Recently, the developers released a trailer for Path of Exile 3.24. In this trailer, we can discover that Necropolis will be making enormous changes to Ruby, Topaz and Sapphire flasks, changing their bonuses from 50% Resistance and 20% Less Damage Taken to 40% Resistance and +5% Maximum Resistance.
This change will have a big impact on high-end defense builds for later farming Valdo’s Maps and Uber Bosses. In this guide, I want to talk about the impact these flask changes can have on endgame builds and explain my thoughts.
The Synergy Of Transcendence & Loreweave
So the first thing we should discuss is Transcendence. This is a Timeless Keystone that applies your armor value to elemental damage taken.
Ever since Transcendence changed all maximum elemental resistances from -5% to -15%, the go-to gear for this Keystone has been Loreweave. Because Loreweave can set your Maximum Resistance to a specified value, you can completely overcome Maximum Resistance penalty.
This is usually a very expensive high-end setup, usually requiring a Double Corrupted Dawnbreaker, a Double Purity mod, Watcher’s Eye, and a ton of flask effects with Taste of Hate to deal with the physical damage you’re going to take.
And since the body armor slot is now occupied by Loreweave, you can’t use Lightning Coil. This means you need more POE Currency to complete high-end builds.
Recently, however, some players have experimented with using Transcendence without Loreweave and trying to scale Maximum Resistance in other ways to combat the resistance penalty. Such as Charms in Affliction League or Tattoos in Trial of the Ancestors League, or even shield modifiers on Crucible Tree during Crucible League.
For example, Molten Strike Pathfinder build I used before completely ignored the resistance penalty and rolled at 55% or 60% of maximum elemental resistance, which was crazy.
Flask Changes
But in POE 3.24, with the changes to these elemental flasks, the new flasks will provide a more consistent way to get a bunch of maximum resistance.
Compared to things like Charms and Tattoos that usually disappear once the league ends, I think this will change the meta of how high-end defense builds are put together primarily on Pathfinder or Mageblood characters.
Related: An In-Depth Analysis Of The Potential Impact Of Flask Changes In POE 3.24 Necropolis
Melding Of The Flesh
When I first saw these changes, one thing that stood out to me was the fact that Melding of the Flesh existed. Because it was previously impossible to convert Less Damage Taken modifier on one of these elemental flasks to also apply to the other two elemental damage types.
This is why the vast majority of builds run all three flasks, namely Ruby, Topaz and Sapphire flasks, to fortify defenses against almost everything they encounter.
This is also why Tempered by War setup with Dawnbreaker, Purity of Fire, and Sublime Vision started to become very popular. Because it’s so powerful, able to focus all your defenses on one damage type and significantly reduce the risk of Elemental Penetration.
But as Ruby, Topaz and Sapphire flasks changed in POE 3.24 to provide Maximum Resistance, there is a new option to use a single flask to obtain Maximum Resistance for each element type through Melding of the Flesh.
This means that scaling Maximum Resistance with Transcendence may become the first choice for very high-end defense setups like Valdo’s Maps and Uber Bosses farms.
If this does start to become a popular way of building around Transcendence. I think items like Aegis Aurora will start to be used more, especially since builds that don’t use Loreweave will free up body armor slots for items like Lightning Coil. This will also make Dawnbreaker no longer a mandatory item to achieve 100% physical damage conversion.
Traitor Keystone
There is also Traitor, which is another Timeless Keystone. Now obviously you can’t use this with Transcendence, as both are exclusive to Timeless Jewels and are limited to one piece.
But Traitor does provide the opportunity to use Melding of the Flesh to gain maximum resistance to all three elements from a flask or other item.
Among them, Micro-Distillery Belt and Traitor have a good synergy. Since you’ve kept at least one flask slot empty, this belt actually provides 30% of the flask effect, equivalent to 1%-2% of maximum resistance. Depends on the amount of flask effects you get from other sources.
Keep in mind that each 20% increase in flask effect will now provide an additional 1% of maximum resistance to the new flask, so I expect to see some strategies using this combination of mechanics.
Also, this would be great for a Chieftain who doesn’t need Melding of the Flesh Jewel, and getting a bunch of maximum fire resistance from the flask slot will allow you to randomly equip. I look forward to seeing what else players can come up with using this setting.
Elemental Flask
I think it’s also worth mentioning here that a Pathfinder set up with Melding of the Flesh will free up two flask slots that were previously used for the other two elemental flasks.
This means you can now take two identical flasks, such as two Magic Sapphire Flasks, or even two Taste of Hate Flasks, and enchant them with Enkindling Orbs to increase the flask effect to 70%. You need to alternate between the two so that the other can get charges when not in use.
Since the two flask slots are cursed, this will give you the most resistance you can get from the flask. If you do this with a Magic Flask, you can even get 133% of the maximum resistance.
Conclusion
Overall, I think some endgame or high investment setups are going to see a pretty big shift. One thing that’s definitely noticeable about this change is that these builds will have a harder time dealing with Elemental Penetration than before. So it will be very interesting to see how the metadata adapts to these changes in POE 3.24.
Especially if you're someone who’s played some of the high-end Pathfinder Builds, or Mageblood Builds with high-potential defense setups, you may be paying attention to these changes as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these flask changes.
