Archnemesis

We have been re-examining what role rare and magic monsters have in Path of Exile, regarding how often you should encounter rare and magic monsters, how difficult they should be to kill and how rewarding their deaths should be.

Previously, league content made fights hard by spawning a lot of rare monsters. In some cases, six to eight times the normal rate of rare monsters. Now that we have better mods available to make fights against rare monsters individually challenging, we have gone through the whole game and normalised the rate that rare monsters are spawned. Some leagues had quite large reductions in spawn rate. You won't encounter situations with dozens of rare monsters on screen at once anymore. Where necessary, we have rebalanced rewards to compensate.

In addition, Archnemesis modifiers have had their rewards reviewed. The number of mods directly correlates to increased item drop bonuses, and powerful modifiers that show up in the third and fourth mod slot use a new reward conversion system that stacks with the other drop bonuses and with player item rarity and quantity.

Details:

• Lowered the number of Rare and Magic Monsters encountered through various League encounters.
• Lowered the number of Rare Monsters spawned in the Summit, Gardens and Basilica Map Boss encounters.
• Lowered the number of Rare Monsters spawned in Doryani's Machinarium, and the number of Rare and Magic Monsters spawned in The Coward's Trial.
• Assembled Metamorphs no longer summon minions at various life thresholds.
• The Ritual Tribute from sacrificing Rare Monsters has been increased, to compensate for the reduced number of Rare Monsters now spawned.
• The Immune Response Atlas Notable Passive Skill now causes Blight Encounters in your Maps to spawn 50% more Non-Unique Monsters (previously 100%), and causes Blight Monsters in your Maps to spawn 100% faster (previously 150%).
• The Abyssal Army Atlas Notable Passive Skill now causes Abysses in your Maps to spawn 50% increased monsters (previously 100%).
• The Unspeakable Offensive Atlas Notable Passive Skill no longer causes Harbingers in your Maps to summon 60% more Minions.
• The Flash Breach Atlas Notable Passive Skill now causes Breaches in your Maps to have 20% increased Area of Effect (previously 30%), and 20% increased Monster density (previously 30%).
• During the campaign, Rare Monsters you encounter will only have one or two modifiers.
• In Maps, you'll stop encountering Rare Monsters with one modifier, and will mostly encounter Rare Monsters with two or three modifiers. It is also possible to encounter Rare Monsters with four modifiers again.
• Some of the more powerful Monster modifiers now use a special reward conversion system. For example, if you defeat a monster with the Corrupter mod, all of its drops become corrupted. The Solaris-touched mod converts all of its item drops to maps. The Kitava-touched mod will cause the rarity of its drops to be upgraded by one tier, so magic becomes rare, rare becomes unique, etc). If you're lucky, you can find these conversion modifiers on both the third and fourth mod of a rare monster. This causes them to stack together. So if you kill a four-mod rare monster with both the Entangler and Kitava-touched mods on it, its heavily juiced drops will also be converted to jewels with their rarity upgraded by a tier. Due to the high amount of inherent item rarity that four-mod monsters have, this may result in several unique jewels. This conversion system is fully compatible with your item rarity and quantity bonuses, as well as the drop bonuses from all other archnemesis mods.

The Valley of Darkness Atlas Keystone Passive Skill has been removed as a result of these changes to Rare Monster modifiers. The Stream of Consciousness Keystone has taken up Valley Of Darkness's position on the Atlas Tree.

Magic monsters have a restricted list of archnemesis modifiers compared to rare monsters, but this list still includes many modifiers which can spawn threats external to the monsters themselves, such as ground effects or volatile orbs. These external threats can feel overwhelming due to magic monsters being more numerous than rare monsters.

We have toned down the modifiers that can spawn on magic monsters so that more of them are stat-based bonuses that aren't too spammy. All monsters in an instance that are the same or very similar will have the same magic monster modifier, rather than rolling a different Archnemesis modifier for each monster.

Details:

• The following Monster modifiers can no longer appear on Magic Monsters that aren't in packs: Consecrator, Empowered Elements, Flame Strider, Frost Strider, and Storm Strider.
• The Corpse Detonator, Ice Prison, and Mirror Image Monster modifiers can no longer appear on Magic Monsters.
• Magic Monsters with the Storm Strider modifier no longer trigger a Lightning Mirage when Hit.
• Magic Monsters with the Flame Strider modifier no longer trigger an Inferno Bolt when Hit.
• Magic Monsters with the Frost Strider modifier no longer trigger a Snow Bolt when Hit.
• Magic Monsters with the Sentinel modifier no longer trigger a Delayed Reckoning when Hit.
• Magic Monsters with the Assassin modifier no longer teleport to distant Enemies creating a Smoke Cloud.

The following Archnemesis modifiers have been renamed to make their function slightly more clear from their name:

• Evocationist has been renamed to Prismatic.
• Dynamo has been renamed to Electrocuting.

Problem: Monsters with block chance generally take a small percentage of incoming damage when they block rather than no damage at all, to prevent blocking feeling too punishing for players. However, Archnemesis modifiers that grant block chance prevent 100% of blocked damage.

Solution: Monsters with the Sentinel and Benevolent Guardian Archnemesis modifiers now take 20% of damage from hits they block.

Problem: Multiple Archnemesis modifiers provide stun immunity to monsters. This is too high a concentration of stun immunity for stun-focused builds.

Solution: Change two of the three Archnemesis modifiers that grant stun immunity to instead grant increased stun threshold.

Details:

• The Steel-Infused and Bonebreaker Archnemesis modifiers now grant monsters 250% increased Stun Threshold instead of Cannot be Stunned. The Juggernaut modifier still grants Cannot be Stunned.