Path of Exile News

Path of Exile has partnered with Twitch Prime to bring you the Divine Arcane Portal and Holy Eyes for free when you subscribe to Twitch Prime! Until the 7th of January you'll be able to redeem these free cosmetic effects by starting a free one-month trial with Twitch Prime and linking your Path of Exile account to Twitch.
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What are the benefits of Twitch Prime?

• Claim monthly free games and in-game loot
  
• Exclusive in-game loot for some of your favorite games
  
• Free games included with Twitch Prime
  
• Limited time promotions you won’t want to miss
  

Get special Twitch perks

• Free Twitch channel subscription ($5 value) every month
  
• Reign supreme with a Prime members-only chat badge
  
• Exclusive Twitch chat colors and emotes
  

Twitch Prime is part of Amazon Prime

• Shopping on Amazon.com is fast and convenient with free two-day shipping.
  
• Watch your favorite movies and TV shows including award-winning Amazon Originals.
  
• Listen to over 2+ million songs, ad-free on any device.
  

How do I redeem these microtransactions?
Once you have an Amazon Prime or Prime Video account, you link it to your Twitch account and start taking advantage of all the amazing perks Twitch Prime offers. To get started with Twitch Prime sign up for a free trial at twitchprime.com.

In most countries, you get Twitch Prime by being an Amazon Prime member and then linking your Amazon and Twitch Prime account. You can do all of this at twitchprime.com.

• Step 1 Sign up for a free trial of Twitch Prime.
  
• Step 2 Create or log in to your Path of Exile account.
  
• Step 3 Visit this page to link your account to Twitch or update your permissions if you've linked your account in the past.
  
• Step 4 Sign in to your Twitch account on twitch.tv and click the crown in the top right corner then claim the offer.
  
• Step 5 That's it! Fulfilling this process should automatically grant the microtransactions to your account.
  

Who can Redeem this Offer?
This promotion is available to Path of Exile account holders only on our main international server and only in countries where Amazon Prime is available.

Path of Exile on Twitch
Path of Exile has an active base of community streamers. With your Twitch Prime subscription you'll be granted a free subscription to your favourite streamer! Be sure to check out our community streamers over on Twitch.

A year ago we released a set of five different Core Supporter Packs, inspired by the themes of Path of Exile. In a couple of weeks we're planning to replace these Supporter Packs with new ones, so you don't have much time left to purchase one of the current Core Packs if you want one before they leave the store forever!

Please note that while we're trying our best to release the new Supporter Packs shortly after the launch of Conquerors of the Atlas expansion, there is still a possibility that they will require more work and testing and might be delayed until the beginning of next year. These new 'core' supporter packs will exist alongside the current Metamorph packs (and future league packs).

Each Core supporter pack contains points to spend in the store and exclusive in-game microtransactions which are only available in supporter packs and will not appear in the store. There are also physical items available, like a pack of signed Path of Exile prints, a Path of Exile T-Shirt and a Hoodie. Check out the awesome cosmetic effects from these supporter packs by watching the video below!

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If you'd like to reserve a supporter pack so you can purchase it after these Core supporter packs leave the store, you can set up a payment plan with our customer support team at [email protected]. Creating a payment plan can reserve a supporter pack for you for up to three months after the commencement of your plan. The payment amounts and times are totally flexible, you just have to pre-arrange this with the team before the sale of these supporter packs end.

Thank you so much for your generous support!

This December we're teaming up with community streamer Zizaran to host a huge boss kill event where Path of Exile's best players can compete to kill the hardest boss in Conquerors of the Atlas while playing in Hardcore, Solo Self-found mode. Alongside the US$30,000 cash that Zizaran will award to winners, we have provided $23,750 of some of Path of Exile's best microtransactions.

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How to Participate

This event runs for the first month of the Conquerors of the Atlas release (which starts on December 13, US time). Only characters played in the Metamorph HC SSF league will be counted for prizes, as the purpose of the event is to provide the hardest challenge that Path of Exile's best players have ever encountered.

In Conquerors of the Atlas, you can place Watchstones in Citadels on the Atlas. These level up your maps and make defeating The Awakener more difficult. Only kills with a fully-Watchstoned Atlas will be counted.

We are creating two custom ladders (order and number of kills of The Awakener) and will link them from this post once 3.9.0 is deployed and the ladders are available.

Cash Prizes

We will create a special ladder that records the order that players kill The Awakener with a fully-Watchstoned Atlas in the Metamorph HC SSF league. Zizaran's US$30,000 of cash prizes will be distributed as follows:

• First Place: $8000
  
• Second Place: $4000
  
• Third Place: $2000
  
• Fourth-fifteenth Place: $500
  
• First Atziri Kill: $500
  
• First Uber Atziri Kill: $2000
  
• First Shaper Kill: $1000
  
• First Elder Kill: $1000
  
• First Uber Elder Kill: $2000
  
• Deepest Delve: $4000 (calculated one month after the league starts)
  

Randomly-drawn Microtransaction Prizes

Every kill of The Awakener with a fully-Watchstoned Atlas in the Metamorph HC SSF league will be recorded on a special ladder that tracks how many kills each player has scored. When the event ends (exactly one month after the league starts, at noon on January 13th (PST) or Jan 13, 2020 9:00 AM (GMT+13) in your local time), we will randomly select twenty players from that list (weighted by how many kills they managed). These players will receive a massive bundle of our most popular microtransactions - all of the following (totalling $1187.50 of value per winner):

• Celestial Armour Set, Darkprism Weapon Skin, Celestial Weapon Effect, Celestial Steam-powered Portal Effect, Celestial Character Effect, Celestial Wings, Celestial Footprints, Celestial Herald and Celestial Cat Pet;
  
• Sin and Innocence Armour Set, Sin and Innocence Sword, Sin Weapon Effect, Sin and Innocence Portal, Sin Character Effect, Sin and Innocence Wings, Sin and Innocence Footprints Effect, Sin Herald and Sin and Innocence Sword Pet;
  
• Automaton Armour Set, Automaton Sword, Automaton Weapon Effect, Automaton Portal, Automaton Character Effect, Automaton Footprints, Automaton Herald, Automaton Wings and Automaton Pet;
  
• Transcendence Armour, Transcendence Dagger, Huntsman Weapon Effect, Transcendence Portal, Huntsman Character Effect, Transcendence Wings, Transcendence Footprints, Huntsman Aura Effect and Huntsman Dragonfly Pet
  
• Dragon Hunter Armour, Dragon Hunter Sword, Dragon Hunter Weapon Effect, Dragon Hunter Portal, Dragon Hunter Character Effect, Dragon Hunter Wings, Dragon Hunter Footprints, Lava Aura Effect and Dragon Hunter Pet.
  

Additional Rules

• Placings and prize eligibility are entirely at the discretion of Grinding Gear Games.
  
• The winners of cash prizes must be able to receive a PayPal payment from Zizaran in order to be eligible to receive it.
  
• While the event being SSF reduces a lot of scope for outside help, any form of account sharing will disqualify a player from receiving prizes.
  
• The cash prizes are only available to players playing on our PC realm, but players who manage to meet the criteria on Console realms will also be eligible for the microtransaction prizes.
  
• Grinding Gear Games Employees (and Zizaran) are not eligible for prizes.
  
• Only valid (maxed-Watchstone) Awakener-kills in the Metamorph HC SSF league are eligible for prizes. Dying or migrating your character out of the league doesn't remove prize eligibility as long as the kill occurred while in the league.
  

Alongside the new Skills and Supports we’ve talked about recently, we're also reworking three bow skills, including Explosive Arrow, Shrapnel Shot and Burning Arrow, and making a number of mechanical and balance adjustments to other skills.

Reworks Explosive Arrow
Previously, Explosive Arrow could have up to 5 arrows in a target, refreshing the duration each time an arrow hit the target. Now, there is no limit to the number of Explosive Arrows in a target, and the duration can't be refreshed. This lets you keep firing into an enemy, and you'll have regular explosions rather than having to halt firing to wait for detonations. The radius of the explosion is now +2 larger per arrow on the target, up to a maximum of +10 at level 1, up to +19 at gem level 20.

The skill no longer deals Secondary damage with its explosion, which greatly limited support and passive options as many specific damage modifiers wouldn't apply. Now, each arrow's explosion will deal a portion of your base weapon damage, with a large added fire bonus and the full effect of any other added damage. This still makes scaling the level of the gem useful, as you'll be boosting the fire damage of the explosion, but now stats like increased Bow Damage will apply to the entire explosion.

The explosion consumes all explosive arrows on the target and deals the combined damage of all arrow explosions, letting you build up a very strong Ignite, and the skill deals more damage with Ignite for each explosive arrow in the target.

The Barrage Support is an efficient way to quickly stack up arrows in a target, great for dealing high damage to bosses with a large explosion afterwards.

Overall, the skill is much simpler to build and use (with a lower mana cost to match), while retaining the core mechanic that made it interesting.

Shrapnel Shot
Shrapnel Shot is now called Galvanic Arrow, making the Lightning theme more obvious and differentiating the skill from the new Shrapnel Ballista. The skill still has a damage cone, but its projectiles are now limited range, traveling a base distance of 40 before projectile speed modifiers (which is about twice the range of Cleave). The skill now comes with two additional projectiles, giving a close range focus to the skill. It also has added lightning damage that grows as the gem levels.

The skill has a new mechanic that lets Projectile Speed modifiers apply to its Area of Effect, making it much easier to scale up the skill's damage cone while simultaneously increasing the range of its projectiles.

Overall, the skill, is now focused on being a close range skill at lower levels, and a powerful and sizeable damage area at higher levels. Adjustments to its damage mean that the Collateral Damage threshold jewel should no longer be required, so we're stopping the jewel dropping. Existing copies will deal 50% increased damage with the cone, rather than giving a 50% chance for double damage.

Burning Arrow
Burning Arrow has a new mechanic that applies an additional stacking Burning effect whenever it ignites, dealing a portion of the ignite damage. This can stack up to 5 times, and lets you get more damage against a target that survives multiple arrows. The goal of this change is to improve the skill's single target damage. The new stacking burning effect can't proliferate, as it doesn't count as an Ignite.

The stacking burning damage and the More Damage with Ignite of the skill also grow as the gem levels. Because of these changes, the Sudden Ignition threshold jewel is no longer required to have the skill be competitive at higher levels. Sudden Ignition and Pitch Darkness will no longer drop, and existing copies of Sudden Ignition will disable the new stacking burning effect of the skill.

Adjustments Tornado Shot
Tornado Shot has been a ubiquitous bow skill for some time now, with its mechanics allowing both high single target damage and large area spread, while being very flexible in how it is built. We'd like to keep the flexibility, while making sure the skill doesn't excel in every aspect.

To that end, we're making the secondary projectiles into limited range projectiles. This will mean the secondary projectiles won't travel as far from the target location unless you've invested heavily in Projectile Speed, giving the skill's high area more of an opportunity cost.

Ice Shot
Ice Shot is having its chilled ground removed, as changes to calculations of Chill and Shock will make it much easier to apply Chill to a target equivalent to the slow that was previously granted by Chilled Ground. The chilled ground was only applying to a very small area, so now the skill will have a more reliable chill over its full area of effect. We'll also be adding new stats to the skill that make its chill more powerful and reliable.

Blast Rain
The number of Blast Rain explosions is now affected by the number of projectiles the skill fires. This means that additional projectiles are now a significant damage multiplier, similar to how additional projectiles affect Barrage. This will make its focussed damage much more competitive with other bow skills.

Its enchantment is being buffed as a result of this change, granting one additional projectile instead of a chance for an additional blast.

Scourge Arrow
Scourge Arrow's base weapon damage has been lowered, but the skill now deals added Chaos Damage that grows as the gem levels. The skill was often used with builds adding elemental damage, so this change is intended to give it a greater reward to Chaos damage based builds while also improving its usability while leveling.

Split Arrow
Split Arrow now has added physical damage on the gem that grows as it levels, with slightly lower base damage. This makes it more powerful while leveling, being less dependent on having a powerful bow.

Other Bow and Wand skills have received numerical tweaks, which you'll be able to see when we provide the full list of skill gems.

Visual improvements

We've added an arrow 'surge' to many bow skills, as well as a burst of energy released from the bow as you fire. This makes arrow skills feel much punchier and easier to see at lower levels.

Check out the reworked skills below:

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There will be more changes that we'll be making as we finalise bow changes, including enchantments, passives, unique balance and more. You'll have to wait until the Balance Manifesto and Patch Notes to hear them!

In Conquerors of the Atlas, we've rebalanced many campaign bosses in order to make them more challenging. We've also added new skills to some of the bosses and improved their existing skills as well. You'll be able to check out these changes in a couple of weeks! In the meantime, have a look at today's preview of some of the fights.

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