Patch 0.3.1 Endgame Changes - Towers Removed

GGG announced today that the long awaited endgame overhaul is coming in patch 0.3.1, which is intended to be within 7 days.

GGG's announcement (without any analysis) is available at https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3860076

Here's the big changes to endgame:

Precursor Tablets and Towers

• Precursor Tablets and Towers are being completely decoupled from each other.
• Towers now are just normal maps, except they always drop a Precursor Tablet, and they will clear Atlas fog of war over a large area.
• This makes Towers exceptionally good maps if you are looking for unique maps, Anomaly maps or Citadel maps - but much less essential than they are now. Also, Citadels are more common, but note they still are absolutely banned from spawning close to the center of the Atlas.
• Instead of getting Tablet benefits on a random selection of maps within range of a Tower, you'll now be able to apply Tablets directly to maps of your choice.
• Tablets will have multiple uses, in line with the number of maps they affect now.
• Maps with a small number of difficulty modifiers can only benefit from up to one Tablet. Maps with six or more difficulty modifiers can benefit from up to three.
• This lowers the number of Tablets that can overlap on one specific map...
• and to compensate, explicit modifiers on Precursor Tablets are increasing in magnitude by about 140%.
• There's also a hidden nerf here - new mods are being added to the explicit modifier pool on Precursor Tablets; these will mostly flood the loot tables.
• In short - you have agency over tower overlaps, rather than tower spawn location RNG dictating this for you.

Map Bosses and Map Completion

• Defeating all rare monsters in a map is no longer ever required
• Instead, you will have a map boss in every map.
• Existing map bosses will instead be termed 'Powerful Map Bosses'.
• Mundane map bosses, i.e. ones that are not Powerful, will be easier to defeat and less lucrative than the Powerful versions.
• Only Powerful map bosses will grant +1 tier on Waystone drops. Mundane map bosses might award a Waystone but if they do it will be same tier.
• Some Atlas Tree points are changing. GGG don't intend these as nerfs or buffs, but some will likely accidentally become nerfs or buffs.
• WARNING: A long standing bug where multiple phase bosses did not get Atlas difficulty increases applied to secondary and tertiary phases is fixed.
• The big change is that you don't need to hunt the last rare any more.

Alchemy Orb Buff

• Simple one here - they can be used on magic items as though the item was normal rarity.
• Doing so removes the mods on the item without compensation.
• This is mostly beneficial for map rolling, but also has some early game use, for example, if you get a Solar Amulet that drops magic with terrible mods. This is likely useful only in early and middle maps.

Map Size Standardization

• Maps that take ages to clear are being shrunk.
• Mire is not on the original list of maps being shrunk. No, I don't know why either.

Map Mod Nerfs

• Do you love standing on chilled ground?
• If so, you'll be sad to know that the waystone explicit modifier that adds chilled, ignited or shocked ground to maps is getting a huge nerf.

More is likely to be revealed next week.

If you are familiar with endgame in POE1, you might like to think of POE2's new Precursor Tablets as being similar to a stack of scarabs in POE1.

(If you don't play POE1, don't worry about this comparison)