Path of Exile: Heist – Area Control Spells and New Curses

Path of Exile’s upcoming Heist expansion will be adding a number of new skills to Grinding Gear Games’ free to play action-RPG while also overhauling some of the existing ones. And if you’d like to know what to expect from the new league, you should check out this announcement that covers the game’s new area control spells, and this one that details the upcoming overhaul of curses.

Here are the new curses in action:

And here’s how you’ll be able to control the battlefield once Heist goes live:

More on that:

Alongside Path of Exile: Heist, we’re introducing four new skills which produce powerful, long-lasting effects that allow you to take control over an area. The interesting effects generated by each skill mean that they are a good fit alongside a wide variety of builds but also offer a particular benefit to spellcasters that need to stand still to spread damage.

Void Sphere

Void Sphere creates an object that generates a pulse within a large radius. This pulse deals physical and chaos damage and pulls normal, magic and rare enemies toward its centre. The first few pulses generated by Void Sphere have a much greater gravitational pull than subsequent pulses. All enemies in its area of influence will also be hindered. The effect of this debuff increases the closer enemies are to the centre of the sphere. Enemies that die within the area affected by the Void Sphere will have their corpses sucked into the void.

Void Sphere can be useful for controlling dangerous enemies, grouping a cluster of slower enemies together to inflict a concentrated damage burst and for triggering on-hit effects over a long period. The skill has a long cooldown, so it can take full advantage of the Second Wind Support to enable you to use Void Sphere twice in relatively quick succession. Note that only one Void Sphere can be active at a time.

Frost Shield

Frost Shield creates an icy dome on the ground at your location that protects the caster and their allies from enemies. When cast, it rapidly consumes your energy shield at a flat rate for one second and will grow in power and life based on how much energy shield is drained. The skill provides protection until it runs out of life.

Frost Shield will protect you and your allies from a small portion of enemy damage if they’re within the shield or a large portion of their damage if the enemies are outside the shield. All enemies close to or within the shield will also be chilled.

Additionally, while you’re inside Frost Shield’s dome, it will provide added base critical strike chance. This makes it great for defensive positioning on bosses, letting you take cover within the sphere and unleash hell as long as the shield holds.

Just like Void Sphere, it works well with the Second Wind Support. Using the Increased Area of Effect or Concentrated Effect Supports allows you to control whether you want more space to move within or a tighter area. A smaller shield provides you with better control over how many enemies enter the shield’s area for maximum damage mitigation.

Sigil of Power

Sigil of Power creates a potent circle on the ground that grants additional lightning damage to you and allies standing within it, while also slightly increasing the cost of your skills. As you spend mana, the skill powers up in stages. Each stage grants more additional lightning damage. Once it’s fully powered up, it also causes enemies standing within the circle to deal less damage.

This skill offers a way to empower your abilities while facing a difficult boss, providing additional damage when you need it. Its defensive properties can be really beneficial when you’re able to keep the boss within the Sigil or against bosses that remain in one place.

Like the other spells mentioned above, this ability has a long cooldown and can take advantage of Second Wind if you’d like to. Increasing its area and duration also works well to extend the reach and lifetime of your powered Sigils. It works well alongside skills with the Archmage support to increase their mana cost, but other spellcast builds usually spend enough mana to fully charge up the Sigil.

Flame Wall

This skill is available from early in the game and creates an area of burning flame. Any enemies that pass through it will be inflicted with a secondary burning effect. This means that you can place a Flame Wall between you and your enemies then watch them melt as they try to reach you. Any projectiles fired through the wall will have fire damage added to the projectile. These flaming projectiles will apply the wall’s secondary burning effect to enemies they hit.

The skill can be deployed to boost the damage of any projectile skill without any additional supports, or can be supported with burning damage to specialise in its damage over time property. You can spread the burning effect yourself with any projectile skill, use projectile firing minions or have party members spread the effect.

You can have up to three Flame Walls active at once, so you can create multiple fire fields in a row with the Spell Cascade support, or a wide defensive barrier with Awakened Spell Cascade support.

Furthermore, before the expansion goes live, the game will be getting a new patch that’s supposed to address some of its long-standing performance issues.