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In Path of Exile Patch 3.27 Keepers of the Flame update that will arrive on October 31st, the most notable change was undoubtedly the complete rework of Shadow's Assassin Ascendancy. 

This update aims to fundamentally reshape Assassin, replacing most of the existing passives with new nodes that offer different or more powerful effects. Even the nodes that are retained have undergone balance adjustments to improve their usability.

Preliminary analysis suggests that these changes are expected to elevate Ascendancy from a niche pick to a top choice, boasting both exceptional DPS and robust survivability. Let's take a look at the changes.

Critical Strike And Poison

Assassin's core role has always revolved around critical hits and poison. This rework strengthens this feature while also making its builds smoother and more powerful.

Critical Strike

The brand-new Assassination Style Notable is the cornerstone of this new power system, providing massive Critical Hit Chance and Damage Bonus bonuses, and allowing players to make meaningful choices between two powerful child nodes:

1. Knife In The Back

This option enhances your initial attack, granting 100% additional Critical Strike Chance against enemies that are not at low health. More importantly, it provides an amazing 100% additional Critical Strike Multiplier against low-health enemies.

This is essentially equivalent to having a built-in finishing move, allowing you to eliminate tough enemies at an astonishing speed, further enhancing efficiency.

 2. For The Jugular

This option reverses the logic above, providing 100% extra Critical Strike Chance against low-health enemies, ensuring you can land consistent critical hits on dangerous, dying enemies.

Meanwhile, the 100% bonus Critical Strike Multiplier applies to enemies that are not low on health, allowing you to unleash devastating opening attacks and quickly reduce enemies to low health.

This flexibility allows players to make relative adjustments according to their needs – whether it's quickly cultivating the map or focusing on boss battles.

Poison

The poison build has also received a revolutionary update. Although Toxic Delivery node's poison damage from critical hits has been reduced from 25% to 20%, it has gained extremely valuable utility.

The previous conditional critical strike chance bonus has been replaced by a new mechanic: each 4-second poison effect you apply will grant you an extension of the poison duration, up to a maximum of 100%. This significantly increases damage uptime, especially against bosses with long phases.

In addition, the new effect of restoring 0.5% health for each poisoned enemy killed provides players with a stable and considerable health recovery in dense groups of monsters.

Crucially, the new node Infused Toxins, located after Toxic Delivery, now allows all attack damage to inflict poison. This design makes poison builds smoother than ever before.

Survival And Functionality Enhancements

The main weakness of Assassins lies in their relatively weak defenses compared to other Ascendancy instances. Path of Exile Patch 3.27 updates directly addresses this issue by adding several powerful survival-oriented nodes.

Shadowed Blood

This is a landmark defensive node that converts 40% of Physical Damage into Recouped as Life, a capability that fundamentally changes Assassin's resilience against physical damage.

Unaffected by Damaging Ailments is also a great advantage. For example, it grants immunity to Bleeding, Poison, and Ignite effects. This single point provides significant recovery and damage reduction, allowing Assassins to confront enemies who unleash these effects head-on.

Opportunistic

This node has been significantly enhanced and now provides 35% damage reduction when there are at least two Rare or Unique Enemies nearby. This is an extremely powerful defensive bonus, making Assassins surprisingly resilient in the most dangerous situations.

Deathmarked

This new node is a top-tier, practical damage-boosting tool that automatically triggers a level 30 Assassin's Mark when dealing critical hits to Rare or Unique Enemies, a huge improvement to the experience.

It eliminates the need for manual mark application, simplifying the process and ensuring key bosses are always marked. Its additional benefit - making your mark ability mana-free and preventing marked enemies from dodging attacks - further enhances accuracy against highly evasive opponents.

Other Mechanics

This rework also introduced some mechanisms, opening up entirely new build possibilities:

Unstable Infusion

Its chance of gaining energy charges on non-critical hits is increased to 30%, and the chance of gaining energy charges on critical hits is increased to 15%, making it more stable to maintain critical hit charges. This, in turn, leads to more stable Critical Hit Chance and Damage Bonus.

Mystical Infusion

This node is revolutionary for hybrid playstyles. It makes Base Spell Critical Strike Chance of spells equivalent to the critical strike chance of Main Hand Weapon, which means that some critical strike-dependent playstyles are no longer entirely reliant on specific high-critical-strike spells or daggers.

This allows players to creatively use high critical strike rate weapons to drive spell critical strike effects.

In conclusion, Assassin rework in Path of Exile Patch 3.27 is not a simple numerical adjustment, but a complete overhaul of the concept. It retains the core characteristics of the class while solving its previous weaknesses.

The updates clearly show that Assassin is no longer a single-function class, but a versatile, powerful, and robust top-tier option. Get ready to shine in Keepers of the Flame release!

Since its stable release, nearly every league in Path of Exile 1 has had a unique theme and core league mechanics that complement it. Combined with old changes, all new leagues offer an upgraded gameplay experience based on the existing PoE experience.

After the livestream, the core gameplay of 3.27 Keepers of the Flame league, which launches on October 31, 2025, was finally revealed, along with all the new changes and content.

Interestingly, 3.27 Keepers challenge leagues not only introduce a new story but are also essentially an extension of the established Breach mechanic. Below, we'll provide a detailed introduction to the core mechanics and other key changes to 3.27 league.

What Is Breach?

To fully experience Keepers challenge leagues, you first need to have a detailed understanding of Breach mechanic itself, not just how to earn rewards from it.

Breach was introduced as early as 2016 with the eponymous PoE 1 league and has since been retained in the base game. After years of refinement and adjustments, it has now become a mature endgame feature.

Regular Breaches spawn randomly on the game map and can be identified by a hand icon within a purple circle. Approaching them triggers a Breach and begins clearing the monsters spawned within. Each Breach lasts for at least 30 seconds, extending up to 60 seconds.

Note that to claim PoE currency dropped, you must kill breach monsters. Furthermore, enemies spawned by Vaal Breach do not drop XP or other items.

Breach In Keepers Of The Flame Challenge League

In fact, not only are the mechanics closely related, but 3.27 league itself can be considered a sequel to 2.5.0 Breach League.

In this new league, the evil Breachlords plan to expand their influence in Wraeclast. To combat them, Ailith has created Order of Keepers of the Flame. Your goal is to join Ailith in destroying all Breach monsters.

Upon entering Mud Flats area, you'll find it overrun by Breach monsters attempting to establish their lair. Ailith's fire powers are effective against them, provided you can help her fend off their attacks.

If you encounter an Unstable Breach caused by the massive Breach Hand, more monsters will emerge, requiring you to quickly defeat them to ensure Ailith can safely clear them with her fire.

After Breach stabilizes, Vruun, Marshal of Xesht, will appear as a boss. You must defeat him to permanently seal Breach and claim your rewards.

What Is Genesis Tree?

As your collaboration with Ailith deepens, she will eventually lead you to Monastery of Keepers, where you can unlock Genesis Tree. Think of it as a specialized Mastery Tree, where you invest points to earn rewards and special Grafts.

Grafts are a new way of granting buffs. By fusing breach hands with your character, you gain access to a variety of new active and passive skills, with up to 16 Grafts to choose from.

Once these Breach hands are implanted, you can collect Graftblood from defeating Breach monsters in battle. This Graftblood can then be invested in Genesis Tree to accelerate its growth, unlocking more rewards.

Grafts not only grant additional skills, but also modify your gear. However, grafted gear cannot be modified or reset with standard currency. Fortunately, Genesis Tree itself offers a very good node investment.

How To Complete Keepers Challenge League?

Based on the core mechanics described above, you can choose to complete 3.27 league in standard, hardcore, or solo self-found modes, depending on your ability.

These three modes share the same core mechanics, but you can create private leagues and add mods to enrich the gameplay, customizing your own Keepers challenge league.

Keepers Challenge League includes 40 new challenges and 8 Ruthless Keepers Challenges. Completing a certain number of challenges in both challenge modes gives you a chance to receive pieces of Keeper of the Flame Armor Set, a 3.27 league-exclusive reward.

In addition, starting with Challenge 19, every three challenges you complete will earn you pieces of Keeper Totem Pole decoration.

The completed totem pole will then remain permanently in your hideout, representing the number of challenges you've completed during 3.27 league.

New Bloodlines System

In addition to utilizing Genesis Tree, Keepers of the Flame League introduces another new mechanic: Bloodlines. Think of them as secondary Ascendancy classes that can be enhanced by allocating Ascendancy passive skill points.

Reliably, there are no restrictions on the use of Bloodlines; as long as you earn a Bloodline by killing an endgame boss, you can pair it with any Ascendancy class you already own. A total of 10 Bloodlines are available.

It's important to note that Bloodlines and Ascendancy classes share the same passive skill points, so it's crucial to carefully consider your needs when allocating them to ensure each skill point is maximized.

Asynchronous Trade Finally Launches

Ever since the initial leaks of 3.27 league, many players have been eager for Path of Exile to implement asynchronous trade or other similar mechanisms in this league, aligning it with PoE 2 and making the game's trading system more convenient.

So, once 3.27 league launches, as long as you've unlocked Act 6, you can visit Faustus in Lioneye's Watch and have him manage your Merchant's Tabs. This way, other players can automatically trade with you even when you're offline.

If you acquired Premium Stash Tabs before 3.26 league launched, you can unlock asynchronous trade using Mercant's Tab Upgrade tool on the game's official website. If you already have Merchant's Tabs unlocked in PoE 2, you can use them directly in 3.27 league.

The new content we've introduced here focuses primarily on mechanics and gameplay, but Keepers of the Flame will also bring many more subtle changes, such as new gems. Once the league launches, you can explore it in depth!

As development on the second game stabilizes, Path of Exile 1 league updates have returned to their normal frequency. Previously announced to begin on October 31st, 3.27 league recently released a trailer and detailed a range of new features.

Named Keepers of the Flame, this league will feature both gameplay changes and new content, focusing on gameplay and other details that impact your gaming experience. We'll explain these changes below.

What Changes Will The Heist Mechanic Undergo?

As you know, Path of Exile 1 will continue to improve and enhance the well-received mechanics and gameplay of the previous leagues as it updates, ensuring they continue to serve you well. This is one of the main reasons the game's scale continues to grow.

The heist mechanic, introduced in 3.12 league, has undoubtedly become a core component of the game, featuring complex entry and completion mechanisms, and, of course, rich rewards.

Unfortunately, with the introduction of new mechanics, more and more players believe that the rewards are far less valuable than the effort required to complete the early Heist missions, ultimately leading to a decline in both participation and appreciation for the mechanic.

To address this, starting with 3.27 league, rogues available in heist missions will automatically start at the highest level, allowing you to farm loot directly in heist locations, eliminating the need to slowly level up rogues by completing contracts from scratch.

Of course, streamlining the system will lower the barrier to entry and difficulty of obtaining rare heist rewards. This may result in a reduction in the amount of PoE currency dropped and a lower drop rate for rare gear or gems to achieve balance.

But honestly, the impact of this balancing act is negligible compared to the redundant upfront work, as you can simply complete Heist missions more frequently to earn loot when you have the time.

At the same time, the improved efficiency of the heist system will also increase the circulation of currency in the game's trading market, making some rare items more accessible and making the trading system more meaningful.

It's worth noting that while the mercenary mechanic from 3.26 leaguewas very popular, it will not be carried over to the base game for now due to a slight imbalance in power and potential incompatibility with Path of Exile after the launch of 3.27 league.

However, the developers have stated that they are generally satisfied with the design of the mercenary mechanic in 3.26 league, so do not rule out the possibility of its return in a future League after a redesign.

Atlas Passive Tree Optimizations

As the primary way to enhance your character and builds in the game, Atlas Passive Tree has been undergoing continuous updates and adjustments.

You can earn a total of 132 passive points to invest in your Atlas Passive Tree, but it's inevitable that you'll need to reset part of your Atlas tree layout.

In League 3.26, which has yet to conclude, resetting your Atlas tree is only possible by consuming Orbs of Unmaking. While earning this currency isn't difficult, the flexibility you have in resetting it is very limited.

Keepers of the Flame League will implement changes to address this issue. In 3.27, you'll be able to directly refund all passive points you've invested using gold, and this mechanic will be applied to the rest of Path of Exile's regular passive tree.

This change will give you more choice and freedom when customizing your character's passive skill clusters, eliminating the need to worry about cumbersome resets that distract from building your passive skill system.

A More Balanced Class And Combat Experience

Maintaining a balanced experience across classes is a constant challenge in any ARPG with multiple classes. It's inherently impossible to make all classes play and power levels identical, requiring constant adjustments based on league content.

Thankfully, unlike PoE 2, PoE 1's class system has stabilized, making adjustments relatively easy and drastic. However, the likelihood of new classes being added is practically zero - at least not in 3.27 league.

On the other hand, combat experience is closely tied to systems like skill gems and support gems, and PoE frequently adds and updates these to fine-tune the overall combat experience.

We expect to reveal more about this update after 3.27 league livestream on October 23rd, as it will likely be related to the new gameplay features of the new league.

Will The Main Story Be Updated?

While storytelling isn't a hallmark of Path of Exile series, the game did generate significant buzz within the community around the release of 3.26 league, building on Secrets of the Atlas plot.

Based on the content released so far, Keepers of the Flame League doesn't appear to be planning to replicate this approach, but the possibility of updating the main story in a new expansion cannot be ruled out.

However, even if 3.27 releases a new story chapter, its primary purpose will likely be to set the stage for more significant plot twists later on, rather than bringing any major news, otherwise the development team would have already revealed it.

Changes To The Trading System

As one of the ways you acquire items and gear in PoE, the usability of the trading system significantly impacts the gameplay experience. A high-quality marketplace allows players to efficiently circulate currency and unused items, driving game development.

To this end, 3.27 league will feature adjustments to the trading system, including changes to the tabs and the loot drop rate adjustments we mentioned when introducing the heist mechanic.

The above is our overall prediction based on 3.27 league trailer and other information revealed by the development team. We expect a full reveal of the league's content after the livestream. So be sure to tune in! You'll have a chance to win Twitch Drops!