Path of Exile: Harvest League Skill Reworks
The new league in Path of Exile is live now! You can play Harvest League right now and admire all the novelties added in PoE's new league. Among them, there are a ton of skill reworks. The major changes are coming to Brands, Slam Skills, and Warcries. In this article, you can see what has changed in all three areas.
Brand Skills
Brand skills were fully reworked. The biggest difference comes in the fact that now brands snap back to where they were the first cast upon the death of their target, and now Brand Recall does not refresh the brand duration, meaning the Archmage shenanigans are gone. However, there are three new brands and new brand support to compensate.
• Arcanist Brand
When an enemy approaches the Arcanist Brand, it'll trigger linked spells in sequence. Think of this as akin to The Poet's Pen, except in Brand form. You can have a multitude of spell options to choose from as though they suddenly became Brands themselves.
• Penance Brand
Penance Brand is another new skill. It attaches to nearby enemies and then quickly spreads to additional enemies whenever it activates. If you use Brand Recall or if the enemy dies, the built-up energy in each enemy is released in a massive explosion.
• Wintertide Brand
Wintertide Brand applies Cold Damage over time to the branded enemy and chills them. Each activation, the Brand's damage effect becomes more intense on that enemy.
• Swiftbrand Support
The Swiftbrand Support Swiftbrand Support greatly lowers the active and inactive duration of a Brand but increases its activation rate. For a single Brand being cast once, it's not as good as other supports, but if you're rapidly placing many Brands, it's a huge damage increase. You can play a much more aggressive Brand playstyle with this support.
• Brand Recall and Brand Mechanic Adjustments
Brand Recall still instantly moves your Brands to you and activates them, but no longer refreshes the Brand's duration. It now consumes mana based on the Brands recalled. This prevents Brands benefiting heavily from the Archmage Support without the same mana upkeep the Support usually requires.
The cooldown of Brand Recall has been lengthened, but we've also provided new avenues of investment so that you can still bring it down to a similar length.
As a small change to remove some more of the potential passivity of Brands, Brands now return to their original or recalled location when dropped by monsters, rather than the dropped monster's location. This puts a greater focus on Brand Attachment Range and prevents the Brand from disappearing into the distance while killing monsters you've yet to see.
Slam Skills
Slam skills are being given, generally, larger AoE, higher damage numbers, and more reliable mechanics. Skills such as Sunder and Perforate are being changed mechanically to be more reliable.
• The Fist of War support gem
This new support gem synergizes with any Slam-type skill. It spawns a spirit to do a slam in tandem with your character for that extra damage.
• Tectonic Slam
Tectonic Slam is having its 'charged slam' mechanic removed and replaced with larger AoE for the number of endurance charges. It is also being smoothed out by losing one charge every three attacks, rather than with a 35% chance.
• Earthshatter
There is a new slam skill being added as well, Earthshatter, which "sends out five damaging fissures in all directions when you slam the ground". It also leaves spikes at the end of each fissure, which then explode if hit by another slam or warcry skill.
• Perforate
Perforate now provides flat physical damage that scales as the gem levels. The distribution of its spikes in Blood Stance has been made more consistent. A higher percentage of its spikes should hit a small target and investment in Area of Effect and/or the number of spikes should keep this percentage of spikes hitting consistently.
• Sunder
As part of our effort to encourage slower and heavier-hitting Slams, Sunder has become a much wider and longer but slower cascade. Using Sunder while one cascade is still in motion will cause the existing cascade to end prematurely. These cascades will always travel a minimum length, so you can still use Sunder effectively with Multistrike and fast-hitting weapons when close to enemies.
• Earthquake, Ground Slam and Ice Crash
These skills are receiving numerical changes which will be revealed closer to launch. In general, the idea is to make them generally stronger.
• Other Slam Skills
The other skills that are now categorized as slams are mostly unchanged but have had their visual effects improved and can be used with the Fist of War support.
Warcry Skills
Warcries have been buffed across the board. Path of Exile: Harvest adds four new Warcry-type skills while reworking three existing ones.
• Enduring Cry
Enduring cry now has a burst of healing as well as elemental resistances built into the existing skill.
• Intimidating Cry
The intimidating cry can now be used as a gem rather than through items, and it empowers your next attacks to deal double damage.
• Ancestral Cry
The ancestral cry is an entirely new ability that causes your next few strikes to also target nearby enemies.
• Seismic Cry
The seismic cry is another new ability that causes your slam effects to have larger AoE.
• Rallying Cry
Rallying cry now gives nearby allies a buff that grants a percentage of their weapon's damage as additional damage, as well as boosting your next few attacks.
• Infernal Cry
The infernal cry is the new Abyssal cry and now coats nearby enemies in ash, causing them to explode on death.
• General's Cry
Lastly, General's cry is yet another new ability which can be linked to melee attacks, and when used to create ghosts that will use the ability once before dissipating – similar to how The Savior works.
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