POE 3.21: Uncovering Some Problems No One Has Discussed On Pathfinder

May 08, 2023 Author: POECurrency.com

Today, we’re going to be talking about the Pathfinder ascendancy.

Intro

Recently, I did a bit of a tier list just breaking down the comparisons between different ascendancies and in that tier this Pathfinder was the highest scoring ascendancy in the Crucible League, putting it ahead of every other ascendancy. I think that’s fair because of just how strong the flasks are right now, how strong defensively Pathfinder can be even with minimal investment and having flasks up reliably all the time is just incredible defensive layers. And those flaws are really strong, with all the flask effects that Pathfinder could obtain relatively easily.

But there’s the other side of the coin as well - the offensive capability of Pathfinder. And right now, we find ourselves in a very poison heavy meta. Poison is incredibly strong right now. We see a lot of different skills being used for poison and the archetype in general is massively over performing right now compared to others.

POE 3.21 Uncovering Some Problems No One Has Discussed On Pathfinder

Ascendancy Rework

The Pathfinder is receiving an ascendancy rework this league. I’d say with the ascendancy being one of the top played ascendancies across all leagues in Crucible. It’s been very successful, especially when you compare it to the Saboteur, which is seemingly in the gutter after the rework and unfortunately made a lot of the Trap and Mine builds far weaker.

Popularity

But the Pathfinder ascendancy landed on its feet after the rework. It was already a decently popular ascendancy in the Sanctum League. You can see pretty much a mid-tier ascendancy when it comes to play rate definitely not unpopular by any means, but again a huge amount of popularity following the rework in this league. And even though we haven’t had much of any kind of meta shift in terms of what’s being played.

Nature’s Reprisal

It’s just become very popular after this change. So, why is it so popular? This is the reworked tree for the new Pathfinder and one of the biggest changes on the new tree is Nature’s Reprisal.

POE the reworked tree for the new Pathfinder

This notable used to provide benefits that only really helped out with attack based, chaos or poison builds. And the new Nature’s Reprisal is completely generic and they’ll just function with pretty much any chaos or poison based setup and it’ll massively boost your damage. It runs a 25% chance to inflict with it on hit and adds increases with its effect by 50%. With it is a debuff that increases chaos damage taken by six percent per stack, it stacks up to 15 stacks.

Max facts: this node will grant an additional 45% chaos damage taken, which is a massive damage boost.

The most important thing here, though, is that this is now a generic node that can be used with anything. As I mentioned earlier, poison is massively over performing right now and these coupled together make Pathfinder a very appealing ascendancy, which is why it’s so popular in this league.

PF Most Played Abilities

We can see this in the stats for each league the most played abilities on Pathfinder. These stats are taken from PoE Ninja and you can see that almost all the Pathfinders across all leagues are playing some form of chaos or poison build with a very limited number of exceptions things, like Vaal Lightning Arrow being tested out and stuff like that on a few builds.

POE Vaal Lightning Arrow

But there’s a lot of people playing the poison version of the exploding totems build this league. Lots of Toxic Rain, which remains to be a great league starter. The representation for Despair here is Impending Doom, which is also really strong on poison. There are a lot of Poison Molten Strike builds, using the new Vengeant Cascade. There’s some like Poison Blade Vortex builds and Poison Tornado Shot setups.

You get the point there’s a very large majority of all the Pathfinder builds are chaos or poison based setups. So, what happens when you try to play a non-chaos or non-poison based build on Pathfinder?

Kobe’s Video & Master Distiller

I actually watched a video from a fellow YouTuber Kobe a few days back and he discussed one of the new notables on Pathfinder.

It’s called Master Distiller. But it’s safe to say this note is quite broken right now even though it’s functioning pretty much exactly as we described on the notable itself. The problem with this node is the use case for it is almost non-existent because whenever you use a skill here, it’s just going to be consuming your flash charges even on a skill that you don’t want to be powered up, like your movement abilities, Shield Charge or Flame Dash, your curse skills or guard skills.

Every time you use an ability, it will consume the Flask Charges to empower that ability. That’s just what you don’t want. And basically, your Flash Charges just get depleted to zero very quickly, and it just makes the node pretty much useless in its current state.

So, Kobe had made a build to use this notable without really noticing exactly how this was going to go. He ended up unspeaking it because it’s completely unusable and this is what his tree looked like in the end.

POE Kobe's tree

This was a non-chaos and non-poison build and you can see the only two notables that he was using were the Flask Charge generation node and the Flask Effect mode. And he was using three unique flasks and two magic flasks, so he wasn’t really gaining much value from the magic flask effect notable either.

This is really the problem that I foresee with Pathfinder when the inevitable poison nerfs eventually happen. Maybe that’ll be the next league. But you see, there’s a big problem here where the ascendancy is really shoehorned into that chaos or poison archetype and without it, you have very limited options or, in Kobe’s case, pretty much no options to go for.

Ascendancy Options

So, if you look at the ascendancy notables, what option we talk about first is the Master Distiller, which is currently unusable. I suspect this one will be revised in the next league or you’d hope so because it’s quite unusable right now, so that may become an option.

But the Master Surgeon really requires a little of investment by using your POE Currency. Otherwise, you’re just taking this one and you’re basically trading the ability to have your life loss up all the time with about half of the recovery that you get from the flask. So, I think that’s not a great trade-off. Without additional investment, this one isn’t that great.

Also Read: Vaal Ice Shot Deadeye Build Info And Showcase - POE 3.21 Crucible

And the Master Alchemist notable is probably the worst noticeable on the Pathfinder. The removal of Elemental Ailments on flask is decent mainly for freeze, but I’d say that you definitely want to be Ailment immune, especially in the current version of Path of Exile. The chance for flask not to consume charge is nice but pretty much unnecessary on any build that can already sustain flask and that’s just about every pathway in the build.

We already talked about Nature’s Reprisal. Right next to that one is the Master Toxicity notable, which is a poison-only node. This one is really strong, but it literally can’t be used on anything other than poison.

Conclusion

You can start to see the problem here and I think this problem doesn’t really exist in the current league because poison is in such a strong place.

But I think the problem will become very apparent if and when poison gets the inevitable nerf. I think you’ll still see a lot of people playing Pathfinder just because of how comfortable the ascendancy is, but we’ll start to see some complaints about this issue and I think people’s ascendancy trees might start looking like Kobe’s tree as well. What do you think?

Next: Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 Defense Overhaul | The Most Popular Mechanics & Builds in Fate of the Vaal League

Previous: CoC Tornado Shot Deadeye Build Guide - Path of Exile 3.21 Crucible

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 3.28 Update Teaser Announced! But This Isn't Necessarily Good News

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.

How to Craft a Boss-Slaying Monk Build for Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0? | DPS & Survivability Focus

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!

Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 Recovery Tech Bug Fixed | Combining Other Mechanisms and Gear Makes Restoring Life Easier

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.