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Path of Exile 3.8 content patch brings with it the Blight Challenge League, introducing a surprisingly refreshing League mechanic: tower defense. I've seen a lot of questions about the Blight encounters towers and Blight maps, so in this Path of Exile 3.8 Blight tower defense mechanics guide, I'll go over how it all works and some strategies that have been working well.
More Read: Path Of Exile 3.8 Crafting Guide - POE Currency, Items & Orbs Crafting Methods For Blight Beginners
Path Of Exile 3.8 Mechanics Strategy/Tips - Tower Defence Mechanic Guide In POE Blight League Challenges
The 3.8.0 league is Blight, in which we assist Sister Cassia, an exiled inventor in stopping the spread of the “Blights”. This takes the form of a quick tower defense event, in which you can create towers to slow the advances of monsters, while you use your own skills to kill them, before they reach the central pump, which is draining oils from the Blight. As a reward, you will receive the extracted oils that allow for unique enchantments, as well as a variety of other rewards. Here Goldkk.com is going to share the tower defence mechanic strategy guide in Blight League challenges POE 3.8.0. They are super challenging and a little bit silly but quite fun!
Resistance Mechanics For POE Blight Tower Defence
The first and most important thing to know is the resistance mechanic, when you start a Blight encounter above the pumps health bar on your UI is a series of gate symbols inside of these are symbols showing what that lane will be resistant to. A lot of people have been confusing this for weaknesses. There are actually no explicit weaknesses on Blight monsters, but resistances are important. If a gate has a fire symbol, those monsters will be fire type and will be resistant to fire tower damage. If they have a purple minion symbol, they will ignore the minions from your summoning towers and so on.
A mixture of tower types is always a good idea, but if there are a lot of gates resistant to a particular type, you'll want to build very few of those towers, it's worth noting. That you can also see this resistance symbol on the map and above the gate itself, so you can plan your tower placement accordingly.
Bosses
The next aspect of the UI that is important to know is the Bosses. Sometimes there will be a symbol above a gate on the UI that looks a bit like a blighted pustule. This shows that the gate will spawn a boss at some point during the encounter. When the symbol is gray the boss is not currently on the map, but when the symbol is gold the boss is active and you should hunt it down. Bosses have a lot of HP and do a chunk of damage to the pump, so stopping them is paramount, you can see their golden symbol on the overlay map as well. When they're active the final UI symbol is the x - symbol below the gates, this means that you'll get two of the same chests rewards from that gate extra-juicy.
Multiple converging paths create natural choke points to concentrate your towers for most regular blight encounters. The strategy is fairly simple, you'll mostly be using low tier towers and not really going for the final upgrades as the encounters, just simply aren't long enough. You're better off spamming a bunch of low tier hours than hoarding points for the big upgrades.
Minions Dominic tower spam is very effective unless there is several lanes resistant to minions, otherwise a mixture of summoning ice and Shock Towers works great. If your builders putting out good damage, if your damage is a bit lacking, however working in a couple fire towers with Tier 2 or 3 upgrades will do the trick, most regular Blight encounters will be fairly easy with just low tier Tower spam. With the occasional boss being handled with some concentrated Tier 2 or 3 tower combos, make sure to concentrate your upgraded towers on any natural choke points that arise and apply your own damage in these locations as the enemy's bunch up.
Tower Types and Upgrades
- T1 through 3 Summoning Towers are fantastically strong and some of the pack of zombie-like minions with high HP, these minions run forwards to meet incoming Blight enemies and Blight monsters will stop to fight them unless they have the minion resistance. Summoning towers are probably the best at holding back the flow of enemies in lanes. Overall the two upgrades either create a high HP golem or a pack of ten flying snipers that do high damage over a long-range. The strategy is typically to stick with Tier 3 summoning towers to hold down a lane and then position some sniper minions further back, if you want some extra damage, the ice towers do light damage and chill, thus slowing a limited number of enemies leaves a solid in combination with other towers and cause Blight lanes to group up which can be good for an OE damage. They have a short-range on them, so put them close to choke points where you want enemies to group up one of the two final upgrades, creates a nice spear which pierces that does pretty high damage.
They do no damage themselves, but they are a crucial tool in the heart of lighted maps, the physical towers do very little damage but they stun enemies slowing them a little bit. These can be decent in an area with a lot of blight lanes converging, but the main reason to build physical towers is for their final upgrades, both of which are fantastic and Blight maps stony gaze tower enemies and eventually freezes them, still these are super crucial for stopping bosses dead in their tracks and giving you time to kill them since they have such high HP, they have a pretty large targeting range on the stony gaze, so you can scatter them around pretty easily to lock down key enemies.
- The other upgrade is a large persistent slowing bubble which is better at slowing down large hordes of regular enemies. I use Stony Gaze Towers more overall because of the large threat that bosses pose, but the AoE slow is good when you have a lot of other towers concentrated in that area, those three tower sets summoning ice and physical are probably the most important. Overall since they just lock down enemies and give you a chance to kill them yourself without good use of these three towers, you'll be pretty quickly rolled over in Blighted maps, that said all of the following towers also a bit important - in certain situations the lightning tower creates shock drown in a small area, the shock ground increases damaged the enemies take, so these are best used in tight choke points in collaboration with other towers, one of the final upgrades creates an arc Tower which does some decent damage, but I found these to be limited in effectiveness.
Overall the other upgrade is a large AoE lightning storm with decent damage, but erratic targeting these are pretty decent when combined with area slowing towers that group up large amounts of enemies.
- The two final upgrade options either buff allies or debuff enemies. It's hard to tell how good this is. The imbuing tower however buffs allies such as you and your minions with attack move and cast speed, this is likely very good on some of the builds. If you're playing one of those just place one in an area where you find yourself standing to fight for the majority of the fight, it's definitely worth making at least one of these if you're a summoner in a blighted map.
- The final tower type is the fire tower which shoots fireballs in a fairly long range upgrade make it shoot more fireballs and they do fairly good damage. Overall the main problem with the fireball tower is that they get hard countered by proximity shields and in the Blighted maps that ends up being quite a few of these the two final upgrades remedial which does high damage in a small, a OE but can be cast at long ranges or a Flamethrower Tower which has short range from the tower but does some decent persistent. AoE damage Flamethrower Tower in a good choke point with slows and ice prisons are fantastic and counter proximity bubble shields, if the tower is within the bubble.
POE 3.8 Blighted Maps
Good placement and choices of towers are crucial. Indoor maps are actually easier. Overall I've found in many cases because of natural choke points they create and better grouping of the tendril lanes. Blight maps can be crafted and chiseled like normal maps although I'd avoid monster movespeed and boss life, if you want a solid shot at winning those are pretty brutal mods on these. When you win the map you get some drops from whatever you kill at the end, but to get all of the juicy chests you need to actually win by surviving for five minutes and killing all of the remaining monsters. In Blighted maps, there will be a much larger amount of Fungal growths found, which can be discovered in the Tower Defense portion of the game.
POE 3.8 Oils
You can also anoint Blight maps with oil and there's actually pretty worth doing. A total of 12 oils are increased with the league, and each oil has its own effect, you can sell them to others in exchange for Poe Currency or combine them to form other effects.
The clear oil slows monsters down and adds pack size, so it makes it easier overall while the sepia oil adds tower damage in pack size, this can be pretty good and there potentially worth using since the Blight maps are proving to be fairly high value and fairly rewarding, but I'd be a little bit careful of going too hard on the pack size if you're not sure you can win yet. When you start the blight map encounter, check the resistances, that's the first thing you want to do. If there is a lot of one type of resistance, make sure to avoid building too many of those tower types, if you find yourself often kind of just relying on one specific tower then you may get screwed. When you run into one with a bunch of resistances, so be sure to mix it up. If there are a mixture of resistances and not too many of any one type, then you'll be fine with just a regular mix of towers.
