Improving Breach: A Proposal for Smoother Loot and Gameplay

Hello Exiles !

First of all, thank you for continuously improving the game and listening to player feedback. I have a suggestion for reworking the "Breach" mechanic, which is one of my favorite parts of the game, especially with an explode build. The sound and the sight of a massive pack of mobs disappearing is always satisfying. However, there’s a downside—currently, collecting splinters from breaches can be a bit painful, especially when they drop in small quantities and are scattered everywhere. For someone like me who’s dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome (not solely due to Path of Exile, of course!), this can be quite uncomfortable.

After closely examining the Breach nodes on the Atlas, I've noticed that we can speed up or slow down the opening and closing of breaches. However, in practice, the advantages and disadvantages aren't entirely clear. If your breach opens slowly, you have time to kill everything and open each gasping hand (which I'll just refer to as "hand" or "chest"). Everything works out, and you can open multiple breaches to keep going. If your breach is fast, you probably have a highly advanced build, and thus the damage to clear everything, but opening all the hands is a different story. In both cases, you’re forced to run around everywhere to pick up loot.

Here’s my rework idea:

Rework Concept:

- Unified Loot Drop: All breaches should not drop loot instantly, whether from mobs or hands. Instead, the loot should drop when the breach closes. The loot could explode outward using the same visual effect as when a Blight encounter ends or when a room is cleared in Alva's incursions. The loot would spiral out, but with a focus on stacking similar items. For example, if the breach yielded an unique item, four rares, and ten opened hands, there should be a single stack of splinters (around 10 to 20) instead of scattered individual ones. The loot should be assigned to the group’s host to prevent looting issues in party play.

Impact:

- This change would give players a reason to choose between fast or slow breaches, with more meaningful outcomes. The mechanic would become much more enjoyable, and if you're playing in a group to help random players gain some XP, they wouldn’t risk taking your splinters or breachstones.

One final note: currently, if you want faster breaches on the Atlas, you need to invest three points, while slower breaches only require one point.

Please let me know what you think of this idea!

Best regards,
The beast, Vagabond

YEs it feels like missed oppotunity while they maked hand openeble by ovement but not unified loot