Balance Changes in Content Update 2.1.0

Alongside the release of the Talisman/2.1.0 update this week, we're making changes to various skills and game mechanics. Our aim is to facilitate more interesting choices when creating a character, with fewer 'incorrect' choices. Where possible, we've tried to achieve this by raising the power level of underused or underpowered game mechanics, rather than with numerical nerfs. However, a few skills that were clearly overpowered have been adjusted to a more appropriate level.

Firstly, there's an entire rework to the Poison system. Read more about it here.

Spell Damage Progression (Buffed)
Spell damage was starting to fall behind Attack damage later in the game, so we've increased the per-level damage increase of many spells. Most spells have increased in damage by 20% at gem level 20, and those that weren't performing well later in the game have been increased even further.

We've reduced the area of effect bonuses available in the tree slightly, but increased the base radius of some skills that were smaller than others like Storm Call and Glacial Cascade, as well as any corpse-destroying effects like Detonate Dead and Abyssal Cry.

Melee Splash (Substantially Buffed)
Melee Splash has been increased in many ways - dealing more damage, having a larger base range, not penalising primary damage, and growing in size as it levels. This should make skills like Heavy Strike, Viper Strike, Glacial Hammer and Infernal Blow more tempting choices to support and use as area skills.

Leech (Buffed)
Life and Mana leech granted in the passive skill tree is now much larger. The Strength area of the tree has the highest values, while the Dexterity area of the tree now includes Elemental Attack Damage as well as Physical Attack Damage as leech granted. The Duelist now has a combined life and mana leech cluster, to reduce the traveling distance required to make the best use of Leech.

Surgeon's Flasks (Nerfed, but not retroactively)
Surgeon's flask mods now grant a chance to gain a charge on critical strike, rather than unconditionally granting one. This will not change flask mods spawned before the deployment of 2.1.0 - they will still work the old way.

The Surgeon's mod made many flasks too easy to keep full for a heavily specialised critical strike character - far beyond what was originally intended. Players today have many more options to reach very high values of Critical Strike Chance, Attack and Cast Speeds than when the mod was created. These stats all have a compounding effect on the power of the flask.

Mana per level, Melee mana costs (Buffed)
Players now gain more mana every time they level up, and most Melee Attack skills no longer increase in mana cost as they level. These changes are to allow Mana to be used more reliably by late-game builds that don't have high amounts of intelligence, as Blood Magic was the prevalent way to use almost every melee attack skill later in the game.

Point Blank (Buffed)
Point Blank was one of the least-used Keystone passive, so we have reduced its damage penalty to be less punishing. It now retains its damage bonus over a longer distance, and now only scales down to 50% less damage, instead of 100% less damage. This should make it more tempting a choice for players who want a riskier, deadlier, up-close-and-personal bow build.

Bows and Bow Skills (Buffed)
Many bow skills have been reviewed and shifted in balance slightly, with almost all of them being increased in power. This includes the return of additional radius per gem level and an extra 10% more damage to Rain of Arrows, to bring it closer to the power of the new Blast Rain skill. These changes result in players having stronger skill choices when playing bow characters.

We've also increased the damage of the lower level bows, and increased the required level of the first quiver, so that quivers aren't required for an enjoyable first few levels on a Bow character.

Poison Arrow (Nerfed due to new passives and supports now working with it)
Because we've introduced a whole new set of Chaos Damage passives and supports, Poison Arrow's damage has been reduced to bring it in line with other skills when it makes good use of the new support gems and passives. It has also been renamed to Caustic Arrow.

Flame Totem (Early-game Nerf/Late-game Buff)
Flame Totem was a little too powerful early on, so has been reduced in damage at lower levels. Its damage is very slightly higher at high levels.

Summon Raging Spirits (Early-game Buff/Late-game Nerf for certain characters)
Raging Spirits have been completely rebalanced, with a faster cast speed, longer duration, and greatly improved AI. This makes it much easier to hit the limit on the number of Raging Spirits available at once. The damage has also been adjusted to compensate.

Raise Zombie (Buffed)
Raised Zombies now have a faster attack speed, and will occasionally use an AoE slam that damages enemies in a small area, to make them less reliant on Melee Splash. They also have a naturally higher stun threshold, so they're less likely to be stunned out of an attack.

Raise Spectre (Buffed at lower levels)
Raise Spectre now has a lower penalty on Life and Energy Shield at lower levels, as Spectres raised at low levels died too easily.

Incinerate (Nerfed)
Incinerate now receives less of a bonus per stage, as its damage was too high. Its general damage has been rebalanced, resulting in less overall damage at higher levels. The skill was dealing far too much damage once fully charged, trivializing some end-game encounters. There were significant community demands for this skill to be adjusted.

Cyclone (Slightly Nerfed)
There was a display bug that caused Cyclone to show the wrong DPS value and attack speed. We have fixed this bug, so you'll now notice the visual DPS almost double and the attack speed on the gem shoot up a lot.

In addition, we have reduced the damage of Cyclone by around 10% and have reduced the damage of its initial hit. Even after this change, Cyclone is still one of the strongest melee skills in the game. It just doesn't out-damage Heavy Strike for single target damage any more.

Magma Orb and Arc (Buffed)
Magma Orb now gains an additional chain when the gem reaches a certain level, and Arc gains additional chains more frequently. This is because the damage penalty of the Chain support gem didn't justify the additional targets hit, so in practical usage, these skills didn't scale the number of targets hit as well as other skills did.

Searing Bond (Buffed)
Searing Bond can place up to one additional totem; This means you can have two Searing Bond totems active without Ancestral Bond, and can use Searing Bond in addition to another totem skill. At early levels this lets it work well alongside Flame Totem rather than directly competing with it as a choice to use.