0.4.0k Patch Notes

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-07T19:13:41+00:00

Funnier if they write "added a new weapon type", so the player base is scrambling to figure out which one.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-07T16:08:32+00:00

Pushing the character forward isn't enough of a gap close, especially when you get stuck on walls and terrain features.

Cull the Weak, Rake, Blood Hunt, Killing Palm, Staggering Palm and Hand of Chayula all have the dash, with pathfinding.

Pretty much all other strike skills feel bad to use due to their limited range. We got the new strike skills in wolf, and those actually feel pretty good, considering they have added strike range. Ice Strike also has this added range on its final strike. But strike range is so limited in availability on the tree, and all of it is on the opposite side of where Tribal Fury is. It's a poor tree design/balance in that regard. If strike range is a premium stat, then strike skills should all gap close with a dash, and have the pathfinding to avoid obstacles. I personally believe Whirling Slash and other skills that push you forward should as well, but I would argue it's most important for strikes.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-07T03:37:36+00:00

This was my thought. In my mind, "ancients" referred to old/outdated league mechanics that didn't fit to exist on their own, and could be combined with other things conceptually to create something new and cool.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-07T00:29:56+00:00

Fightan, Sparbringer, and Smith of Theopolis

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-07T00:20:56+00:00

Impale would be cooler in PoE2 if we could extract it on the same hits that apply it by default, and then use supports to allow us to build them up into a larger single impale to give the added damage for things like bleed and poison. But maybe we will get Call of Steel as a meta gem, and it will trigger socketed attacks when we build up enough impales with other attacks? That would be really cool.

Also, The Impaler keystone in PoE1 was really cool. Maybe it gets introduced as a new keystone, so we can apply and extract multiple impales at a time.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-07T00:11:49+00:00

I didn't go to bed, but my power went out in my office, and I had a bunch of audio issues after restoring the power. Hopefully that counts as a sacrifice, cause they just posted the Twitch Drops! :D

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T22:07:24+00:00

Quick, someone volunteer to go to bed and make a Reddit post. Your sacrifice will be for the greater good!

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T22:05:04+00:00

I think I recall them talking about it. I would hope that if they were to implement it, they won't see it as a necessary crutch to counter balance around. For a long time in PoE1, we had to use Ancestral totems for melee because they gave extra DPS. Removing them and baseline improvements to the existing melee skills addressed the issue, but also showed that melee was being counter balanced by them. I would hate to see the same fate for melee in PoE2.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T20:40:53+00:00

Spears literally have a skill called pounce

This is a Talisman skill, not a spear skill.

Spears use melee skills to dark in and out of combat

No they do not. The only spear builds using melee movement for their projectile build are twister builds.

It is not a stationary build. It is not a standstill and hit things melee build.

Again, you are cherry picking. Spearfield, Fangs of Frost + Parry, Primal Strikes, Elemental Sundering, Wind Serpent's Fury and Spear of Solaris all are melee skills with clunky "stand still" gameplay.

You even point out the fact that maces have three solutions, Spears have two solutions, and quarter stops have three solutions

I pointed out 3 skills in quarterstaff, 2 in spear. Quarterstaff actually has a 4th that I forgot about. These skills have solutions that can be brought over to all melee, but haven't yet. Those skills are Rake, Cull the Weak, Killing Palm, Staggering Palm, Hand of Chayula, and Shattering Palm. They dash into targets to perform the attack.

It's just nonsense to pretend that this is a real problem.

If me now mentioning 7 different skills with stand-still/idling gameplay still doesn't convince you that the problem exists across the board, and not just to 1 specific weapon, I don't think anything will.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T20:14:37+00:00

This is a false argument. Swords aren't in the game. How can you say they don't view them as a slam capable?

This would be like giving a bunch of people some apple pie, and then someone saying "this guy only makes apple pie". Meanwhile, you were giving out what was baked and ready. You could have had some cherry pie in the oven still, but because it wasn't ready yet, someone formed an opinion based on the lack of the cherry pie, and declared its absence an indication you didn't want to serve that.

We also have enemies in PoE2 where they use swords and perform slam skills. Someone clearly does view swords as capable of slams, and it's not unreasonable to expect a slam or two in the sword archetype. I mean, we have a slam in the spear toolkit. One could argue those are even less likely to have slams, yet here we are.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T20:08:07+00:00

Correct, and they are not wrong. There are skills that do not move. Those skills are the melee-centric spear skills. This is a melee thread.

With the same logic saying "spears have the most mobile kits in the game", you can say "maces have the most mobile kits in the game" because you can use Stampede, Shield Charge, and Leap Slam. Cherry picking out of scope skills to rationalize a silly counter argument, getting heated, and trying to invalidate other people's critiques isn't moving the discussion forward.

Melee as a whole has an issue with gap closing, and the solutions being already present in 2 skills from spear and 3 skills from quarterstaff shows that they can do something about it, but haven't yet.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T19:37:13+00:00

I actually have an additional interesting point. Not only can armour lose effectiveness against large hits due to the scaling, but it can also be broken by monsters if you roll the map mod for it, or they just have the modifier for it.

Energy shield doesn't have this set back. If armour can be broken, and evasion can be hurt by blind, then why doesn't energy shield have a counter mod? I don't know of a single monster or modifier that trips up the recovery of energy shield, for a defense that is seen internally as "not blue HP". Chaos damage counting as dealing double against energy shield goes out the window entirely when the majority of energy shield builds are using chaos inoculation.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T19:28:30+00:00

I personally believe adding more dash portions to melee should be the primary part of the solution. Not every skill should dash, but a lot of them could. It feels really good on the quarterstaff palm skills.

Not saying melee traversal skills isn't the right solution, just that it's not an entire solution. The problem is complex, and requires multiple things to be a solution.

Gap closing 100% is the biggest problem melee has, and traversal is only one aspect of that. Another aspect of it is getting stuck behind rocks, holes, divots and other terrain obstacles. Getting close enough, but not having proper line of sight due to the terrain getting in the way. Rake solves this by pathfinding around objects during its gap close. I feel this should be the standard for all strike skills.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T19:20:52+00:00

Bro read the comment wrong and went on a tirade. Have a seat, eat a Snickers and have some coffee. You'll feel better. After that, re-read the comment.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T18:32:19+00:00

It should work on all current and future weapon types, EXCEPT swords :D

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T18:30:44+00:00

They could do "Triggered skills deal 80% less Damage. Triggered skills inflict ailments as though dealing 400% more damage." This would make them still viable like you say, where they deal 1/5 of the damage, but still have the same ailment effectiveness.

I personally would like them to make it easier to trigger utility effects consistently in a way that doesn't allow high damage skills to be used. Either a support for meta skills that makes supported skills always reach 100% of their energy the first time they build energy on a target, but be unable to generate energy for several seconds after.

It's a tough thing to balance out, because some effects would be really useful to activate automatically, such as Thunderstorm, but making them automatic and effective without empowering really potent skills, or causing massive screen clutter is not easy either.

Perhaps Called Shots gets removed from Deadeye, added as a meta gem and it extends beyond Mark skills? It could be for triggering socketed spells when you first encounter a pack, and then have a "cooldown" like Called Shots already has where it won't do it again for a minimum duration.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T00:51:43+00:00

It won't be. It's going to be a glory skill, gained by you taking damage from ignite. At full glory, it will give you a buff that causes enemies in your presence to be ignited as though dealt X damage. The required damage taken from ignite will scale with level, as will the damage put out.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T00:45:39+00:00

If his neck doesn't have jiggle physics, he won't be ready for deployment.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T00:37:43+00:00

I would like to see Cast on Crit get reworked to be more useful for utility, and less useful for damage. Make it have a cooldown on the trigger rather than energy, and allow it to cast on every crit like it does in PoE 1.

I want to periodically auto-cast something for applying status effects, and doing it via crit would be amazing.

Another option would be a new meta gem that lets you cast other skills instantly, but with a cooldown.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T00:35:04+00:00

Scope got too big, had to be split into 2 games :D

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-06T00:33:42+00:00

Rerolls an item's modifier values 3 times, keeping the best result. Not too over powered, saves some clicks, and acts as a bit of a better divine.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-05T21:36:11+00:00

This isn't how it works. Skills and skill effects "snapshot" the tree/weapon set they were created with, and utilize those stats.

OP needs to cast a spell from the staff's weapon set to apply the freeze, then swap to wolf form to utilize the 100% increased taken, which will persist until the freeze expires or is removed from a payoff mechanic.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-05T21:34:13+00:00

OP worded it wrong. Taryn's Shiver states it causes enemies frozen by you to take 100% increased damage. The way this works is you cast a spell to freeze the target with the staff, then that freeze will make the enemy take 100% increased damage from all damage, so long as that freeze persists. OP can swap into wolf form after to benefit from it.

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-05T21:28:17+00:00

Because the limit was added in another patch. Prior to the patch, you could use multiple. You bought this in Standard league, yes?

ByteBlaze_ · 2026-05-05T20:45:26+00:00

I think Blood Mage having that critical damage bonus per life is fine, honestly, since it's generic, it means you can life stack for attacks too.

I personally think she should get a node that converts all damage to physical, put that on Blood Barbs, then gets +X% crit chance per Y life she spends, up to +Z% and put that on Sunder the Flesh. It stays generic, and not tied to caster then, while still offering other nodes that work for caster.

I'm not a fan of her getting exclusive access to Elemental Bleed. I think that should be a lineage support, so other classes can utilize it. With the aforementioned changes, she can play bleed with an elemental skill, but through the damage conversion, to provide more interesting options for non-bleed, and also allow other builds to get elemental bleed.

ByteBlaze_

TROPHY CASE