Content Update 3.16.0 -- Path of Exile: Scourge

Best patch in a while GGG, good work.

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SeaSkipper wrote:

<<< GGG TEAM >>>

Did the Gladiator ascendancy lose its identity?

Gladiator ascendancy has been long associated with block and sacrificing damage for getting defensive benefits. Now it seems, other Melee ascendancy classes are even more tanky AND have much more damage.

Instead of the old 75/75 block chance and no damage, in 3.16 the gladiator has 60/0 block chance and no damage with the same amount of investment. With more investment in skill points (+2), he can get to 60/50 but still with no damage. While other ascendancy classes get to 50/50 with little investment (2 skill points) while retaining their massive damage ascendancy nodes and / or defensive nodes.

I was really hoping for GGG to recognise this and make the re-worked Gladiator ascendancy nodes provide much more damage for gladiators since their defence was nerfed. It is sad to see an ascendancy be obliterated and being taken over by other ascendancy classes in terms of defence and on top of that damage too.

R.I.P. Gladiator you lived long enough
-2021

im kind of behind in this game now, but what others classes get "50/50 with little investment" u talking about here

The nerfs from 3.15 still stays.
Still no changes to monster HP and speed.
Another timer-based league mechanic.
You messed with Gladiator.

I thought the sweeping nerfs was to slow down players but now it's the other way around? Chris Wilson himself even said to our face live on stream either to go meta or forget about it.

What a joke.

Sooooooo, lets make a list of most notable buffs and nerfs:

Buffs:
-former league mechanics become more accessible/easier to run, but the top end is harder once more.
-more keystone notables on the tree + tree mastery
-further buffs to woke gems (which makes normal gems feel worse)
-reduced map pool and faster atlas completion

Nerfs:
-trickster, glad
-ele dot builds
-blind, dodge, spell dodge
-good map pool

Other downsides:
-hardly new skill gems that dont require party play (3 of which none are damaging spells (unless you count max. 1 tornado), bow skills, traps, minions, or true melee skills)
-no power given back to skills/stuff hit disproportionally hard in 3.15
-new league mechanic ONCE AGAIN A TIMER, with Chris saying ''git good or go home'' completely invalidating his earlier statements saying they wanted to provide for the top AND bottom/casual end of the player base.

Everything good in this expansions feels overshadowed by forced player retention attemps. I've been playing since 1.3 and even with break leagues, this focus on increasing player playtime every league by adding unneeded and unwanted bloat/fomo mechanics and gating is horrible.

Iron reflex meta inc. i suppose since my last league build is once again bricked (not by damage this time but by defensive layers). 5% less damage taken doesnt compensate for 50% evasion chance lost obv....

Good work. Thx

Was a bit skeptical after the last leagues and the constant fun killer updates, but seems it's going in a right direction.

I will give it a try and if the fun is there i'll support it.
So far i'm excited.

Feedback on the new Trickster ascendancy node for dmg over time immunity:

Defensively it's bad because if your survivability is not good enough without the effect, you die 50% of the time. If your survivability is good enough, then why would you take this in the first place. Defensive pendulum effects are bad because you can't control enemies. Offensively you can control when to engage the enemy (compare to Ngamahu, Flame's Advance).

Offensively you could use it with Righteous Fire to get a lot of spell damage which is good if you time it right. It would be kind of like Ngamahu, Flame's Advance (which I like, because it rewards player skill) except this works with only 1 skill versus EVERY (non-dot?) physical skill. Do you really make an ascendancy node around 1 skill?

Losing global damage reduction, stun immunity, cast and attack speed, and gaining something so situational in its place seems so out of place. Did the ascendancy need such a heavy nerf? Losing the cast speed is also bad for self cast, which doesn't need more nerfs.

I'm sure there are niche-niche ideas that can use this but maybe spending a full ascendancy node is not the place to use for that opportunity?

Boring suggestion for an ascendancy node that buffs self cast: 15% more cast speed for 4s every 10s (adjust numbers to not be stupid op). Coming up with a solid defensive node is harder but anything that's not a pendulum effect would be better than what's planned for now.

PS. Other than this I'm really excited for the next league. Thanks for all the work.

<3 ^v^

After the last joke patch. I am really not holding back when it comes to GGG, but this time GGG you have my respect back for good balance changes and massive all QOL changes and new things in a way. I could feel you listen to some feedback. So I have to give credits GGG to you, for pulling more than usually do for non "expansion league". Respect :)

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Heartsease wrote:

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Problem
The tree is very compact, making it hard to easily view and leaving little space for rearranging clusters.

Solution
Spread out the entirety of the passive tree, and increase the radius of small, medium, large and very-large jewels. This is done to give a relatively equivalent but not identical effect of radius jewels on the tree. This will have impacted all Radius jewels in different ways.

Thread of Hope may suffer...

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Spectral Shield Throw now has a base Attack Time of 0.65 seconds at all gem levels (previously 0.7-0.6 seconds). Now has 3 to 4 Added Physical Damage per 15 Armour or Evasion Rating on Shield at gem level 1 (previously 4 to 5), up to 5 to 7 at gem level 20 (previously 6 to 8). Now deals 47 to 70 Base Off Hand Physical Damage at gem level 1 (previously 58 to 86), up to 203 to 304 at gem level 20 (previously 399 to 599).

Assume a 3000 armor shield -

old damage = (7*200+499)/0.6
new damage = (6*200+253)/0.65
nerf ratio = 29.4%

Thread of hope is probably nerfed, but not for the same reason you're thinking of. With Masteries, some of the "very good" minor notable bonuses are moved to masteries instead, meaning there are likely less good places to grab a lot of great minor notables at low cost.

EDIT: actually, misunderstood how the Mastery system worked... in which case it's actually probably a massive buff.

Also until we know how much armour/evasion modifiers have improved on shields, this isn't quite a fair comparison, since we're likely to have stronger shields as compared to previously.