Archnemesis

Sanctum Patch Notes

Monster Mods and Archnemesis

Problem:

• Archnemesis monster mods each added a number of stats and buffs to monsters, causing them to feel overwhelming and confusing (especially when multiple mods were present on the same monster).

Solution:

• Monster mods now only do one specific thing.
• Here's an example: The Magma Barrier Archnemesis mod did a whole lot of stuff. It started by putting a magma barrier around the monster, but it didn't stop there. It converted some of the monster's physical damage to fire damage, it added some extra fire damage on top, it granted fire resistance to the monster and it gave some physical damage reduction for good measure. It also spawned volatile flamebloods to follow you. The new equivalent modifier just puts a magma barrier around the monster and does nothing else.

Problem:

• Keyworded, thematic monster mod names gave an impression of the overall effect of the mod on the monster but did not explain exactly what they granted, requiring players to memorise them.

Solution:

• Monster mods now say exactly what they do.
• For example, rather than "Incendiary", which broke down into six properties, you'd now see monsters with either "Ignites" or "Fire and Ignite Resistant". Instead of "Deadeye", which did five separate things, you'd now see "Applies Random Mark", "Extra Crits" or "Accurate" as separate unrelated mods.

Problem:

• The percentage of Archnemesis mods that significantly changed gameplay was high, and combinations of modifiers that required careful play arose too frequently, making content too complex.

Solution:

• Since each mod now only does a single thing but monsters don't have more mods than they used to, the percentage of monsters with gameplay-altering effects is now much lower. Interesting and challenging emergent behaviour from overlapping mods can still happen, just less often.

Problem:

• The way Archnemesis rewards were set up meant that many players felt like they couldn't just kill a monster, they had to consider if they wanted to bring a magic find character in to maximise rewards

Solution:

• Players are no longer required to do annoying actions to maximise rewards
• In Archnemesis, rewards were associated with individual mods. This meant that you could tell what kind of rewards you would get in advance. In some cases, you were then effectively required to fetch a magic-find culling character to make sure that you maximised the value of the monster mod that you had found. In other cases, you would ignore a monster completely if you knew that it would only drop rewards that were of no value to you. In the new system, we have added a significant pool of new rewards to rares, but the reward that is on the monster is hidden (and not associated with a specific mod), so you don't know what kind of rewards you will get until you kill the monster. Rare monsters with more mods are more likely to have these special hidden reward mods. This new reward system smooths out the spikiness that the Archnemesis reward system had.

Conclusion:

• The original motivation for developing Archnemesis was that the previous monster mod system was very out of date. Many of the mods didn't have any appreciable effect under modern balance and there wasn't a lot of interesting gameplay possible. In our opinion, Archnemesis did succeed at adding a lot of interesting new mechanics to rares, but introduced the problems described above. While creating the new monster mods described, we were careful to retain most of the interesting mechanics that Archnemesis introduced, but in a way that doesn't include a grab-bag of other effects and is diluted by many other simpler mods.
• The result is a system that is very similar to what monster mods used to be like, but with much more up-to-date content and balance. Mods are simpler and say exactly what they do. While you can certainly still rarely encounter scary combinations of mods that really wake you up, it's a lot rarer than it was under the Archnemesis system. We feel that the new system is more modern and interesting than the old monster mod/nemesis system and is clearer and easier to understand in the heat of combat than Archnemesis was.

Kalandra Patch Notes

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.

Sentinel Patch Notes

Archnemesis Changes

• Archnemesis modifiers have been rebalanced and added to the core game. Existing Magic and Rare monster modifiers have been replaced with Archnemesis modifiers.
• Rare monsters will be found with two Archnemesis modifiers by default. From Act 6 onwards, there is a chance to find monsters with three modifiers, and in Maps, a chance for finding monsters with four modifiers.
• Magic monsters will be found with one Archnemesis modifier by default.
• The life, experience, increased item quantity and rarity of Magic and Rare monsters are no longer primarily determined by the monster's rarity, these are now primarily determined by the type of modifiers on the monster itself. A monster with more, or rarer, modifiers will have more life, increased item quantity and rarity, and grant more experience.
• Archnemesis modifiers are able to be gained by characters through sources such as Headhunter and Inspired Learning, though you are only able to have one instance of each modifier at any given time.

Bloodlines and Nemesis Removal

• Bloodlines and Nemesis have been removed from the core game. Some of their modifiers have been incorporated into the new monster modifier system:
• The Snow Bolt and Inferno Bolt Nemesis modifiers have been incorporated into the Frost Strider and Flame Strider Archnemesis modifiers.
• The Storm Herald and Final Gasp Nemesis modifiers can now be found as Archnemesis modifiers on Rare Monsters.
• The Union of Souls, Voidspawn of Abaxoth, Spirit Walkers and Heralds of the Obelisk Bloodlines modifiers have been incorporated into the Archnemesis modifier system, and can be found on Magic monsters.

Timeline (NZT)

• Jan 25 - Balance Manifesto
• Jan 28 - Announcement, Patch Notes, Passive Tree Json
• Jan 31 - All new and changed gems at 20/20
• Feb 1 -
• Feb 2 - Scourge League Ends, Atlas Skill Tree
• Feb 3 - Item Filters, Challenge Rewards
• Feb 4 - Information about launch and hopefully a torrent
• Feb 5 - 3.17 PC League Start, Harmony Mystery Box
• Feb 10 - 3.17 Xbox and PlayStation League Start