Content Update 1.3.0 Patch Notes, Deployment Timeline and Official Path of Exile Twitch Channel

guys this is such a good patch, trust me, these things are for the best. Forsaken masters brought a lot of variety to the game, theres a way to make the vast majority of skills and mechanisms viable in end game now. But it also brought some heavy imbalanced things to the table and further buffed some already ridiculous stuff. Weve had buff after buff after buff for so long that this was over due, the spikes of op broken things had to be shaved down. Its one thing to have diversity in viability, but if the game is still plagued by too many long term "most efficient" options you still dont foster variety in practice.

This is the balance to the FM changes that this game sorely needed, just stop looking at individual nerfs and see how healthy this is as a package for the wider picture of the game.





Melee is fine, melee chars get such strong defense and dps, I have tons of melee characters atm and they are almost all broken, completely and utterly broken strong characters that will continue to be ridiculous post patch. Just dont play bad melee builds, you dont need the block, use evasion its way better anyway. Stack armour gear, use grace for evasion and get ondars. Use the points u were spending on block to boost your armour and endurance charges, just grab some easy come block nodes and enjoy avoiding way more damage thanks to your evasion.

You just go to drop these outdated builds that you feel arnt working. The top of the tree is barren of defenses, its a wasteland of deeps and crits. The bottom of the tree is just ripe with heavy duty defense mechanics, use them. I feel like Ranger through duelist to marauder is much more of a thing now, its not so much the right tree / left tree dichotomy we had before with a bit of going through the middle. If melee isnt working for you trust me, the way you think melee should be done is either out of date or just not at all efficient, theres really strong, hc viable melee builds in the game and they will be even stronger with this patch imo.

Im so god danm excited planned a full gaming weekend with some irl friends. allthough it goes live like 02.00 at the night in denmark we are gonna be ready for it :)

Thanks GGG for keeping this game updated and interesting

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The_Speculator wrote:

Such a disgrace of a patch and decision making overall really, no different than Blizz. If by 1.4 your actions continue to be anywhere near this disastrous level I'm done. Not a penny more of support from my 6 figures+ from me until then.

Good luck keeping this 'hype' and your peak interest from 1.2.

++

Vote by attendance and wallet. 180 degree turn im overal mechanics because of PvP; zero consistence and stability; almsot every unique droping now dull and sad- clients not amused.

and btw Block/Dodge was (maybe) slightly imba in pvp not in pve. Instead of making separate league with diferent rules setup you created frankestein. Existing data allows to form such opinion now.

When will we get permanent league? There is no perma league now. Standard is not perma.

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Optee wrote:

And most people I see crying don't have the supporter banner, so you're playing this free-to-play game, spent maybe 10$ for 1 - 2 years you've been playing and you feel entitled to talk shit? Really?

Don't be ignorant. Is very probable they spent 100$ and more to buy stash tabs directly simply because it was cheaper than supporter packs. I spent 50 and that's price for AAA game on day of realese.

So many whining babies in this community, I had forgot. So the meta and balance changes. Roll with it instead of sitting around and crying. And these ridiculous posts "hurrdurr no more financial support from my 6+ figures", hahaha. Goddamn comedy gold.

Meanwhile the rest of us will play and enjoy the game come tomorrow.

I've read nearly all posts till now, and I must agree with many of them. And some of the clearest i had collected, summing their arguments up. Because I think some of you guys can't even imagine what those changes means for players who cant spend >35h a week. I can play 1-2 hours a day, summing up to max 15h a week, and I still try to have fun with this game).

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ichbinwerichbi wrote:

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Chris wrote:

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Chameleon wrote:

So much hate for this patch, hope it changes once they play it.

Ziggy made a good point that there wasnt anything really "positive" in the patch notes like a small buff to a less used skill or something to get people excited about a new build.

This is the danger with describing the key content in advance - that the 8 new gems, 26 new uniques and such are already old news when considering the balance changes. There are plenty of awesome new builds, especially now that there's more parity between them. I'm personally excited to make a level 28 Raging Spirits PvP character and a Static Strike Templar as my regular character. Seems like it'll be two Templars for me this league :P

Its nice that you are excited about your changes and are verry happy to make new chars.

I DONT like to make new char and have the personal challenge to bring one char to 100. As a cant play so much like streamers and have to earn money for my family, this patch is the 3 who make this more and more impossible.

I can understand, that you guys are interested to play leages and make new chars. But there are also people who love the char they build and optimised with the time they spend on it and the currenci they throw in.
And THEN. You come and destroy it. And say. Hey its not a problem. make a new one.

If you feel its to easy to play with the new skills or builds are to strong, make mobs in higher lvl stonger or give them abilitys like ingnores all block or reflect 100 % of phys and/or ele dmg.

Destroying chars with changing build enabling things in skilltree and or gems is in my opininon not the right way.

so i can only quote Ziggi and say hey you say what i feel in the last 3 updates.

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Ziggy made a good point that there wasnt anything really "positive" in the patch notes like a small buff to a less used skill or something to get people excited about a new build.

I have the same Problem. I played a char ad HC for the last 3 month (and replayed it as he dies at lvl 80 due to some beyond hell breaks loose action beyond the screen). I could bring it to lvl77 yesterday and had spend most of my currency for the items and right socketing. I can't even afford a 6L (or even 5L...).
And now: it's dead-nerfed. It was a 1H+Shield Infernal Blow with low damage and armor. The only thing why it was playable (without high end items) was the high block.

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fuzzybearz wrote:

I can understand GGG's rationale for making the game content harder through various nerfs as stated that the "content is gradually drifting to be easier and easier as more skills/options are available to characters".

As always, we have to see the parties involved and how it may affect them:

1. New league characters
Content becomes harder due to nerfs, but since everyone starts on equal ground, it is equitable to all.

2. Standard characters
i. Starters (Those who just joined, or are joining the game)
Nothing to lose, but it is going to make the game more challenging for them.

ii. Intermediates
Have been playing for sometime, the nerf hits them badly, but still acceptable since they have not amassed enough equipment for a particular build. Possible but rather expensive to change build.

iii. Advance
Hit the hardest. These are the players who have reached 77/78 mapping stage, have perhaps amassed a few dozen exalts worth of equipment and dumped everything into their build. These are the players who have their builds destroyed because their decent damage becomes thrash.

iv. The at-least-one-mirror-worth-of-equipment
"Oh wow, my damage halves. Its alright, I'm still owning the game contents."

Who benefits the most relatively? Yup, you got it right, the extremely wealthy who can and will exacerbate the wealth disparity further as they are the ones who can now exclusively clear end-game content while the advance players, who had a good chance to do so to, now can't.

As argued above, I think the ii. Intermediates were hit hardest. When the only end game character, who sums up all good items, isn't playable anymore, then what left for those players? Spenging again several month to reach the funny endgame again? That's very, very frustrating! Even more frustrating than dying to any hard mob because the character isn't even standard viable anymore!

The next comment argued this point very well:

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ilenoc wrote:

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Chris wrote:

Common feedback is that we need to buff the weaker skills and also make the game generally more challenging. This is equivalent to applying small nerfs to the strongest skills.

There are two types of players in POE:
[1] Competitive no lifer – Dedicate themselves to this game. Can reach level 80 in first day of the new league. Will probably have 6 link shavronne’s at the end of second week. Deal 3million dps.
[2] Regular gamers – Who can play max 2-3 hours / day. Still couldn’t kill Atziri or Uber Atziri. Just looking the pictures of Acuity gloves…

Consider how many percent is in the first group and how many in the second group. You only care about the feedback from the first group who is already face rolling every content in this game. How will the characters of second group survive from all these defensive nerfs? For second group it is even becoming more difficult to achieve the end game farming.

If you still want second group to continue supporting PoE, think about it Chris... I have enough challenge already. I want to succeed in my struggle. Stop taking it to a further point every time.

And what are 75% Block against 100% damage evation due to become not hit as a ranged character who kills every mob whith one shot? How would it be possible to play a HC melee character? Every hater-hater in this thread said "don't whine, learn to kite!". For example Optee:

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Optee wrote:

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ilenoc wrote:

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Optee wrote:

Absolutely 100% of people crying here haven't played the new patch. Just wait for it, check it out, then decide what to do. And everyone talking about tornado shot / flameblast, no one is making you play it. You don't have to play the BEST skill, play the most enjoyable skill, and fucking wait to test it out, don't cry to get attention and up-votes.

Are you for real? So what will happen when I play the game? After all those block and defensive nerfes, is there a chance that my characters survival increase? Do I really need to play to see the obvious?

I haven't said it will increase, nor have I said it will be unplayable. Learn to kite, maybe the reactive skills will give you the power to push through, maybe something else. The point is I haven't said anything good or anything bad, I just said wait and test it.

I must agree with ilenoc at this point! If a melee kites, he can't strike. In order to hit, he must take hits. So melee handicapped anyway. Now the discrepancy is even bigger! I can't see any way (for an intermediate and below player) to play melee characters in hardcore

Instead of nerfing characters who makes this game aviable for intermediate players, there should be more and other challenging end game content. Odoakar explained it well:

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Odoakar wrote:

Chris, I know you played D2 quite a lot but I don't think you ever understood what made D2 such a special game and why it's still being called the greatest hack'n'slash.

If you think the game is not challenging enough, then add more optional content like Atziri and high level maps. Make it so that people who want challenge, can find it there, and those who don't want challenge, can play the vanilla part of the game.

D2 was fun because at the end game you would be obliterating the content. It was fun. It was enjoyable. You would destroy Act 4, and then you'd either go for Ubers or you'd do dueling. Those who didn't find that challenge enjoyable would reroll another character, wanting to see if they can destroy the end content faster with that build then with the previous one.

You keep nerfing and nerfing content, while we still have 4-5 maps in rotation over and over again. You don't touch Flameblast which is by now the worst offender. You destroy people's builds and make them less inclined to create new builds.

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block + dodge was so broken in pve, so so broken. Oh hello, I evade 50% of attacks, 95% of projectiles, then when one actually hits has 40% chance to be dodged, then 50% chance to be blocked, and if anything actually makes it through to actually damage me Ive got 42% flat physical resist thanks to my lightning coil and base endurance charges I didnt even invest in passively.... and you have all this while playing a +5k life, 100k dps crit weapon spec.

It was just too strong, way too strong. Its still possibly too strong even with the changes.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

block + dodge was so broken in pve, so so broken. Oh hello, I evade 50% of attacks, 95% of projectiles, then when one actually hits has 40% chance to be dodged, then 50% chance to be blocked, and if anything actually makes it through to actually damage me Ive got 42% flat physical resist thanks to my lightning coil and base endurance charges I didnt even invest in passively.... and you have all this while playing a +5k life, 100k dps crit weapon spec.

It was just too strong, way too strong. Its still possibly too strong even with the changes.

But this was only one possible block build. If this was such a problem, why wasn't the nerfing of acrobatics enough? Or giving some notable block passives a nerf on evade/dodge? This way would only destroyed such an OP combination of damage evasion, but not every way to play block builds.

Nerf, nerf and nerf. That is all in this patch . . .

On a side note, great release time for europeans!!! (sarcasm on)

Could you not like shift the release time like 4 hours earlier?

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Fallen_Azrael wrote:

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melee can kite.

Use an aoe, cleave, reave etc. Attack, circle, attack, circle.. same thing a bow does just closer. What is saving you is simply moving, not the distance. Mobs will target you at your location, if you circle them a few steps they miss, you cna take out a pack of 50 mobs with reave and never get hit once by just circling the pack and herding them into a ball or kiting them to a doorway indoors.

Ive been playing with ideas for new league builds, using all armour gear you can get like 8k armour, 5 endurance charges, extra 4% reduction, 7k evasion + ondars, 7% extra block with shield, 180% life and still get tons of damage clusters. What exactly are you weak compared to? A witch with their nerfed cloak, nerfed aa, 130% life build that maybe has 2.5k ev and 800 armour?

the survivability is there, Id be more worried about playing a caster witch in hc right now than some steeped in defense str/dex attack build.