Path of Exile: Harvest - Warcries and Rebalanced Unique Items
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If you’re someone who prefers a “slower but stronger” playstyle in your action-RPGs, you’ll be pleased to learn that the upcoming Harvest expansion for Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile will introduce some changes aimed at making that playstyle more viable. One of the angles of improvement is an overhaul of the game’s Warcry skills. This announcement goes over that overhaul and is accompanied by this quick video:
More on that:
In Path of Exile: Harvest, we're adding four new Warcry skills, one new support and are reworking three existing ones. We've generally improved the options available for those who want to utilise Warcries in their builds. Today's news post reveals new skills and what to expect in terms of changes.
Changes to Warcry Skills
Some time ago we decided that it would be good to do a balance pass that focused on two-handed weapons and the "slower but stronger" playstyle. While we were exploring how best to achieve this, it became clear that giving Warcry skills some long overdue improvements could be of great help.
Our first step in doing this was to define for ourselves what a Warcry should be and what function it fulfils. We found that Warcries should:These rules can be flexible but provide a base starting point of what Warcries should look like within the new system. We started by reworking existing Warcries to fit into this set of rules, and as we made new ones to fill in any gaps we felt were present.
- Release a shockwave that taunts enemies.
- Apply either a buff or debuff where its power is based on nearby enemies.
- Exert (or "power up") your next few attacks with special properties.
We also changed the mechanics of 'nearby enemies' to care about the power of these enemies. In the old system, five small monsters would provide five times the Warcry benefit compared to a single unique boss. This felt wrong. The new system now counts magic, rare and unique enemies proportionate to their power so that your Warcry scales more effectively with the content you're facing. Currently this works by counting normal monsters as one, magic monsters as two, rare as ten and unique as twenty.
Enduring Cry
Enduring Cry received a relatively minimal rework but we wanted to see if we could improve various aspects of this skill while we were reworking the others.
It still generates endurance charges based on the power of nearby enemies, but also provides a short burst of very powerful healing. It also temporarily gives you additional resistance and physical damage reduction for a short duration.
Unlike other Warcries, Enduring Cry does not exert your next few attacks; its benefits are purely defensive.
Intimidating Cry
Previously, Intimidating Cry was only obtainable through a unique item. In addition to it now being available as a skill gem, it has undergone a full rework to be a lot more punchy and exciting.
Its benefits are purely offensive. It achieves this by intimidating nearby enemies and exerting your next few attacks to deal double damage. It also provides a buff that lets you ignore some of your enemies' physical damage reduction based on nearby enemy power. (Note: we'll reveal what number of exerted attacks each Warcry creates closer to launch)
It's intended to be the offensive counterpart to Enduring Cry. It should work in a wide variety of builds to make your next few attacks feel really powerful.
Ancestral Cry
This is a new Warcry which was designed to work well specifically with strike skills. It causes your next few strikes to also target nearby enemies, similar to the Ancestral Call support.
It also provides a buff based on the power of nearby enemies which both increases your melee range as well as providing bonus armour.
It's intended to be a well-rounded Warcry that generally provides benefit to anybody interested in playing strike skills.
Seismic Cry
We've created a new category of skills known as 'slam skills' and wanted to make a Warcry that synergises well with these skills. It causes your next few slam skills to have an increased area of effect and more damage which both increase with each attack until you reset the Warcry or your exerted attacks run out.
It knocks enemies back and interrupts them when it taunts them. It then grants you a buff based on nearby enemy power which reduces enemy stun threshold, making it easier to stun enemies with your hits.
Rallying Cry
Rallying Cry has been reworked and given a new identity. It has traditionally worked well with support-style builds and we designed it to provide a new way to support allies.
It causes nearby allies to gain a buff that grants them a percentage of your main-hand weapon's damage based on the power of nearby enemies. It also exerts your next few attacks to deal more damage based on how many allies you have near you. Unlike most other Warcries, the power of the buff comes from both the power of both nearby enemies and allies.
This is a rework to an existing skill to give it a new identity. This obviously seemed to fit a very supportive-type of role, but we wanted to do a new way to support allies.
It works well with minions or to support a full party of allies.
Infernal Cry
This was previously known as Abyssal Cry and has received a full rework. We aimed to keep its old features while providing some new exciting ones to refresh its appeal.
It covers enemies in ash, a debuff that scales with the power of nearby enemies. It also causes enemies that are affected by this debuff to explode with fire damage when they are slain.
It also exerts your next few attacks to trigger Combust when hitting an enemy. Combust is a triggered Area of Effect attack skill granted by the Infernal Cry gem. It scales with attack damage modifiers and can benefit from your supports.
General's Cry
This is an intense new Warcry that has been designed to be very open-ended in how it can be used. It's a Skill/Support hybrid which melee attack skills can be linked to. This Warcry summons ghostly mirage warriors from corpses near you. These ghosts use one of the linked skills once before dissipating.
The number of warriors you summon is based on the total power of nearby enemies as well as the power of nearby corpses.
General's Cry lets you summon your own legion of warriors to destroy your enemies using a large selection of skills.
Additionally, there’s also this announcement that shows off a few newly rebalanced unique items.
