These 3 New Unique Rings Added In POE 3.25 Will Allow You To Revisit Warlock Skills! (2024)

These 3 New Unique Rings Added In POE 3.25 Will Allow You To Revisit Warlock Skills!

With the end of Affliction league, Wildwood Ascendancy mechanic also disappeared. However, GGG has been working on slowly integrating these Ascendancy mechanics into the core game. We can see this in POE 3.24. They added Apostate and Veruso’s Ambition in Necropolis, both of which provide full or partial access to certain Wildwood Ascendancy abilities.

Now in the current POE 3.25, we have the new Warden Ascendancy, replacing Raider. In addition, Pacify, Affliction, and Penance Mark were three Warlock of the Mists exclusive skills in Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction league. In POE 3.25, they return as part of some new Unique Rings, which are now exclusive drops from Ritual content.

Here we are going to focus on discussing the three new Unique Rings that grant us access to one of the three previous exclusive abilities of Warlock. The three new rings are: Hateful Accuser, Queller of Minds, and Selfish Shepherd.

We will talk about the mechanics of these three new Rings in detail to help you understand how to use them and whether it is worth investing more POE Currency in them. Let’s jump right in!

Unique Rings Base Types Explained

These three Unique Rings are exclusive drops for Ritual mechanic. Before we discuss the details of each ring, I should first mention the base type. Because this is a new Ritual exclusive base type.

For example, Nameless Ring can give you a 50% increase in Elemental Ailment duration and a 50% reduction in the effect of curses. This will usually be a double-edged sword unless you are doing some kind of Self-Chill build or similar.

Keep in mind that the full duration of using Reflected Ailments will not be increased with Ailment Duration modifier on these rings. Because Reflected Ailments Duration is only affected by offensive stats, such as the increased Ailments Duration you inflict on enemies.

Queller Of Minds

Let’s take a look at Queller of Minds first. This ring has some cast speed, maximum energy shield, and chaos resistance, but the reason you use these rings is that of the unique ability they provide, Pacify.

To be honest, this one is the weirdest of the three. It might even be the weirdest ability GGG has added to the game. It's really shocking that this skill would appear again after the Affliction league ended.

Pacify is a hex curse skill that initially does nothing, but if the curse duration has passed for at least 60%, the affected character will not deal damage. Then for the remaining 40% of the duration, Pacify prevents the target from dealing any damage.

This ability can only prevent entities from dealing damage directly. It does not have any effect on things that exist in the area. As a result, you won’t necessarily be directly harmed by the entity. For example, in Sirus boss fight, Storm Clouds will chase you. The damage caused by these Storm Clouds is not considered being caused by Sirus himself, so Pacify Curse will not prevent them from dealing additional damage to you.

More importantly, any effect that would kill the character directly without dealing any damage will still kill the character, such as Drowning Orbs in Eater of Worlds boss fight.

Note that whether Pacify is cast now or not, the duration of Pacify Curse can be altered by Curse Duration modifier, which will have an effect on the period when Curse has no effect and the period of time when the target cannot deal damage. For example, extending the Curse duration will make the target not deal damage for a longer period. But you will also have to wait longer until you actually reach the point where the target cannot deal damage.

And the effect cannot be altered, which means you can’t apply Temporal Chains or similar effects to the no-damage portion of the Curse to artificially extend its duration.

Hateful Accuser

Next up, we have Hateful Accuser, which definitely gets more use than the former.

Hateful Accuser has a certain cast speed, life, and chaos resistance, and it allows the use of Penance Mark skill. This was also a favorite ability of many Warlock users during Affliction league, and for good reason.

Penance Mark is a mark curse skill that targets a single enemy and behaves the same as any other mark skill, meaning it lasts indefinitely. It scales with the mark effect, and only one mark can be active at a time.

Once the mark hits a target, Phantasms are spawned, up to three per second. They are essentially allies of that target, so by default, this gives you new targets to use.

These Phantasms are considered Common Rare enemies and do not drop loot when killed, and they do not leave any bodies behind. They do grant both Flask Charges and Vaal Souls, though, which is why Affliction league favors Mark.

The reason Hateful Accuser is being used a lot in POE 3.25 is because summoned Phantasms can be used to generate hit and kill effects. And since they also fire projectile spells, they can also be used to trigger hit effects and other similar stats, such as on blocking mechanics.

One of its major use cases right now is creating mobs on Chieftain, which has a chance to trigger Hinekora, Death’s Fury. When you kill them, Explosion and any subsequent Ignites will deal a ton of damage, which is particularly useful for Righteous Fire builds that struggle with single target damage.

But that’s not the only use that’s been getting a lot of attention. Because in POE 3.25, the newly added Retaliation skill gives Hateful Accuser another use case. These skills require specific conditions to be met, such as blocking before using them, and Phantasms formed by Penance Mark can help make these abilities more reliable. This way you can use them more often in boss scenarios.

As mentioned before, Penance Mark scales with Mark effect, and each breakpoint of 33.3% Mark effect provides additional summoned Phantasms when hitting.

Selfish Shepherd

Finally, we have Selfish Shepherd. This ring has some cast speed, maximum energy shield, and chaos resistance, and it allows the use of Affliction abilities, which is not Curse or Mark.

This is a skill that can only target your minions to have a permanent effect on them. This effect causes them to take physical damage over time, with the damage rate starting at 8% of your maximum life per second, increasing by 100% per second, and then your character regenerates life per second equal to 20% of this damage.

This is an effect that is inflicted on your minions, totaling all minions that have the same effect on them. So when a minion reaches 20% of their maximum life, they explode, dealing 50% of their maximum life as physical damage to surrounding enemies, which provides a pretty decent amount of healing for your character.

So this is actually a pretty powerful effect. And in terms of base damage, it’s much higher than minion instability, which causes a minion to explode after life drops to a low point ( 50% of life) dealing 33% of its maximum life as fire damage. So, essentially, you need to get your minions’ life down to a lower threshold to get a bigger payoff.

But remember that this is physical damage, and it will be affected by any relevant Conversion modifiers that the minion has. For example, Absolution Minion will convert 50% of physical damage to lightning damage, or inherent Conversion modifiers that don’t necessarily exist as Skill Gems, such as Summon Raging Spirit, which has a 100% conversion of physical to fire damage.

However, this skill offers a hands-on, proactive playstyle rather than the automated playstyle some might be hoping for.

Outro

Overall, we expect to see some use of Hateful Accuser and Selfish Shepherd, especially Hateful Accuser’s Penance Mark, as its undeniable synergy with Hinekora, Death’s Fury will make it even more useful. Which Unique Ring would you be more interested in trying? Do you have a better way to maximize their potential? Good luck!