Here, IGGM would like to discuss a key new mechanic added to Keepers Of The Flame League in Path Of Exile 3.27: Grafts.
Grafts Explained
Grafts are Keepers of The Flame League-exclusive items generated by Growing Wombgifts in Genesis Tree. They provide passive bonuses to players, but often require specific conditions to activate.
In essence, these Grafts and their corresponding skills are similar to a borrowed power system, offering useful mechanics and new customization options for your character build. You can even equip two Grafts simultaneously and further adjust their effects through your talent tree and Genesis Tree. This means that in PoE 3.27, equipping these Grafts unlocks even more possibilities for your build.
More importantly, many Graft abilities are very easy to use because they trigger automatically under most specific conditions. In many cases, you simply add them to your build and passively enjoy their bonuses without any buttons.
While Grafts are a new item type, they cannot be crafted using regular PoE currency items; only Implant currency items can modify them.
Furthermore, the effects of these Grafts are not directly linked to player attributes. Therefore, you cannot increase damage or multipliers through your own attributes, nor can you improve cooldown reduction or AoE attributes. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t influence Graft abilities in other ways.
Graft Modifiers
These Graft items can randomly generate three different modifier types:
- One provides some attribute bonuses to your character;
- One enhances the attributes of Graft abilities, making them more powerful;
- And the third focuses more on influencing Genesis Tree and item crafting.
Graft Skills
Next, IGGM will introduce some of Graft skills we currently know, and how to utilize them in POE 3.27 to help your build gain powerful strength.
Heart Of Flame
The first Grafts skill we’ll mention is Heart of Flame. This skill is interesting because, although it’s a Guard skill, it doesn’t have the typical buffs that Guard skills possess.
It doesn’t share a cooldown with other skills because it’s not a base skill, but rather comes from Grafts. Therefore, the skill maintains its cooldown regeneration during the buff’s duration, making it easier to refresh.
We speculate that Heart of Flame’s automatic trigger condition is when your health falls below a certain threshold, or perhaps it activates immediately when you lose any health. Once activated, the skill grants you a buff and helps you absorb some incoming damage. When attacked while the buff is active, the skill even fires a ring of fire projectiles that explode on hit.
Heart of Flame is a level 30 spell with a buff lasting 8.4 seconds. It can absorb 80% of incoming attack damage, with the remaining 20% absorbed by your life or energy shield. This buff can withstand up to 4584 damage. In comparison, the damage reduction cap for a fully leveled Molten Shell is only 5000, making this skill’s defensive effect quite considerable.
More importantly, Grafts have a chance to randomly generate modifiers, such as reducing the skill’s cooldown. While it’s currently unclear whether all Grafts will randomly generate the same modifier, or whether each item has a unique modifier pool, generating a cooldown-reducing modifier for this skill would be quite valuable. Not to mention, you can also reroll the modifier by using PoE Divine Orbs, reducing its cooldown by up to approximately 3 seconds!
As for the buff itself, while you can’t adjust the duration of the skill effect through your own attributes, you can artificially extend the duration of your buff through methods that reduce the effect’s duration, such as Runegraft of the Warp or Temporal Chains.
Theoretically, by stacking these modifiers, you can maintain Heart of Flame buff for an extremely long duration, potentially even making it permanent, which would be incredibly powerful.
Call The Pyre
Now, another perfect Graft skill is Call The Pyre. This is an attack skill with a 1-second cooldown, triggered when you attack. This skill is very useful in the early and mid-game, as the actual damage it deals seems quite considerable.
Furthermore, Call The Pyre also turns enemies to ash upon impact, a very good debuff for any fire-based build, especially Righteous Fire build players.
Because this skill triggers when you attack, and RF builds typically use Shield Charge for fast movement, you can easily use Shield Charge to apply Ash Cover to high-tank targets, increasing their fire damage taken by 20% for 4 seconds. This is a great buff for fire-based builds.
Wreathed in Light
Next is Wreathed in Light, an active skill that doesn’t require a passive trigger like some other skills.
This skill has the potential to spark a new trend in Path of Exile 3.27 because it creates a ground effect called Radiant Ground. This is a brand new effect that provides some extra lightning damage, but more importantly, it makes your hit damage lucky.
This Lucky effect doesn’t specify a damage type, meaning that when you’re standing on the ground effect, all your hit damage lucky, rolls twice, and then takes the higher result. This is obviously fantastic for any lightning build, as lightning damage typically has a high damage scaling range.
It’s worth noting that, based on the currently leaked trailers, Radiant Ground effect created by Grafts has a fairly large range. It seems to spread out from each lightning bolt that hits the ground, forming a circle, which makes it very effective against groups of monsters and harvesting PoE currency.
Seize the Flesh
Finally, there’s the skill Seize the Flesh. This is an attack skill that triggers when you cast Warcries, summoning Bone Spires on the ground around you. When you use a powerful attack, these spikes explode, dealing physical damage and inflicting bleed and piercing effects.
This skill is interesting for bleed-based builds because it leverages the bonus damage from Physical Mastery, increasing the bleed damage over time by 6% each time an enemy is pierced.
Builds like Boneshatter of Complex Trauma can utilize this skill effectively. Alternatively, you can use it in conjunction with Bloodlust Support. However, note that its base bleed duration is only 5 seconds, and the skill has an 8-second cooldown. If you want to quickly increase bleed effects, then choosing to buy POE currency at IGGM.com and focusing on adding DoT multipliers or cooldown reduction modifiers to this skill is what you should do immediately.
Summary
Overall, based on what we’ve seen so far and other data mining and leaks, IGGM believes Grafts mechanic will be very powerful in POE The Keepers league, providing a significant damage boost in the early game. While they may not be as impactful as mercenaries in POE 3.26, in the late game, you can enhance your build through custom skill trees and Graft skills.
In addition, Grafts provide extra attribute bonuses, making them quite promising in the endgame! However, we’ll have to wait and see how effective they actually are!