Check Out This New Blade Blast Of Unloading Assassin Build Guide Of POE 3.23
Feb 03, 2024 Source: POECURRENCY
Presented within this build guide is an agile and high-impact Assassin configuration in Path of Exile 3.23. The recently introduced Blade Blast of Unloading represents a revitalized iteration of its predecessor, the Blade Blast.
Out of all blade skills, it can interact only with the Blade Vortex by detonating them in a ring around you. It will detonate them one by one, gaining more area with every consumed Vortex.
How It Works
You can use the Arcanist Brand to quickly accumulate Blade Vortex Stacks without manually casting them. The brands will add one stack of Blade Vortex with each activation, and you can additionally use the brand recall to cause all your brands to activate once without any target every few seconds.
Moreover, by using the Perfect Crime Notable borrowed from the Saboteur ascendancy via Forbidden Jewels, you will double all stacks you gain with this setup. Gaining max Stacks against a single target takes only a few seconds, and it’s almost permanent. If there are more enemies, it is hard to find a reason to not use a power stacking setup, especially on the Assassin ascendancy. It scales all important aspects of the build and can be assembled very cheaply, leaving a lot of space to bolster your defenses.
Unique Items
The build consists mostly of unique items, which makes it very easy to assemble. Most of them are very cheap, but you can aim for certain corrupted implicit to make them even more powerful. The Atziri’s Acuity might be the most bothersome to get, as you will need to get proper socket colors for your gem setup. Void Battery grants you additional power charge, decent cast speed, Critical Strike Chance for your spells, and improves your spell damage for each power charge you have.
You can corrupt it to get more area of effect instead of the minor spell damage bonus. Malachai's Loop enhances your spell damage and bestows an additional 2 power charges. The drawback associated with this item is effectively mitigated by your belt.Try to get a corrupted implicit that converts part of the incoming physical damage to be taken as elemental or reduces the damage you take from critical hits.
With those boots, you will always have the maximum benefits of all your charges. They also offer solid movement speed and resistance bonuses. They can be corrupted to grant you additional spell suppression, endurance charge, or more movement speed. The Badge of the Brotherhood applies all your maximum power charge bonuses to the frenzy charges as well, which grants you a ton of cast speed and damage. It also lowers the cooldown on your Frostblink skill.
Useful corruptions are very expensive. We would recommend it only if you have nothing else to spend your POE Currency on. The Grave Intentions increase your maximum power charge limit but disable their generation. You will instead gain absorption charges, which in this case is beneficial since it removes the shock from your shield.
Rime Gaze gloves provide an easy way to gain full cold damage conversion. Other modifiers are not that impressive. Try to get a corruption that boosts the base critical strike chance of your spells or automatically applies a curse when you hit an enemy. This armor can nearly double your maximum life, but you can’t have any life modifiers on your other pieces. You will need a corrupted version that has 6 white sockets or color it with the tainted chromatics, as they ignore attribute requirements.
It is best to find one that boosts the levels of socketed gems by 2 or reduces the damage you take from critical hits by half. Militant Faith can grant you the Inner Conviction keystone, which grants you more damage for each power charge you have but disables frenzy charge generation. You should socket it near the Instability notable and allocate the Hex Master keystone.
There are a lot of powerful modifiers you could use with this jewel. The most potent ones are tied to the Hatred aura. The Purity of Elements also offers very useful defensive modifiers, such as extra chaos resistances or physical damage mitigation. It will double your Blade Vortex stacks gained from the Arcanist Brand, and the less damage penalty doesn’t apply to the Blade Blast.
With this combination of jewels, you can purposefully become susceptible to stuns and instantly regain most of the life taken from such hits. It also makes those stuns barely noticeable. Thanks to the Petrified Blood, you will be effectively immune to non-lethal hits. You can anoint the Unfaltering notable if your Blood Notch is not perfectly rolled.
Rare Items
There are just a few rare POE Items you can equip. You can get additional power charges on them, but it will leave your defenses lacking, and the damage is very good without them. Remember that you should avoid life modifiers, which include life regeneration or life recoup. You will also need a bit of attributes for your gem requirements. A rare helmet should grant you spell suppression, elemental resistance, attributes, and physical damage mitigation.
You will need plenty of energy shield to cast your spells, and any amount of chaos resistance on top of that will also be helpful. With your rare rings, you should fix your remaining elemental resistances or attribute requirements. It should also grant you some cast speed and chaos resistance. Optionally, you can improve your energy shield or reduce mana costs if you have trouble casting your Divine Blessing.
You can get the cold damage conversion via the veiled modifier and Eldritch implicit in rare gloves. To get the remaining conversion, use the Cold Mastery on your passive tree. It will be very expensive but can potentially give a bit more damage or spell suppression. At the top end, the Cluster Jewel can be used to obtain the Life Leech from the elemental damage via the Doryani’s Lesson Notable. Other notables are more flexible.
Flasks
The Taste of Hate Flask is worth using just for the powerful defensive modifiers it grants against physical and cold damage. But in this build, it also boosts your damage dealt. You can improve its quality via Hillock to get better uptime. For your remaining Magic Flasks, we recommend using Quartz Flask with the mana cost of skills reduction, Jade Flask with Evasion rating bonus, Life Flask with bleed removal, and a Quicksilver Flask with cast speed bonus.
Skill Gems
The Blade Blast of Unloading detonates your active Blade Vortex stacks in an expanding circle around you, dealing damage and increasing the area for each Vortex consumed. In this setup, we convert it to deal with only cold damage. Having all 10 Blade Vortex stacks doesn’t affect your DPS, so you can use it at any time you want. However, you will need to stand pretty close to your enemies to hit with all rings. You can use the Concentrated Effect or Empower Support against particularly hard encounters, but it is rarely required.
A Vortex of Blades can have up to 10 of them active. It doesn’t deal much damage in this setup. It is used to fuel your Blade Blast. The Arcanist Brand is essential to quickly accumulate Blade Vortex stacks with this setup. It is fairly easy to maintain them all because of high cast speed and duration. The Petrified Blood delays part of the incoming damage, keeps you at a low life status without penalty, and allows you to freely reserve half of your maximum life. Purity of Elements grants a lot of elemental resistances and makes you immune to all elemental ailments. You can replace it with the Grace aura if you have enough resistances. The Summon Skitterbots aura creates 2 helpful minions that apply shock and chill to nearby enemies. The Bonechill Support causes the chilling Aura of your Skitterbots to also increase the damage taken by affected enemies.
You could also use the Unbound Ailments Support, but it requires higher mana reservation efficiency investments. The Herald of Purity significantly improves your physical damage. You can also use Herald of Ash or Herald of Ice for their unkill effects and slightly lower damage bonuses. Precision improves your critical strike chance. You can keep it at a low level. It is not very impactful but enables certain useful Watcher’s Eye modifiers. You can also use the Vitality aura instead.
The Arrogant Support causes linked auras to reserve life instead of mana and greatly improves their effectiveness. You can reserve up to 50% of your maximum life because of the Petrified Blood effect. Hatred is a very powerful aura. It adds a portion of your physical damage as extra cold damage and additionally boosts all cold damage you deal. Thanks to the Divine Blessing, you can use this aura as a temporary buff if you don’t have enough energy shield to pay its cost. Try to lower the gem level of Divine Blessing Support or link it with the Inspiration Support.
Brand Recall summons all brands to you and forces them to activate once. Use it to move your brands around the map and instantly generate the maximum amount of blades. Frostblink is an instant blink spell that allows you to cover a small distance. You can use it during the Blade Blast expansion, which will travel with you. Steelskin is your main guard skill that reduces the incoming damage and disables bleed effects on you. During its effect, your main curse spell is the Frostbite. It lowers the cold resistance of affected enemies.
Bandits & Pantheon
Killing all bandits for 2 bonus skill points is the best option. You can help Alira to ease the gearing process a bit and refund it once you gather more currency. Damage over time is the biggest weakness of this build, which is why we recommend using the Soul of Arakaali as your major Pantheon power. Do not use the Soul of Brine King as it ruins the Blood Notch recovery. The minor Pantheon power is less impactful, but the Soul of Shakari seems like the best choice for general content.
Passive Tree
The Blade Blast is too fun during the early progression. You should use the regular Blade Vortex during the leveling. It has very good damage on its own. Fortunately, the Shadow has a very good starting area for spellcasters. There are many useful notables on the passive tree that you can pick to make your progression faster. You can transition to the Blade Blast after you acquire the Perfect Crime notable via Forbidden Jewels.
The final passive tree is very simple. It aims to pick all maximum power charge notables available. You will also pick plenty of maximum life, spell suppression, and aura modifiers. You will need the Brand Equity notable to summon more brands and lower the cooldown of the recall.
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Why Has The Early Access Of Path Of Exile 2 Been Well Received By Many Players Before It Was Officially Released? - Give Priority To Endgame
Grinding Gear Games, the developer of the most outstanding ARPG Path of Exile, will officially release the new sequel of this game, POE 2, next week. It will bring players similar to gameplay to the original, but will have much better game mechanics, greatly improved visual effects and a new story to enhance the player’s gaming experience.
However, there is no shortage of ARPGs with similar gameplay in the current game market, but why has POE 2 been loved by so many players before it was released? I think this is also what some players who have been waiting to see want to know. Don’t worry, in the information currently leaked about POE 2, we found the specific reasons and will answer this question for you in this guide.
Other ARPGs For Endgame Content
For ARPGs that can provide live-service, the easiest and most common way to retain the player base is to add a lot of Endgame content to the game, making it a driving force for players to participate in the game for a long time. In this way, after players have completed the main quests in the game or explored the upgrade experience, they will still feel fresh about the game because of the new Endgame content.
Unfortunately, Endgame content of most live-service ARPGs cannot effectively attract players, or even retain players. Therefore, in the long-term development of the game world, most of these games will be criticized by many players. Even if some games have made Endgame content very beautiful in the early stage, they are gradually forgotten by players because of the lack of timely updates.
In many player communities, we often see that it is not that Endgame content in these live-service ARPGs is not rich enough, but that players do not feel the fun they deserve in the process of exploring these contents. For example, many ARPGs have farming in the same dungeon or refining some equipment.
Although these repeated game loops reduce the difficulty of exploration for players, they will also make players feel that this is a chore that is not worth spending too much time and energy on, and then turn to another more interesting new game. While the very generous rewards in Endgame content will also have some impact on players, this is not the strongest reason for players to explore this content repeatedly.
Among them, Diablo 4 is a very typical example, because its Endgame content repeatedly relies on exploring Nightmare Dungeons. Even though other events have been added to the newly released DLC at this stage, the number of daily active players in this game is still decreasing. In addition, Marvel’s Avengers is also a game that failed because Endgame content is too repetitive. Players unanimously believe that the rewards in this Endgame content are not comparable to their efforts, so players have given up the game.
POE 2 For Endgame Content
I believe that when you read this, you should understand the most important reason POE 2 stands out among many popular ARPGs-that’s right, it pays more attention to Endgame content. In the previous Path of Exile 2 presentation, developer representative Rogers once said that players will definitely experience the best Endgame in this brand new game! In the latest information released, the developer did what he promised. The main campaign in the early access of POE 2 is about 25 hours long because there are only three Acts.
This means that players can complete the first few main campaigns in a brief time and explore these three Acts again in Cruel mode, and then immediately plunge into Endgame content. Don’t think that Cruel mode will take up a lot of your time. Although the monsters or enemies you encounter in this mode will become more threatening, your character will also get some enhancements here. So you don’t have to worry about your early exploration time being too long, nor do you have to worry about spending too much POE 2 Currency in the early exploration, because the game content of the three Acts of the early is very simple.
In addition, you will experience a completely different exploration experience in Endgame content of the advance of Path of Exile 2 than the original. Whereas in previous games, you were limited to the areas you could explore based on items you picked up, such as maps, in the sequel you’ll be presented with an Atlas, which is a map overview of Endgame content in this brand new game.
In Atlas, there are densely packed nodes with three colors, which represent the types of maps you can explore at this stage, have explored, and have not unlocked. This means that you can choose the map to explore according to your combat ability, and at the same time, you can use Waystones to make the map more advantageous.
In general, POE 2 has greatly increased the expectations of players because it pays more attention to Endgame content. I wonder if those players who are struggling to decide whether to buy this new game have made their decision after reading this guide? No matter what your choice is, it is worth affirming that POE 2, a game that has been polished for a long time, will definitely give you a very big surprise next week!
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How To Better Explore Endgame In Path Of Exile 2 Early Access?
As the official release date of the early access of the new game Path of Exile 2 is getting closer, players are increasingly looking forward to some of the basic gameplay and combat methods. Among all the campaigns, the expectations for Endgame are far higher than other campaigns.
Therefore, this guide will summarize the methods for better exploring Endgame in POE 2 and the explanations of some specific names based on the leaked trailers and some player videos at this stage, so that you can get a head start in the early access version. However, it should be noted that what is introduced in this guide is only speculation, and it is subject to the eventual release.
What Is The Campaign In POE 2?
It should be noted here that since the early access of POE 2 will be released in a few weeks, it will not be a complete campaign, but only Acts 1, 2, and 3. Because this campaign is shorter, there will be a Cruel Mode in the early access version. In this mode, you can re-experience the game content in the 3 Acts you just explored, and then enter Endgame.
Cruel Mode
In the original game, you need to re-explore all the game content in the 3 modes (Normal, Cruel, and Merciless) at some point in the game before you can enter the Endgame. For the upcoming advance version, you only need to complete Cruel Mode to enter it.
Under normal difficulty, all the content of 3 Acts will take about 25 hours; but in Cruel Mode, because your character will be strengthened, the exploration time you need will be reduced accordingly. The specific exploration time may need to be determined according to your game ability and game style.
Endgame Overview
Atlas & Maps
After you have experienced all the above game content, you will enter Endgame. Then you will enter Atlas, which is a super large map that can be infinitely expanded in all directions, and it is also the core endgame system you need to explore.
You will find that there are many small circles in Atlas, each of which represents a portal to a specific map. For example, the blue circle represents the map you can currently access, the gray circle represents the map you can explore next, and the green circle represents the map you have explored.
In these maps, you will clear the corruption that affects the game time and fight powerful monsters. Of course, in the process of exploring these maps, you will be rewarded with a large amount of POE 2 Currency and some loot that is useful for your construction.
Waystones
I believe that in the introduction to Atlas just now; you have discovered one of the most critical differences between POE 2 and the original: in the original, the map you explore is the item you get in other event explorations, and you can choose which maps to run; in POE 2, you can only explore in the order provided to you in Atlas.
And among them, Waystones play a very important role. First of all, before you explore a map, you need a Waystone, just like you need a key to open a lock. The level of Waystones you provide will determine the level or rank of the monsters on the map. In simple terms, the higher the level of Waystones you provide, the higher the level of the monsters you will encounter, the more experience points you will gain, and of course the better the quality of your loot will be.
Like most Path Of Exile 2 Items, you can also add prefixes or suffixes to your Waystones. Prefixes increase the rewards you will receive on the map, while suffixes increase the challenge of the map. This is also a key way to maintain your supply and obtain higher-level drops.
Endgame Map Mechanics
In POE 2’s Endgame map, you’ll encounter bosses, enemies, and mechanics. For bosses or enemies, all you need to do is increase your build’s damage and survivability. In contrast, it’s more important to understand the map mechanics. Here are three mechanics you may encounter in Endgame map.
Precursor Artifacts
It’s Shrines in POE 2, just with a new name. But it’s also where monsters gather. After clearing all the monsters here and pressing the Artifact, you will get a buff for a period.
Strongboxes
Fill these Strongboxes with loot and monsters, which will all depend on your luck. In addition, there will be special modifiers in Strongboxes that will increase the monster weight of the box or apply some debuffs to you. After you clear them of monsters, they will also drop some loot and POE 2 Currency as your reward.
Essences
While exploring Endgame map, you will often find monsters trapped in crystals. After you free them and defeat them, they will drop Essences, which can be used for crafting. It will ensure that the crafted items have a type of modifier, allowing you to craft the effect you want most.
The above are some of the details we have learned about Endgame in the early access of Path of Exile 2. In general, after seeing a very perfect POE 2, our long wait will become very worthwhile. I hope you can have fun playing the new game in a few weeks!
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What Game Mode Is Suitable For You In The Upcoming Path Of Exile 2 Early Access? - Mode Detailed Explanation
Finally! The highly anticipated Path of Exile 2 will officially meet players in a few weeks on December 6. I believe that after this long wait, GGG will bring us a nearly perfect POE 2. But in the meantime, besides waiting foolishly, what you can do is to learn as much as possible about the detailed information of this new game.
And this guide will introduce you to the various game modes in Path of Exile 2 today. If you are a player who has just come into contact with POE series of games, you are likely to be confused by these more complex game modes. But don’t worry, this guide will solve these doubts for you and help you make the most suitable choice for you.
What Is League?
Similar to the seasons (also called ladders and stages) in other action role-playing games, there is a permanent league called Standard League and a limited-time league that usually lasts for three months in Path of Exile 2, usually called Challenge League. For example, Settlers of Kalguur in POE are currently an active Challenge League. Let’s introduce them one by one.
Challenge League
In Path of Exile 2, a new temporary Challenge League is launched every 3-4 months, during which all players will use a character starting from level 1 to start exploring this league again, without pre-existing items and advantages. During this Challenge League, the developers will occasionally introduce a lot of new content and new patches, which will achieve balance in the game by enhancing or weakening items, classes, skills or enemies.
These new changes will not only bring more opportunities for many players to try new builds and new combat strategies, but also keep players in a strong sense of freshness in the game. This is also the main reason why most players choose to explore the temporary Challenge League in POE.
When this Challenge League ends, you will not lose all the characters and items you have spent a lot of POE 2 Currency to obtain. They will be transferred to Standard League that has always existed.
Standard League
As I just said, Standard League is a permanent league in POE 2, which means that you will never be forced to restart your progress in this league, and you can always access all the characters and items you have obtained in Challenge League. This is the most stable choice for some players who don’t have much time to explore the game or those who don’t like to reset their progress frequently.
But this does not mean that Standard League is perfect. Its disadvantage is that you can’t try some new league mechanisms and many new contents in Challenge League. You may only be able to explore continuously in one game mechanism. Fortunately, Standard League will also make some real-time adjustments like the temporary league to achieve the balance within the game.
Here you need to be reminded that some objects in Standard League may change and produce some variants with the start of a new Challenge League. But please rest assured that the builds applicable to these original items will not change as a result, so for the builds in Standard League, you may not need to spend too much time and energy to make frequent changes to it.
To summarize, if you are a player who loves novelty and the thrill of exploration, then Challenge League will be more suitable for you. If you are a player with limited time or a player who likes an unchanging way of exploration, Standard League may be more suitable for you, and most importantly, you will not feel the pressure to complete the objectives before the end of the league.
Game Modes
In addition to the two most important leagues, POE 2 also offers players several game modes. Here is a detailed explanation of these game modes. You can choose the corresponding one according to your game style.
Softcore (also known as SC)
Softcore is the default game mode in the game and is the most suitable for novice players. In this game mode, once you die in combat or exploration, you can choose to respawn in the town or choose to respawn at the last checkpoint you just experienced.
Softcore game mode is available in both Standard League and Challenge League, but you can only explore and trade with players in the same league as you. Like the previous characters and items, all progress in this mode will be reset to zero after Challenge League ends and return to Standard League.
Hardcore (also known as HC)
Unlike Softcore, characters that die in Hardcore mode will not be able to explore in this league. They are not permanently deleted, but sent back to Standard League to explore. This game mode is very suitable for players who are experienced in the game, very confident in their builds and operations, and have a lot of free time, because they don’t mind losing everything they have when they make mistakes.
But from another perspective, Hardcore mode provides players with a way to train their build and exploration abilities with a focus on strengthening defense capabilities. Of course, players in this mode can also choose to explore in Standard League or Challenge League.
The above is the detailed information of several game leagues and modes in POE 2 that will be available to players this time. In any case, after such a long wait, we will definitely see an extraordinary Path of Exile 2. I hope you can choose the game mode that suits you best with the help of this guide. I wish you a happy game!
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How To Make Your Monk Stand Out From The Crowd In The Early Access Of Path Of Exile 2 Next Month? - Class Guide
As the final date of the early access of Path of Exile 2 promised by GGG is getting closer, players are more and more interested in this game that has been polished. But in this anxious waiting process, you can’t just wait foolishly, but you should learn more about some new information or new gameplay in this brand new game during this period, and the most important one is Class.
There will be 12 Classes for players to choose in POE 2, 6 of which are retained in the original game, and the other 6 are newly added. Among these newly added new Classes, the most likely to attract players is Monk, because this Class has appeared in Diablo 3, a game that has long been compared with POE series of games.
Many players have always wanted to understand what the difference is between Monk in POE 2 and in Diablo 3. Don’t worry, this guide will introduce it to you and teach you how to make it more powerful. If you are familiar with this Class knowledge, you will create a very outstanding Monk in the early access of the game at the fastest speed!
Monk Overview
First of all, we need to understand that Monk is a Class with both Intelligence and Dexterity attributes, which makes it located in the upper right part of the passive skill tree, similar to Shadow class in the original game. If your game style is to explore with a flexible combat state, then Monk will be your best choice.
For Monk’s weapons, the most commonly used are Quarterstave and Quarterstaff. Quarterstaff is a spell-casting weapon with modifiers such as Spell Damage; while Quarterstave is a weapon with a modifier of attack damage. In some necessary situations, Unarmed is also one of Monk’s main combat methods.
From this, it can be concluded that Monk will be more suitable for melee use and will rely more on mobility rather than brute force. So you can use more skill points to add more Cold Damage nodes in Dex area of this Class’s passive skill tree and don’t forget Lightning Damage nodes in Int areas. These will make your Monk more powerful in combat.
But this does not mean that you don’t need to invest in some defensive capabilities. Defensive layers such as Energy Shield, Evasion, and Spell Suppression are also worth your effort to use POE 2 Currency to obtain, so that Monk will have both strong offensive capabilities and survivability.
Some Changes To Monk’s Mechanics
In the leaked Monk gameplay trailer and test videos, we can see that GGG has made some changes to Monk’s Crowd Control and Freeze mechanisms - in POE, the effect of Crowd Control is a single thing: either it happens or it doesn’t happen.
So in the original game, many bosses are immune to Crowd Control and Freeze mechanisms, which is also one of the most unsatisfactory shortcomings of many players in POE. But in POE 2, the Crowd Control mechanic has an internal meter, so when you Freeze or other Crowd Control abilities on a boss, the meter will continue to build until the boss is hit by your crowd control ability.
But if you have already Freezed a boss in the meantime, the threshold will increase, so you need to Freeze them more before Freezing them again to achieve the crowd control effect. But don’t worry, this threshold increase will slowly decay as your character levels up.
Monk’s Skills
Similarly, based on the trailers and test videos that are currently available, we have summarized some skills of Monk Class and their effects. However, it should be noted that these are our summaries and do not represent the eventual results. Everything is subject to the final pre-release.
- Falling Thunder: Monk will use Lightning to damage all enemies on the ground, and this skill will consume Power Charges to increase its range and damage.
- Culling Palm (also known as Killing Palm): It can be used to kill some enemies with low health and increase Power Charges for yourself.
- Wind Blast: This skill will cause your character to generate a gust of wind and knock back all enemies, with the purpose of distance between yourself and the enemy, and put yourself in a safe range.
- Ice Strike: It can continuously attack the enemy multiple times and eventually freeze it.
- Glacial Cascade: Much like Ice Strike, you will cast an ice waterfall and send spikes at the last location. These spikes will cause greater damage to those enemies who have been frozen.
- Wave of Frost: You roll backwards a distance, and a wave of ice spikes appears in front of you, causing damage to enemies.
- Whirling Assault: You spin very fast and cause damage to enemies as you move.
- Shattering Palm: This skill allows you to place an ice bomb on the target enemy. When the target dies or causes enough damage to it, the bomb will explode.
The above is some information about the new Monk Class in POE 2. This new game has undergone a lot of revisions, but please believe that you will see a very perfect Path of Exile 2 next month, and it will make all your waits worthwhile. I wish you a happy game!
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How To Use Energy Shield In Path Of Exile 2 To Enhance Your Survivability? - Mechanics Explained & Potential Changes
As we all know, the much-anticipated POE 2 Early Access has been postponed to December 6, which has whetted everyone’s appetite. Many players are now a little impatient and want to experience the content of Path Of Exile 2 in person.
But while waiting, you can also learn about some of the mechanics in Path Of Exile 2 in advance, and how these differ from those in POE 1. For example, this article will introduce Energy Shield in detail. Without further ado, let’s take a look.
How Does Energy Shield Work?
Energy Shield is a form of defense that can be used as an additional hit point pool in the life pool. In addition to armor and evasion, it is also one of the defense types that can appear implicitly on equipment.
Energy Shield Recharge
Energy Shield Recharge is a mechanic that restores Energy Shield over time at a base rate of 33.3% per second. It only starts after Energy Shield or resource has not taken damage, and the duration of Energy Shield protection lasts for 2 seconds. Energy Shield recharge is interrupted if Energy Shield or the resource it is protecting takes any damage.
However, Energy Shield recharge does not stop when full Energy Shield is not reached or if resource loss comes from non-damage sources, such as using Lifetap Support to consume life.
Application Of Energy Shield
In addition, each class has no Energy Shield in its initial form. But after that, for every 10 intelligence increase, the maximum Energy Shield will increase by 2%. Of course, Energy Shield also reduces the amount of damage the class takes. As long as the character has Energy Shield when it takes damage, even damage from Labyrinth traps, that damage will be applied to Energy Shield first.
It’s worth noting that physical damage reductions and elemental resistances also apply to damage before being deducted from Energy Shield. Damage only starts to be applied to life or mana when all Energy Shield is depleted.
The exception is chaos damage, which bypasses Energy Shield. Of course, Energy Shield can also be mixed and matched with some other items. For example, Corrupted Energy, which makes 50% of chaos damage unable to bypass Energy Shield, but on the downside, it causes 50% of physical damage to bypass Energy Shield.
Additionally, Eldritch Battery Keystone can cause Energy Shield to conserve mana instead of life, causing the character to consume Energy Shield before spending skill charges. Mind Over Matter can be used in conjunction with Eldritch Battery, with damage dealt being redirected to mana and deducted from ES.
If the class does not take damage for a certain period of time, Energy Shield will begin to recharge. Also, when using Blood Magic or Sacrifice mechanic, consuming Energy Shield does not count as taking damage.
By default, Energy Shield starts charging after a delay of 2 seconds. Players can also reduce this delay by using passive skills and equipment to activate Energy Shield Recharge modifiers more quickly.
In general, as a form of recovery, Energy Shield Recharge Rate can reach 20% per second. If you want to speed up your recovery efficiency, it is essential to invest some POE 2 Currency to re-roll stats, which will give you more generation opportunities in some critical endgame situations.
Avoiding Stun
Energy Shield also has an inherent stun prevention mechanic. When a character takes hit damage while having Energy Shield, they will have a 50% chance to ignore being stunned by that hit unless they also have Eldritch Battery Keystone in use. This stun prevention mechanic is completely independent of other sources of stun avoidance, and is rolled separately.
Chaos Inoculation keystone can also be used to render a character immune to damage, but at the cost of losing only one life. All these changes make Energy Shield a primary resource for absorbing damage.
Potential Changes
Now, POE 2 is making some major changes to the core Energy Shield mechanic, mainly regarding which damage types bypass Energy Shield. For example, chaos damage will no longer bypass Energy Shield by default, unless it is chaos damage from poison ailment.
Any non-poison type of chaos damage will remove twice Energy Shield after mitigation calculations. Therefore, please be aware of the damage type and equip the appropriate POE 2 items in advance to avoid unnecessary consumption of your Energy Shield.
Although physical damage from bleeding ailment bypasses Energy Shield, bleeding only causes damage from direct hits, so GGG is currently planning to provide players with immunity of bleeding in the same way as Chaos Inoculation keystone did in POE 1, so that when attacked, no life damage is dealt and ailment is applied.
Of course, since Path of Exile 2 Early Access hasn’t officially launched yet, some of the new mechanics and changes we’ve learned about so far haven’t been fully confirmed. However, for some players who can’t wait, you can also read this guide in advance to make a full understanding before officially playing POE 2. I hope it can help you get a better gaming experience!
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How Will The Damaging Ailments Mechanic Work In Path Of Exile 2?
Before Path of Exile 2 Early Access officially arrives on December 6, let’s take a look at some of the changes that may happen in this sequel so that you can quickly adapt to everything when you enter the game and dominate the entire continent of Wraeclast.
Here, we will mainly explore Damaging Ailments mechanism in POE 2. We will talk about how it works and how it differs from the same mechanism in POE 1. If you are also interested in this, then don’t miss this guide!
Composition Of Damaging Ailments
Damaging Ailments mechanism in Path of Exile is composed of three ailments. Each ailment will cause continuous damage during its effect. These three are Poison, Bleed and Ignite.
Bleed is caused by physical attack damage and will cause physical damage over time. Its magnitude is 70% of the base physical strike damage of the ailment per second. It lasts for 5 seconds and does not stack. However, the damage dealt by Bleed triples to 210% per second while the target is moving.
Ignite is caused by fire strike damage and deals fire damage over time with a magnitude of 90% of the base fire strike damage that causes the ailment per second for 4 seconds, and does not stack. Ignite is always dealt with five points of damage, and the last one is also a critical hit.
Poison is caused by physical and chaos strike damage and deals chaos damage over time with a magnitude of 30% of the base physical and chaos strike damage that causes the ailment per second for two seconds, and stacks infinitely.
Modifiers
There are a number of modifiers on Passive Skill Tree, including Ascendancy notable and Unique items, that are directly related to these ailments. The more common modifiers increase the duration of the ailment or increase the character’s chance of causing these ailments, but some modifiers can directly change the default behavior of the ailment.
For example, Crimson Dance keystone does this, allowing you to stack Bleed effect up to 8 times on a single target, but at the cost of halving the damage dealt and losing the inherent property of Bleed not dealing extra damage when the enemy is moving.
What Are The Changes To Ailment Mechanics?
Now, Path of Exile 2 is making some very significant changes to Ailments.
Ailment Application
First, let’s discuss the broad changes to ailment application and damage dealt by ailments. In POE 2, you won’t be able to trigger ailments by investing POE 2 Currency like you did in the original game, as these modifiers grant you a percentage-based chance to cause specific ailments. Meanwhile, critical hits in POE 2 will no longer guarantee the application of Elemental Ailments.
So how do you cause ailments? Now, in Path of Exile 2, the chance to cause an ailment and the damage dealt will be based on the damage the defender has taken before the mitigation phase. This differs from the calculation of ailment damage in POE 1. In PoE 1, damage was calculated from the base damage of a hit on the attacker’s side.
Now, this change is important for a few reasons. First, since the chance of inflicting an ailment is based on the hit damage, you now care about adjusting the hit damage to help ensure that you can inflict that ailment. This wasn’t important in PoE 1 originally, for example, Deadly Ailments Support was a regular addition to an ailment-based build, since reducing the hit damage by 80% wouldn’t affect the damage inflicted by the ailment.
Second, since the damage inflicted by an ailment in PoE 2 is based on and scaled by the damage hit rate, the damage modifier will no longer be directly applied to the ailment before mitigation, as it was in PoE 1. This means that in PoE 2, you are actively incentivized to scale the hit damage, not only to improve the chance of inflicting an ailment but also to inflict more damage on it.
Ailment Damage Scaling
Now, even though hit damage before mitigation determines the chance to cause an ailment, you can still invest in modifiers that help you cause an ailment, but they work slightly differently.
A good example of this is Ignition Support, which gives supported skills a 50% chance to cause Ignite. This can be thought of as somewhat similar to Implicit, which exists on modifiers that allow you to cause an ailment. This is because hit damage first determines the chance to cause an ailment and the modifiers of Ignition Support.
And then, as a multiplier of that number, besides being able to increase the chance to cause an ailment, you can also use a new type of modifier to directly scale ailment damage. This modifier originally only existed on certain non-damaging ailments in POE 1 Ailment effects. But in POE 2, you will be able to directly scale damaging ailments with ailment effect modifiers as well. For example, this Frostfire Support, which makes Ignite caused by supported skills 100% more effective against frozen enemies.
In addition to the hit damage modifier naturally scaling ailment damage in POE 2, this modifier essentially increases the base effect of Ignite from dealing 90% of hit damage per second to 180%.
Critical Strikes & Detonate Dead
There are two other important mechanics that also affect Damaging Ailments in POE 2, namely Critical Strikes and Detonate Dead. These mechanics are calculated before mitigation damage and directly affect hit damage. Therefore, they will increase the chance of inflicting a bleed and the damage dealt by that ailment.
Keep in mind that the 50% multiplier provided by critical hits for bleeds in POE 1 will no longer exist in POE 2, and as mentioned before, critical hits will no longer guarantee the application of Elemental Ailments in Path of Exile 2.
Default Behavior Of Specific Ailments Changes
Finally, the default behavior of specific ailments will also change, and now only hits that damage life can cause bleeding, and hits that are completely absorbed by energy shields or other resources will not cause bleeding.
In addition, damage caused by bleeding will completely bypass energy shields, which is very interesting. This means that Chaos Inoculation Keystone will make characters immune to bleeding in POE 2. Because non-poison chaos damage will no longer bypass energy shields, but will remove twice as much energy from this resource.
By default, poisons will not stack, but you will be able to invest in additional poisons, such as this Multiple Poison Support. However, non-poison chaos damage will no longer bypass energy shields, but will remove twice as much energy from this resource.
This is all we know about Damaging Ailments mechanic in POE 2. However, we have to make a disclaimer that nothing is set in stone before Early Access is launched, so please stay tuned!
