Path Of Exile Produces Lengthy Manifesto Detailing Balance Changes

Grinding Gear Games summarized the significant balance changes that would be coming to Path of Exile in last week's presentation of its upcoming league/expansion, Expedition, which we covered here. This week, a longer -- make that much longer -- explanation was posted on the PoE site, explaining the philosophy behind the changes and what they were meant to accomplish.

Overall, the changes are being enacted due to the persistent power creep that's occurred over the game's life span. That's made many boss fights trivial, sometimes taking just "a fraction of a second, without any interesting interaction." Low-level monster life levels will be increased, and there are changes coming to several key aspects of player builds.

The bulk of the manifesto covers the same subjects that were discussed last week: support gem reduction, the flask system rework, and player ailment mitigation. In general: support gems that simply provide a buff to damage will be reduced, flasks will recharge more slowly, and there are new ways for player to mitigate ailments that don't rely so heavily on flasks. Three movement skills -- Flame Dash, Dash, and Smoke Mine -- are also less effective, requiring greater specialization to utilize to their fullest extent.

There's a lot more in the manifesto -- changes to Arcane Surge, Fortify, damage-over-time multipliers, veiled mods, a few that get just a bullet point's worth of discussion, and even some actual buffs(!) -- so if you're a hardcore PoE player, you'll definitely want to check it out. Expedition launches in three days, so you might even get done reading it by then.