Revamped Skill Gems: In addition to the 20 new Gems introduced in The Awakening, several older skills and supports have been revamped. These new versions replace the old ones, providing a better experience for players who rely on them.
All attack skills now gain a multiplicative damage increase per Gem level, which replaces the additive increase they had previously. Shock nova now follows up the ring of Lightning around you with a larger Lightning nova. Enemies can be damaged by both. Punishment now causes cursed enemies to grant a buff to anyone they hit with melee attacks. The buff grants more Melee Damage and increased Attack Speed. It no longer reflects damage. Arctic Armour now chills enemies when they hit you. It causes you to drop chilled ground only while moving and take a percentage less Fire and Physical damage while stationary. It will reserve mana instead of draining mana and no longer reduces damage taken by a flat amount. Tempest Shield now deals arcing beams of damage to attackers when you block. This damage chains between enemies. It now has a mana cost and a duration instead of a reservation cost. Blocking refreshes the skill's duration. Due to these changes, it no longer persists between areas. Blood Rage now deals physical damage over time rather than chaos, and grants increased attack speed and life leech for the duration of the buff regardless of the state of the player's life. The leech values are now in line with the game-wide rebalance of leech. It now also drains a percentage of physical damage based on Energy Shield, on top of life. It now only has a 25% chance to generate a Frenzy Charge on kill. Enduring Cry is now a warcry rather than a spell. It now grants some life regeneration on use and grants 3% increased Area of Effect per 1% quality (was 1% per 1% quality). Frost Wall now has a cooldown that can be bypassed by consuming Power charges. Its damage, duration, and wall length have all been greatly modified. Enlighten now reduces its mana multiplier each level. It no longer grants increased experience for linked gems. It instead serves to lower mana costs and reservation. Reduced Mana no longer reduces reservation costs of supported gems. It now only lowers the casting cost of skills.
Additional Content: When you complete a quest, gems from that quest plus some others are added to a new tab on the Jewellery vendor in town for you to purchase cheaply. These gems sometimes come with experience if they're lower level than you are. Introduced the Fortify buff, which is granted by the Fortify Support Gem and Vigilant Strike. This buff is designed to protect melee characters and grants 20% reduced damage taken from hits for a few seconds. We've added 18 new achievements. New 3D art has been added to the following Uniques: Alternate Art Taryn's Shiver, Blood Thorn, Bino's Kitchen Knife, Alternate Art Bino's Kitchen Knife and Hegemony's Era. The Nightmare tier of weapons have all had their 2D and 3D art replaced. New types of chests have been added to the first three acts. A Gemling Legionnaire monster pack has been added to the Warehouse District in Act Three. Added a new Unique boss to the church in the Fellshrine Ruins. The voice acting of existing character classes has been improved. In some cases this involved very large changes! Large Skeletons now have their own model and animations, as opposed to being upsized variants of normal skeletons. They now attack slower, but hit harder than normal skeletons. More lore objects with voice acting have been added throughout Wraeclast. A swarm of parasites have infected some very large crustaceans and found their way to the coast of Wraeclast in Act One. We've added new puncture animations for all player characters. Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.
Achievement Changes: As well as adding new achievements, we have updated and revamped several existing ones.
The achievements "All Ears", "No Loose Ends", "No Stone Unturned", and "Locomancer" have been expanded and revamped. They now incorporate Act 4 content, as well some of the new content added to previous Acts. Players who have completed any of these achievements before this update will keep them, even though they haven't done the new content required for them. We may expand these achievements again later, but no-one will ever lose an achievement once they have earned it, now or in the future. All of these achievements now show your current character's progress towards them, instead of your account's best progress. Once you have completed them, they are simply marked as complete, no matter what character you are playing. "Locomancer" now includes the Act 4 waypoints. "All Ears" now includes Act 4 NPC dialogue and is broken up by Act. "No Loose Ends" now includes the Act 4 sidequest and is broken up by Difficulty. "No Stone Unturned" is now broken up by act. Many new pieces of environmental lore are included, such as the Vaal Letters found in corrupted areas, as well as content in Act 4 and earlier acts. For achievements broken up by Act or Difficulty, the progress of each is tracked individually, to make it easier to follow your progress. This also means that these achievements are no longer required to be done on a single character, though each individual Act or Difficulty must be.
Content from the Torment/Bloodlines Challenge Leagues: Tormented Spirits have been added to the core game. Bloodlines Mods have been added to the core game. The Bloodlines Mod Phylacteral Link is no longer used as a Bloodlines Mod but the mechanic may be reused in other places. The Bloodlines Mod Cult of the Elements has been removed. The Bloodlines Mod Otherworldly has had its duration reduced and now has less damage reduction. The Bloodlines Mods Voidspawn of Abaxoth, Congealed Blood and Bearers of the Guardian now spawn less frequently. The elementals spawned by the Living Blood Bloodlines Mod have been rebalanced. The Bloodlines Mod Necrovigil now appears later than before and has had its radius reduced. One of the variations of the Bloodlines Mod Heralds of the Obelisk has been removed. The Torment spirit Tormented Martyr has been made significantly less dangerous. None of the Unique Items from Torment or Bloodlines drop in the core game. Zana mods can help you find these.
CHAPTER THREE: GAME BALANCE
General Balance: The invulnerability grace period when loading into an area has been increased to 30 seconds. In addition to being unable to die, traps now cannot be damaged at all until they arm. Damage reflection mods on rare monsters are no longer auras. There are now two new monster mods that reflect physical and elemental damage respectively. They have new effects that are much more visible. A Bloodlines mod has been added for pack-based reflection on magic monsters. Warcries are now a category of skill containing the existing Enduring Cry and the new Abyssal/Rallying Cries. Warcries have a shared cooldown. Projectile skills no longer "shotgun". You can't hit the same target with more than one simultaneously-created projectile from the same source any more. They've been rebalanced around this. The life of Totems cast by players has been increased in all cases. Totem placement can now be sped up with a new Totem Placement Speed stat. Cast speed no longer places totems more quickly. Base totem placement speed is faster than the cast speed used to be. The delay on Energy Shield recovery has been shortened. The rate at which Energy Shield recovers has been slowed. Eldritch Battery now causes Energy Shield to protect Mana instead of Life. Armour now protects you more than it did before (approximately 18% more protection). Frenzy Charges now grant 4% Increased Attack Speed and Cast Speed. They also grant 4% more Damage. Previously, the most that experience could be penalised to was 2% of the monster's normal experience. This value has been reduced to 1%. This is to encourage players to run content appropriate for their high level. Missions now award slightly less reputation and favour. This change is larger for higher-level missions. The 1.3.0 patch made master levelling too easy. Leech on weapons is now local (it doesn't affect your other weapon). Barrels now deal damage when they explode. Side content and content introduced in previous leagues is now introduced at a staggered rate (and at lower rates early on). The intent here is to avoid overwhelming newer players with too many mechanics too quickly. Fire Shrines, Static Shrines and Hexing Shrines will no longer spawn. Shrine effects now last 45 seconds. Many shrine effects have also been rebalanced.
Quest Rewards: Due to the rebalancing of the levels of all Skill and Support Gems, quest rewards throughout Path of Exile have been adjusted.
Skill Gems are now only offered as quest rewards in Normal difficulty. The skills offered at each reward have been consolidated and skills are no longer offered multiple times. These gems and others appear in gem vendors so that they're available later on if you need them. Support Gems are now only offered in Normal and Cruel. They are now available when you enter the Lower Prison, rather than at the Caverns before Merveil. Multiple rare items have been added to the quest rewards over all three difficulties. (Including rare Jewels in later difficulties) Normal Items with four linked sockets have been added to quest rewards in Merciless. Special Unique Jewels have been added to the quest rewards in all difficulties (from the Golden Hand Quest). The Bandit Rewards have been adjusted, these now grant: Normal Kraityn: 10% to Elemental Resistances. Normal Alira: 60 to Maximum Mana. Cruel Oak: 16% increased Physical Damage. Cruel Alira: 5% increased Cast Speed Any quests which now give maps have been adjusted to give the new version of those maps.