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If you're a longtime Path of Exile player, you'll know that Settlers of Kalguur League saw a major overhaul of the defense mechanics, including reworks to melee and Endurance Charges.

The impact of these changes has been a double-edged sword, with many character builds having their physical damage sources nerfed or removed entirely, while others have received significant damage reductions.

In comparison, the changes to the defense meta in Path of Exile Secrets Of The Atlas expansion have been relatively mild, with even the initial changes to the core mechanics being relatively unnoticeable.

But that doesn’t mean we can just stick with the defense setups from past leagues. Some powerful unique items, the mercenary mechanic, and the new Runegraft changes have all made a vast difference to Ascendancy build defense setup.

Passive Tree Setup Changes

So, let’s start with the passive tree changes. As I mentioned earlier, the 3.25 changes did severely nerf the defensive power of these talents.

They now have a significant reduction in total defense from Determination and Grace, and generally cannot afford the stat cost of equipping new high-end armor and evasion base types. They also lose the scaling of armor and evasion from Defiance Banner. This, combined with the loss of Physical Damage taken as modifiers, means that these builds are stuck with the most dangerous damage type for most builds when they first enter the map, which is physical attacks.

However, take a look at the distribution of Ascendancy in Softcore Trade League a month after the release of POE 3.26. You’ll find that three of the top four Ascendancy builds are top and right side builds, namely Trickster, Occultist, and Elementalist.

As we all know, builds are usually classified according to the side of the passive tree they originate from, with top and right side being associated with certain archetypes. Builds starting from the top of the tree are usually associated with spells, continuous damage, and minion builds, while right side builds are usually known for melee, spells, continuous damage, crits, traps, and mines builds.

Trickster

Let’s start with Trickster, which once again became the most used Ascendancy in PoE 3.26. Despite having been nerfed significantly in the last league, the class has been nerfed in multiple areas in 3.26.

From Escape Artist’s defensive scaling being nerfed, to Polymath’s damage bonus taking a big hit, to specific nerfs like Lightning Strike being nerfed significantly, and Ephemeral Edge losing 25% damage scaling.

Combined, these changes have had a huge impact on the scaling of Ephemeral Edge attack builds. Now, these builds mainly improve defense and offense by constantly stacking energy shields.

But frankly, these nerfs are not enough. Lightning Strike has been replaced by a Transfigured version of Smite of Divine Judgement.

While Ephemeral Edge’s damage scaling has been cut, this specific build benefits from one of the most dysfunctional mercenary interactions in this league, which means that Trickster builds can focus on stacking energy shields more than ever before.

As a result, even after Escape Artist nerf, we still often see Trickster players with 25,000 or more energy shield.

Occultist

However, the impact goes far beyond this. After two major changes, Occultist finally ushered in a breakthrough ascension in this expansion.

A month after the release of POE 3.26, Occultist’s popularity is second only to Trickster.

Now, Occultist Ascendancy itself has been adjusted to Vile Bastion in this patch, which allows the maximum energy shield to be increased to resist spell damage. This is a significant buff to energy shield and allows you to increase two defenses at the same time.

But on its own, it may not be enough to compete with Trickster’s Escape Artist.

Fortunately, the new Runegraft mechanism in POE 3.26 can increase global defense, but the attribute will be reduced. This is another key addition to increase energy shield.

More importantly is the arrival of Whispers of Infinity, a new unique Amulet that is exclusively dropped by the new Pinnacle Atlas Boss.

This Amulet not only provides super high Energy Shield, but also makes skills consume Energy Shield instead of Mana or Life, which greatly benefits Occultist and Trickster builds, allowing them to increase defense by stacking Energy Shield while also increasing attack power by increasing the effective hit pool.

Elementalist

So, what about Elementalist? In fact, this Ascendancy class may have the most changes of all Ascendancy in the league.

The most interesting thing about this Ascendancy is that the universal property adjustments it brings with Golems can benefit a large number of builds, such as Ignite Eviscerate to Herald stacking Blade Vortex to Storm Call, and so on, which also contain many different defense settings.

Also Read: What New Challenges Does Path Of Exile 3.26 Bound By Destiny Modifier Bring?

Berserker And Chieftain

Now, among the many top builds, Berserker and Chieftain each have their strengths, but have evolved in very different ways. After becoming the most built class in the first week, Berserker’s popularity has plummeted in the league, while Chieftain’s popularity has soared. So, what’s going on?

In fact, at the beginning of the league, Berserker actually had an extremely strong start with Volcanic Fissure of Snaking and Earthshatter. Both of these builds were very strong from the start. However, while Berserker’s offense is enough to match other classes, the nerf to Defy Pain does make its defense less powerful.

As a result, you will also find a significant decrease in Trickster and Occultist builds now. This makes sense, as the popular builds of these classes require good equipment to play the maximum effect. But this is often a paradox, especially in the early stages of the league when almost all players are short of POE currency.

Then, as the league progressed, players began to abandon Berserker in favor of more solid Occultist and Trickster builds. At the same time, Chieftain’s popularity also increased significantly, as stun setups with Bloodnotch + Immutable force made its build play more possible.

Other Ascendancy Classes

What about the less popular Ascendancy classes? Hierophant and Archmage, for example, are still able to build very strong defenses with strong mana stacking and life regeneration.

Then there is Champion, which I expected to be one of the most popular Ascendancy classes before the league started. However, what we didn’t know before was that the developers drastically nerfed the drop rate of Celestial Brace in POE 3.26 to only 1% or less. This change hindered the availability and accessibility of one of the most important items in all planned Champion builds.

As a result, it may not be as strong as those mainstream Occultist and Trickster builds. And it also has a high initial budget threshold, a badly rolled Celestial Brace is about the equivalent of 25 Divine Orbs, which is really hard to afford in the early stages of the league.

Outro

Now, in general, with the exception of Trickster, the mainstream build defense settings have all undergone considerable changes in POE 3.26 League, mainly because of the addition of those new unique items.

At the same time, we saw a major breakthrough in those passive tree upper builds, which allowed them to survive and even thrive in some of the high-difficulty content of Path of Exile. So try them out while they are not nerfed in 3.27!

At present, Path of Exile’s 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion has entered the mid-term stage, and Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt league has been launched for more than 3 months.

In this case, these two games with similar core mechanisms and game content will be compared to many players. So in this guide, we will compile some of the current player comments and feedback about POE 1 and POE 2 across several gaming communities and social media.

Here we will compare you specifically to the aspects of campaign content, endgame content, and players’ demands for each game. Not only that, we will also predict which of the two games will go further and have more advantages in subsequent development.

Campaign Content

The first thing to introduce is the comparison between the main campaigns of Path of Exile 3.26 and Path of Exile 2, which is also one of the most important parts of every MMORPG to attract players. First of all, the results are said that the original has received more positive reviews.

At this stage, Path of Exile 1 includes six acts of base game content, while the Early Access version of Path of Exile 2 only includes three acts of base content. Not only that, the original game has a lot of high-quality and interesting league mechanisms in these exploration contents, while the sequel can only experience some mechanisms transplanted from the original game in the endgame content.

Although this cannot be entirely blamed on the developers, after all, POE 2 was released for a short time and not enough league mechanisms have been retained, but the new mechanisms introduced in Dawn of the Hunt league in the sequel, such as Rogue Exiles and Asarian Wisps, are not satisfactory.

The original intention of the developer to add Rogue Exiles to the game is to allow players to add more PVP elements to this game, which has more PVE combat modes, and adjust their strategies according to the corresponding combat methods.

However, what all players did not expect was that although these new enemies were easy to defeat, the loot they contained, such as the number of Uniques and POE 2 Currency they were equipped with, was very small, and the quality was not very good, which made many players complain.

Back to Path of Exile, Mercenaries of Trarthus league mechanic added to the currently active Secrets of the Atlas expansion also provides players with a mercenary enemy that is very similar to the character they control, but with a completely different reputation.

Not only does it provide players with the option of 0.5 allies to fight alongside them, but also because the combat moves and item options equipped in these mercenaries are closer to regular characters, even the more challenging Infamous Mercenaries, which have more commons with high-tier players.

In this case, POE 3.26 has received unanimous praise as soon as it was launched, even though the developers have made some nerfs to many mercenaries in several supplementary patches after the release of the 3.26 patch, because this mechanism allows players who are accustomed to exploring alone to have more build possibilities.

Endgame Content

In this comparison dimension, Path of Exile 1 can be said to be a complete winner. Since the release of this sequel that has been promoted for nearly 3 years on December 6 last year, players have complained seriously about the lack of depth of its endgame content.

In this process, players can only blindly follow the established process of entering the map, running the map, and collecting loot. To give a very simple example, Path of Exile 2’s endgame is like a puddle of water with a huge surface area but only a metre deep.

You may think it is worth exploring when you look at it from the sky, and the various systems contained in it are attracting you. But when you really step into it, you will find that there is not much you can do, and it cannot even make a player with a medium game level feel highly challenging.

In the endgame content of the previous game, you are like entering the Mariana Trench, with many explorable parts and more POE Currency. And there is no established process here, you can explore whatever you want. According to player feedback, POE 1 has an endgame depth that is approximately three times that of the sequel.

However, it is worth celebrating that the developers have clearly recognized this flaw and have announced that they will spend the entire second half of the year adjusting and modifying the problem of insufficient depth in POE 2, which is expected to appear in the 0.3.0 patch to be released at the end of the year.

Players’ Needs

In fact, some loyal players of POE 1 will not ask for large-scale changes to this game that have been released for more than ten years, such as adding new classes or completely removing some of the original game mechanisms and adding new ones.

So compared to POE 2, which is still at the center of controversy, players only need to improve the game graphics and adapt to the iteration of more updated game consoles. This is not only an important factor in improving the player experience, but also a major feature of the game itself to attract more new players.

For this imperfect sequel, players have a lot of requirements: release the official version as soon as possible, add more classes and game mechanisms, and deepen the depth of the endgame as mentioned above. According to the current attitude of the developers, they are likely to gradually complete these requirements and do their best.

But the cruel thing is that the purpose of developers doing this is not just to change players’ reviews of the game from negative to positive, but also to make more revenue: because the player group of the previous game is relatively stable, but the players in the sequel will return or join because of wider publicity and more positive reviews, thereby earning more.

Which One Can Go Further?

Judging from the many reviews of these two games, they can both go a long way, but the sequel has more potential. On the one hand, it is the attitude of the developers towards it, and on the other hand, it has a more build possibility than POE 1.

Although Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion brings some new crafting options to players, this crafting system is a bit difficult for many players, and many players cannot farm or make Path of Exile currency they need within the limited time.

However, in the crafting system in POE 2, players can clearly get corresponding crafting materials from some game content, such as basic content will provide you with basic currency, encounters related to essences can provide you with essences, and Ritual encounters can provide you with Omen Crafting materials.

In summary, players who already loved the diverse challenges of Path of Exile 1 can continue to explore it, because the developers will no longer move all staff to the development process of the sequel, so its subsequent league updates will have the previous frequency and may receive higher-quality updates.

But for those players who have been lingering in various RPGs for many years, Path of Exile 2 is worth a try because it has more development potential. Of course, this potential is also limited, and it depends on whether the developers are willing to launch POE 3 and more sequels. I wish you a happy game!

Generally speaking, each Path of Exile league can be experienced independently except for the possible connection with the main storyline, but sometimes it can be continued to the next league if the mechanism performs well enough.

For example, in the current 3.26 Mercenaries of Trarthus league, you can not only play Settlers of Kalguur content belonging to 3.25, but also Necropolis challenges related to 3.24.

Completing these challenges can not only help you win the required POE currency, but also reward you with special appearance decorations. So how can you get them with the highest efficiency? We will introduce it to you.

What Is Necropolis Challenge?

The gameplay first appeared in POE 3.24, which was launched on March 29, 2024, and then remained in Path of Exile 1 as a playable system.

Now you can experience 40 levels of Necropolis challenges i 3.26 expansion, and when you reach the 12th, 24th, 36th or 40th milestone, you can also unlock special level rewards:

• 12 Tier: Base cosmetic (including helmet, weapon effect and more)
• 24 Tier: Mid-tier reward (including character effect and back attachment)
• 36 Tier: Premium tier effect
• 40 Tier: The totem pole of Hideout

In fact, in addition to currency and item rewards, in the process of completing these challenges, you can also get a deeper understanding of the current league’s mechanics, endgame content and the best builds to choose and utilize. To explore the deeper Secrets Of The Atlas.

What Do Necropolis Challenges Include?

According to the specific difficulty of all 40 levels of challenges, they can be roughly divided into the following 4 difficulty levels:

• Level 1 (1-12): Novices can also complete it, close to the tutorial difficulty.

Complete the campaign, utilize skill gems and craft items.

• Level 2 (13-24): The difficulty is close to the endgame content.

Complete as many maps and sets of corpse affixes as possible.

• Level 3 (25-36): You need to prepare enough currency and items to ensure that your character is strong enough.

Pinnacle bosses farming, and clear endgame events such as Rituals.

• Level 4 (37-40): In addition to reliable strength, you also need to have good luck.

Kill Uber bosses, win PVP battles or racers events.

In these challenges, you will have the opportunity to experience the following gameplay:

• Necropolis Mechanics
• Atlas & Mapping
• Crafting
• Farming bosses
• Various miscellaneous. For example, special leagues mechanics.

How To Complete Necropolis Challenges?

Before stepping into the official Necropolis challenges, you need to complete the following prerequisite tips:

• Check your remaining items as soon as possible.
• Make sure your Atlas layout is good enough.
• Don’t consume too much time looking for rare drops, as you can trade them in time.
• Try to complete multiple challenges in the same map to be more efficient.

At this point, you are fully qualified to be a warrior in Necropolis challenge! But if you want to improve your reward farming efficiency and avoid taking damage as much as possible during the challenge, you can refer to the following suggestions.

Complete All Map Tiers

Even if you level up inefficiently, you can quickly complete all levels of the map. If you find that there are missing tiers, you can find them through Kirac missions. In addition, if you can upgrade the map early, don’t create extra chaos.

Try To Kill The Map Bosses

Killing certain map bosses or even some unique map bosses, such as The Shaper, Elder, Sirus, or Eater of Worlds, can bring you higher-level loot. Of course, the premise is that you can deal with them.

Completing Delve Encounters

This gameplay requires you to explore the nearly infinite Azurite Mine dungeon and obtain rewards by clearing nodes in it. If you want to be more efficient, follow the horizontal route, utilize flares and dynamite to find more cities and broken walls.

Consuming Scarabs In Mapping

To complete multiple game tasks at the same time through mapping, you must invest at least 4 scarabs for each. It should be noted that utilizing Rusted Scarabs as early as possible can reduce currency consumption, and you can continue to upgrade them later.

How To Speed Up The Process Of All Challenges?

Although following the above guidelines is enough for you to complete all challenges independently, 40 challenges is a long process after all, and you will definitely want to find more ways to continue to speed up the farming speed.

To do this, you can seek help from other players through relevant forums or groups, and view your real-time challenge progress through special filtering tools to adjust your current playing strategy.

Most importantly, you should choose the right builds. Generally speaking, you may want to craft more powerful POE 3.26 builds, but they are not necessarily suitable for dealing with Necropolis challenges. In contrast, the following builds are more targeted:

• Tornado Shot Deadeye
• Poison Concoction Pathfinder
• Explosive Arrow Ballista Champion

The above is the information on the skills and related rewards for completing Necropolis challenge in POE 3.26. Thank you for reading.