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POE 3.20 Manifesto - Archnemesis, Curses, Ailments, Eldritch Altar, More Balance Changes in Path of Exile 3.20 League

11/11/2022 4:57:55 PM

A series of Balance Manifestos will roll out in the upcoming Path of Exile 3.20 Patch, here we explore the balance changes that may be addressed on Archnemesis, Curses, Ailments, and Eldritch Altar.

Path of Exile 3.20 Balance Manifesto


Path of Exile 3.20 Balance Manifesto Changes

A lot of good news is going to come out as 3.20 gets closer. On the POE website, a post "Upcoming New Schedule" is joy for the ears as everyone around looks for what exactly will GGG be addressing in the 3.20 expansion.

GGG promised a series of balance manifestos, covering a variety of topics

In the past, with the game balance updates, they completely destroy medium builds such as buff bows in the past seizure to Atlas. So the game balance and expedition were super scary because they actually just nerfed player power across the board with all of the support gem nerfs, the Mana Nerfs, and the flash nerfs. So balance manifestos are a pretty exciting time and when they give us these lists of topics:

  • Jewels and Ailment Mitigation

  • Curses

  • Eldritch Altar Revamp

  • Archnemesis

  • Plus potentially a fifth post about other changes if needed at the time

With these topics offered,  we can guarantee these are going to function a lot differently than they did before, and we can speculate on what's actually going to happen.  

Balance Manifestos are a great predictor of what to look forward to for the next patch (minion reword and bow buffs). So now follow us to go over the post and break down what changes we are expecting to see in each of these topics.


Jewels and Ailment Mitigation Changes

Cluster Jewels are Too OP

We are not really sure if this is meant for two items or just one item in general and the ailment mitigation offered on Jewels because it's kind of weird to bundle them up both together. Now if you're pessimist, you could say that Jewels has to deal with cluster Jewels being 2lp. Right now most builds will benefit from cluster jewels and the only builds that don't really benefit that much are SSF Hardcore builds where they're trying to fit in as many life nodes as possible or the tree pathing takes too many points. But for softcore trade, we can guarantee that every single build is probably better with some Cluster Jewels especially if you're playing Venom gyre or something like that and then you can get like eye to eye and repeater, or if you're playing a projectile build you want some projectile speed and the list goes on and on. 

Ailment Mitigation is too easy to obtain with Eldritch Bootr and Shield Mod

Ailment Mitigation could be too easy to get right now, there are very easy avenues to get 100% ailment mitigation, you can use your pantheons, get cannot be frozen on the pantheon, 50% reduced effective chill on a Pantheon. And then if you wanted to go full ailment mitigation, you could use the Eldritch boot mod which gives you up to like 35% of the mitigation, you can roll 25% of mitigation on your boots, 25~30% on your chest and 25% on your Shield, and it is actually pretty easy to get a 100% mitigation. Also, purity of elements is extremely strong even though it's a 50% Aura and getting a 100% ailment mitigation, so they could Nerf the values on ailment mitigation to bring some mods that are out of tune in line with other mods and that is a very pessimistic point of view.

Replace General Aliment Mitigation with Specific

They could also replace general ailment mitigation with specific ones, so they'll probably get rid of the mods that set chance to avoid elemental ailments and make it more specific, so we have to invest in more things and kind of choose the ailments that we want to actually avoid, now that would actually be a very bad change.

Jewel Implicites will be readded into the game

To be optimistic, we would just interpret this balance Manifesto as that dual implicit will be re-added into the game by some method other than Harvest. These are some different ways of mitigating stuff that we had in the past, you could get 15% chance to avoid being chilled, avoid being frozen, avoid being ignited, so an easy solution is adding these back into the game.

Ailment Mitigation will be easier to obtain due to how it feels almost mandatory

Another change they could do is that ailment mitigation will be easier to obtain due to how it feels almost mandatory. Most people can agree that playing without freeze immunity or playing without chill immunity or playing without shock immunity is pretty much a super fast way to die, so they could try to make it so that these check marks that you have to have for your builds aren't as mandatory and we can get around to having more options in terms of build creativity and diversity now.


POE 3.20 Curses Changes

Nerf to Curse on Hit Rings

They could probably nerf Curse on hit Rings since they removed the mark on hit Rings, 8they could also Nerf the curse effect on mobs while mapping. 

Nerf to Curse Effect on Mobs while Mapping

We do think that curses are extremely strong for mapping because they don't have that reduced curse effect that bosses do. 

Nerf to Curses across the board, requiring you to take points on tree and invest in Doom

They can also Nerf curses across the board and try to move the power of curses into the tree and make you invest into doom - doom is something that the longer your curse stays on the enemy the more effect that it will have, so that would be a very bad change because the more stuff you move onto the tree that means the less points we have for damage and survivability.  

Make curses last forever like Marks  & Buff Weaker curses to be more in line with Strongest Marks

They could also buff the weaker curses to be more in line with the Strongest marks so that's something that. A lot of people experience if you don't have a plus one curse limit you'll find a lot of times that Sniper's Mark or Assassin's Mark will probably be the best curse overall. Now sniper's Mark is just absolutely crazy especially with Mark effect and Venom gyre as he was like.


POE 3.20 Eldritch Altar Revamp & Changes

Eldritch Altars are too OP and limit diversity for farming methods

Elders altars are definitely the scariest part that they could potentially change. Actually Elder Alters is probably one of the best things in the game currently that should not really be touched, because it actually adds a lot of fun and uniqueness to mapping, especially at the end game, it allows you to maybe dupe divination cards, and also allows you to get more Quality and Rarity and allows you to have some strategy while mapping. Now the pessimist side of me could say that Eldritch Alters is too OP, limit build adversity limit diversity for farming methods since every single method is just going to be about duping PoE currency for God touch or duping Div cards for strong boxes.

Make it so Eldritch Altar Benefits cannot stack

They could also make it so that all Eldritch altered benefits cannot stack until you get all the benefits, so say you can't stack Quant and Rarity, can't stack duplication, so that's something that they could potentially address.

Eldritch Altar downside is too negative for some builds

Now to be optimistic, GGG would be going to change some of the Eldritch Altar downsides so that it's not too negative for some builds. There are some builds that really get screwed over especially if you have friends here and endurance charges that you get no regen or you get a projectile shoot in a circle around you, and some of Eldritch Ultra mods are terrible, especially the one that summons the meteor from the sky and just kills you and then there's also some other downsides that make it so you have to take the pantheon with the burning ground.


POE 3.20 Archnemesis Changes

Removal of Loot Goblins with no equivalent replacement for endgame farming

Arsenesis is something that's probably the biggest problem in the community's eyes and that's because it's tied directly to Luke Goblins and it's very hard when you get the horrible combination of mods. Now for the pessimist side,  they're going to remove Luke Goblins of no equivalent replacement for endgame farming so that mobs could have more Arsen Nemesis mods than before, or they might make it so that they add new arch nemesis mods to make combat more engaging and these new arch nemesis mods are even more broken than ever. Now hopefully that doesn't happen.

Move +1 Archnemesis mod back onto the Atlas Passive Tree and take away 1 Archnemesis mod from mobs

The first optimist side says that they're going to re-add Valley of Darkness back into the game and this is the one that allows you to add one additional archnemesis modifier to your mobs, and this will make the base game a lot easier, but also still retain how we can make the end game harder. Chris did talk about that in his vision and philosophy about how he wants players to have the choice to opt into difficulty and receive more rewards. 

Keep God-Touched but find a way to make it so you can not call in MF Culler

They could try to find a way to keep God touching the game but find a way to make it so that you cannot call in a Magic Find Culler, this could deal with snapshotting your rarity and quantity whenever you encounter them all for the first time.

Full Overhaul in how loot works so that it is no longer reliant on Archnemesis

Maybe they will try to overhaul how loot works altogether so that it's no longer relying on archnemesis, maybe we can go back to the past when we had old League mechanics have high quality and rarity so we're not forced to find this perfect combination of loot.


That's all we can guess about manifestos balance changes, no doubt we hope that GGG will bring surprising changes to players to keep the game playable!