Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was the full reveal stream for Path of Exile 3.27, aka the Keepers of the Flame league and it looks pretty freaking awesome. This is the first time they have revisited a previous league theme, and this time Breach is getting a significant rework. The interesting thing about this, and some of the things from the patch notes… is it seems like they really want to make league mechanics distinct and their own thing. During this league they have effectively clawed back all of the other leagues that could drop breach mechanics, and are making players focus on breach specifically if they want to farm any of these resources. Similarly they clawed by the nodes for Delve that allowed players to passively generate azurite, which makes me wonder if we are seeing more of a design ethic at play. As a Delve aficionado this means that my resonators just go way more valuable and I am on board with this, since players are no longer going to be able to skip delve and passively get them.
Breach itself looks really interesting. There are effectively three versions of Breach that are going to be available. There are scenarios where the hive has already set up shop in a zone and you have to burn down their fortifications and then fight a breach lord. There is a version where it is similar to the current form, but once you have filled a bar through killing breach enemies it locks open and spawns tougher mobs in the center. I love the whole concept of it locking in place, because the fleeting nature of breach was the one thing I didn’t really like about it. I notoriously hate being on a timer. The last version is more of a breach citadel which feels like it is going to be something akin to the way Abyssal Depths feel. Rarely there will be this bonus content that spawns in that you can tackle, and I am pretty on board with this conceptually. I mostly look forward to doing Breach in every map, because Breach rings themselves have been entirely reworked to be similar to how they are in Path of Exile II. This means that we are most likely going to be getting most of our really good resist rings from Breach this league.
The borrowed power system for this league are Grafts, which will allow you to equip two new item slots that do various things. More specifically they showed off these as triggering specific cast attacks, or granting you new spells, or even just passively casting some ability over and over while you are clearing content. These seem like they are going to be really great a low levels, but might peter out as we get into the endgame. Mostly it is going to be interesting to see what all is available here, because if you can have grafts taking on some of the conditional defensive buffs like Molten Shell, it might give you more freed from socket pressure. You start off with one graft socket, but at some point you can end up with two of them. Mostly interested in seeing how these abilities augment and change the way existing builds play.
Similarly there are new ascendancies going in with this patch called Bloodline Classes. You will unlock these by beating various bosses and they will offer you an alternate progression system. Essentially you will use your normal ascendancy points but can spec into alternate abilities. There are a lot of ascendancies that have two to three really phenomenal notables, but at least one choice that you just sort of have to wing and choose the next best thing. We have only seen three of the ten revealed, and I am interested to see how these change existing specs. This feels like the sort of thing that might stick around in some permanent form going forward, because this alternate ascendancy concept is something that they have played with a few times, and tying this to clearing bosses feels like the final evolution of the concept. I also think this might be super beneficial when combined with Forbidden Flesh and Flame jewels that allow you to get back anything you might skip from your base ascendancy to get new powers.
Another really interesting system going in is the Genesis Tree which is a crafting system that allows you to “birth” uniques, itemized rares, and currency by spending points to skew the results. At first glance this looked a lot like the Weavers Tree from Last Epoch, but instead of socketing items in the tree to get improved chance of drops, you are spending points to skew the results towards generating new items. I think it is going to be interesting to see how easy it is to craft for example a really good elemental bow with this system, since we got a bunch of interesting bow attacks to play with this league. Mostly I think I am going to use this system in an attempt to fuel alternate classes later in the league, as opposed to a progression system for my main build. It seems like it is going to take a lot of investment before this actually becomes really useful. I am however wondering if there are going to be some cracked out alternate versions of Cloak of Flames available through this system, since there is a method of generating uniques with one of the attributes replaced on them with something new and different.
Probably the thing that I am looking forward to the most however is the new trade system. I was already generating most of my league wealth through the currency exchange, and I don’t really see that changing. However I am probably going to dive deeper down the rabbit hole of trying to trade things like Einhar Beasts and other incidental things like that, which always felt too cumbersome to actually trade. For buying items… it is so much nicer just to port to a hideout and buy the item off the vendor than trying to wrangle someone to actually respond. Additionally it is a really good feeling to log in after being gone for awhile and have a stack of currency waiting on you. This tends to benefit the really hardcore you can exploit markets first, and the super casual… who get very cheap items once those markets have crashed. I don’t expect to get rich though this system, but it will be less painful to pawn my shit and in turn buy the stuff that I actually need.
At the core… we got a bunch of interesting stuff and so far it does not feel like the builds that I cared about were nerfed. Righteous Fire did not get any buffs, other than potentially making Nebulis sceptres as a mid league option if they are cheap enough. I will still be able to play good ole predictable RF in order to fund other build ideas. The biggest things that ate nerfs were the entire concept of BAMA aka Blink Arrow Mirror Arrow. It is still possible to play it, so it did not get the nuke from orbit that Hexblast Mines did last league where they effectively said “no, we don’t want you playing those as mines anymore”. Trickster ate some nerfs, but honestly the class feels still perfectly viable. There is enough interesting stuff going on like them leaning into the Physical damage archetype for wanders, that might produce some really interesting builds.
They added a new Bow ability called Conflagration which is essentially Rain of Explosive Arrows. You can get this from playing a Ranger in Act 3 by killing Gravicius, and it looks really interesting. I think this is probably going to be my second build of the league once I have stabilized and built up a base of currency through playing Righteous Fire. I think you will self cast instead of totems, and lean hard into dealing fire damage. I do wonder what it would feel like to have a double six link setup with you self casting Conflagration with maybe Mirage Archer support, and then have a totem setup with Explosive Arrow similarly to how one plays other bow builds. I don’t think you try and do the elemental equilibrium nonsense, because I am not sure what damage you deal other than fire first. You should probably want something converting fire damage to another element though so you could run Trinity support. Anyways it is worth theorycrafting something out. I would probably play this as an Elementalist maybe to get buffs from the golems… which did eat a nerf but they are still phenomenal. Alternately you could do the Champion thing, which I think might still work.
One interesting change that SirGog pointed out in his patch notes review video, is that Hardcore is getting a bit of an upgrade. Namely when you die in Hardcore Leagues, your characters will transfer over to Softcore Leagues instead of transferring to Standard. This is pretty huge for someone who might want to start out with the challenge of Hardcore, but then convert to a Softcore character when they eventually die. Additionally if a player just gets tired of the sweaty gameplay, they can chill out in softcore with the current state of their character. As he pointed out there used to be a lot of weird stuff going on in Hardcore where the Standard players would manipulate the market to get items that were valuable in Standard then take a death and transfer items between the leagues. I think this is a net positive for players in general, but I am still not really at all interested in Hardcore anything. I did my brief Hardcore Minecraft run, and it was fun… until it wasn’t. I also participated in Gauntlet and made it to Act III, but was pretty damned happy when I finally died because I was not enjoying being that nervous all the time.
I am fully amped for this new league and am contemplating taking off next Friday so that I can play with purpose as soon as it goes live. I will likely be grinding it pretty hard throughout the weekend, and seeing if I can hit maps relatively early for my pacing. This is the benefit of having no real life, is that I can go hardcore into something like this. Earlier in the week is the drop of the new Guild Wars 2 expansion, so I am hoping I can wrap the story there before league start so I can give this my undivided attention. I will probably be juggling Guild Wars 2, Destiny Rising, and Path of Exile for awhile, and may end up talking about progression in all three. The other thing that I do find tempting is minions, especially since Spectres got a massive quality of life improvement. However in truth I am probably way more interested in Bows as my second character, but depending on how long I stay engaged I might end up rolling something minion focused as well.
Are you going to be playing Keepers of the Flame? If so what are you leaning towards as your league starter? Drop me a line in the comments.
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