Path of Exile’s Siege of the Atlas expansion is adding an entirely new passive tree

destructoid.com:

After a brief delay, we are now just a week away from the next update to Path of Exile. The Scourge league is coming to a close, and the Siege of the Atlas and Archnemesis updates are primed and ready. For those unaware of the schedule, every three months Path of Exile updates to a new league, bringing in new mechanics alongside things like new items, gems, and balance changes. Occasionally, like this update, developer Grinding Gear Games (GGG) also includes an expansion-type update that shakes up how the game is structured.

Next week, the Siege of the Atlas expansion will change how the game’s “map” system works, while the Archnemesis league will introduce new mechanics for players to toy around with. The balance patch notes show a lot of buffs alongside expected nerfs to the strongest skills from the previous league. Currently, players are rushing around to find out which build they will start at the beginning of the league, and theory-crafting potentially broken combinations given the newest information.

For newer players, the biggest thing to focus on is the Archnemesis league. This will introduce a way to customize monster mods on rare monsters in each area, making them harder. A play off of an earlier league called Nemesis (which also added mods to rare monsters), now players can pick up items that both increase the difficulty of a rare monster as well as the rewards upon killing it. There are shrines in each zone that hold rare monsters, and players add their mods and release the monster to fight it. The mods and rewards will then stack for future monsters, making each additional Archnemesis encounter exponentially harder.

It looks like an exciting way to customize encounters and allows players to sort of “choose”