Path Of Exile: Skill Balance In War For The Atlas

War for the Atlas is undoubtedly one of the most discussed topic now, it will be released first on PC on December 8 and shortly after on Xbox One. We are looking forward to their arrival. What we need to do now is as much as possible to know everything about the War for the Atlas. Today, GM2V will tell you the skill balance in War for the Atlas.

Path of Exile

  • Existing Vulnerability Skill gems are now Despair gems. Despair curses all targets in an area, making them less resistant to chaos damage, and causing them to take increased damage over time. Cursed enemies also take additional chaos damage when hit. There is a new red skill gem called Vulnerability.
  • Your minions (and their minions) will no longer deal or take damage while you are dead.
  • Dark Pact no longer gains bonus radius when using your life. The damage bonus from using your life grows less quickly as the gem levels up, dealing 76% more damage at level 20 (down from 95%).
  • Detonate Dead now deals spell damage based on the level of the skill gem, in addition to damage based on the corpse’s maximum life. The base fire damage dealt by the spell part of the explosion has been significantly increased. The skill now gains additional area of effect radius as it levels, and its base critical chance has been increased from 5% to 6%. The cast time has been lowered to 0.6 seconds (from 0.8).
  • Raise Spectre now grants additional accuracy to Spectres based on the level of the gem.
  • Bear Trap and Vaal Rain of Arrows now remove all movement speed, as opposed to reducing it by 300%.
  • Raging Spirits now have a 15% less Added Damage multiplier, up from 30%.
  • Summoned Skeletons now have a 50% more added damage multiplier, up from 30% less added damage.
  • Raging Spirits, Spiders created from Arakaali’s Fang, and the spirit skulls from the Essence of Insanity can no longer taunt their enemies.
  • The amount of burning damage dealt by the burning ground created by a Burning Arrow on a character with the Pitch Darkness threshold jewel is now determined by the level of the Burning Arrow skill gem.
  • Orb of Storms can now trigger lightning strikes from channelled skills.
  • Desecrate: Now creates 5 corpses (up from 3). The cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds per stack (down from 5), and the cast time has been reduced to 0.8 seconds (down from 1). Desecrate’s maximum corpse level now grows more steadily as the skill gem levels up. It can now create higher level corpses at most levels, except level 19 of the gem, in which the maximum corpse level has been lowered from 100 to 81.
  • Lightning Tendrils has been reworked. It is now a channelled skill, and deals more damage on every 4th pulse. It has also received a visual overhaul. The new version hits slightly less frequently than previously, but has higher sustained damage overall.
  • Minion Life Support now affects Minion Life multiplicatively (it now provides 30% MORE Minion Life rather than 30% increased Minion Life) at level 1 of the gem (up to 49% more life at level 20).
  • Dark Pact now counts as being a Minion skill gem, and will thus interact with effects such as the one found on Cloak of Tawm’r Isley.
  • Ruthless Support can no longer support Channelled skills.
  • Cyclone can no longer be supported by Ruthless Support.
  • Iron Will can now support Summon Skeleton and will affect the damage dealt by Skeleton Mages if you are using the Dead Reckoning threshold jewel.
  • Arctic Armour’s chilling effect now slows enemies by 30% when you are hit (up from 10%).
  • Melee attacks supported by Multistrike now more accurately take attack range (including area of effect modifiers) into account when checking for targets for subsequent attacks. This has negatively impacted some skills and positively impacted others, but in general melee skills supported by Multistrike will target monsters that better fit the behaviour of the attack.
  • Bladefall’s area of effect was wider than intended close to the caster. The area of effect now better matches the area the blades visually land. The total width of Bladefall’s area of effect has been increased slightly to compensate for the now-narrower early stages.
  • Storm Burst is now correctly modified by factors based on the state of the projectile (such as Powerful Precision’s “Projectiles have 100% increase Critical Strike Chance against Targets they Pierce”).
  • Charged Dash is now limited to a maximum of 15 strikes per skill use, as well as limited by distance travelled.
  • Static Strike’s radius has been increased from 19 to 20, bringing its total radius to 24 at gem level 20. Static Strike’s explosion now correctly applies ailments with 40% less effect. It was previously applying ailments without taking the less-damage modifier into account.
  • Ice Crash’s radius has been increased from 8 to 9 for the first stage, from 16 to 18 for the second stage, and from 24 to 26 for the third stage.
  • Earthquake’s radius has been increased from 25 to 28 for the second stage.
  • Reave’s radius has been increased from 17 to 20, bringing it up to 24 at gem level 20.
  • Wither now increases Chaos damage taken by 6% (down from 7%), and stacks up to 15 times (down from 20).
  • Vaal Power Siphon’s radius has been reduced to 70 units (down from 120).

Happy playing and enjoy yourself on GM2V!