The Path of Exile 3.12 Path of Exile: Heist expansion is scheduled to release later this month. Grinding Gear Games has prepared the fanbase for the upcoming release of the expansion on consoles and computers by releasing a slew of information about the game. It comes at a time when the patch notes are expected to be released soon, possibly as early as tomorrow, and fans are anticipating finding out what the new patch will bring. The release of the balance manifesto, which details the changes that will be made in the new patch on a macro level, takes place today.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow's patch notes to get a full rundown of everything that's changed, because this is the balance manifesto, which is mostly overarching changes.

Changes in Capabilities
Acendancies for Necromancers and the Ascendant have been modified to reduce the damage dealt by the Mistress of Sacrifice node. Critical strike chance and multiplier on the Assassin's Deadly Infusion, as well as the Critical Strike Multiplier on the Assassin's small passives, have been nerfed for the assassin.
The defensive bonuses granted by the Divine Flesh Keystone poe exalted orb have been reduced to +5%, making it much more difficult to reach the cap on other defenses scaled from Chaos Resistance.
Enduring Cry's cooldown has been increased to 8 seconds in order to make it much more difficult to obtain insane levels of defensive buffs while using it. In order to get the full effect, you must also have at least one enemy in range.
Damage values for Ball Lightning have been slightly reduced.
Spellslinger's cooldown has been extended in order to slow his casting speed. When the skill is first learned, it has a reservation override of 30%, which decreases to 25% at gem level 20.

Changes/Buffs to the overall game.
Flat life regeneration mods have had their ranges increased in order to make them more viable for endgame use.
Glancing Blows have been made more dangerous by dealing 65% of their damage through shield blocks, effectively reducing the effectiveness of shield defences.
Minor changes have been made to a large number of items, as well as Cluster Jewels.

Mod Tags are a type of tag that can be used to modify something.
The tags that are displayed in-game for mods on items, skills, and other things are getting a significant update. GGG has made, as they put it, "thousands of individual changes" to mod tags, and in order to aid in understanding the implications for item crafting, we've compiled a comprehensive list of all the mods that can roll on poe chaos orb, as well as their new tags.

After 3.11, when it became much more visible to players, the mod tags system required some attention. Some people were perplexed as to how the system worked as a result of this. The system is being expanded to include items other than those that were previously included in the previous expansion, but it is also being condensed to save space. It will now be divided into the following groups:
Ailment Characteristics

Curse Damage is a type of damage that occurs when someone is cursed.

Gem Resistance is a term used to describe the ability to withstand the effects of gems.

Changes have been made to Fossils, Item Classes, and a slew of other things. The shift has an impact on a wide range of fossils of various types. As background information, the following changes to fossils are listed in the Path of Exile 3.12 Balance Manifesto:

Turbulent Catalysts will have an impact on mods that have both the Elemental and Damage tags applied. Other Catalysts will use these new tags, as well as existing tags, in their normal operations.
Corroded Fossils and Prismatic Fossils now affect mods with the Physical and Ailment or Chaos and Ailment tags, rather than just mods with the Bleeding and Poison tags, as opposed to just mods with the Physical and Ailment tag. The tags for Bleeding and Poison are no longer in use.
Faceted Fossils now use the new Gem tag (which has been applied to all mods that have a direct impact on gems), and the Gem Level tag is no longer used. Faceted Fossils can now be used in a variety of ways, with only a minimal impact path of exile currency on their existing functions.

Bound Fossils now increase the likelihood of rolling Curse mods as well, allowing them to be used in a wider variety of situations.
Because Elemental mods are always tagged as such, Prismatic Fossils no longer have a separate effect on the weightings of Fire, Cold, and Lightning mods. The same can be said for Jagged Fossils and Bleeding mods, as well as Aberrant Fossils and Poison mods, among others. These aren't functional changes, but they do make things more clear because fossils no longer have effects that aren't explicitly described.

The Cannot roll Attack Mods and Cannot roll Caster Mods meta-crafts have been simplified to simply use the Attack and Caster tags instead of the old tags. And while these won't have a significant impact on item crafting or building diversity, it appears that the goal is to make information about the effects of the items and skills that players use more clear to them. To see what they're all about, click here.