(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)
Anyone who missed out on the previous league, Ritual, has nothing to worry about. While the Trialmaster's Ultimatum fights will take the spotlight, Ritual battles have been incorporated into the endgame Atlas, so you'll run into them occasionally. While largely leaning in the player's favour, there have been some nerfs made to the rewards of both Harvest and Talisman leagues, aiming to bring them more in line with other sources of loot. Naturally some players will be upset that an obvious path to victory has been closed off, but power inflation is very much a thing in Path of Exile. A level 70 character in 2021 is a vastly more powerful beast than one from 2018 POE currency trade .
It's not a Path of Exile expansion without new ways to kill monsters, either. With Ultimatum, they're adding four new skill gems and four new support gems, all based around the classic Vaal themes of blood sacrifice and risk-taking. The Corrupting Fever and Exsanguinate skills allow you to literally use your own blood as a projectile. Reap allows you to invest health in sweeping magical scythe attacks that get more powerful and costly through repeated use.
Death comes quickly in Path of Exile—especially if you're literally hitting enemies with your own hit points—so there's some new risk-mitigation options too. The Petrified Blood spell makes the bottom half of your health bar "safer." With it equipped, potentially fatal damage will be dealt out over time instead of instantly, giving you a precious few seconds to chug a healing potion instead of instantly killing you.
(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)
The new support gems lean into this theme as well. Arrogance lets you empower passive Aura buffs by reserving part of your health bar instead of mana. Lifetap lets you power any skill through health instead of magic, applying a buff to damage done if you invest enough HP. Bloodthirst provides damage buffs to skills used while on 50 percent or lower health. The last new support gem, Cruelty, stands out by being just a straight buff to damage done, but I suppose not everything can be fun, games, and blood sacrifice.
The last round of buffs that Ultimatum brings to the table is another wave of upgrades for Vaal skill gems. These double-function skills let you cast them normally, but also let you harvest souls from enemies to charge powerful smartbomb-like supercharged attacks. They've made some tweaks so your Vaal skills will recharge much faster just by hurting bosses, making players less reliant on filler enemies between phases. They've also run yet another balance pass on Vaal skills in general. While the exact changes won't be announced until closer to launch, I'd expect some more buffs POE trade currency .
