Path of Exile Affliction League: New Ascendancy Classes Explained and More!

Everything New in Path of Exile: Affliction

Path of Exile’s latest League, Affliction, is releasing very soon. It may already be out by the time you see this article. GGG have unveiled lots of updates in their recent Content Reveal Video.

Affliction is adding a ton of new content into the game, and players are exciting to test out new builds. In this article, I’ll be covering all of the new updates coming to the game and guide you through the new mechanics.

Let’s get right into it.

Affliction League Mechanic

Path of Exile’s new league introduces the Viridian Wildwood, an area plagued by the Affliction. Travel to this area with the help of Sacred Wisps to uncover the darkness and cleanse the Wildwood.

Wisps

As you explore Wraeclast, you will stumble upon passageways that lead to the Wildwood. Wisps will light up your way, but only for a limited amount of time. You will find a variety of encounters in the Wildwood, ranging from Shrines to boss battles.

As you travel, you will be able to collect different Wisps by following their trail. These Wisps will follow you back to Wraeclast and inhabit monsters, empowering them and increasing their loot.

Wildwood Ascendancy Classes

As you travel through the Wildwood, you will encounter Azmeri Wanderers. By helping these Wanderers, you will gain access to three new Ascendancy Classes, with 8 points to spend on the tree.

These classes will be in addition to your regular Ascendancy Class, and you will be able to switch between them, provided you do the quests from their respective Wanderer.

These Ascendancy Classes grant unique bonuses that can fit on many builds. While some builds may look to maximize the Ascendancy bonuses, you can also take one that fits your playstyle. Let’s cover them more in detail.

Wildwood Ascendancy: Warden of the Maji

The Warden of the Maji uses a new item type, Tinctures. By taking the Notable “Coated Blade” you will be able to apply these Tinctures to your weapon, granting additional effects.

This will require you to equip the Tincture to one of your Flask slots. Only one Tincture effect can be active at a time. You can toggle this effect on and off, and you can even switch between Tinctures if you have multiple equipped.

The small passives on the tree will increase the Quantity of Primal Wisps in the Wildwood. This will help you buy more Tinctures. Now let’s cover all of the Notable Passives in the Warden of the Maji Tree.

Warden of the Maji Notables

• Coated Blade: Can apply Tinctures to your Equipped Weapons
• Detect Evil:
  • Your Hits against Marked Enemy cannot be Blocked or Suppressed
  • Rare and Unique Enemies within 120 metres have Minimap Icons
• Enduring Suffusion: Tinctures applied to you have 7% increased Effect per empty Flask Slot
• Nature’s Concoction:
  • Flasks adjacent to applied Tincture gain 3 chages when you Hit an Enemy with a Weapon, no more than once every second.
  • Flasks adjacent to applited Tincture have 30% increased Effect when used if you’ve Hit an enemy with a Weapon recently.
• Oath of the Maji:
  • Defences from Equipped Body Armour are doubled if it has no Socketed Game
  • +50% to all Elemental Resistances if you have an Equipped Helmet with no Socketed Gems
  • 25% increased Maximum Life if you have Equipped Gloves with no Socketed Gems
  • 30% increased Movement Speed if you have Equipped Boots with no Socketed Gems
• Wildwood Blessing: Grants Level 20 Barkskin Skill
  • “Barkskin is a Reservation Skill granting Armour. As your character is hit, you will lose bark/Armour and gain Evasion. Over time, the bark will regrow, granting Armour again and losing Evasion.”
• Lesson of the Seasons:
  • 10% chance to Avoid non-Damaging Ailments on you per Bark below maximum
  • 10% reduced Duration of Damaging Ailments on you per Bark

Wildwood Ascendancy: Warlock of the Mists

The Warlock harnesses the dark power of the Azmeri, granting a variety of effects from the skill tree.

The small passives on the Tree increase the Quantity of Wild Wisps. You will be able to use these Wisps to buy special corpses that you can summon as a Spectre, or consume to grant yourself damage reduction.

Here’s a rundown of the Notable Passives from Warlock of the Mist.

Warlock of the Mist Notables

• Warlock Power: Pick one of three attached options:
  • Creeping Lobotomy: Grants Level 20 Pacify Skill – Pacify curses all targets in an area, having no effect at first, but causing them to deal no damage once 60% of the curse’s duration has expired.
  • Black Mass: Grants level 20 Affliction Skill – Affliction permanently Afflicts any of your damageable minions in a targeted area, causing them to take physical damage over time, at an accelerating rate. Each such minion causes you to regenrate life at a rate based on the current damage of it’s Affliction debuff. Afflicted Minions explode if their life is lowered to a fifth of maximum.
  • Choir of the Damned: Grants Level 20 Penance Mark Skill – Penance Mark curses a single enemy, causing them to spawn multiple phantasms when hit. The phantasms will be allies of the marked enemy with the same monster level. They cast a projectile spell which deals physical damage, and are immune to curses. You can only have one Mark at a time.
• Foul Pact:
  • Enemies Pacified by you take 20% increased Damage
  • Minions affect by Affliction have Onslaught
  • Phantasms from Penance Mark grant 50% increased Flask Charges
    Phantasms from Penance Mark have a 50% chance to grant a Vaal Soul on Death
• Soul Splitting: Grants Level 20 Summon Dark Effigy Skill (tbd)
• Sanguimancy:
  • Skills Cost Life instead of Mana
  • Skills Reserve Life instead of Mana
  • Removes all Mana
  • 30% increased Life Reservation Efficiency of Skills
• Crimson Power:
  • Removes all Energy Shield
  • Gain Maximum Life instead of Maximum Energy Shield from Equipped Armour Items
  • -6 Maximum Life per level (you naturally gain 12 life per level)
• Cannibalised Faith: Spells you cast yourself gain Added Physical Damage equal to 20%  of Life Cost, if Life Cost is not higher than the maximum you could spend
• Blood Hunt: Grants Level 20 Ravenous Skill
  • This allows you to consume a corpse to reduce the damage from monsters of the same type.

Wildwood Ascendancy: Wildwood Primalist

Lastly, we have the Primalist. The Primalist is able to activate effects from different regular Ascendancy Classes.

Small passives will increase the Quantity of Vivid Wisps, used to purchase charms. These charms will slot into your skill tree, allowing you to activate effects you otherwise could not with your regular Ascendancy.

Here’s a rundown of the Notables.

Wildwood Primalist Notables

• Charm Socket x3
• Howl of the Wolf
  • Your Warcries attempt to shake extra items from Corpses
  • Your Warcries open Chests
• Might of the Bear
  • 5% increased Character Size
  • Equip a Wildwood Rucksack which has 20 Inventory Slots

Which Wildwood Ascendancy to Pick

Overall, each of the three Wildwood Ascendancies provide something very unique and something flexible. Depending on your build, you can choose an Ascendancy to better match, or maybe you can even center your build around a certain Notable.

Either way, don’t fret too much as you’ll be able to switch Ascendancies at any time, provided you finish their respective quests.

• Warden of Maji: 
  • Synergizes with Weapon builds more than others.
  • Provides a variety of effects through Tinctures, but at the cost of a Flask slot.
  • Barkskin is also a flexible defensive skill that can be useful on just about any character.
  • Bonus Movement Speed and Resistances can be very powerful on League Start or early game on an SSF character.
  • Strong Flask utility at the cost of empty Flask slots
• Warlock of the Mist: 
  • Synergizes with either Minion builds or builds that want a free Blood Magic effect.
  • Synergy with Petrified Blood Builds/Can create builds that have extremely high Life 30-40k+
  • Warlock powers are also very flexible, with Pacify + Foul Pact granting “enemies take 20% increased damage,” a solid multiplier for just about any build.
  • Penance Mark can be used for a variety of effects like splash damage, proliferation, gaining flask charges, and more.
  • Ravenous provides more damage and mitigates damage from specific enemy types.
• Wildwood Primalist: 
  • Bonus backpack size is a nice addition, but doesn’t scale character power.
  • Charms can also be high variance depending on what you find in shop. Charms can range from busted to useless depending on your luck.
  • Can be risky if played in SSF as you might not get good charms for your build.
  • Likely to have powerful interactions, but requires planning or copying builds to find ways to maximize the Charms.

Ultimatum Returning and Metamorph Removed

The Ultimatum League mechanic is making a comeback for this league and will be going core. The mechanic is quite simple. You will be challenged to fight enemies to gain rewards.

After succeeding, you can take your loot or double down by fighting a stronger wave of enemies. Continue until you rip or complete all 10 waves.

The Metamorph League mechanic will be removed from the game, with Catalysts now becoming an Ultimatum reward. There will also be a new Corrupted Catalyst, allowing you to apply a random Quality to a Corrupted Accessory.

Transfigured Gems

Affliction is also bringing a new system called Transfigured Gems. This system will be replacing Alternate Quality Gems, Labyrinth Helmet Enchants, and Unique Threshold Jewels.

These three older mechanics were ways to alter the way skill gems worked. Now, Transfigured Gems are replacing these systems, and will be accessed via the Divine Font in the Eternal Labyrinth.

These Transfigured Gems will alter how existing skill gems work, creating new builds and ways to play. While these Gems will be similar in nature, they can vary wildly from how they play.

Here’s a quick example.

Firestorm of Meteors is a Transfigured Gem that will turn Firestorm into a large meteor. This is just one example of how a transfiguration can change a gem quite a lot.

For a full list of Transfigured Gems, you can check out these links from GGG.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

Closing Words

That wraps up just about all of the new content coming to Path of Exile: Affliction. This League is shaping up to be one of the best in a while, and everyone is excited to give it a go.

Thanks for reading, and have fun running maps!

If you’re not sure what to play, you can check out our Ascendancy Tier List to get an idea of what may suit your playstyle.

Path of Exile 2 is on the Horizon. Be sure to check out our News article, covering information of PoE2.