructive Link would not grant 100% critical strike chance to the linked target.

Solution:
Change this modifier so that it does affect the critical strike chance of the weapon.

Problem:
The modifier to Total Mana Cost of Skills on Voidbringer and Apep’s Rage did not function correctly after the Mana cost rework in 3.14, as it applied after other modifiers, including Blood Magic.

Solution:
Replace these modifiers with an effect with a similar downside, which would no longer count as a cost. This means they will no longer prevent the skill being used if no mana is available.

Problem:
Stormfire’s “increased Burning Damage for each time you have Shocked a Non-Shocked Enemy Recently” can be used with a number of specific mechanics to count as shocking a non-shocked enemy hundreds of times per second. This interaction provides problematic levels of damage.

Solution:
Update the Stormfire Unique Ring so the increased Burning Damage for each time you have Shocked a Non-Shocked Enemy Recently will be capped at 120%. To compensate, the base values of the damage increase will be raised to 8-12% increased Burning Damage. Existing items will be affected by this cap, but a Divine Orb will need to be used in order to update the increased Burning Damage values.

Item Balance

Problem:
The crafted version of added fire, cold, and lightning damage modifiers on Gloves are more powerful than the base modifier versions that can roll on Gloves.

Solution:
Add two new tiers of added fire, cold and lightning damage to the core glove modifier pool.

Problem:
Recouping Life from damage taken has too few locations to invest in the mechanic, with items only giving the mechanic on Unique items.

Solution:
Introduce ring modifiers that cause a percentage of the damage you take from hits to be recouped as life over the 4 seconds following the hit.

Problem:
The Veiled Belt modifier that provides Flask Effect and reduced Charges is a suffix, while the Belt modifiers in the core modifier pool that provide Flask Effect are prefixes.

Solution:
The Veiled Belt modifier that provides increased Flask Effect and reduced Flask Charges gained has been changed to a prefix modifier. Existing modifiers will be unaffected.

Problem:
The Crafting option for Attack Speed on Shields is a much smaller value than is obtainable on Dexterity based Shields.

Solution:
Change the Shield crafted modifier to use a higher Attack Speed value. This can apply to any Shield type.

Problem:
Increased Spell, Fire, Cold and Lightning Damage prefix modifiers on one hand weapons have a jump in values across tiers.

Solution:
We have smoothed the progression of tiers for increased Spell, Fire, Cold, and Lightning Damage on prefix modifiers, so there is no longer a sudden jump in values.

Problem:
Cluster Jewels allow the stacking of Maximum Total Life Recovery per second from Leech, letting the mechanic reach such high values that Strength of Blood would mitigate too much damage.

Solution:
Remove Maximum Total life recovery per second from Leech from Cluster Jewel notables, and improve other aspects of the Notables they come from.

Problem:
The Shortcut divination card allowed obtaining high-level flasks too early, but gave a low-level move speed modifier.

Solution:
Update its modifier to the highest movement speed modifier available, and raise the minimum drop level to 80.

Crafting Recipes

Problem:
With crafting recipes being removed from optional content in 3.16.0, the ability to unlock Socket crafting options was moved to far later in the game, when it is intended to be an early solution for guaranteed socket manipulation.

Solution:
These crafting recipes have been moved out of Maps. They can now be found in The Mines, The Grand Arena and Kaom’s Stronghold in Act 4.

Kirac League Mods Available During 3.17.0

• Kirac’s map device options are now unlocked as you complete bonus objectives on your Atlas. These are the League Mods available during 3.17.0.
• Fortune Favours the Brave (costs 3 Chaos Orbs): One of these options will be applied at random, including those you have not yet unlocked.
• Abyss (costs 2 Chaos Orbs): Area contains an additional Abyss.
• Domination (costs 3 Chaos Orbs): Area contains 3 additional Shrines.
• Bloodlines (costs 3 Chaos Orbs): Magic Monster Packs each have a Bloodline Mod. Area contains 3 additional Magic Monster Packs.
• Ambush (costs 4 Chaos Orbs): Area contains 4 additional Strongboxes.
• Harbinger (costs 4 Chaos Orbs): Area contains 2 additional Harbingers.
• Beyond (costs 5 Chaos Orbs): Slaying Enemies close together has a 15% chance to attract monsters from Beyond.
• Ritual (costs 13 Chaos Orbs): Area contains Ritual Altars.

User Interface Changes

• The Map Stash Tab map series behaviour has been changed. You can once again set all of your Map Stash Tabs to old map series if you choose. All of your purchased Map Stash Tabs that were not explicitly set to an older map series will now be set to remove-only and replaced with empty current map series Map Stash Tabs when a new map series is released. You can now promote a remove-only Map Stash Tab to be active, provided you have an empty active Map Stash Tab for it to replace.
• Added a section to the Map Stash Tab for storing Conqueror, Elder and Shaper Guardian Maps.
• Added an option to visually hide your life and mana reservation, so your actual usable life and mana are scaled to fill your entire orbs. This can be found in the UI Options, under Gameplay.
• The Advanced Mod Descriptions of an item will now display the English name of base item types and Unique items when playing Path of Exile in languages other than English.

Quest Rewards

• Divine Blessing Support is now offered to the Templar for completing A Fixture of Fate.
• Eternal Blessing Support is now offered to the Marauder for completing The Eternal Nightmare, and can be purchased from Petarus and Vanja by all classes.
• Mark on Hit Support can be purchased from Petarus and Vanja by all classes after completing The Eternal Nightmare.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where some modifiers would display the lowest item-level version of that modifier as tier 1, with the highest item-level version of that modifier displayed as the lowest tier.
• Fixed a bug where poisoning yourself through The Golden Rule Unique Jewel with the “Enemies Poisoned by you cannot deal Critical Strikes” Claw Passive Mastery allocated would cause you to be unable to deal Critical Strikes.
• Fixed a bug where Divergent Cast while Channelling was granting increased effect of non-damaging ailments on enemies for Supported Skills, rather than Supported Triggered Skills.
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to damage yourself when using Vaal Cold Snap.
• Fixed a bug where Hydrosphere would not continually apply the drenched debuff to Totem Enemies.
• Fixed a bug where Defiance Banner was not gaining stages at the correct rate.
• Fixed a bug where Creeping Frost was not interacting with Tornado correctly.
• Fixed a bug where increased Attack Speed could decrease the speed of Monster projectile attacks.
• Fixed a bug where using Molten Shell whilst channelling Cyclone with the Gluttony Unique Belt equipped could cause desync.
• Fixed a bug where Heist Laboratory Blueprint and Contract areas could slow down to an absolute crawl.
• Fixed a bug where Blade Trap would not have its spell damage increased when supported by Iron Will.
• Fixed a bug where Belts with some Energy Shield and Armour modifiers could not be reforged with random modifiers, including a Defence modifier, through Harvest crafting.
• Fixed a bug where Monsters in the Domain of Timeless Conflict would not revive if they were killed as soon as they spawned.
• Fixed a bug where The Vaal Omnitect’s Thrusters could continue to deal damage after death.
• Fixed a bug where some Squid Monsters were still able to blind you with the Garukhan “Cannot be Blinded” Pantheon selected.
• Fixed a bug where the Grasping Vines debuff was not applying the correct movement speed reduction.
• Fixed a bug where Evasion Rating from Auras was not taken into account when entering areas if you had both Ghost Reaver and Ghost Dance Keystone Passives allocated.
• Fixed a bug where the “All Damage inflicts Poison while affected by Glorious Madness” modifier on the Beacon of Madness Unique Boots was not working correctly
• Fixed a bug where Battlemage’s Cry was not interacting correctly with Iron Will Support.
• Fixed a bug where “Exerted Attacks deal increased Damage” only applied to attack damage, rather than to all damage with exerted attacks.
• Fixed a case where the War Bringer Berserker Ascendancy Passive had an incorrect description. It has been updated to clarify exerted attacks deal more attack damage, rather than more damage.
• Fixed a bug where it was not possible to equip Skill Effect Microtransactions to Skills granted through Scourge modifiers.
• Fixed a case where Anomalous Earthbreaker has an incorrect description. It has been updated to clarify it provides increased effect of Ancestor Totem buff, rather than increased effect of buffs your Ancestor Totems grant while active.
• Fixed a bug where the damage from Vaal Detonate Dead’s explosion was able to be reflected.
• Fixed a visual bug where it was possible for a Summoned Golem to display an Elemental Overload buff.
• Fixed a bug where the Varunastra Unique Sword was not working correctly with Mace Passive Masteries.
• Fixed a bug where the Chance to Block Spell Damage Armour crafting bench option was listed as a Suffix instead of Prefix.
• Fixed a bug where the Touch of Cruelty Cluster Jewel Passive incorrectly stated Chaos Skills had a chance to Hinder Enemies on Hit, when this only applies to Chaos Spells.
• Fixed a bug where the Harvest Craft that exchanges Breach Splinters or Breachstones into Splinters or a Breachstone of another type did not specify which kind of Breachstones it works on.
• Fixed a bug where Flasks were able to be triggered after they were refilled when leaving a Hideout or Town.
• Fixed a rare bug with Item Filters where HasExplicitMod and HasEnchant could filter items incorrectly if used with certain numeric operators.
• Fixed a rare bug where the Map Stash Tab could fail to display recently stashed Maps if they were added quickly.
• Fixed a bug where the Champion’s Arrival Portal Effect microtransaction had an excessively long close animation.
• Fixed a bug where ignites from Stygian Wave of Conviction would be green.
• Fixed a bug where the Aesir Weapon Effect looked incorrect when applied to the Cane of Kulemak.
• Fixed a wonky visual interaction between the Scavenger Blood Rage and Aureate Halo microtransactions.
• Fixed two instance crashes.