Path of Exile - Page 761

Version 1.1.4:
Content and Features:

Added a new Intelligence skill - Flame Surge: Strikes enemies in front of you with a surge of flame. Burning enemies are dealt more damage.
Added a new corrupted Skill Gem - Vaal Flameblast: Targets an area and builds up a large explosion. The build-up speed is based on cast speed. The explosion occurs after it reaches 10 stacks.
Added a new corrupted Skill Gem - Vaal Grace: Casts a temporary aura that grants you and your allies the ability to dodge attacks and spells.
Added a new corrupted Skill Gem - Vaal Clarity: Casts a temporary aura that lets you and your allies cast skills without paying their mana costs.
Flame Surge is a quest reward for the Witch, Templar and Shadow from the quest "Invaders in Black" in Normal.
Added three new cosmetic microtransactions: Tentacle Wings Back Attachment, Soul Nexus Clarity Effect and Bandana Helmet Skin.
Added five new unique items, four of which are designed by our supporters. One of the uniques is a unique map.
Added two new achievements: Virtue Corruption and Dream Enrichment.
Added one new vendor recipe involving common Vaal items.
Added 3D art for the following items: Chernobog's Pillar, Fencoil, Shavronne's Wrappings and Skullhead.
We have added armour and weapon racks to the Barracks area. These chests drop only armour or only weapons respectively.
We changed the way longer audio files are loaded and played to reduce load times and memory use.
We have added race rewards and the functionality required for Race Season Eight.
Updated and improved several audio elements of the game.


Vaal Side Areas from Fragments:
To provide both the ability to run Vaal areas at will without re-spawning areas, and to use additional Fragments that players have accumulated, a new feature has been added to the map device.

We have added the ability to spawn Vaal areas in The Eternal Laboratory using Vaal Fragments. If you use one Fragment, a Vaal side area will created as a map. If you use all four fragments, they must be in the correct arrangement for creating Atziri's area.


Map Mods:
We have made changes to how degeneration in map mods is handled. This change was made as the Suffering mod inhibited hybrid life/ES builds from being played. This is a style of defence we would like to see used as an option, however this one map mod was very punitive to this style of play. This map mod also overstressed the requirement for a base amount of life regeneration, which is not equally available to all classes.

We removed the Suffering map mod and replaced it with two other mods filling the same role, "of Venom" and "of Desecration". The replacement mods keep the chaos damage over time flavour, but are not an always-on effect.
"of Venom" has been added as a map mod, which gives all the monsters on the map Poison on Hit.
"of Desecration" has been added as a map mod, which gives the map patches of Desecrated ground.


Dual Wielding Changes:
We have made changes to dual wielding to improve it. Dual wielding was weaker than the alternatives of using a shield or a two-handed weapon (which received improvements as part of 1.1.0). We want dual wielding builds to be as viable as other build types.

Players now receive a +20% physical damage multiplier while dual wielding.
We have reduced the damage of Dual Strike by 10%, but it's still higher than it was before because of the new dual wielding bonus. This particular skill was already very strong, and it benefited too greatly from the dual wielding buff. This change will make more skills viable to use while dual wielding, especially earlier in the game, and reward high physical damage one-handed weapons.
A bug in monster dual wielding was also fixed. Their off hand weapon was doing no damage.
In reaction to the off-hand damage of monsters being fixed, we have reduced the damage of most dual wielding monsters by 20%, and a further 10% less damage with Dual Strike.


Descent: Champions Changes:
Descent: Champions is the signature race of Season Eight. It will be run as 40 minute races. We have made several changes to Descent: Champions to make the race more suitable for this purpose:

We removed many dead ends, and increased the linear nature of The Entrance Hall, The Chattering Halls, The Croaking Halls and the Rasping Halls.
We moved the entrance to The Freezing Chamber to be more central in The Rasping Halls.
We moved the entrance to The Obelisks of Faith to be more central in The Haunted Dungeon.
We moved the entrance to The Chamber of Greed to be more central in The Burning Cave.
Added a new Unique Claw (Scar of Fate) to one of the starting chests.
Added a new Unique One Hand Sword (Blood of Summer) to both of the starting chests.
Buffed Tear of Entropy (Unique Helmet), Relic of the Cycle (Unique Bow) and Remnant of Empires (Unique Shield).
The Templar now receives the Flameblast Skill Gem.
The Shadow now receives the Glacial Cascade Skill Gem.
The Templar no longer receives the Summon Skeletons Skill Gem.
The Templar's Lightning Strike skill gem has been moved to the opposing area's chest.
The Marauder and Duelist now receive Molten Strike in the provisions chest.


General Balance:

We have increased the rewards from Olmec's Sanctum and Acton's Nightmare, to help bring them in line with the rewards gained from other unique maps.
We have reduced the movement penalty that armour types have as follows:
Tower Shields now have a 3% movement speed penalty (the same as other shields) instead of 6%.
Body Armour now has a 3% movement penalty, with Strength or Strength/Intelligence armour having a 5% penalty, instead of 4% and 8% respectively.
Plate Vest only has a 3% movement speed penalty, rather than the 5% that other Strength armour has.


Bug Fixes:

Fixed a bug where areas with corrupted secret areas inside them would take noticeably longer to load.
Fixed a bug where exploding strongboxes would not have a delay before they exploded.
Fixed map bonus from fragments on The Alluring Abyss area to be consistent with the Fragment bonuses on The Apex of Sacrifice area.
Fixed a bug where some skills could move monsters or players to inside terrain.
Fixed a bug where spiralling projectiles could go into the ground or into the sky arbitrarily.
Fixed some common cases where Strongboxes could block progress.
Fixed a bug where character audio looped in character creation.
Fixed a bug where the Anarchic prefix did not always spawn an Exile in low-level side areas.
Fixed a bug where creating a new character on an account with no characters would not have a default league.
Fixed a bug where the zombie on the opening beach could show model segments during his bite animation.
Fixed an issue where corrupting some unique quivers could remove the level requirement.
Fixed some issues with the Eternal Weapon Effect for some weapon types.
Fixed some issues with Witch weapon animations.



As always, thanks very much for your generous support!

EDIT: This patch also contains readjustments to unique chances for different uniques as described in the manifesto here.