One of the biggest problems with Path of Exile 3.19 came down to Archnemesis monsters. Rare monsters, i.e. more powerful than your average mob monsters, would often have Archnemesis modifiers that could make these enemies insanely tanky or dole out insane damage. What’s more is that oftentimes you’d see these modifiers stack on top of each other, so you could pretty routinely find totally unkillable monsters that would, in fact, be significantly more powerful than the bosses in the game. This would break down builds of characters that would otherwise be fine, and ultimately, it made the whole gaming experience a lot more frustrating than it needed to be. However, GGG has gone and done what was unthinkable for a lot of the PoE playerbase: they’ve gone ahead and removed Archnemesis from the game, returning PoE to a more simple system of monster mods. You can read the patch notes for specifics about this change, but in general, this has smoothed out a lot of problems players had with the game. Now, rare monsters are nowhere near as punishing or scary, and you won’t have to design your build around being able to take down these types of monsters. You won’t have to worry about tearing through a zone only to get instantly obliterated in a fraction of a second by an Archnemesis mob. Another huge problem with Path of Exile 3.19 came down to loot, most especially in the context of Archnemesis monsters. The problem became that the way GGG made loot work came down, oftentimes, to finding rare Archnemesis monsters. If you could find the right Archnemesis mob with the right mods, and if you were powerful enough to kill it, you could get crazy amounts of loot all at once compared to what you were likely to find just playing the game normally. This became such a problem it spawned the infamous magic find meta. Magic find is a pretty familiar concept in ARPGs. Essentially, you can kit out your character with gear that increases the quantity and rarity of loot dropped by monsters you kill. This gear isn’t especially powerful in terms of offense and defense, and it’s almost always ludicrously expensive to afford, but it had a ton of benefits during Path of Exile 3.19. Because of how much loot was concentrated into Archnemesis mobs with the right modifiers, folks who could afford it would build magic find characters and party up with other gamers who were best equipped to actually take down those powerful monsters, and they’d sell their services. If you wanted loot, you’d want until you found the right mob, you’d hop on Discord and find yourself a magic find party that would join your game, kill your mob, and take a portion of the loot. As you might expect, this was extremely tedious and almost nobody liked doing it. Thankfully, with the removal of Archnemesis mobs, this meta is dead, even if magic find gear is still part of the game. In Path of Exile 3.19, the Lake of Kalandra mechanic was fairly widely considered a letdown. It was essentially a fairly basic area surrounded by water you could walk through, fight monsters in, and get less loot than you’d expect from. While it didn’t break the game, it wasn’t especially fun or lucrative. Even with patches and tweaks, for a mechanic based around one of Path of Exile’s most iconic characters, many thought it was a disappointment. With the 3.20 Forbidden Sanctum League, though, things are looking up a bit. This League’s mechanic turns Path of Exile into a proper roguelike where you can do runs through an ever-changing set of rooms, and the farther you get the bigger the rewards, while each run will be different with a unique set of buffs and debuffs. Plus, there’s also a new ‘Resolve’ mechanic that works like a second health, so to speak, that you have to manage. Rougelike action is a great fit for Path of Exile, although the mechanic does need some tweaking in its current state. Unfortunately, there are too many debuffs and not enough buffs in the current state of Sanctums, and rewards, especially for finishing challenging runs, aren’t really in line with what you’d expect from a rougelike mode. Of course, most League mechanics launch needing tweaks and balancing, so we’ll have to see where the Sanctums end up, but as of now, they definitely show more promise than the Lakes did in 3.19.
