Path of Exile 3.16 Balance - Part 1 - Flasks and Ailment Mitigation

Wait but i love these

Interesting...

Well, from this I can concur that ailments are literally a joke at this point. I wanted to play raider next leauge and go for full speed build. Now I don't have to take the ailment immunity ascendency tree but now I'll just put on purity of elements and call ailments a problem solved. Not to mention that purity of elements essentially removes 1 stack of kitava's affliction. Lastly, the abbreviation for purity of elements is POE. Am I playing path of exile or purity of elements ?

good stuff.

I don't get these changes?

Purity of Elements gives permanent ailment immunity to everything? Didn't you nerf the ailment immunities from certain ascendancies (making them worse picks this league and hard to build, compared to others) because it was merely a "ailment immunity check" race and that it was readily available without much investment? But then you give out a aura that does everything and above for pretty much every ascendancy, with or without being close to ailment immunity nodes?

This nuts guys.

In a game where economy is a deciding factor outside of SSF, the changes to aurabots and cursebots are very important. As it stands, those sorts of comps are simply too far ahead of solo players (this goes 1000x at league-start) for the playing field to ever be fair, so thank goodness for changes to that. Anyone who argues against this is probably bitter at the thought of their economic dominance being lessened (they'll still be dominant mind you, the smart ones at least, but it won't be quite as bad).

Ailment changes are pretty fantastic. 3.15's greatest flaw in this regard was that the stance on HOW these things should be balanced felt very muddled, in the sense that getting all of your bases covered could range from very easy (Raider) to 'compromised' for a majority of builds. With reasonable avenues for investment (i.e., not insanely expensive) there should be much greater room for build diversity going forward, especially if defenses are made more affordable as well. Time will tell though, as many players are still struggling to leave their comfort zone in the quest for more damage without gutting their EHP in the process. Harvest was a major culprit in this, as it left an entire generation of players dependent on using deterministic systems to achieve optimal gear at a steady pace.

The EO and EE changes look to be some of the best in a long time. The dependence elemental DoT builds had on these two nodes was INSANE; they weren't even choices 99% of the time, you had to use them. It's probably better to overcompensate for this and dial it back later, as underpowered builds are less likely than overpowered builds to get the attention they need going forward.



Of all the changes mentioned though, the ones about flask uptime for slower builds are probably the most unexpected and underappreciated. Incredibly durable builds often have the capacity to become clear-speed monsters via their ability to tank through dangerous T16+ content later in the game, but getting to that point is so incredibly tedious because of how clunky things can feel early, and flask management is a huge part of that.

The least impactful change mentioned seems to be the Enkindling Orb changes. While many of the buffed outcomes are nice for their respective niches, the increased flask effect buff is incredibly muddled. Builds that invest in flask effectiveness are unlikely to feel this in most cases, as they already have a lot of flask effectiveness (I say this from experience, Pathfinder was a lot of fun in 3.15 thanks to the new flask nodes). Honestly, all of the changes seem very underwhelming, but in the instance of increased% flask effect, I find myself wondering why it isn't MORE% Flask Effect. Builds with high flask investment won't ever use an Enkindling Orb without something as severe as a more% increased effect, because investing into flasks generally makes any situations of less-than-constant uptime that much more punishing.



Excited for Part 2. Hope to hear more about this 'suppress spell damage' you teased us with at the very end of the last spoiler.

I think the party system is pretty terrible.
Monsters ramp up insanely, most map modifiers are very unfriendly.
Lag is enough for one person.
Mostly design issues that have been overlooked for too long.
I disagree with the community, I did to a random loading effect
Much more frequently than freeze or stun.
Shouldn't need to invest $2000+++ into a free game.
Doesn't leave much for me to buy mtx with.

Marauder needs some life leech on attacks.

But i am happy, it dont look bad so fare

this sounds pretty good :D

I wrote before and I stand right, that GGG realized how big f**c-up were the last changes, from player retention and most likely also from monetary view, and I predicted a full turn-around.

And here we are, complete ailment immunity. Good changes to flasks. Let's wait for next balance changes.