Path of Exile: Massive Changes to Curses in the Next Expansion

The next expansion for the action RPG Path of Exile is going to be exciting. Grinding Gear Games has recently unveiled some massive changes to curses, which make them much more viable in 3.20 than they are now.

Hexes are Stronger Against All Monsters

According to GGG, Hex builds are usually quite powerful against minor enemies, but they don’t shine where they’re needed the most, such as battling pinnacle bosses Sirus and the Searing Exarch. This is due, in part, to the hidden penalties that reduce their effectiveness. As it stands, the Hex penalty for fighting unique monsters is at 33% and pinnacle bosses at 66%. These are pretty substantial, thus prompting GGG to do something.

In Path of Exile’s next expansion, these Hex penalties are completely removed. This means that the effects of Hexes are effective against all monsters in the game.

Doom’s Removal

Those who are using self-cast Hex builds now might have to make some adjustments to their passive skill tree again because Doom is going away in 3.20.

For the uninitiated, Doom is a mechanic in Path of Exile where applying curses manually on the enemy builds up stacks of Doom. This allows certain attacks like Hexblast to deal more damage depending on the number of Doom stacks the target has accumulated.

That said, the company stated that while it was working as originally intended for self-cast Hexes, Doom is a mechanic that added a lot of complexity. This is one of the reasons why self-cast Hex builds are not that popular in the Kalandra League.

Since Doom will be removed in the upcoming expansion, GGG is set to make changes to builds that require interaction with the said mechanic. As to what those adjustments are, it remains to be seen until the full patch notes for 3.20 is released.

Occultist Ascendancy Changes

Certain Occultist notable passives are adjusted to account for the changes made to curses in general. Malediction’s “15% increased Effect of your Curses” and “Enemies you Curse have Malediction” are completely removed. Instead, Profane Bloom’s effect, “Your Hexes can affect Hexproof enemies,” is moved to Malediction. Because substantial changes are made to Malediction, the said notable passive will be renamed as it no longer applies Malediction to enemies the players have cursed.

The 15% increased curse effect is moved to the passive skill tree to give non-Occultist players a chance to incorporate this into their builds.

While this may seem like a huge blow to Occultists, GGG reassures players that it is still the strongest overall Ascendancy when it comes to applying as many Hexes to an enemy as possible.

So, what can you say about the changes mentioned above?

Path of Exile is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.