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What Is The Reaction Of Players To Saboteur Rework In Path of Exile 3.21?

Jul 07, 2023

I don’t know if you noticed, but the release of Path of Exile Crucible League actually comes with the rework of two ascendancies: Pathfinder and Saboteur

We’ve discussed Pathfinder rework in this site and Pathfinder rework was very successful, but Saboteur rework was not. Therefore, we will further expand on the topic of Saboteur rework.

Rework Goals

This ascendancy was changed in a big way and I believe the idea around this rework was to attempt to change. The Saboteur ascendancy in a way that made it so that: 

1. It’s not always the go-to ascendancy for Trap and Mine build.

2. You can play other build archetypes other than just Trap and Mine builds on this ascendancy. 

What Is The Reaction Of Players To Saboteur Rework In Path of Exile 3.21?

So, were they successful in this goal?

You could say that they were a sort of successful in some ways. But unfortunately, the changes attempt to pull many of the Trap and Mine builds off of Saboteur and give them the freedom to be played on other classes. 

That’s not really how it turned out.You can see these builds were only being played on Saboteur because they really needed this ascendancies kit to function to a good standard. And without it, they likely just won’t see any play at all. That’s essentially exactly what has happened. 

Trap & Mine Builds 

Many of the popular Trap and Mine builds are just gone from the ladder when comparing Sanctum and Crucible League. Because these builds are just not that great without those ascendancy notables, which the Saboteur used to have access to. 

For example, Explosive Trap, which was being played by about 2% of all of the builds in Sanctum League. And of those 2%, 90% of them were Saboteur builds by the way. Fast forward to Crucible League, the play rate of Explosive Trap is down by 90% with just 0.2% of characters using this ability.

Seismic Trap has the same correlation with play rate down across the board from 2% to 0.4% league on league. And this same trend can be seen across many Trap and Mine builds. 

Other Archetypes?

But what about their other goal of this rework? To make Saboteur an ascendancy that can be picked for more than just Trap and Mine build.

GGG tried to achieve this goal by adding some new archetype options to the ascendancy (such as Like Clockwork & Perfect Crime). And there is some moderate success in this field, with about 30% of all of the Saboteur builds in Softcore Crucible League playing some form of Trigger build. That’s one of the new archetypes they added with the Triggerbots ascendancy notable.

Path of Exile 3.21 Like Clockwork & Perfect Crime

A third of those builds are playing Cyclone Cast on Critical Ice Spear and about a sixth of them are playing Ward Loop builds. So, I say there has been some level of activity with players experimenting with some form of Trigger archetype that the new ascendancy offers the support for. 

Popularity

But on the hull, the Saboteur as an ascendancy is down in popularity in quite a big way league on league, which I don’t think is very surprising because the vast majority of mainstay Trap and Mine builds were heavily nerfed by the changes. 

And I think it’s fair to say that often is the case when ascendancies are changed and new things are added to an ascendancy. It may take a bit of time for these adjustments to actually take effect and people to start picking up on how to play and how to interact with these new archetypes.

But the Saboteur has really suffered in popularity league on league. It’s gone from 7% play rate in Softcore Trade Sanctum to just 3% in Softcore Trade Crucible. And it has had an even bigger impact on the other leagues with popularity down from 7% to just 1% in the comparison of Hardcore Trade Leagues from Sanctum to Crucible.

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Even worse still is the Solo Self-Found League where Saboteur was nearly the most played ascendancy at 12% in Sanctum down to just 2% in a Solo Self-Found Crucible. 

So, I think it’s fair to say that this rework has heavily nerfed the class on the vast majority of builds that it was used for previously, gutting most of them to enable just a few of the new ones. 

The Numbers 

I feel like Saboteur should have launched in Crucible with better numbers on the new ascendancy like the Tiggerbots ascendancy noticeable, which should have had a smaller and less damage modifier to begin with. Because I think it’s completely fine for a reworks class to launch in a state where it’s perhaps a little overtuned. It can always be revisited later and tweaked a bit. 

But in the current state of Saboteur, it does need some number changes to really allow the Trigger archetypes to flourish. 

As for the Trap and Mine builds, I’m not really sure it’s quite obvious that those builds relied on the ascendancy notables that the old Saboteur had and now they’re gone.

So, I think these archetypes just need a lot more support on the passive tree and on gear to allow them to function more freely on other ascendancies. So you should reserve as much POE Currency as possible. That way, no matter what kind of build you want to make, you have the ability to just buy what you want.

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