Changes to the Mod Tag System
During Harvest, we added the ability to view the tags of mods on an item by holding ALT with advanced mod descriptions enabled. However, further changes to the mod tagging system were required in order to support displaying tags in the long term.
We have standardised existing systems that use mod tags to use the same set of tags, applied a simpler and more consistent philosophy to categorising which mods should receive a tag and we've also made a few changes to fossils. The primary goal of these changes is to make the effects of crafting functions that rely on mod tags more clear and predictable.
From 3.12.0 onwards the tags displayed when holding alt (which were previously used for fossil and Harvest crafting) will also be used by catalysts, the “Cannot roll Attack Mods” and “Cannot roll Caster Mods” meta-crafts. The new enchantments available in Heist will also use these tags, as will all future uses of the mod tag system. Mod tags will also be displayed on unique item mods.
New tags have been added to support this merger. These are:
· Ailment
· Attribute
· Curse
· Damage
· Gem
· Resistance
The changes made to systems which use mod tags are as follows:
· Turbulent Catalysts will affect mods with both the Elemental and Damage tags. Other Catalysts will use these new tags or existing tags normally.
· Corroded Fossils and Prismatic Fossils now affect mods with both the Physical and Ailment or Chaos and Ailment tags rather than the Bleeding and Poison tags. The Bleeding and Poison tags are no longer used.
· Faceted Fossils now use the new Gem tag (which has been applied to all mods that directly affect gems), and the Gem Level tag is no longer used. This opens up new uses for Faceted Fossils while minimally impacting their existing functions.
· Bound Fossils now also increase the likelihood of rolling Curse mods in order to expand their range of uses.
· Prismatic Fossils no longer separately affect the weightings of Fire, Cold and Lightning mods, as these mods are now always also tagged as Elemental. The same is true for Jagged Fossils and Bleeding mods, and Aberrant Fossils and Poison mods. These aren’t functional changes, but provide greater clarity as Fossils no longer have effects that aren’t explicitly described.
· The “Cannot roll Attack Mods” and “Cannot roll Caster Mods” meta-crafts now simply use the Attack and Caster tags.
Finally, the rationale used to tag mods has been simplified and all existing mod tags reviewed for consistency, in order to allow players to reasonably infer what tags a mod may have even without viewing them directly. In summary, tags are now only added to mods which specifically and directly affect the subject of the tag. Some of the main implications of this include:
· Conditional mods do not receive tags based on the condition. For example, a mod that grants damage while on full life does not receive the Life tag, and a mod that grants attack speed if you have dealt a critical strike recently does not receive the Critical tag. A mod that grants a power charge on critical strike would receive the Critical tag, since that is directly modifying the effect of the critical strike.
· Any tag that is necessarily a subset of another tag receives both tags. Currently this just means that all Fire, Cold and Lightning mods are now also Elemental mods. This isn’t a functional change to Prismatic Fossils — as mentioned above, they used to also apply to Fire, Cold and Lightning modifiers without explicitly describing this. A related concept is that all bleed-related mods now receive the Attack tag as well as the Physical and Ailment tags, since bleed can only be applied by attacks.
· Mods granting skills or keyworded buffs do not grant tags matching the stats of those skills or buffs. Previously it was very inconsistent whether these tags were granted, but a more minimalist approach was chosen in order to prevent many mods which grant buffs from requiring enormous numbers of tags. Mods granting notable or keystone passives do grant tags matching the stats of those passive skills — while this is inconsistent with our approach to buffs and skills, it was judged necessary for the sake of cluster jewels.
Thousands of individual changes have been made to mod tags, so to assist with understanding the implications for item crafting we’ve prepared a full list of the mods which can roll on items and their new tags. Click here to check them out. It must be stressed that most crafting methods are not significantly affected by these changes, but specific methods for crafting items with certain combinations of mods may be impacted, and you will undoubtedly be able to find new methods with a little investigation.