We’re finally able to take a closer look at what the new season is going to look like. This one is probably the biggest balance patch since the early access became live. GGG introduced a full list of the buffs, nerfs, and new additions, including two powerful ascendancies. Now, let’s dive into the changes that matter the most in the Runes of Aldur league.
The Losers
This time, we’re going to start with the bad news first, cause there is more of it. This patch introduced hard nerfs to some of the most popular 0.4 builds. You’ll definitely want to know them before deciding on your starter choice on the league release.
🍀 POISON PATHFINDER
Poison Patfinder is known for being a simple tanky build with tons of physical damage, especially good for leveling and early mapping. So what’s changed?
- Overwhelming Toxicity: 35% → 50% less poison duration;
- Running Assault MS penalty reduction: 50% → 30%;
- Poison Burst Arrow base duration: ~4.9s → 3s;
- Poison Burst Arrow quality bonus: 20% → 10%;
- Toxic Growth pustule limit: 12 → 5;
- Plague Fingers: can no longer inflict elemental ailments (Chill, Shock, Freeze).
What does it mean in practice? Poison ticks for less time, lasts shorter, and your main clearing skill lost 2 seconds of duration, which is a significant change to the whole damage output. Without freeze or shock from Plague Fingers, you lose extra damage and crowd control. Yes, it’s still playable, but you will definitely feel the nerf on adds and bosses. Verdict: Poison Pathfinder is not the best starter build of this patch, that’s for sure.
🍀 ENERGY SHIELD BUILDS
Energy Shield has appeared over 60 times in the recent patch notes. And guess what? Most of them are the nerfs. Here’s a quick TLDR that will make you reconsider making builds on ES:
- Quick Response notable – 20% faster start of ES recharge → 10%;
- Small passive nodes – 15% faster start → 6% (more than halved);
- Ghost Dance ES restored – 5% of Evasion per second after hit → 2% (and cooldown 6s → 10s);
- Almost all sources of instant ES recovery removed from the game;
- Base ES recharge delay is now longer across the board.
In 0.4, you could stack ES and fight with almost instantly rechargeable shields. Now, you must take a step back and wait for them to replenish. That’s a massive change for all builds based on this defense mechanism. Not only that, but you’ll feel how much time it now takes to regenerate. Ghost Dance no longer serves as an emergency button, but more like a weak overtime heal.
🍀 LEECH & BLOOD MAGE
The whole Leech system is going to take a massive hit in 0.5. No more full HP recovery per cast, and more to come. That’s what GGG decided to make a change on:
- Instant leech – removed entirely (Vaal Pact, Sanguine Gloves, Val Acuity, etc.);
- Active leech instances – multiple → 1 per resource (per Life, Mana, or ES);
- Leech damage cap – none → 40,000 per hit;
- Vitality Siphon (Blood Mage) – 10% → 20% (small buff, which doesn’t save it).
Before 0.5, one spell could provide multiple leech instances: one from the hit, one from a crit, and one from a kill. That worked to easily restore full HP in a moment, but now only the highest-rate instance will count.
🍀 INFERNAL LEGION MINIONS
Minions in general are winners in this patch, but not the Infernal Legion archetype. Previously, it was a powerful build with minions burning everything around, literally passively clearing your screen. GGG thought that it didn’t match their initial concept of the builds around Infernal Legion and decided to cut the damage by more than half.
- Burn damage: 20% → 10% of minion max life per second;
- Ignite radius & damage: 20% → 10%;
- Infernal Legion support gem: removed (actually replaced with a much weaker version).
So, what do we have to work with now? Minions that worked as the “walking nuclears” become coughing babies. You can still build around them, but is it worth it? Your minions now deal half the damage with a much smaller ignite radius – an important thing to keep in mind. Most players will simply abandon this archetype and switch to more traditional minions builds. And you’ll learn more about them in our “Winners” section.
🍀OIL GRENADE MERCENARY & WHIRLING ASSAULT
Two different but notable playstyles took a hit in 0.5. Oil Grenade Mercenary lost its infinitely rising ignite chaining, while the Whirling Assault melee skill had its multi‑hit area damage cut down. Neither build is completely dead, but they won’t feel the same, that’s for sure.
- Oil grenade ignites – can no longer compound on the same target;
- Argen’s metal bolt reload – 100% → 25% chance on kill;
- Whirling Assault – splash damage now applies only once per area.
So now you can’t just throw one Oil Grenade and clear the whole screen. It still applies ignition, but they won’t stack as before. Argen’s Metals also became much less reliable for consistent DPS; you’ll more likely run out of bolts.
No more spin-to-win for Whirling Assault enjoyers. Before 0.5, the skill created overlapping damage areas as you spun, and each of them could splash to nearby enemies. Now only one splash per spin, which will decrease your effectiveness against single targets by roughly half. It’s still OK for map clearing, but boss damage will be noticeably worse. Some players will compensate for it with the buffed Tempest Bell (see the “Winners” section), but no more free spin-to-win for you, guys.
🍀 HONORABLE MENTIONS
Items and builds mentioned in this part of the article were strong in 0.4, but didn’t define the meta. They received notable nerfs that you might want to take a look at.
⚔️Shield Wall (Warrior) – the popular shield-throw build lost about 40% of its damage. The skill can no longer hit the same enemy with multiple walls (only one explosion per target now). Still a good option for leveling and early maps, but not the one you’ll want to use later in the game.
⚔️The Vertex (helmet) – this unique helmet provided a spell damage bonus, which doubled the whole output in many builds. GGG took a second look at it and decided to cut a dmg bonus nearly in half. That means that some one-shot builds became two-shot for most things. Still usable, but no longer BiS for every spell build.
⚔️Druid Skills (Rend, Oil Barrage, Flame Breath) – several Druid skills received damage reductions:
- Rend – bleed damage reduced by ~20%;
- Oil Barrage – base damage lowered, mana cost now applies while channeling (instead of upfront);
- Flame Breath – reduced area damage scaling.
These changes make the Wyvern and Werewolf Druid less powerful, but the class remains playable. Especially, if we take into consideration other Druid buffs (Bear form remains mostly untouched).
The Winners
Not everything is so depressing in this patch. The developers give us a chance to look at some builds from a different perspective. Some remained completely untouched, but some got significant buffs to become the best bets for a smooth Runes of Aldur league start.
🍀TEMPEST BELL MONK
Monk was already a solid boss killer in 0.4, but the Tempest Bell skill felt clunky with 1 bell at a time. Now we’re looking at a new meta with triple the previous damage with a new stacking option. Let’s take a closer look at what potentially can become your favorite build of the season:
- Max active bells: 1 → 3;
- Can now be ancestrally boosted, as if it were a strike skill (more damage multiplier);
- Shockwave damage: 132 → 119 (slightly nerfed, but doesn’t matter with multiple bells);
- Trigger rate: every 0.25s → every 0.3s.
Stacking three bells on a boss means x2-x3 the damage with no extra setup. Now you place them, and each hit triggers all three bells at the same time. Even with small nerfs to Shockwave, it’ll still feel like a Monk on steroids. He became an absolute monster, and you can expect to see
🍀MINION BUILDS
Traditional minion builds (non-Infernal-Legion) were decent in 0.4 but need a boost to clear speed. GGG addressed this directly while also adding new options for scaling:
- Lich ascendancy – unchanged;
- New Minion Splash support (melee minions hit multiple enemies);
- New minion modifiers on rings and belts;
- Minion survivability and AI slightly improved.
In 0.5, you can expect a better clearing speed (x2 or x3) with the new Minion Splash, where every swing hits multiple enemies. Now affixes on rings and belts = more scaling. All this makes minion setups the perfect league starters if you enjoy passive and safe gameplay.
🍀 SNIPE DEADEYE
Snipe Deadeye was already one of the single-target DPS builds in 0.4. The problem is that you had to stand still for seconds to charge your shot. That was an awkward moment because you were completely exposed. Now, the Mirage clone change completely removes this downside.
- Mirage clone can now channel Snipe (new);
- Snipe base damage: 343 → 312;
- Icy Blast (freeze damage): 3062 → 3067 (basically the same).
The worst part of Snipe was having to stand still for 2 seconds to charge it. You were a “hit me” vulnerable target for the boss. Now you don’t have to worry about that. Your Mirage Clone does the channeling for you, while you run around, having fun, and freezing everything with your Ice Shot. This is a massive QoL improvement that provides greater safety and ease of use.
🍀TWISTERS (HUNTRESS)
It was predictable that Twisters would receive a strong nerf because they are some of the fastest campaign clearers in the game. But GGG decided to leave them completely unchanged, most likely because of the new Spirit Walker ascendancy, which is literally built around them. Strong early, strong late, and now with a brand-new subclass.
- Completely untouched, zero nerfs;
- New Spirit Walker Ascendancy.
Receiving no nerfs in a patch full of nerfs feels like a massive buff. The new Ascendancy adds even more gameplay options. You can expect Twister to be one of the most popular and powerful league starters for quick campaign runs (~3 hours to Atlas) and late mapping. Twisters are arguably the safest league-start pick in the patch.
🍀 RUNES & GENERAL BUFFS
In contrast to many defensive system nerfs, the basic runes received significant buffs. These changes actually affect every character regardless of class or build.
- Max life rune: 40 → 60 (50% more life from a single rune slot);
- Resistance rune: 14% → 18% (easier to cap resists, especially early in maps);
- Attribute rune: 10 → 12 (small but noticeable for gear requirements and passive tree travel nodes).
Some Big Changes Worth Mentioning
Since we broke down all the most impactful buffs and nerfs this patch, let’s check some little things that will wait for you already next league. Some adjustments quietly reshape the economy, the way you decide what to wear, or how to craft. Here we have a few changes that don’t go into winners or losers but will make the league feel different:
- Vaal & Sanctifying Orbs are no longer pre-divine itemsl;
- Currency rarity changes – Greater and Perfect currency are rarer (Perfect Trans/Aug especially), but Divine Orbs are more common, likely to offset the removal of Temple farming;
- Temple uniques and altered stats are gone. And the Recombinator was removed entirely;
- New resistance-swap rune lets you convert one resistance type to another on your gear;
- Martial weapons lost +levels (spell weapons untouched):
- Two‑handed martial: max +7 → +5;
- One‑handed martial: max +5 → +4;
- Sceptres unchanged.
What to Play at League Start
The reasonable question might arise in your head: “So what do I play at the league start?” And the safe picks for this season would be Ice Shot Deadeye, Tempest Bell or Martial Artist on Monk, and minion builds on Lich.
League start is always a race, and the first few days set the tone for your entire league. If you want to get a decent momentum at the start with a fully optimized build without figuring out these patch changes altogether, check out our PoE 2 League Starter Builds. We have many strong openers to choose from. Good luck in the new Runes of Aldur league, Exile!
