By now, Path of Exile fans have probably had some time with the latest challenge league, Sentinel, which released on PC on May 13th. Post launch of the new league, Grinding Gear Games seems to have gotten quite a lot of feedback, especially where monster difficulty is concerned. The team has been working hard at balancing these enemies so that players don’t go insane, and Producer Chris Wilson took to reddit to explain about the changes, along with some upcoming ones.
It didn’t take long after the initial release of Path of Exile: Sentinel to learn that the changes were a little more than they anticipated for the average player. Through player feedback, along with death data, Grinding Gear Games decided to decrease the difficulty of rare and magic monsters, but they didn’t stop there. Over the course of the weekend, additional changes were rolled out, and more are planned, in relation to Archnemesis modifiers.
“Previously, rare monsters you encountered generally had two Archnemesis mods, but could spawn with as many as three or four. Now, they will default to one modifier, with a chance of having two or three."
– Chris Wilson, Producer, Path of Exile, POE Reddit Post
The patch to change the modifiers for rare monsters rolled out server side on May 14th, and goes hand in hand with Wilson’s original assertion that some enemies were just too difficult. It doesn’t mean that they’ve completely removed monster difficulty, on the contrary, there should still be some rare monsters with multiple modifiers that will be challenging for your build, but those battles will not happen nearly as often as before.
The final post by Wilson led into their intentions of modifiers moving forward. In possibly the most helpful post yet, a list of all the modifiers and what they do was included. While the post does provide an exhaustive list of the modifiers as they are at this moment, the team plans to make a balancing pass over the next week which will change them in ways not yet mentioned. One common complaint Wilson addressed in the post revolved around the rewards for killing these tough rare enemies.
Some players complained that they weren’t being rewarded nearly enough comparative to the difficulty of the enemies. While nothing specifically was decided on making a change to the reward structure, Wilson did say the team is open to looking into and ensuring players are getting the appropriate XP and drop rates according to the effort it takes to kill these enemies. A fine sentiment that we hope results in a positive outcome for players going forward.
