Yesterday, we noted that Grinding Gear Games is set on delivering a trio of dev blogs leading into the reveal and release of Path of Exile’s 3.16 Scourge expansion later this month. The first piece focused on flasks and ailment mitigation; the second dives into core character defenses and recovery.
“We are doing a major balance pass to improve defences and recovery for all characters,” GGG explains. “The goal here is to put more power into the core defences (Armour, Evasion and Energy Shield) to make them the best way to mitigate the kind of damage they are best at preventing, while taking some of that power away from the one-off mechanics that provide a significant defence for too low a cost. While some individual mechanics have been nerfed, this is overall a massive buff to defenses across the board.”
“Previously, there were some very tanky characters, but they were gated behind specific niche mechanics and uniques that were not accessible to everyone. What we’re doing here is moving a lot of that power to everyone else, so that core defenses are far more powerful than they were before. We’re also making sure that every type of character has plenty of ways to mitigate a much more diverse set of damage types. For example, Evasion mitigates Attacks well, so we’re introducing Spell Suppression to help Evasion builds protect themselves against Spells.”
Once again, the studio has a massive list of the problems it’s identified along these lines, as well as the specific solutions, chiefly for min-maxers’ eyes. The third blog is expected later today and will target auras, curses, and elemental DOTs.
