Everything You Need to Know About Patch 0.50: Nerfs, Buffs, and Best Builds

Patch 0.50 brings massive changes that will completely alter the game's meta. If you were planning to repeat your league starter from the previous league, you should check the patch notes carefully.

Below, we have organized the main points from the video into a clear guide featuring the 10 biggest changes in the new patch, along with a list of builds that remain strong to start the season.

1. Poison Pathfinder Suffers Heavy Nerfs

The most popular build from the start of the last league received multiple nerfs across different aspects. If you intended to use it as a league starter, the general recommendation is to look for other options.

• Movement Speed: The Pathfinder's movement speed penalty while using skills was adjusted, making map clearing (mapping) slower.
• Poison Duration: The Overwhelming Toxicity node went from 35% to 50% less poison duration. Additionally, the Poison Burst Arrow skill lost 2 seconds off its base duration at level 20 (dropping from 5s to 3s). In practice, the total duration was cut in half.
• Damage Reduction: There was a flat 10% loss in poison magnitude, resulting in less overall damage.
• Plague Fingers: The core gloves for this build no longer apply alternate ailments automatically. This means you lose the Chill and Shock bonuses (Shock previously guaranteed at least 20% more damage).
• Toxic Growth: The pod limit on the field dropped from 12 to 6. Furthermore, the skill no longer scales with extra arrows (surpass enchant), severely limiting its power in both the early and endgame.

2. Global Nerf to Energy Shield (ES) Recovery

Energy Shield recovery was reduced between 50% and 66% across all aspects of the game, including equipment, the skill tree, and runes.

Ghost Dance Adjustment: This mechanic no longer grants instant recovery. Now, it regenerates 2% of your ES per second based on your evasion (e.g., 40k evasion recovers 800 ES/s) for 4 seconds after being hit. The cooldown was also increased from 6 to 10 seconds.

Virtually all sources of instant ES recovery were removed from the game, making the mechanic much harder to sustain.

3. Instant Leech Removed From the Game

The life and mana leech mechanics went through severe adjustments.

• End of Instant Leech: Every single source of instant leech was removed from the game. Popular unique items, like the Sanguine and Vaal Acuity gloves, lost this property.
• Fast Metabolism and Vaal Pact no longer grant the instant effect (Vaal Pact now only grants overleech).
• New Limit: The base leech recovery cap is now 20% of your maximum life per second. Even if you invest in all the relevant tree nodes, the absolute cap is 50% per second. As a direct consequence, Blood Mage builds were indirectly nerfed.

4. General Buff to Basic Runes

It's not all about nerfs. With the exception of ES recovery runes, all basic runes (Greater Runes) received improvements of around 50%.

Additionally, attributes like life gained on kill and maximum mana were improved. The patch will also introduce over 100 new runes that players have yet to discover.

5. Changes to Sanctify and Vaal Orbs

From now on, using Sanctify and Vaal Orbs will no longer redefine (divine) the item's attributes before applying the modification.

This means that the initial roll of the item matters heavily. If you want a weapon with perfect stats, you will need to use the Vaal Orb on an item that already dropped with high rolls. The new strategy for valuable items is to use Divine Orbs to maximize the base attributes before attempting corruption.

6. Economy and Crafting Updates

The crafting system will see some major updates:

• Rarer: Currency like greater imperfect, Perfect Transmutation, and Augmentation Orbs are now harder to find.
• More Common: Divine Orbs will have a higher drop rate, precisely to help players improve their item rolls before corrupting them.
• Removed Items: The Omen of Corruption and the Recombinator were completely removed from the game.
• New Resistance Rune: A new rune was added that allows you to swap an equipment's resistance type (e.g., change Fire resistance to Cold resistance). This will make balancing resistances and trading for specific items much easier.

7. Gem Level Reduction on Martial Weapons

Weapons focused on melee or physical combat had their skill level bonus limits reduced:

• Two-Handed Weapons (2H): Maximum bonus dropped from +7 to +5.
• One-Handed Weapons (1H): Maximum bonus dropped from +5 to +4.
• The Perfect Battle Essence item was also nerfed proportionally.
• Note: Bonuses for spell levels (+ levels to spells) were unchanged, with the exception of the Vaal Mask, which now grants a maximum of +4 to all spell skills.

8. Warrior and Druid Class Nerfs

Two very popular options had their performance adjusted:

• Warrior (Shield Wall): The most popular shield-focused Warrior build saw an estimated 40% damage reduction.
• Druid (Wyvern): The skills Rend, Oil Barrage, and Flame Breath were nerfed. The Werewolf form build received slight nerfs. The Bear form remains practically identical, losing only some interactions with support gems and rage generation.

9. Gathering Storm Adjustments

The Gathering Storm build with the Quarterstaff, famous for one-shotting bosses, was nerfed. However, the skill itself received a base damage increase for standard use and now directly combos with bell skills, offering a brand new playstyle.

10. Best League Starter Options That Remain Viable

If you are unsure of what to play, these are excellent options that passed through the nerfs untouched (or even received buffs) and are great choices for league start:

• Grenades: Remain exactly the same and very strong.
• Twisters: Received no nerfs and should be one of the most popular speed-farming meta builds.
• Bows (Ice Archers): Despite the massive nerf to the poison version, the critical/freeze focus (Freeze/Ice Shot) remains excellent for the endgame, requiring only minor adjustments during the campaign phase.
• Rampage Bear: The Tear's Vengeance build remains incredibly solid, despite minor secondary adjustments.
• Minions (Necromancy): Received indirect buffs! Builds using Essence Extraction, Bonestorm, or the Lich and Demon forms are safe bets for Patch 0.50.