Path of Exile News

Last week, we revealed some of the Poison attack skills coming with Blight. Today we'll show the two remaining Poison gems, Venom Gyre and Plague Bearer.

Venom Gyre
Venom Gyre is a new level 12 Claw and Dagger skill. Fling out a poisonous shuriken blade that deals damage based on your weapon, with physical to chaos conversion and some added chaos damage. It returns to you when it hits an enemy, wall, or after a time. When returning, the blade folds up to pierce through enemies, but deals less damage.

Catch all blades that return to you, storing them around you like charges. You can have up to 30 of these blades floating around you.

If you use Whirling Blades, you'll fling out all stored blades over the length of the whirl, throwing them out in a spiral. Whirling straight through an enemy will cause lots of the blades to hit that foe.

The skill has many interesting interactions with projectile modifying supports; Pierce lets you deal damage to an enemy twice by hitting them once when you throw it through them and then again when it returns, Faster Projectiles lets you fling the blades much further before they return, Chain bounces the blades between enemies before it returns to you, and Fork splits the blades into two, so you get to catch twice as many blades as you threw out.

Plague Bearer
Cast Plague Bearer once to enable an ongoing effect on your character. While active, you'll deal less poison damage, but a portion of the remaining damage your poisons apply will be stored up in Plague Bearer's buff. The higher the level of Plague Bearer, the more damage it can store. It stops lessening your poison damage when the skill has stored its maximum amount.

At any point, you can activate Plague Bearer again. It will switch modes, become a damaging area around your character. This deals 12% of the stored damage per second as chaos damage over time to enemies around you. This lasts until it runs out of stored damage, or until the skill is activated again. This damage isn't affected by your character's damage modifiers. While in this damaging mode, you won't be able to store up any more poison damage, and your poisons will be full strength again. When you reactivate the skill or the stored damage runs out, the skill returns once again to storing damage.

The skill acts much like a temporary Righteous Fire, letting you run through packs of enemies to wipe them out, or giving you an additional damage boost against tougher foes when you need it most.

Check out these gems in action by watching the video below:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We hope you've enjoyed this look at the upcoming skills, and that you'll give them a go in the Blight league coming at the end of this week. You'll be able to find more details on these skills in the upcoming level 20 gem reveals.

In the Blight League you'll have the option to complete 40 new challenges and earn exclusive microtransaction rewards. At 12, 24 and 36 challenges you will earn the Blight Helmet, Blight Portal Effect and Blight Wings respectively. Completing challenges also grants you pieces of the Blight Totem Pole Hideout decoration.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
You'll be able to check out the full list of challenges in game when Path of Exile: Blight launches on PC on September 6th.

The Legion League on PC ends on Monday September 2nd at 3PM (PDT), so it's your last weekend to finish your challenges. We're also running a 50 Point Sale with more than 200 microtransactions available for 50 points or less. To make this sale more satisfying, we're offering one free Frontier Mystery Box when you spend points!

Legion Ends Soon
The Legion League on PC ends on Monday September 2nd at 3PM (PDT), so it's your last weekend to finish your challenges.

Thank you to everyone who played in Legion. It's been a fun league and we hope it will become a great addition to Path of Exile's core in 3.8.0. If you've been enjoying the Legion league, check out the exclusive Legion Brimmed Hat before it leaves the store next week!

50 Point Sale
We've just started a 50 Point Sale where we're discounting a huge assortment of cosmetic effects. More than 200 microtransactions are available for 50 points or less, including Helmet Attachments, Pets, Skill Effects, Hideout Decorations and more. Check out the full list of this weekend's special by pressing M in game.

Get a Free Mystery Box When You Spend Points
As is tradition at the end of the league, we're offering a free Frontier Mystery Box when you spend any amount of points in the store. This means you can purchase another Weta for your in-game insectarium, or the Legion Brimmed Hat and get one free Frontier Mystery Box as a gift from us.

Please note: it's only possible to get one free Frontier Mystery Box from this promotion. Making additional microtransaction purchases will not grant additional mystery boxes. Purchasing a supporter pack will not grant a free Mystery Box but spending points from a supporter pack can grant a free Mystery Box.

This offer will end at 1pm on September 6th (PDT). Thank you for your support!

What to Expect Next Week
The Blight expansion launches in just 7 days, so you all know what to expect next week: more teasers, a development manifesto and of course, patch notes. Here is our news schedule for the upcoming week (this schedule follows New Zealand's Monday to Friday work days, but in other countries might be Sunday to Thursday):

• Mon: Blight Challenge Rewards and Part Two of New Gems for the Assassin Archetype.
  
• Tue: 3.8.0 Balance Development Manifesto.
  
• Wed: 3.8.0 Patch Notes, Passive Tree and Item Filter Information.
  
• Thu: Showcase of the new and reworked gems (at Level 20 with 20% Quality).
  
• Fri: What to expect when Blight launches and possibly a torrent pre-download for the patch.

Additionally, our technical director Jonathan and game designer Mark (Neon) will appear on the Baeclast podcast at 12AM Sunday September 1st (PDT) to discuss the Blight expansion. Check it out live at https://www.twitch.tv/tarkecat!

Have a great weekend everyone! See you next week!

The Blight expansion will come alongside major changes to the Mine system, as well as three new Mines, a new reservation skill for trappers and miners, three new supports and reworks to existing mine supports and unique items.

Mine Mechanic Changes

• Mines are now thrown, letting you deploy them at long range.
  
• Mines take less of your time to place now, taking 0.25 seconds for each throw.
  
• Mine Detonation is now always Instant.
  
• Mines detonate in sequence. Each mine detonation starts a detonation timer on one or more mines in an area around it, with the detonation time getting faster each time. This also means that you can continue to throw mines while a detonation sequence is occurring, and they'll be detonated by the sequence. This works particularly well for mines which have additional effects for each detonation in sequence.
  
• Mine skills each have unique, stacking auras that affect enemies. The more mines you deploy, the more auras affecting enemies around them. These mines are considered aura skills, allowing many Aura stats from passives and items to apply to them.
  
• Mines reserve mana while they're active, but have much lower mana costs.
  
• Mines can be detonated much earlier when deployed, including detonating in the air.
  
• The base mine limit is now 15, up from 5. You can get up to 23 mines at once by combining passives and the Minefield Support.
  
• The base mine duration is now 5 seconds, except for Smoke Mine which has an 8 second duration.
  

Stormblast Mine
Stormblast Mine is a new skill available at level 1. When placed, it has a stacking aura that increases the damage nearby enemies take by 3%. This means that it provides 45% increased damage taken when you've got a full set of mines placed, even more if you have additional mines from passives and items.

When you detonate Stormblast Mines, they release a lightning nova around them, with a high chance to shock and increased shock effect.

Icicle Mine
Icicle Mine is a new skill available at level 12. When placed, it has a stacking aura that increases critical chance for hits against enemies around it by 10%. When you detonate Icicle Mine, it releases a nova of projectiles, firing five projectiles from the first mine, then an additional projectile for each two mines in the detonation sequence.

Icicle Mine replaces existing copies of Freeze Mine.

Pyroclast Mine
Pyroclast Mine is the level 28 Mine skill. When placed, it has a stacking aura that adds fire damage to hits against enemies near it, which grows as the gem levels. When detonated, the mine releases a fire nova and a salvo of mortar projectiles that fly up before raining down on enemies around the mine. As with Icicle Mine, for each two detonations in the sequence, an additional mortar is fired.

Pyroclast Mine replaces existing copies of Fire Nova Mine.

Summon Skitterbots
Summon Skitterbots is a reservation skill that summons two fast moving, invulnerable minions. One has a shock aura while the other has a chilling aura. While they're active, they'll grant you more Trap and Mine damage. They'll each also look for and activate traps and mines near enemies. On Mines, they'll activate and then re-arm the mine, which won't set off a detonation sequence. On Traps, they'll trigger a number of traps at once.

Blastchain Mine Support & High-Impact Mine Support
Existing Remote Mine Supports have been changed into the Blastchain Mine Support, a level 8 gem that turns supported spells, bow attacks or wand attacks into mines. It now grants less damage as a result of the much shorter mine throw time, and 5% more damage for each mine detonated in sequence.

We've also added a new support at level 31, the High-Impact Mine Support that also turns supported spells, bow attacks or wand attacks into mines. The supported skills deal less damage, but have an aura that gives hits against nearby enemies a chance to deal Double Damage.

These two supports let you choose to specialize in creating long cascades or creating powerful auras when turning a skill into a mine.

Swift Assembly Support
Swift Assembly Support is a new level 4 Support Gem for traps and mines. It grants a chance on throwing a trap or mine to throw an additional trap or mine, a smaller chance to throw two additional, and a very small chance to throw 3 additional. This is particularly useful for Mines, letting you get higher stacks of auras and longer detonation sequences without greatly extending your throw time.

Charged Mines Support
Similar to the Charged Traps Support, the new Charged Mines Support allows you to generate Power and Frenzy charges when detonating supported mines near enemies, with additional mine throwing speed per frenzy charge and critical chance per power charge.

Changes to Existing Gems and Items

• Minefield Support now places 4 mines rapidly, but with a slower total throw time. It allows 4 additional mines to be placed. It is now a level 38 gem.
  
• Smoke Mine doesn't start a sequence when detonated, grants more movement speed than before, and modifiers to mine duration will apply to the speed buff's duration.
  
• We've made changes to the Curtain Call and Tremor Rod unique items.
  
• The +1 Mine Placed shaper helmet mod will no longer appear on items, but existing modifiers will still remain. This is because placing additional mines is now more powerful as a result of various mine changes and Minefield changes.
  

We're going to be showing all of the mine passive changes, the Saboteur Ascendancy and more new Poison skills in the coming days. In the meantime, check out the video of the new Mine gems below:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In Path of Exile: Blight we're introducing 18 new Divination Cards, created by our supporters. You may have already seen some of those in our teasers and on the announcement page. Today we're revealing 10 more.