Path Of Exile 3.26 Secrets Of The Atlas League Is Back With A Massive Updates! - Full Content Reveal
Dear Exiles, the long-awaited Path of Exile 3.26 is finally here! Although the developers have promised that the release cycle of POE is 4 months, POE 1 has really experienced a super long pause in updates, perhaps because of the release of the sequel, or perhaps because the developers have run out of inspiration.
However, everything will soon return to normal, because Path of Exile 3.26 will be officially released on Friday, June 13.
Here, we will take you to take a deep dive into the new Secrets of the Atlas League update, explore the new challenge league - Mercenaries of Trarthus, the much-anticipated Betrayal system upgrade and a series of game experience improvements. Let’s get started!
Background
In POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas, strange cracks begin to appear in Atlas. In the meantime, Zana returns, but she seems to be trapped in it.
Halfway through the endgame, you meet Eagon, a wise man with a mysterious lineage. He discovers that these rifts in reality are actually threads of memory, twisted by Atlas, and turned into reality. Eagon is able to connect these threads and open portals to them.
So, we have to work with Eagon to find Zana or any of her remains based on these threads.
How Does This League Mechanic Work?
In Secrets of the Atlas, Eagon’s pursuit of Zana is a brand new storyline that will appear in high tier maps. Once you meet Eagon and find the rift, he will transfer it to your map device and display a Thread of Memories on your Atlas.
Now, in order to access each map in Thread of Memories, you just need to talk to Eagon when you are ready, and he will open these areas in order. These areas can be fully affected by Atlas Trees, Scarabs, Fragments, and all similar items.
As you progress along Thread of Memories, you’ll discover that these maps contain dangerous threats that are influenced by Zana’s own memories.
Monsters here are infused with Memory Petals, and defeating them absorbs this power, which can be unleashed as a special ability in combat. Different maps in Thread have different abilities, which are displayed on an extra mini-skill bar next to your regular abilities.
As you progress, your maps can have multiple memories, so you can have multiple powerful abilities. When you consume Memory Petals, you can use these abilities at the same time.
But that’s not the only extra content these maps offer. When you defeat the boss of each map on the Thread, you’ll be presented with an Altar, which applies a modifier to all subsequent maps in the thread, and these modifiers stack as you progress. So the deeper you dig into the memories, the more modifiers you get. These modifiers, combined with special abilities, will make it possible to run some juiced maps.
The final map of each Thread is a real challenge, with all the altar mods applied to it and guarded by a powerful boss. If you manage to defeat Sirus or other warped memory bosses, they’ll drop a Map Fragment that Eagon can use to continue exploring the memory rifts.
And with these fragments, you can take on three brand new Pinnacle Bosses: Incarnation of Dread, Neglect, and Fear.
After defeating all three new Pinnacle Bosses, you’ll be able to find new memory-influenced tier 16 maps. These maps come with the aforementioned special abilities and monsters infused with Memory Petals, but can also roll with the same modifiers normally found on tier 17 maps, making their rewards even more generous.
All in all, in POE 3.26, you’ll need to fight Guardian and Pinnacle Bosses that torment Zana, find crazy Pinnacle Uniques, and craft powerful new items as you try to free her from the warped memories scattered throughout Atlas.
Gold
As we look at the rich rewards that come with the new endgame system, you may have noticed a lot of gold dropping.
Gold is a currency introduced in Settlers of Kalguur expansion, and it is mainly used for the development and operation of Kingsmarch, as well as various new features, including Currency Exchange, Black Market and Passive respec mechanics.
Although town construction is no longer ongoing, gold is still used for town services. And the developers also plan to add new ways to use gold in the upcoming leagues, which may be a new shock to POE currency system.
Challenge League
Now it’s time to talk about the new Mercenaries of Trarthus Challenge League. You will meet mercenaries who have trekked all the way from the city of Trarthus, ready to provide evil services, but not for free.
These mercenaries have different personalities and different builds, skills and equipment. After meeting them, they will challenge you to a duel. If you win, you can choose to hire them, take one of their items, or exile them.
If you choose to hire them, just pay a certain amount of gold, and they will accompany you as a skilled warrior to assist you in fighting monsters everywhere.
But if you lose the duel, don’t worry, you don’t need to give them any items. You’ll just die. So, it’s a test of strength and faith!
Settlers Enter The Core Game
As we mentioned before, Settlers League update introduces a gold-based Passive respec system. You can now also reset passive points by talking to multiple NPCs throughout Wraeclast.
In addition, Black Market item gambling, which was previously only available in Kingsmarch, is now available at the same NPC in every town, allowing players to unlock a randomly generated a pool of items with gold. This will be very useful especially when you are having trouble leveling up, or are looking for a specific unique item.
It is worth noting that there will be no more town building in POE 3.26! However, when you start running maps in the endgame, you will start to find different mineral veins. You can mine minerals and transport them to Kalguuran and Karui ports to get return rewards.
Betrayal System Rework
Let’s first briefly explain what Betrayal is. This is a mechanic introduced in Act 9, which is about Jun Ortoi and her investigation of Immortal Syndicate.
Syndicate is a mysterious group of exiles who seem to be able to return from the dead. You must help Jun find their leader, Syndicate Mastermind.
Immortal Syndicate has four different divisions. As you encounter these members, you will gain intel on each division, thereby discovering the location of its leader and tracking them to their respective safe houses. Defeating the leaders of these divisions in the safe house will gain intel on Mastermind.
In your journey to hunt down Syndicate, you will control the members of Immortal Syndicate: change sides, make friends or confrontations, and even temporarily expel them from Syndicate.
Previously, after encountering and defeating Syndicate Mastermind, the status of Immortal Syndicate would reset and you would have to start your investigation from the beginning. This mechanic has been complained by players as the biggest drawback affecting the gaming experience.
But in POE 3.26 expansion, Mastermind will be separated and players can approach this boss through a new fragment, which has a chance to drop from high-level safe house bosses.
And defeating Mastermind will no longer reset the state of Immortal Syndicate! Now you can build Betrayal Board to your liking, optimize it, participate in Mastermind battle and get rewards without losing all your progress every time you can explore and experience at your own pace.
Quality Of Life Improvements
In the 3.26 expansion, many new features that players have been asking for to improve the quality of the game have also been added.
- Now, the game has been added to the pause function, which can be done at any time by opening the menu or any full-screen interface. However, in some pinnacle arenas, you will be affected by the debuff, and the pause function does not apply.
- In addition, the use of currency items in Strongboxes and monsters imprisoned in Essences has also been adjusted. Now they will be displayed according to the currency in your inventory and the status of Strongboxes. However, valuable currencies like POE Divine Orb have been excluded, as using them in this context would usually be a waste.
- A small additional inventory is now available in the map device, which is particularly useful if you are running multiple maps in sequence, or if you want to use different numbers of Scarabs or other map fragments.
- On console gamepad, monster and non-monster target selection have finally been separated, allowing you to select them separately. This can eliminate a lot of frustration when you try to interact with objects in the world and monsters are nearby.
- The vendor window now remembers your last search, which will be remembered until you log out, and it will be remembered separately for different NPCs.
- When using currency items, after right-clicking them, it will highlight all other items that can use that currency.
Of course, there are many other quality of life improvements in this update, and you can keep an eye on the patch notes.
In any case, the new battle is about to begin. Are you ready to enter the game at any time to cooperate with many powerful mercenaries and uncover the mystery of Atlas’ origin? Looking forward to seeing you in the game!
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PoE 2 patch 0.4.0 has been out for over a month, and many players' builds are nearing their peak. While Temple is a great mechanism, relying solely on it might become tiring.
The farming method described below requires a strong enough build to complete some challenging content, but the rewards are excellent, yielding hundreds of Divine Orbs per success.
Farming Goal
Your farming goal is The Adorned Diamond, which only drops from Trialmasters. Its market value has skyrocketed in the past week. Unidentified The Adorned Diamonds initially sold for 500 Divine Orbs, but due to inflation, they can now fetch over 1000.
Even regular The Adorned Diamond is now worth about half the value of a Mirror of Kalandra. After deducting your investment in farming, a net profit of approximately 3 The Adorned Diamonds is equivalent to one Mirror of Kalandra.
The Value of The Adorned Diamond
The high demand for The Adorned Diamond is due to its recent changes. Players can now refine it to higher stats and obtain powerful affixes that interact with rare jewels through Double Corruption.
On the other hand, it's also related to inflation. Vaal Temple has become incredibly juicy thanks to multiple updates and player research.
You first need to collect Energized Crystals from the endgame map content. T15 and T16 Waystones with six affixes are the best source of these crystals. You need at least 6 Energized Crystals to enter Vaal Temple. Before entering, you can use the options on the left side of the interface to place your chosen paths or rooms.
Each time you close Temple, the system automatically removes several random rooms from the current panel. Players will use various strategies to maximize room rewards. Finally, all players need to use Juatalotli's Medallion to prevent Temple instability.
Because of this, everyone is now focused on building their own Vault Temples to achieve an infinite supply of PoE 2 currency. When players start producing currency in large quantities, it naturally leads to Divine Inflation in the late game. Inflation reduces the supply of various endgame items, pushing their value even higher amidst currency fluctuations, ultimately making The Adorned Diamond worth hundreds of Divine Orbs.
How to Prepare?
Since it takes players a very long time (approximately 100 to 200 hours) to fully build an enhanced Temple, it can be combined with other farming methods.
If you want to use this farming method, you must at least ensure that your builds can easily defeat Trialmaster. Since the biggest cost of this build is time, the faster you defeat it, the better.
As the hidden final boss in Trial of Chaos trial system, Trialmaster is not an easy opponent to challenge. First, you need to collect the following three Fate Fragments:
- Cowardly Fate
- Deadly Fate
- Victorious Fate
You need to Inscribed Ultimatum to unlock 10 waves of Trial of Chaos. Each completion will reward you with one Fate Fragment. It's worth noting that the drop rate for these three Fate Fragments is random, so completing only three Trial of Chaos sessions won't guarantee you all three. Only after collecting all three can you unlock the gate and challenge Trialmaster.
However, even if you defeat Trialmaster, the drop rate for The Adorned Diamond is extremely low, possibly less than 2%, sometimes appearing only once every 70 to 80 attempts. Be prepared for this.
Cost
Farming Fate shards yourself is clearly a foolish choice. By the time you've painstakingly cultivated enough shards, PoE 2 Patch 0.4.0 might already be over.
To speed up the process, you'll need to invest some Divine Orbs to trade Deadly Fate and Victorious Fate shards with other players. Approximately two Fate shards require three Divine Orbs. While directly trading all three types of Fate shards is faster, your profits will be significantly reduced. Therefore, you can choose to cultivate the last type of Fate shard yourself. Under these conditions, challenging 50 Trialmasters requires approximately 150 Divine Orbs.
Clearing a complete trial takes about 13 to 15 minutes. If you include the time needed to collect the three types of Fate materials, the total time to prepare just 50 sets of Deadly Fate and Victorious Fate shards will be as long as 21 to 24 hours. As for the last type, Cowardly Fate, you can directly loot the final Fate Material from the boss to unlock Trialmaster's gate. This will save you approximately 75 Divine Orbs for future challenges.
Other Loot And Benefits
Besides The Adorned Diamond, you'll also get a certain number of Soul Cores. Basically, each Trial of Chaos will give you one or two Normal Soul Cores and Specialized Soul Cores. Unfortunately, even with fewer players farming Trials of Chaos, the demand for them isn't high.
As for currency, Trials of Chaos isn't as generous as Vaal Temple; its drop rate is within the normal range. Trials, monsters, and bosses all have a chance to drop Divine Orbs, but they certainly won't be enough to cover your costs.
Currently, each The Adorned Diamond is worth approximately 700 to 800 Divine Orbs. If we calculate based on 50 trials per diamond, each trial could yield a profit of around 600 to 700 Divine Orbs. As for hourly profits, that depends on your farming speed.
This method relies on gambling and luck. If you're lucky, it might be even better than Temple, but if your luck is average, you'll have to endure the tedious mechanics and long farming time of Trial of Chaos.
Since the release of Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids, Shaman seems to be used more frequently among the two Ascendancy classes of the new Druid class. This is perhaps because it is easier to learn and its benefits are quickly felt.
However, this doesn't mean the other one, Oracle, is not worth experiencing. In fact, if you craft the right build, Oracle can help you build temples and earn loot faster in the optimized Fate of the Vaal mechanic.
Based on this, we will provide you with a strategy for crafting such an Oracle build. If you are interested, please read on!
Oracle introduction
Choosing this Ascendancy class will grant you the power of foresight, allowing you to gain combat advantages by predicting enemy actions and unlocking additional passive skills.
If you find the above explanation difficult to understand, the following exclusive skill effects should give you a more intuitive understanding of how to play Oracle:
- Entwined Realities: You can allocate key passive skills without connecting them to an existing passive tree.
- The Unseen Path: Unlocks additional passive nodes accessible only to Oracle players.
Oracle Build for Atziri's Temple
One of the key elements to improving room building and overall exploration efficiency within this league mechanic is minimizing your skill cooldowns. Therefore, many related builds require Temporalis Silk Robe, which provides this effect.
Fortunately, Oracle build we're introducing here provides a similar effect without this gear and can easily defeat most bosses with extremely high DPS, making it very useful for clearing maps!
Skills and gems
After unlocking Oracle as your Ascendancy class, the key is to stack your critical strike chance to over 100%, as Mana Flare triggers on critical hits, giving you an auto-explosion effect.
Another crucial point is to reduce Lightning Bolt's cooldown to below 0.2 seconds - this is a critical point; any cooldown below 0.2 seconds is considered good. Additionally, you'll need 115% to 150% cooldown reduction to increase damage.
To achieve all the above, you need to unlock Spark to trigger Lightning Mode and add Pierce to increase projectile speed, faster casting efficiency, and duration.
For Spirit skills, you need to add Trinity to boost elemental damage, especially lightning damage.
Next, you need to add Blink and Mobility skills to gain a 100% reduction in Blink cooldown and increased Blink regeneration speed. Combine this with support gems Clarity I and Rapid Casting II, and you can eventually Blink in less than 1 second.
Best gear
First, you need Headhunter Heavy Belt. If you don't have it yet, start farming it now, or get PoE 2 currency for sale and exchange for one; this will be faster.
This gear provides increases to maximum health, Strength, and Dexterity, and rewards you with an extra 20 seconds of modifier when you kill rare monsters.
Next is The Vertex Tribal Mask Helmet, which is easier to obtain and, when equipped, increases four skill levels, significantly boosting damage and critical strike chance.
For weapons, we recommend Sacred Flame Shrine Sceptre, which grants you additional Purity of Fire skill, providing a fire damage buff for you and your allies, as well as a life recovery buff for allies.
When choosing gloves, prioritize those with energy shield resistance, and boots with chaos resistance, movement speed, and increased health.
Jewels and passive tree unlocking
Some nodes in Oracle passive tree provide significant cooldown reduction increases; these should be unlocked first.
Additionally, you need to unlock the additional Multitasking node for a 12% cooldown reduction increase or a 15% increase in ability duration. To do this, you need to defeat the boss Kosis, the Revelation, to obtain Megalomaniac Diamond.
Alternatively, you can consume Exalted Orbs to craft one From Nothing Diamond, distributing passive nodes within a specific keystone radius, even if these nodes are not connected to the main tree.
This greatly increases the flexibility of build crafting and saves many passive points. You can freely invest them in other nodes according to your needs.
If possible, we recommend socketing a Time-Lost Emerald, preferably with attribute bonuses and cooldown reduction speed. Heart of the Well Diamond is also a good option, as it similarly provides cooldown reduction speed and a small damage bonus.
In short, the core of this build's reliability lies in maximizing cooldown reduction speed to keep your Lightning Bolt cooldown below 0.2 seconds, ensuring automatic casting of Lightning Bolt.
While you might find this build a bit clunky in practice, it's one of the best ways to complete temples faster without adding Temporalis Silk Robe.
Other excellent Oracle builds
Oracle build we've introduced focuses on accelerating your temple challenge progress, but in terms of overall strength and experience, there are actually many better options.
Currently, the most well-known Oracle build is probably Lunar Assault Werewolf. As a top meta Oracle build in PoE 2, it centers on high-speed melee attacks and cold damage bonuses, utilizing transformation to freeze and crush enemies.
Besides these, Cast on Critical Comet, Plant/Vine Oracle, and Mass Summoner are all good choices. They'll suit you better if you're not focused on the temple progression.
Atziri's Temple is expected to become better experienced after Patch 0.4.0d is released. If you're interested, you can use our recommended Oracle build to test if the patch's changes are effective! It'll definitely be fun!
The recent Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 has been undergoing constant changes, with numerous patches and hotfixes optimizing the game based on Fate of the Vaal League mechanics, aiming to improve the overall experience.
Ten days after the release of Patch 0.4.0c hotfix 14, PoE 2 announced that Patch 0.4.0d will be released this week. Based on the announced content, this patch primarily focuses on bug fixes, with some aspects worth highlighting and discussing.
Below, we will provide a preview of this patch and analyze its main features and potential impact.
Patch 0.4.0d overview
The entire patch can be broadly divided into three parts: further optimization and fixes to Fate of the Vaal League mechanics, overall modifications, and comprehensive bug fixes. Undoubtedly, the most noteworthy aspect remains the first part.
Interestingly, even before the patch has been officially released, Fracturing Orbs have already depreciated in value simply by being announced. This means you can more easily acquire them through PoE 2 Divine Orbs to stabilize your gear affixes.
This is likely due to changes in the league system, making this part of the patch analysis a key focus of our guide.
Atziri's Temple boss fight reform
Let's temporarily ignore the usual temple fixes and focus on a new respawn change: if you die while fighting the boss Architect or Atziri in Atziri's Temple, you can respawn in the new temple instance.
However, this opportunity is very limited, as almost the entire temple is destroyed during the boss fight - somewhat like how endgame maps work in the game.
Therefore, when this mechanism is finally implemented, it's expected that not all players will be satisfied with it, but it's necessary because it can curb the possibility of some players seeking cheating due to the inability to respawn.
In short, if you die in these boss fights again later, you should be able to start re-challenging them faster, instead of having to unlock the rooms from scratch.
This means that even if you unfortunately fail on your first attempt, you'll have an extra chance to familiarize yourself with the boss mechanics. In fact, these bosses aren't difficult to defeat; their mechanics are just rather intricate.
Holten exploit fixes
As you know, collecting Energized Crystals by defeating monsters around Vaal Beacons is a crucial part of experiencing Atziri's Temple gameplay, as only with enough crystals can the temple progress.
However, in the game prior to Patch 0.4.0d, there was an issue where Vaal Beacons frequently spawned in an easily accessible location within Holten campaign area.
This allowed players to exploit this by repeatedly resetting dungeons to farm Energized Crystals faster, causing an imbalance in the entire Atziri's Temple system and an abnormal inflation of the value of some rare currencies.
Frankly, the issue of economic inflation was repeatedly mentioned in the player community shortly after Atziri's Temple's release, but for some reason, concrete measures to improve it have only now been introduced. However, better late than never.
Atziri's Chambers fix
As the spawn location of the final boss Atziri, the connection between this chamber and other rooms was previously a mess; sometimes you simply didn't know how to place and connect rooms.
Fortunately, Patch 0.4.0d finally fixed this, allowing Atziri's Chambers to correctly connect to any adjacent room, ensuring the entire mechanism functions more clearly and consistently.
Temple QoL fix
This fix requires you to place at least one room before each run. If you already have a highly optimized temple, you might not want to place any rooms at all, and therefore might mistakenly think this is a weakening change.
However, the purpose of this measure is actually to ensure that you don't accidentally open the temple before placing rooms, and to better guide new players through their first temple.
Of course, considering the needs of different players, the game also allows you to bypass this option. If you're a PC player, hold down Ctrl key and click Run Temple button. If you're a controller player, simply select "Deny" when prompted.
More Atziri's Temple fixes
Besides the highlights above, Patch 0.4.0d focuses on optimizing Atziri's Temple mechanics and includes other details, such as clearer instructions for Atziri's Chambers and more explanations of different mechanics.
The complexity and depth of gameplay have always been major obstacles for new players joining Path of Exile series. Sometimes, new leagues and their new mechanics can even confuse longtime fans.
Therefore, this patch shows that providing clear explanations is more effective in winning over players than creating mystery and raising the barrier to entry through seemingly complex mechanics.
Fracturing Orbs fix
In the first half of this article, we mentioned the devaluation of Fracturing Orbs, primarily due to a bug fixed in Patch 0.4.0d involving Immured Fury - the endgame boss and primary source of Fracturing Orbs drops.
Theoretically, this boss shouldn't spawn in cleansed areas, but previously, clearing excessive corruption would imprint a hidden marker indicating the presence of Immured Fury in certain areas.
This meant players could more easily earn Fracturing Orbs by defeating this boss, leading to an abnormally inflated value and disrupting PoE 2 economy and trade balance.
Fortunately, Patch 0.4.0d fixed this by making Immured Fury spawn completely unpredictably, restoring the rarity of Fracturing Orbs to a more normal level through a more randomized spawn method.
The above content covers what needs to be explained in detail in Patch 0.4.0d. However, there are also some interesting changes and fixes that you can discover and experience one by one through the game after the patch is finally released. Thank you for reading.
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!
