Since its release, Path of Exile has continuously introduced new content to ensure the vitality of the game. After a long time of preparation, GGG finally officially announced relevant information about the 3.7 league - Legion. 

 

Battle of the Five Armies

In Legion League, the five large armies that have existed through Wraeclast's history are all coming back to re-ignite their age-long conflict. More specifically, “their souls are trapped in the Domain of Timeless Conflict,”Like the previous leagues, you will randomly encounter the 'Entrance' of the Legion league theme on the map - special monoliths. Upon activating special monoliths in areas within the Legion league, players will be transported to the Domain of Timeless Conflict, where they will encounter two opposing armies locked in battle, yet frozen in time. There are five different armies that can be encountered, so each battle and the rewards available will be different depending on which armies are at war.

When the frozen armies appear, it is up to the player to decide what elements of the armies they wish to fight. By dealing damage to the frozen warriors, you untether them from the Domain of Timeless Conflict. You will have a short window of time to do this, and when the time runs out the undamaged enemies will disappear, and you will have to fight the enemies that stay. Powerful enemies will be attached to chests, so it is up to the players to decide exactly what enemies they wish to fight. Some enemies will have symbols above their heads, denoting particularly valuable rewards.

There is an interesting balance of risk and reward at play here. Unfreeze too many enemies, and you might not survive the encounter. Unfreeze too few, and your rewards might not be satisfying. 

When the player fights with the army, it will produce some splinters, which will be used in more advanced gameplay. You can merge into an emblem when you have 50 splinters. Each of the five emblems represents one of the armies in the conflict, and the ones you put into the Map Device determines which ones will be present when you visit the Domain of Timeless Conflict yourself. The fights will be challenging. Though the map device only sports four slots currently, players will actually be able to unlock a fifth slot. That means truly dedicated players looking for a real challenge will be able to fight all five armies at once.

Loot and rewards

Loot Drop Loot

“By deferring the item drop and making the player work for it, we get to drop a better item than we otherwise would. We're very concerned about power creep.”- Wilson

The new loot type is an incubator. These items modify a piece of existing equipment, adding certain challenges that must be met before rewarding a player with an item down the line. For example, you may have an Incubation item that requires you to kill 2,000 monsters above level 35. Attach it to a piece of gear you are wearing, and once complete, you'll get your reward. Different incubators provide different items, from divination cards to gear, from the fairly common to unique weapons.

Special Jewel 

Players will also be able to earn a special Jewel from each of the Legions. Jewels can be socketed into your Passive Skill Tree, and will modify passive skills within a certain radius of it in different ways. Wilson noted that these gems would be easy to move into the core game after the league so players can make all sorts of crazy characters.

New Unique

Legion will also see the introduction of 12 new Unique items, and reworks for 15 older Unique items that are themed around Legion's five armies. These newly enhanced items will be showing up as rewards in the new league as well. 

Melee Improvements

Since Path of Exile launched in 2013, players have complained that its melee combat can feel clunky. So, as part of Path of Exile: Legion, Grinding Gear Games are fixing it.

Players can cancel melee attack animations after the damage is dealt or right at the point of activation to make combat more responsive. Movement skills now activate instantly, and new low-level movement skills have been added to many classes so players can dodge quicker.

All melee attacks now hit adjacent enemies, and the timing of the damage is tightened up to ensure enemies take damage when they should. Wilson also adds that Grinding Gear has fixed the range indications of damage for all attacks in the game.

When it comes to the animation system, support for chaining and dynamic speed changes has been added, too. Melee targeting has also been improved to retarget monsters when your attack ends if you’re still holding the mouse button down.

Path of Exile: Legion also sees tweaks to many other systems that relate to melee gameplay. An example of this is accuracy, which is no longer caps at 95%. Much like how Path of Exile: Synthesis contains a rework of spells, Legion provides an end-to-end rebalance of melee attacks. Also, many existing melee skills have been reworked: Cyclone, to name one, is now a channelling skill.

Players can also dodge attacks easier. As such, early-game monsters and bosses will have better signalled attacks.

New Archetypes

Legion also introduces two new Archetypes. There's the Blood and Sand Gladiator, where blood and sand are stances that the Duelist can switch between: Blood does lots of damage to close enemies, and sand is more of a defensive AoE. This archetype uses the new skills Blood and Sand, Flesh and Stone, and Bladestorm.

Blood and Sand

The blood and sand are stances that the Duelist can switch between: Blood does lots of damage to close enemies, and sand is more of a defensive AoE. This archetype uses the new skills Blood and Sand, Flesh and Stone, and Bladestorm.

Rage Berserker

In Legion, rage no longer drains life from the Berserker over time unless the player chooses to in order to increase power. New skills will generate rage, and the Berserk skill consumes rage to give very powerful multiplicative attack bonuses.

 

On top of the challenge league, some older content is also getting reworked. Eight Atlas Maps have been reworked and improved, with specific care being paid to the boss fights on each one.

 

The ExileCon

For those excitedly awaiting ExileCon, Grinding Gear Games has locked in the attendance of the whole trifecta of original Diablo 1 and II creators. David Brevik, Max Schaefer, and Eric Schaefer will be attending to talk with fans, share information on their projects, and sign autographs and such.

 

Legion Release Date

  • Path of Exile's 2019 schedule:
  • June 7: Legion (3.7.0) expansion PC launch, South Korean launch
  • June 10: Legion expansion Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launch
  • September 6: 3.8.0 expansion launch
  • November 16-17: ExileCon, announcement of 3.9.0 expansion and 4.0.0 mega-expansion
  • December 6: 3.9.0 expansion launch