Greetings, and welcome to one big as heck update for Path of Exile. 3.21 Patch has brought a lot of changes, and the Patch Notes are right under this paragraph. You will be astonished at the number of changes that have happened in 3.21 Patch of Path of Exile and we advise you to bring some snacks and beverages.
Content Update 3.21.0 — Path of Exile: Crucible
All in all, without further ado, enjoy the official updates from Grinding Gear Games:
The Crucible Challenge League
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New Content and Features
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League Revamps
In this expansion, we’ve targeted a couple of endgame leagues that have fallen behind other leagues on the Atlas Tree: Breach and Abyss.
The changes outlined below should ensure that you can play a wider variety of leagues in the endgame, both through being able to access them more easily and because Breach and Abyss now feel far more modern and competitive with other popular league content.
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We’ve also revamped many Breach Uniques:
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We’ve also taken the opportunity to revisit Abyss Unique Items, and have made the following changes:
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Atlas Changes
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Endgame Changes
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Divination Card and Voidborn Reliquary Changes
Passive Skill Tree Mastery Changes
Looking at the masteries Path of Exile’s passive skill tree, we realized that a lot of the choices were rather bland and could be a lot more exciting.
We have reviewed each mastery one by one, and tried to come up with as many interesting stats as we could, ignoring what was currently available. Once we had a shortlist of high-quality stats, we added in the existing ones that used to be on each mastery and picked the six best. All of the leftover ones have been saved for later or used in other places like unique items.
This process was performed on approximately half of the masteries on the tree, initially targeting the ones that needed the attention the most. Previously, some masteries only had four options, so we have tried to increase as many as possible to six options.
We have also added new Stun and Recovery mastery types, to fill gaps we felt were missing:
We’ve compiled a list of the mastery types that have received changes in Path of Exile: Crucible, highlighting the new options. Below this list is a spoilered section containing the masteries that have been removed, for your reference.
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Accuracy Masteries
Armour Masteries
Armour and Energy Shield Masteries
Armour and Evasion Masteries
Attack Masteries
Caster Masteries
Chaos Masteries
Claw Masteries
Cold Masteries
Dagger Masteries
Elemental Masteries
Energy Shield Masteries
Evasion Masteries
Evasion and Energy Shield Masteries
Fire Masteries
Flask Masteries
Fortify Masteries
Impale Masteries
Leech Masteries
Lightning Masteries
Life Masteries
Link Masteries
Mana Masteries
Mine Masteries
Mark Masteries
Physical Masteries
Poison Masteries
Protection Masteries (previously Resistance and Ailment Protection)
(New) Recovery Masteries
Reservation Masteries
Spell Suppression Masteries
(New) Stun Masteries
Trap Masteries
Two Hand Masteries
Warcry Masteries
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Removed Masteries
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Passive Skill Tree Cluster Changes
While looking at masteries, we noticed that there were some mechanics that didn’t have enough passive tree support, so we decided to add more options and passive skill choices for those mechanics.
We also wanted to grant more access to certain types of masteries in specific parts of the passive skill tree. For example, in order to allow more access to the Attack Mastery, we’ve added an attack cluster by the Templar, and one between the Ranger and Shadow.
We wanted to create more access to other forms of recovery such as Regen and Recoup, so we’ve added some new passive skill clusters
The addition of the Stun Mastery introduced some interesting mechanics that we want to provide more interaction with. We’ve introduced three new stun clusters to the passive tree, and tweaked some existing ones, to provide more ways to build upon stun other than stun and block recovery or reduced stun chance.
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Attack Clusters
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Bow Clusters
Cold Clusters
Fortify Clusters
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Link Clusters
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Mark Clusters
Poison Clusters
Recovery Clusters
Stance Clusters
Stun Avoidance Clusters
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While reviewing these clusters we also decided to make the following changes to Cast when Stunned Support:
Warcry Clusters
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Ascendancy Changes
While going through Ascendancy Classes, we identified two that needed work: the Saboteur and the Pathfinder. Both have been significantly changed in Path of Exile: Crucible. These changes reinforce their respective identities while adding some new options to build around.
The Saboteur is definitely the Ascendancy most aligned with traps and mines, but the previous version of Saboteur made it difficult to play anything but traps or mines. This new version has more builds available, including a whole new specialisation: Triggers. There are two notable passives that help with this, Like Clockwork and Perfect Crime.
Like Clockwork grants you increased Cooldown Recovery rate, while Perfect Crime summons two Triggerbots, which override the location of where a triggered spell is being cast, and instead causes it to trigger twice, once from each of their locations.
The layout for the Saboteur’s trap and mine ascendency passives has changed so that there aren’t separate four-pointers for traps and mines. Now each one has a two-pointer that is connected to the same shared four-pointer.
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Here’s a list of the full changes:
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Pathfinder
The Pathfinder has been overdue for some attention, especially with recent features such as Concoction skills that she could get the ability to specialise in. We also wanted the flask-themed Ascendancy to have a proactive way of improving life flask usage.
Master Distiller is a new notable which allows you to turn most of your skills into Concoction-like abilities, while the new version of Master Surgeon effectively gives all your Life Flasks the “Enduring” effect, previously only found on mana flasks.
In addition, both major Flask-themed branches now have some form of flask charge recovery.
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Early-game Changes
We’ve added three new Support Gems in this patch. These Support Gems are all given out in Act One, and supplement the early game of some archetypes as well as introducing players to interesting Path of Exile mechanics early on, such as gems triggering other gems, in a relatively simple manner. To give another single target option for bows, we’ve also created a standalone version of the Snipe Skill Gem, which previously was only available through the unique helmet Assailum.
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Skill Balance
A number of specific changes primarily to skills acquired in the early game have been made to even the playing field between levelling options. The majority of skills changed here have either been buffed, or have received nerfs to early game power while compensating at higher levels. A few gems which were overperforming overall have had adjustments both to early and endgame power.
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Onslaught Support
In an effort to make a wider variety of builds competitive for levelling, we initially considered broadening the use cases for Onslaught Support in order to allow more builds to use it. This would result in Onslaught becoming a mandatory link for almost every build to level faster. This would still mean that the few remaining builds that could not make use of Onslaught Support would be at a speed disadvantage in the early game.
This eventually led to the conclusion that the removal of the support gem, and the addition of a number of new support gems to support more interesting early playstyles was the correct route to try to broaden the playing field. This does lower the early game movement speed potential of some builds, placing more reliance on gear and passive tree choices to invest into movement speed.
Attack and Bow-based Levelling
In order to better support early attack and bow based levelling, Faster Attacks Support and various Mark skills have had their level lowered, adjusting their values to be appropriate for their new levels. These gems still scale to the same or very similar values in the endgame.
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As Sceptres are meant to be more caster-oriented than their One-Handed Mace counterparts, it didn’t make sense that many early game Sceptre bases had significantly faster Attack Speeds than One-Handed Maces. These Sceptre bases have had their base attack speed values lowered, and physical damage values buffed to compensate.
Wand and Vendor Recipe changes
The Vendor Recipe granting flat Elemental Damage to Spells no longer exists. Weapons created using this recipe in the first few acts were powerful enough sources of damage to not need to be replaced until players reached even the final few acts of the campaign, which is not ideal. Players should be actively considering weapon replacements as they progress through the levelling process, an aspect of levelling which was undercut by the existence of this vendor recipe. This also gave spellcasters a significant damage advantage in early acts.
We have also changed the implicit modifiers of many Wands. These changed wands now have a new implicit which grants specific flat Elemental Damage to Spells and Attacks. This means that it will still be feasible (through these bases as well as explicit modifiers) to obtain flat Elemental Damage early on, while adding some more consistent early flat damage for wand attackers to take advantage of. There are also endgame variants of these base types, which adds more variety to wand bases.
The following Wands have received new Implicit modifiers:
Some Unique Wands are found on new basetypes as a result of the above changes:
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Arcane Surge
In an effort to have Cast Speed still available early for casters who want to invest into it in their support links, Arcane Surge now grants Cast Speed instead of More Spell Damage. Changes to Hierophant and Ascendant, as well as minor changes to Arcane Surge related passives on the tree, have been made to account for this.
Miscellaneous Player Balance
Stunning enemies has become too trivial with the amount of hit damage the majority of players regularly deal. To combat this, we’ve made it harder to stun enemies with hits for almost all skills – however, since Melee relies on stuns more than other archetypes for survivability, the ability for Melee Attacks to stun enemies has remained untouched.
Molten Shell currently outperforms other Guard Skills without much investment. We’ve reduced the amount of damage the Buff provided by Molten Shell can take, to bring this skill more in line with other Guard Skills:
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Item Balance
Monster Balance
Ruthless-specific Changes
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Kirac League Mods Available During 3.21.0
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User Interface Changes
Item Filter Changes
Changes since the original post was made:
Updated the following note, regarding Ascendant Saboteur:
Updated the following note:
Added the following note:
Congratulations for surviving until the very end!
Nikola has been a Staff Writer at Prima Games since May 2022. He has been gaming since being able to hold an Amiga 500 joystick on his own, back in the early 90s (when gaming was really good!). Nikola has helped organize dozens of gaming events and tournaments and has been professionally attached to gaming since 2009.
