Guide for Legion in Path of Exile

Introduction

On 7th June 2019 the new challenge league, Patch 3.7.0 Legion League was released.

In addition to a new league mechanic featuring several factions of monsters that fight each other and the player, Legion features new skills, items, and perhaps most importantly, a game-wide overhaul of melee skills. Many of the Duelist and Marauder Ascendancies were changed or rebalanced for the league.

Clickhere to see the official Grinding Gear news release.

The Legion

Through the areas of Wraeclast players will encounter Monoliths. Interacting with a Monolith will reveal monsters from the Five Legions, frozen in time and conflict.

By dealing damage to the monsters in stasis and reducing their health to zero, the player can choose which monsters or rewards to activate. When the Monolith’s activation timer ends, all the monsters you broke out will come alive and attack and engage the player — it’s basically a “reverse Breach”.

Certain monsters are more dangerous but drop subsequently more rare and valuable rewards. There are also chests containing valuable rewards, and each Legion has its own General, which is a Unique boss that appears rarely from a monolith activation.

Splinters and Emblems

The armies of the Five Legions will occasionally drop splinters — just like Breach League — that eventually stack up into emblems.

Placing two or more Emblems in the Map device unlocks portals to the Domain of the Timeless Conflict, where the Legions are waging an endless war against each other. You are guaranteed to find the Legion General matching the Emblem(s) you placed in the Domain of the Timeless Conflict. This is where the “4-way” and “5-way” fights occur, by using 4 and 5 Emblems respectively. There’s some more detailed information on the Doman of Timeless Conflict further down in this guide.

Incubators

Certain monsters in the Legions will be marked by a symbol over their head, indicating what kind of rewards they will drop. One of the new rewards offered in Legion are the Incubators, which can be applied to an item.

After a certain number of kills using an item on which an incubator was placed, players will receive a guaranteed reward. This allows the player to target the exact reward types that interest them. This seems like an especially great feature for players on Solo Self-Found leagues, as they will have an even finer degree of control over their path in the end-game.

Legion Jewels

Legion introduced Unique Jewels for each faction. They are obtained from the Timeless Conflict accessed by placing Emblems in the Map Device. In order of rarity, from most common to least common, they are:

• Lethal Pride — Karui Historic Jewel
• Elegant Hubris — Eternal Historic Jewel
• Glorious Vanity — Vaal Historic Jewel
• Militant Faith — Templar Historic Jewel
• Brutal Restraint — Maraketh Historic Jewel

The Legion Jewels, called “Historic Jewels”, have hundreds of unique effects. Each one that drops has its own “seed”, denoted by the numbers in the tooltip, that transform passives and keystones in the radius in various ways. The level of complexity and change involved is loosely tied to the rarity of the Jewel itself. Karui Historics do not change the passives within the radius at all, and add one or two new stats instead, while Vaal Jewels transform the passives to entirely different ones, and so forth. Experimentation is the only real way to discover the true potential of these Jewels, as there are thousands of different seeds and therefore near limitless possibilities. PoB recently integrated a tool for experimenting with jewels named “Find Timeless Jewel”. You can find this next to the node power button in the bottom right of your PoB.

Melee Combat Rework

Melee skills and mechanics were entirely reworked for Path of Exile, as Melee had been lagging behind the dominance and fluidity of Ranged and Caster builds for some time. Not only were many or all of the skills reworked mechanically, but new skills were introduced along with some mechanical changes. Here are some of the other changes:

• Accuracy is no longer capped at 95%!
• You can cancel attack animations after the skill lands
• New mobility skills
• Movement skills are now instant

New Ascendancy archetypes were also added, such as the “Blood and Sand Gladiator” on the announcement page, that can cycle between “Blood” and “Sand” stances. Berserker also recieved a facelift with the “Rage Berserker” archetype, which generates and consumes Rage to fuel and unleash deadly new abilities.

Ascendancy Reworks

The following ascendancies were overhauled in Legion:

• Slayer
• Gladiator
• Chieftain
• Berserker

Early Game Monster Rebalance

Not only did melee receive a facelift, but many monsters that had poor or concealed attack animations were reworked to have more telegraphed abilities, enabling players to react to and avoid attacks with greater ease. Some of the older bosses, in particular, recieved new models and new abilities that were more in line with the quality of the later story Acts.

An example model of Hailrake, the boss on the Tidal Island in Act I, was revealed with the announcement and is pictured above.

The Timeless Conflict

The Timeless Conflict can be accessed by placing 2 or more emblems into your Map Device. Timeless Legion Generals are guaranteed to be in the conflict based on what emblems you decided to use. The amount of time you have in the Timeless Conflict is based on the number of emblems you put in the Map Device, as are the monster levels and overall rewards. The “Battle of Five Armies, as Chris Wilson referred to it, occurs when you put all 5 different factions’ emblems together in the device.

You can spawn the monsters in the Timeless Conflict by standing near the monolith in the center of the small area. You can also respawn monsters and generals you have already killed by returning to the monolith and standing near it for a few moments. Generals have a short timer that prevents their respawn, however, so you may have to return and spawn the monsters again if you only just defeated the General moments ago.

The more monsters you kill, the more loot you will receive when the timer expires. Killing Generals is the most important factor in whether or not you will receive Historic Jewels as a reward.

Conclusion

The Legion League is a very exciting Patch, with large scale reworks, targeted rewards, and a fast-paced League mechanic reminiscent of Breach, one of the all-time most loved challenge leagues of the past.