When Chris Wilson, lead developer for Path of Exile, said that the effects of certain boss nodes would be part of the baseline, a lot of people were happy. This means that players will no longer have to take specific passives on the Atlas, which makes bossing more accessible in general. However, since Patch 3.20 was released, this was actually not the case.
Redditor @tuvang expressed their sentiment about this on the platform, where they mentioned specific Atlas Passives, including Height of Hubris, Pay for Play, Eater/Exarch notables, and nodes for Cortex.
Height of Hubris, an Atlas Passive that increased the effect of modifiers for Maven Invitations by 100%, has been removed in the Forbidden Sanctum expansion. The removal of this node means that completing Maven Invitations drops far less loot now than before.
Pay for Play is another node removed in Patch 3.20. This not only improved the players’ chance to get an Awakened Support Gem, but it gave a 25% chance for Orbs of Conflict to be duplicated as well. Unfortunately, players would have to farm Maven-witnessed boss encounters more often now if they want to get their hands on Awakened Gems since Pay for Play is no longer present in the game.
According to @tuvang, these changes were meant to make bosses more accessible to Path of Exile players. But endgame loot is not in a good spot right now because players must take on Uber versions of Pinnacle Bosses if they want to get some highly coveted items.
Another user chimed in that Grinding Gear Games wanted to reduce the need to completely change one’s passives for specific content. But in reality, the opposite is true.
The removal of Pay for Play, for example, was so that players will have a chance of getting an Awakened Support Gem on Maven-witnessed bosses instead of fighting Maven herself. However, some players have reported that it took them over 100 bosses just to get a single gem to drop. This shows that Pay for Play’s absence made things worse than what GGG had intended.
Redditor @HallComplex8005 is a little hopeful though. They said that the removal of Height of Hubris and other boss nodes from the Atlas Passive Tree may indicate that they will reappear in a different form in a future expansion.
But what do you think? Do you agree with @tuvang that bossing in the Forbidden Sanctum expansion just feels bad right now?
Path of Exile is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
