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According to the information released by the developers, Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas is expected to be officially released on June 13th. It adds a lot of new content, such as the current exclusive Mercenaries of Trarthus challenge league and new endgame content. In addition to the new mechanisms and items that will affect the gameplay, players are very surprised by the addition of the pause system.

In POE 2, which is highly sought after by developers, the pause mechanism has allowed some players to enjoy an unprecedented and enjoyable exploration experience. Given the previous developers’ attitudes towards the previous game and the sequel, players did not have high hopes for this Secrets of the Atlas league, but the appearance of the pause system overturned everyone’s views.

Since the current developers’ description of the pause mechanism that players are looking forward to is only a small part in the patch notes, most of it appears in some public interviews with its game director Mark Roberts. Therefore, this guide will explore the operation mechanism of the pause mechanism and the dual attitudes of developers and players towards it.

The Necessity Of The Pause Mechanism

For a long time, it is not uncommon for players to die because of problems with the game instance or network architecture in Path of Exile as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game .

In fact, in this type of game world, as long as you do not choose the Hardcore mode, it is very normal to die 1-2 times during an exploration. However, the super-strict death penalty in POE will greatly increase the exploration cost of players, whether you die due to skill rotation or network disconnection.

First, all POE currency and loot that you have not collected in the exploration of this map will be confiscated. Secondly, you cannot explore it again by using the same Waystones (even those with the same modifiers).

This will make the player’s small mistakes in a certain battle infinitely magnified, and even cause some newly joined exiles to not dare to try the final boss in the first act, because they are afraid that they will not be able to beat it and make all the costs invested before go down the drain.

Not only that, those players with medium game skills will also use the build that conforms to the current game version for a long time, because they are afraid that the new build will cause them to die in battle, which is completely detrimental to the build diversity advocated by the entire game.

How Does Pause Mechanism Work?

In view of this, the developers added the pause mechanism in POE 2 to change the status quo. In the subsequent exploration process, you only need to press Esc to pause, whether you are in some regular combat or running exploration.

But it is worth reminding you here that if you are playing a multiplayer game, only if each player chooses to pause can the entire exploration time be frozen here. According to Roberts, this is to prevent a player’s pause from affecting other players’ sessions to ensure fair exploration for all players in POE.

If the network environment you are in does not allow you to explore freely in the game, or even cause high latency, the system will help you automatically pause the instance exploration to prevent you from being hurt during the disconnection period. So with the help of this mechanism, those players who often experience lag will have a much lower chance of death than Hardcore players.

Of course, the developers are not partial, and Path of Exile also has a failsafe mechanism for hardcore players: if the game detects that the player’s client is no longer communicating, it will automatically pause the instance immediately. Although the detection element it has only looked at packet loss and frame rate issues, it is fast enough to prevent some abnormal deaths.

Developers’ Attitude

After Roberts introduced the pause mechanism in POE 3.26 for players, he said that not all game content in Wraeclast can be paused. In order to fully maintain fairness, all pinnacle boss encounters in the game will not be able to use pause.

Their consideration is to prevent some players from abusing the pause right to cheat, such as pressing Esc to observe what the boss’s next attack is or where the attack range will be.

In this case, the developers believe that it not only retains the highest challenge difficulty in POE, but also allows players to get super high flexibility in other aspects besides this content. They are even very confident that the addition of this system can attract more new players.

Players’ Attitude

In fact, since the developer announced that the pause mechanism will be added to the game, the attitude of players towards it has been mixed.

Especially after the announcement that Mercenaries of Trarthus challenge league would allow players to hire a mercenary to be your 0.5 teammate, players became even less optimistic about the pause mechanism. Because while you are exploring with your mercenaries, you can only mark yourself as paused, and the battle continues.

Not only that, but disabling the ability to pause during pinnacle boss encounters, which are extremely prone to death, is another point that players are very unhappy about.

Originally, the number of deaths and penalties for players in this high-difficulty challenge were already very high. After the pause mechanism was banned, the difficulty of the challenge can be said to have been taken to a higher level.

In summary, the developers added a pause mechanism to balance the exploration fairness in the game and disabled it in some difficult content, but players said that this would make some challenges that were originally difficult to win more difficult, thus further undermining the players’ confidence in exploration. So what is your judgment about it?

With PoE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League approaching, are you ready?

As we all know, the beginning stage is always the most critical moment in the game, just like building a house, the foundation is always the most important. A good starter build will always determine whether you can have a far superior advantage when you start the league and enter the endgame earlier, which is a vast difference between having to stagnate for a while because of using an inappropriate build.

Therefore, here we have sorted out the starter builds for various different play styles to ensure that everyone can find the most suitable one for you! Whether you have already chosen your initial equipment or you like to leave it until the last minute, it is always beneficial to get more information and know which builds are more popular. Let’s get started.

1. Volcanic Fissure Of Snaking Berserker

Let’s start with a build that is likely to become mainstream in the early stages of the league, which is Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Berserker.

While this isn’t a brand new build that just appeared in POE 3.26, it’s perfectly positioned in the meta as a strong successor to the severely nerfed Lightning Strike.

Volcanic Fissure of Snaking is a melee slam attack with great scaling and huge single target damage. When you slam the ground, you create a winding rift that deals area damage as it moves outward. Once it reaches the target location, the rift bursts, dealing damage to the target area, and the rift keeps moving towards enemies, dealing further damage.

Not only that, this build has great synergy with Warcries, and since it’s auto-cast, you don’t even need to press an extra button.

In addition, its spawning power is pretty strong thanks to Ascendancy rework and the use of Endurance Charges and other defensive layers. The explosive visual effects brought by this build will also bring you a feast for the eyes and ears!

2. Penance Brand Of Dissipation Inquisitor

Moving on to Penance Brand of Dissipation Inquisitor, which really shocked me by surviving 3.26 patch.

Despite being one of the most powerful skills in Path Of Exile in the past, it has not been nerfed at all in the latest update because of its mechanics and scaling to billions of DPS. And now, with updates to skills like Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion, it could be even more powerful.

This build is excellent at farming content like Ultimatum and Simulacrums, and can even handle endgame bosses if you’re willing to spend some POE currency to equip it with the right unique items.

While it’s not a fast clearer, it can be very efficient when you commit to the right farming strategy. Not only does it give you the thrill of a rain of Divine Orbs dropping, but the entry cost is fairly low and more importantly it scales impressively into the late game, which is why this build has always been at the top of the popular build charts over the past year.

3. Explosive Concoction

Next up is Explosive Concoction, a pure League starter that can be used as a temporary build while you prepare for a real endgame setup.

For this build’s Ascendancy, Slayer class is the first choice for most players, but in fact, any class on the right side of the passive tree is applicable, and its flexibility determines that it can be your excellent League starter. Even if you don’t choose Ascendancy class, it can still help you get to the endgame, which is exciting!

4. Poisonous Concoction Of Bouncing Pathfinder

Then there is Poisonous Concoction of Bouncing Pathfinder, which is also a strong starter build.

Poisonous Concoction causes projectiles to bounce randomly in a non-linear manner, and the damage of the explosion scales according to the area of ​​effect.

Note that choosing this build as a starter does not mean you have to use it for the entire League. It is perfect for fans who are eager to build a small army of soldiers, starting with the low-cost and reliable Archer Skeletons, and transitioning to Skeletal Mage on a small budget.

If you like to summon an army to help you, then this build is definitely for you, it is arguably the best minion build for early leagues. It has always been strong, and the latest patch has given it some indirect buffs.

5. Flameblast Of Celerity Totem

Also, there is a very interesting build, Flameblast of Celerity Totem, which is probably the most buffed skill in POE 3.26 update.

It now does 660% more damage at the maximum stage, and the new gem quality increases its damage by 40%. Since you can get a gem quality of up to 104 by using Ashes of the Stars and buffing it to level 4, it means that the quality alone can cause 208% additional damage.

Therefore, the damage effect brought by this spell totem is absolutely ridiculous, you don’t even need to worry about aiming or charging, the patch gave it a better cast speed and lower mana cost.

6. Lightning Arrow Deadeye

Finally, my personal favorite Lightning Arrow Deadeye build is a lot of fun, traversing the map at the speed of light, leaping over enemies and firing thousands of projectiles. Although Arrow has been nerfed in POE 3.26 and doesn’t perform well on a budget, this is also the right starter build for you if you want to have fun.

In short, no matter what your play style is, you can find the best starter build for you here. Maybe you can try something new, they may bring you unprecedented experience!

Last week, after the developers of Path of Exile held a live broadcast about 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League, they released a full description of the entire update, and the introduction of some new and improved features made many players look forward to this new league.

However, the changes to Shaper of Winter passive skill of Elementalist, Ascendancy class that players have always loved, have caused opposition from some players who are keen to use elemental damage such as freezing and frost to complete all campaign content, because its effectiveness has been greatly weakened compared to the previous patch.

But in fact, it is not. This guide will compare the current description of Shaper of Winter in the game with its update notes, and analyze for you from multiple attributes and statistics presented to you whether this change is a sign of the developers giving up this style of play or an early attempt to find a different way.

Some Changes

This 3.26 patch notes originally released by the developers state that the changes to Shaper of Winter include increasing the maximum Cold Ailments Effect by 50%, increasing Chills inflicted by each hit, and removing the previous effect of reducing enemy movement speed by 15% - 40%.

Instead, this Notable will only cause enemies that are Chilled by you to deal 50% of your Chill Effect. For example, if you can deal 30% Chill, the damage dealt by Chilled enemies will be reduced by 15%. Not only that, these already Chilled enemies will be more vulnerable to this longer duration damage, and the damage they receive will be increased by the Chills effect.

With this change, builds with Shaper of Winter Notable activated can still rely on strong offensive gear with high POE Currency investment to have strong Chills damage even when taking any type of hit damage, which is very suitable for encounters with monsters with strong offensive capabilities or elite monsters.

However, the developers made another change to Shaper of Winter Ascendancy Passive Skill in the patch notes of June 9 update: the previous slow down debuff of up to 40% was returned to players, which means that your powerful Chills damage and action speed debuff can help you complete encounters with more flexible bosses more easily and smoothly.

Is It A Loss?

Judging from the comments in the player community and social media, the biggest complaint from players about the changes to Shaper of Winter is that the developers removed a lot of direct damage buffs that players saw and added new effects that did not directly make their builds more powerful.

Yes?

But if those players calm down and analyze rationally, they are likely to modify their negative comments. First, before determining how much actual damage you can get from the modifiers that Shaper of Winter provides to Chills. If you only have this one damage type in your build, then a 30% modifier means you can cast 30% more damage.

It has to be said that in the more than ten years of POE development, there is no optimal build that focuses on only one source of damage. So if you add gear that can cast Unnerve debuff to your build and buy POE currency to increase your spell damage by 10%, then the actual damage gain from the modifier provided by this passive skill may only be 27%.

Of course, when making a build, you must add some crowd control modifiers, such as Shock debuff that make enemies stand still and vulnerable to damage, which can generally be up to 50%. With these modifiers working together, the additional damage provided by the modifier of Chill damage buff may only be 18%-19%.

In addition to this, like chaos damage, vulnerability, and physical damage modifiers that can be added to a build will reduce Chill damage bonus that the original Shaper of Winter had, preventing it from being able to reach its maximum effect.

So it was a very correct decision for the developers to remove this passive skill effect that is not conducive to players’ exploration in the game and balance the offensive and defensive effects brought by Shaper of Winter.

No!

First of all, the up to 40% enemy speed debuff that players had before is still there, so your build defense ability has been greatly improved. And reducing the enemy’s damage ability by half will put you in an advantageous position in the battle from the beginning.

Secondly, on the offensive side, you can combine Chill effect of this passive skill with Bonechill Support, so that you have higher cold damage and can more easily deal with enemies and bosses that have no resistance to this element type.

Not only that, in POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League, the developers will bring some new Uniques to players, among which Ahuana’s Bite, a Unique Quiver, makes up for Chill Effect buff removed by Shaper of Winter in the build. And most importantly, it will not stack with other elemental damage affixes.

So in summary, Shaper of Winter changes are actually good news for builds that focus on cold damage, but builds with a variety of elemental damage may see some nerfs when using this passive skill, but it’s not a big deal.

Which builds are likely to be most affected by this change? Those builds with limited access to increased damage taken on the enemy are probably some of them. 

Of course, in the regular exploration process after the new Secrets of the Atlas League is released, we highly recommend heading over to the major communities and social platforms to find the build that works best for you. And here will continue to pay attention and introduce it to you. I wish you a happy game!