First Impressions Of POE 3.20 Krangled Passives Event - Fun But Not For Everyone
Today, I want to talk about the Krangled Passives Event, which has been one of the March events that GGG has been running lately.
About Krangled Passives Event
This has been a fairly unique event where the entire passive tree is scrambled. What does scrambled mean? It means that all the notable passives across the entire tree are swapped with each other.
For instance, Endurance here is something that would be in a totally different spot on the passive tray normally, but it’s been moved here. All the notables are transposed with other notables. All the small nodes are transposed with other small nodes and all the keystones are transposed with other keystones. So, where iron reflexes on the normal tray would be in the south-south east area. Instead here, it is in the Northwest.
Possibly of most interest, all of the small nodes and all of the large nodes within all of the ascendancies have been scrambled. So, Avatar of the Slaughter, which normally belongs to the Raider is now an option for the Inquisitor. Instruments of Zeal is also still an option for the Inquisitor.
Then you have small nodes that would belong to other ascendancies normally and they have been shoved over in this ascendancy cluster for the Inquisitor, as well. Of course, everything that you are not connected to is Veiled, as well.
So, in order to try and scout out your passive tree that requires a substantial investment of resources or alternately, it requires cooperation with other players because all players that play this event share the same passive tree.
Now, this creates an interesting dynamic where the passive tree structure is different, but it also makes the game meaningfully harder because your character will be quite a bit weaker than they would be in the base game. Why is that?
It’s because there are a lot of nodes that don’t really do very much on the passive tree unless you are playing a build that optimizes for them. For example, I am forced to pass through Wand Attack Speed and Accuracy. My character is a Spellcaster. I get absolutely nothing from this node and there’s quite a number of these notes across the passive tree and you’ll also have to find a bunch of them as you explore.
Three Ways To Play This Event
*As I said, there are three main ways that you can play this event: the first one is that you can go in with no foreknowledge at all or with almost no foreknowledge. This is the way that I played it.
I deliberately chose to play an Inquisitor because I knew the Occultist was the strongest ascendancy and I thought well. I don’t know anything about the Inquisitor, so I’m just going to force that to work somehow. And I’ve chosen to go with the Inquisitor ascendancy and just play around, find nodes that seem like they’re useful and spec them and then try to force a character to work.
This has been a lot of fun, but it has resulted in a low power character. My experience has been that my character has been probably a little weaker than a character of comparable level would be in Ruthless normally and definitely far weaker than a character of comparable level would be in the base game.
*The second way that you can play it is you can have a look for major things on the tree you want to work towards. If your budget is sufficient, you can directly use POE Currency to obtain them. For instance, you might know that you want to spec a whole bunch of Mana Reservation Efficiency and Aura nodes, so you can look up a cheat sheet and get a sense of exactly where all of these are across the passive tree. These cheat sheets do exist now.
*The third way you can play it is you can see it as an optimization puzzle where you look at all of the information that’s available across a passive tree that’s been scattered out by other players and you try to build the most powerful character possible within the constraints of the event.
All these are valid ways to play it. Of course, if you’re trying to win the event, then the correct way to play it is going to be to treat it as an optimization puzzle. But alternately, it’s perfectly fine to just play it for a bit of fun the way that I’ve been doing as well.
Now, the thing that’s really noticeable in this event is that you are extremely starved for attribute points. Selling players aren’t generally used to being in short supply of in the base game. Now, in the base game, you might sometimes spec a node like Alacrity or one of the other similar nodes like Beef that will provide you with a short-term boost to a particular attribute that you need right then and there.
But generally, you’re allocating these with an idea: I’m going to allocate this in the short term and then in the medium term. I’m going to get rid of this node because it’s terrible and I want something else in its place.
Nodes You Want To Look For
In the Krangled Passives Event, you actually really want to look for these nodes. These nodes are a substantial power boost when you get them and I have Alacrity. I have Expertise and they have been absolutely fantastic nodes that I would not respect for anything. I also have a 20 strength node somewhere.
Again, one of the best nodes on my entire tree this is very different to the base game where these are filler nodes that you don’t want to take. Why is this?
It’s because it removes pressure on the rest of your gear. You’ll find that you’ll have a small amount of resistances on the tree because there’ are quite a lot of nodes that provide resistances. But you won’t have very much in the way of attributes on the tree. You’ll then need to gear for attributes. And in fact, I am using an amulet (Extractor Mentis Agate Amulet) that you probably would not use in the base game solely because this amulet is providing me with a total of 80 points of attributes.
This is a huge boost for me and all the other effects on this amulet are pretty much neither here nor there. I’m using it because it’s giving me 60 points of Strength. It’s giving me 20 points of Intelligence. This is allowing me to use my gems.
Only I believe that if you’re playing this event with a goal of winning it, such as the group that does the Searing Exarch and the Eater of Worlds the fastest. You would probably be in a huge advantage if your group had an Astramentis drop for you. Because then you could have set up a situation where you’ve got one dedicated carry, who is able to use all of their gems without fear or favor and then the other players would then combine auras in order to power that character up.
Conclusion
That’s not the way that I’m playing it, though I’ve just been playing it solo and it has been a lot of fun.
Anyway, I highly recommend this event. I think that this event will get run again. This is not going to be everyone’s favorite event. In fact, I think a lot of people will give this a shot and decide it’s definitely not for them, but it will be some players’ favorite event and that makes it worth trying and experiencing.
Maybe it’s one of yours, and maybe it’s not. But either way, you’ll get a bit of experience playing the game in a very different style where you’ve got a lot less character power. But you have a lot of crazy new options.
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As you know, Patch 0.4.0, while adding new classes and other content, also brought many changes to the game's inherent mechanics. Although these changes may not be drastic on their own, they still affect the overall system.
For example, in The Last of the Druids, the left side of the skill tree, focusing on melee, defense, and life/block mechanics, was adjusted, leading to changes in the popular defense configurations used by each class.
This article will introduce the entire defense system and analyze the latest popular defense mechanics and styles during Fate of the Vaal league.
Path of Exile 2 defense mechanism overview
The game's defense system can be roughly divided into four layers: core and secondary defense layers, evasion, and recovery mechanisms. Each layer has multiple different functions that can be used in combat.
The core defense layer refers to the main attributes on the gear, which can be adjusted through the talent tree, such as armor or energy shields, which can directly block damage.
The second layer of defense indirectly transfers or reduces the damage you receive, including blocking, resistance, and more.
Avoidance mainly refers to default or temporary defensive buffs, while recovery restores health after being attacked, such as with flask or leech.
Changes in Patch 0.4.0
This patch primarily focuses on the left side of the skill tree, where the lower half emphasizes strength, while the middle and upper halves emphasize intelligence.
The left-side skill tree focuses entirely on defensive mechanics, containing numerous nodes that increase your health, armor, and block chance. It's key for melee builds that excel in high tanking or health.
The focus on these changes might be because the new Druid class is itself a defensive melee class, so most of the new passive nodes also share these characteristics.
The addition of new nodes and clusters necessitates adjustments to many existing skills. If your previous builds were based on these skills, you'll have to reset them, significantly altering the defensive styles popular during the new league.
The popularity of shield wall styles
The shield mechanic remains highly popular after Patch 0.4.0, primarily due to the surge in shield wall builds. As the most popular starting skill for Warrior class, shield usage has actually increased season by season.
This is perhaps because Patches 0.3.0 and 0.4.0 focused on hardcore single-player modes, where shield wall builds provide effective benefits, especially if you further unlock Titan as an Ascendancy class.
The popularity of Disciple of Varashta
As a newly added Sorceress Ascendancy class, Disciple of Varashta has caused quite a stir in the current league. Based on its powerful defensive capabilities, it performs exceptionally well in modes of varying difficulty.
For example, the passive skill The Fourth Teaching grants a 40% increase in shield recharge rate when your shield is below or equal to 35% of its maximum value.
In other words, the larger your energy shield hit pool, the better this talent node is, because you can maintain a considerable effective hit rate during the initial phase when the higher energy shield regeneration rate takes effect.
This talent node, combined with powerful support skills such as Nascent Hope or Convalescence, can significantly increase the natural regeneration rate of the energy shield, making its charging mechanism more reliable.
Even if you take a lot of damage and your health drops to a low level, you can still benefit from the higher regeneration rate by forcibly charging, ensuring your energy shield is fully charged again.
This Ascendancy class also has a powerful defensive skill called Sacred Rituals, which converts 60% of your current energy shield into armor, thus reducing the physical damage you take.
It's worth mentioning that both of these nodes can be combined with Chaos Inoculation to form one of the most powerful defensive configurations in PoE 2 - Chaos Inoculation is also another key defensive skill in the current league.
Despite a major balance update in patch 0.4.0, energy shields remain significantly stronger than pure health builds, and the addition of Discrete of Varashta has provided an ideal platform for the growth of these builds.
Talisman defense mechanism
This new Druid-friendly gear type cannot be used with shields, leading many Druid players to favor a hybrid health approach to defense.
The updated talent tree features a considerable number of energy shield and armor hybrid talents, so the vast majority of Druid builds focus on investing in energy shields as an extension of health.
Furthermore, many players using Talisman builds utilize the new keystone passive Lord of the Wilds, allowing them to simultaneously use a non-unique scepter and talisman to gain a pure resistance aura.
This not only alleviates gear pressure regarding resistance affixes but also allows for the use of numerous support gems without prior reservation. While this may be a bug, it has been present in the game for some time.
Self-chill and increased speed
In Patch 0.4.0, speed is also one of the most powerful defensive measures. As long as you can move, attack, or cast spells at extremely high speeds, no enemy can hit you or catch you - the best offense is also the best defense.
To achieve this, you can combine Asphyxia's Wrath Broadhead Quiver with Sierran Inheritance Marabout Garb. This quiver reduces the damage you take based on cooldowns, providing you with amazing damage reduction.
Therefore, you are not only unmatched in speed, but even if you do take damage, the damage reduction significantly reduces the actual damage dealt by enemies.
That concludes this introduction. Hopefully, this analytical guide will be helpful in your future crafting of defensive builds in PoE 2!
Path of Exile 3.27 has been running for almost two months, halfway through the League season. As usual, the official announcement for the upcoming livestream indicates that news about the next league will begin in the coming weeks, and that Path of Exile 3.28 will be released as planned in early March 2026.
While it's good that the official update is on schedule, given the large amount of content in each Path of Exile update, such a short timeframe has raised concerns among players about whether the content has been reduced.
Official Update Plan
In June 2025, Path of Exile's lead representative, Jonathan Rogers, clarified the future update plan in an interview, stating that Path of Exile 1 and 2 would both have a four-month update cycle, with the two games alternating in updates. This means that on average, players will see new content for one of the games every two months.
On January 12, 2026, the official forums announced that the Path of Exile 3.28 expansion would be released on schedule in early March, continuing the tradition of a four-month development cycle. This timeline is approximately three months after the release of Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4 in December.
For developers, a fixed update schedule alleviates development pressure. Rogers has admitted that delivering content every two months is quite difficult, but a fixed-date, variable-content model is more conducive to development management.
Update Schedule
Although the official timeline seems balanced, the official update dates are not entirely fixed; they may be released at the beginning of the month or at the end. Based on the principle of alternating updates between the two games and important schedules, this cycle may harbor some risks of imbalance.
Let's look at the update timelines for the two games:
- December 12, 2025: Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 The Last of the Druids released normally.
- Early March 2026: PoE 3.28 released, approximately three months after PoE 2 Patch 0.4.0.
- April 2026: A possible PoE 2 Patch 0.5 update is expected in about a month.
The official statement indicates they will strive to conclude early testing of PoE 2 by 2026. Therefore, they may adjust the update schedule for Path of Exile 1 to maintain a consistent update pace for PoE 2. Even if they cannot release Patch 1.0 by the end of the year, they will still release a major update to attract more players.
This raises a problem: for an early-stage game like Path of Exile 2, content consumption is faster. While version 0.4 adds the Druid class and Vaal Temple mechanics, the overall content volume still cannot compare to the mature PoE 1.
Potential Issues
Many core players worry that this cycle of one month for Path of Exile 1 and three months for Path of Exile 2 will create a double problem.
Because the mature Path of Exile 1 has more endgame content and three years of accumulated League mechanics, giving players ample choices to farm PoE currency, this is enough to support months of deep gameplay. However, players only have about a month to experience each new league before being drawn to the PoE 2 League.
Path of Exile 2 is currently still in early access. According to the game director, the originally planned six-month Early Access has been extended to approximately one year. Player concerns currently focus on whether its existing content is sufficient to support nearly three months of gameplay.
Furthermore, recent League updates have revealed a high player churn rate for PoE 2. Even with the addition of the new Druid class in patch 0.4.0, significant player attrition has occurred.
This is because the new endgame mechanic, Vaal Temple, initially didn't yield good returns. Subsequent adjustments by the developers, coupled with player discoveries of loopholes, allowed the mechanic to generate a large amount of currency. Several subsequent poor adjustments resulted in Path of Exile 2 patch 0.4.0 experiencing inflation, leading to increased unfairness in trading for ordinary players.
This is actually due to the current lack of endgame content in PoE 2, making players more likely to focus on game issues.
Possible Solutions
Faced with a potentially entrenched imbalance in the update schedule, some constructive alternatives have been discussed within the community. These proposals aim to break the potential vicious cycle and seek a more sustainable update model for both players and developers.
Perhaps a multi-stage update could replace a single full Path of Exile 2 League update. This would give the development team extra buffer time to adjust the timeline while maintaining player activity.
Another direction is to adjust the length of each update cycle. However, this would conflict with the crucial year-end revenue window, and considering that holiday season releases can generate three times the revenue of other months, this solution is less likely to be implemented.
Director Rogers stated that he will maintain communication with the community and promised to experience the game from the player's perspective and understand the reasons behind their feedback. This indicates that the official team may flexibly adjust the plan based on player acceptance of the actual update schedule.
With the release of Path of Exile 3.28 and Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0, you can observe whether this cycle will continue. If this cycle is broken, it may not be through drastic adjustments to update dates, but rather because the official team has found a way to populate Path of Exile 2 with enough new content within a three-month cycle.
Battles with bosses are a constant throughout almost every Path of Exile 2 league, including killing bosses in various acts during leveling and defeating increasingly difficult map bosses in endgame. They are both obstacles and sources of enjoyment.
Therefore, many PoE 2 builds are designed to defeat bosses in the most efficient way possible, and to achieve this, high DPS and survivability are indispensable.
Based on this, this article will introduce how to craft a Monk-based build effective against most bosses during Patch 0.4.0, and its practical performance.
This build overview
This Monk build is based on Ascendancy class Invoker, combining related skills and passives to utilize various control effects to weaken the boss, thereby achieving the effect of killing the boss at the end of the battle.
The advantage of this build lies in its simplicity - most of the time you simply need to keep casting skills and wait for enemies to be killed, and it provides excellent survivability and enemy clearing capabilities.
However, it's important to note that if you plan to use this build in every stage of the game, you'll need to adjust the build's setup based on the actual needs of the current stage, the amount of PoE 2 currency you have, and the rarity of your gear.
Leveling stage
In this stage, your goal is to level up as much as possible while utilizing the league system to earn as much currency as possible to exchange for better gear or enhance the affixes of existing gear.
If you want your Monk build to be even stronger in the endgame, you need to acquire Headhunter Heavy Belt gear as early as possible when completing various acts.
This belt increases your stun threshold by 20-30% and grants you a 20-second attribute bonus from the ability of a rare monster after you kill it. It also provides the following buffs:
- +40-60 to maximum Life
- +20-40 to strength
- +20-40 to dexterity
Since this gear requires defeating a boss to obtain, you can choose other items as substitutes if you find it difficult, but its effect is indeed the best.
Skill selection after entering endgame
To deal sufficient damage to the boss, you need not only to ensure higher DPS but also to break the enemy's armor faster - if the current boss has relevant mechanics.
Based on this, you should first unlock the lineage gem Uul-Netol's Embrac, which helps Herald of Ice become more effective, not only breaking armor but also creating explosions to deal more damage to the boss.
In the endgame phase, killing more bosses requires completing a sufficient number of maps, as you'll always encounter hordes of monsters before the boss appears. Therefore, it's recommended to unlock Whirling Assault as your primary skill.
This is because this skill allows you to accumulate energy orbs faster, and triggering Profane Ritual or Mantra of Destruction continuously builds energy orbs.
These orbs can be used more consistently after adding Flicker Strike and Falling Thunder, resulting in significant damage.
Furthermore, equip Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ash for even stronger AoE damage and faster monster clearing speed. Additionally, equipping Wind Dancer will enhance your defense and survivability.
More skill gems and their corresponding support gem options are as follows:
Whirling Assault:
- Practiced Combo
- Rage III
- Pinpoint Critical
- Magnified Area II
- Oisin's Oath
Falling Thunder:
- Elemental Armament II
- Nova Projectiles I
- Ricochet II
- Pinpoint Critical
- Ice Bite II
Flicker Strike:
- Blindside
- Concentrated Area
- Close Combat II
- Perpetual Charge
- Hit and Run
Charged Staff:
- Prolonged Duration II
- Innervate
- Culling Strike II
- Blind II
- Embitter
Mantra of Destruction:
- Chaos Mastery
- Prolonged Duration II
- Charge Profusion II
- Ailith's Chimes
- Delayed Gratification
Cast on Critical:
- Profane Ritual
- Charge Profusion II
- Overabundance I
- Boundless Energy II
- Energy Retention
Wind Dancer:
- Magnified Area II
- Close Combat II
- Blind II
- Maim
- Elemental Focus
More gear options
Besides the recommended Headhunter Heavy Belt, other gear choices are also important. For weapons, quarterstaff remains the most suitable for Monk - Sinister Quarterstaff is the best due to its highest base critical strike chance.
Building on this, you need to stack frost damage in combat, increasing the damage output of your Herald of Ice and Armour Explosion while ensuring all melee or attack skills have critical strike chance and higher ratings.
It's worth mentioning that you can also roll affixes for your quarterstaff that convert a percentage of physical attack damage into mana, which synergizes well with Oisin's Oath support gem.
As for armor, you should focus on whether your options have energy shields or high enough evasion rating to unlock Ascendancy ability, Lead me through Grace, for more spirit.
The best other gear slot options are as follows:
- Helm - Ancestral Tiara
- Body - Armor Sleek Jacket
- Gloves - Vaal Wraps
- Boots - Quickslip Shoes
- Amulet - Gold Amulet
- Ring - Unset Ring
- Life Flask - Ultimate Life Flask
- Mana Flask - Ultimate Mana Flask
In fact, acquiring gear is only the first step. To maximize their effectiveness and make your entire Monk build more powerful, the key is to consume currency to improve their rarity and affixes.
Fortunately, while crafting this boss-focused build, you will also encounter bosses, resulting in decent currency drops and making your build crafting experience smoother over time.
If you're not focused on challenging higher difficulty maps or bosses, you can also use this recommended build to farm currency in easier maps. While it might seem a bit tedious due to damage overflow, it will help you accumulate wealth quickly!
That concludes this introduction. We hope it has been helpful in ensuring you can continue playing Monk classes during patch 0.4.0! Thank you for reading!
Every time Path of Exile 2 releases a new patch, the lengthy and detailed patch notes can be overwhelming, so you're likely to only focus on the more appealing parts or simply search for summaries.
In fact, even if you consume time reading all the update details, you'll still discover some new changes after entering the game. Perhaps because they were difficult to categorize or added later, they weren't included in the patch notes.
This situation occurred again after the release of The Last of the Druids, specifically with a recovery tech bug fix and its chain reaction, which has a significant impact on your PoE 2 combat experience.
Below, we will detail this change and its specific application and further implications in the game.
What is recovery tech?
In PoE 2, recovery tech primarily refers to the special effect provided by the unique item Sacrosanctum Corvus Mantle, which allows you to convert or apply your character's life regeneration to energy shield.
More specifically, when this gear is equipped, it stores life regeneration, and then applies the total life regeneration to your energy shield. Furthermore, recovery tech requires stacking passive skill tree nodes to fully function.
This significantly increases your recovery capabilities, as life regeneration nodes are easy to obtain, and you can stack them with special nodes to more efficiently maintain your energy shield, improving your defense and survivability during combat.
It's important to note that the game's existing life regeneration speed modifiers do not affect energy shield regeneration.
What was the bug with recovery tech before?
This bug was actually related to the game's block and damage mitigation mechanics. Theoretically, successfully blocking an attack in combat should completely prevent the incoming damage.
However, before the fix in patch 0.4.0, there was a bug where blocked damage was not counted towards any damage mitigation mechanics.
For example, assuming you have unlocked Made to Last passive tree node, you would also need to have a modifier that allows a portion of the blocked damage to affect yourself for the blocked damage to be counted towards damage mitigation.
After the bug fix, when you block enemy attacks using the default blocking mechanism, all blocked damage will be counted towards damage mitigation. This means that every time an attack is blocked, life recovery from other sources will increase.
Impact of the bug fix on Svalinn Crucible Tower Shield
This item is a unique shield in the game that, when equipped, grants you Raise Shield and Cast on Block skills, and increases your armor value by 150-200%, reducing damage taken when blocking attacks by 15-20% - although the block chance depends on luck.
Now that the recovery tech bug has been fixed, this gear has been enhanced, allowing for even greater damage reduction from blocked attacks. This means you have a chance to simultaneously gain lucky blocks, thus increasing your effective block chance.
On average, you will take less damage throughout the fight and can utilize the recovery tech to gain more recovery from blocked damage. You can also choose to buy PoE 2 currency to roll lucky modifiers on this gear, bringing the final effective block rate to 75%.
This is because this modifier performs two block chance checks, and if you invest more resources in the passive skill tree, you can increase the block rate even further, as there are many maximum block chance bonus nodes in the passive skill tree.
More damage reduction methods
In addition to unlocking Made to Last node, you can also obtain the ancient Soul Core Guatelitzi's Thesis, added in patch 0.4.0. If you socket this item into your chest armor, it converts 10% of physical damage to life.
When stacked with Made to Last, the final conversion rate can be increased to 15%, resulting in an amazing amount of life recovery, which can be further enhanced through corruption.
Alternatively, you can combine the recovery tech with another chest armor, Wandering Reliquary, which provides an additional 50% conversion of physical damage to life.
However, it's important to note that you usually won't have enough life to withstand fatal blows that penetrate your block, and if you use Wandering Reliquary, you cannot simultaneously use Sacrosanctum Corvus Mantle.
Therefore, the final choice of which gear to use to activate the recovery tech and stack other bonuses depends mainly on your specific situation and needs. The bug has been fixed, so you can enjoy the combat without worry.
It's worth noting that the new patch also introduced the new keystone passive mechanism, Scarred Faith. If you choose to stack energy shields, you can also benefit from this. Therefore, the fix for the recovery tech bug is likely based on the addition of this mechanism.
Although this passive prevents you from recharging or recovering energy shields, as compensation, you will convert 5% of the physical damage taken into energy shields, based on the energy value of the monster attacking you.
Therefore, you can actually combine Scarred Faith with Made to Last node and Sacrosanctum Corvus Mantle to enhance your life recovery against weaker monsters.
While the new gameplay brings excitement and more build crafting possibilities, seemingly insignificant changes like the recovery tech bug fix, which affect the overall combat experience, have a more profound significance for the stable operation of Path of Exile 2.
Although the controversy surrounding Temple of Atziri league mechanism has not yet subsided, overall, Path of Exile 2 is always committed to providing you with a better gaming experience, so let's be a little more understanding.
