The Path of Exile: Legion release date is looming and brings with it a swathe of new content through which you can grind. Grinding Gear Games has packed this expansion with a new challenge league called Legion, which pits you against hordes of interdimensional foes to vanquish. But it’s up to you to choose how many of these foes you want to take on: the more enemies you quell the more loot you get.
You’ll also find that the melee combat has been entirely redesigned: Grinding Gear’s managing director Chris Wilson tells us in our Path of Exile: Legion preview that a familiar bit of feedback he gets is that the game’s close quarters combat can feel clunky. This expansion also features new skills, player archetypes, unique items, quests, and redesigned maps to spruce up the early game.
To put you on the right path for your expansion preparations ahead of the Path of Exile: Legion release date, we caught up with Wilson to talk more about Legion and what’s ahead for the dark fantasy action-RPG. So, without further adieu, here’s everything we know about Path of Exile: Legion.
Path of Exile: Legion release date
If you’re looking to take some time off work for this expansion, then tell your boss not to expect you in very soon: the Path of Exile: Legion release date is June 7, 2019 on PC.
There’s quite a long trail of expansions to come after that, too. Grinding Gear is following its plan of releasing an expansion every 13 weeks, so you can expect two more in 2019 around September and December. Even further afield is Path of Exile’s 4.0.0 Mega Expansion, and you’ll learn more about that at ExileCon in November.
Path of Exile: Legion trailer
Check out the trailer above if you want to see some of Path of Exile: Legion’s challenge league in action. It’s a good, fast minute of heroes picking fights with huge hordes and tearing through them at an equally rapid pace. After that, you’ll get some developer thoughts on the season ahead and what it entails.
Path of Exile: Legion Challenge League
The story of this expansion centres on five famous generals and their sprawling armies. While they come from different eras within 2000 years, they fight an eternal war against each other in the Domain of Timeless Conflict. That’s the scene the game sets as you summon them into an alternate dimension and start chopping ‘em down in the name of loot.
You’ll find that each Legion challenge league area contains a Monolith. Give it a ding, and two armies will suddenly appear, suspended in time and locked in conflict. You have a short amount of time to damage these monsters, which will untether them from the Domain of Timeless Conflict. Once the time is up, the tagged monsters will resume their battle. Word to the wise, though, these monsters will prioritise you over their foes.
Advanced players face a larger number of monsters, but more chests to choose from as a reward – the best are indicated by objects with symbols over them. Aside from oceans of beasts, the main dilemma lies in whether the risk of plundering more loot is worth it.
Monsters in Legion leagues drop Splinters that combine to form an Emblem – this represents the Legion they come from. There are five different Legions, and you’ll need to craft a mixture of Emblems to access the challenge league’s endgame.
Once you have your Emblems you can place pairs of them in a four-slotted Map Device which opens a portal to the Domain of Timeless Conflict. Then you’ll fight armies from the two Legions that correspond to the relevant Emblems. If you’re feeling brave you can increase the challenge and loot potential by adding more than two Emblems.
Also, one of this league’s unlockable items is a device that allows the map to take five slots. That way you can add an Emblem from each Legion, and snag even more loot if you survive.
Path of Exile: Legion Incubation items
In Path of Exile: Legion, Incubation items guarantee a specific type of item drop from an enemy. Specific Legion monsters drop them, and the item will drop after you kill enough monsters.
There are a variety of these items, with some being rarer than others. For example, when a Blacksmith’s Incubator is attached to a sceptre, this will cause a weapon to drop when you defeat a total of 2000 monsters.
Path of Exile: Legion unique items
This expansion contains 12 new unique items and 15 buffed pre-existing items that are themed to suit one of Legion’s five armies. Voll’s Protector, for example, is an existing Templar-themed unique item that now has an additional property called Inner Conviction. This keystone passive causes you to gain power charges instead of frenzy charges, and your power charges have more substantial spell damage than before.
Path of Exile: Legion has a swathe of new Jewels to earn that modify nearby passive skills in different ways. One is called the Vaal, which corrupts adjacent passive skills into Vaal passive skills. Each distinct Vaal Jewel, however, has a different potential result in each socket.
Path of Exile: Legion 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.
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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.
Path of Exile: Legion Blood and Sand Gladiator and Rage Berserker
As ever, Grinding Gear Games is adding new archetypes with Path of Exile: Legion. These act as suggested builds that use a combination of newly introduced skills.
Archetype: Blood and Sand Gladiator
The Blood and Sand Gladiator is a Duelist build that can swap between the new Blood and Sand stances. These two stances come with specific strengths and skills that complement a particular playstyle. The Blood Stance, for example, is ideal for dealing lots of damage to close enemies, and the Sand Stance is defensive and boasts a larger area of effect.
Archetype: Rage Berserker
The other new archetype in Legion is the Rage Berserker, featuring an attack buff called Rage. This buff increases attack damage, movement speed, and can stack up to 50. In Legion, however, it no longer drains life over time, but you can restore that effect for even more power.
Path of Exile: Legion Atlas Map Improvements
In Path of Exile: Legion you’ll find that eight maps have been improved to make boss fights better. There are pathing/layout improvements and a complete refresh of the Coward’s Trial unique map.
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And there you have it, everything we know about Grinding Gear’s upcoming expansion before the Path of Exile: Legion release date lands. The Legion challenge league pits player’s might against their desire for loot, and it should play out wonderfully. The new melee system looks like it could have a significant influence on the way we play Path of Exile. Regardless, we hope this guide will help you in your preparations for Path of Exile: Legion.