With the launch of Official Hardcore Servers on Classic Era, I think it’s time to cover what’s different on these Official Hardcore Servers, compared to the version of Hardcore we have been playing in the past with the addon.

So, here, I will cover the major differences between the addon and the official hardcore servers, as they do not follow the same rules and are actually very different from one another.

Grouping

Let’s start with Solo / Duo / Leveling in a Group.

With the Hardcore addon, if you wanted to be in a duo or a trio, you had to be online at the same time, and level together from start to finish. There were several rules in place such as you’re not allowed to be in different zones, basically meaning you had to duo with the same person from level 1 to level 60 and always play together.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, you are free to Solo, Duo, or Trio whenever you want. You can invite whoever you want to your group whenever you want. You could, for example, group up in a 5-man group from level 1-10 and just focus on kill-quests, then split up at level 10 and then solo the rest of the way until level 60. And if you suddenly meet someone you want to duo with for a couple of hours, you can do that as well.

Basically, you are no longer locked into being a Solo, Duo or Trio Character upon starting. Because with the Addon, if you chose to be in a Duo, you were stuck in that Duo. On the upcoming Hardcore Servers, you’re more free to pick and choose throughout your journey.

So basically, Grouping was very restricted before, but now you’re free to group up when you want to.

Dungeons

Now, let’s talk about Dungeons.

With the Hardcore Addon and the Solo Self Found Ruleset, we were only allowed to do one singular run of every dungeon until we hit level 60. This could be very annoying, as a singular mistake, and losing one person could mean you miss out on the entire dungeon. Because if you lose 1 person in, for example, Zul’Farrak or Maraudon, finishing such a high level dungeon with only 4 people can be incredibly difficult and is often a risk not even worth taking on Hardcore.

This could mean you miss out on an entire dungeon because of a mistake someone else makes. And not only that but some dungeon quests were borderline impossible to do with only one run: Like for example the Stormwind Stockades Bandanas Quest, or the Zul’Farrak Mojo Quest, basically quests where you loot mobs for an item with less than 100% drop chance, and even Wailing Caverns with the Deviate Hides, though those could be farmed on the outside.

In these cases, players would literally /roll for who got to complete their quests. And if you lost the roll, you would not be able to complete your quest, which feels kinda weird.

On top of that, you also have dungeons, like Uldaman, which heavily encourages you to do multiple runs of the dungeon in order to complete every quest, although it is technically doable in one instance-run if you time it to perfection.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, all of this annoyance is removed, as we can now do several dungeon runs while leveling, although there has been one modification in order for people not to just spam Dungeon Cleaves like they did in 2019 when Classic WoW came out.

Dungeons now have a 24 hour reset timer from level 1 to 59, meaning this timer is lifted once you hit level 60, so you can freely farm dungeons. But this means while leveling, dungeons will have a daily lockout and you can run every dungeon once per day.

One more change they have made to dungeons is that mobs inside dungeons give 50% less experience, but bosses give a lot more experience than usual.

Basically, they have taken 50% of the mob experience throughout the dungeon and put it into bosses, which is done for two main reasons: Mobs inside the dungeons do reset over time, but bosses have a 24 hour reset timer. And it also encourages people to focus on killing bosses and doing the higher dungeon rather than just AoE farming mobs inside dungeons for experience.

Trading

Next up then, the use of Mailboxes, Auction House and Trading. I’ve chosen to throw all of this into one place, as it all pretty much boils down to one thing: Trading.

Sending a mail between players is essentially trading something, you’re just doing it via mails. Same thing with the Auction House, so it’s all Trading.

On Classic Era with the Hardcore Addon, Trading was not allowed, even for things, such as Mage Food or Mage Water, or Warlock Healthstones. Basically, no trading whatsoever.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, this rule will be lifted and you are free to Trade, use the Auction House, and use the mailbox. I think this is a good thing, because you have another way to make WoW Classic Hardcore Gold.

But what I will say is, all the rules we had in place with the Hardcore Addon, made it so you were pretty much forced to play in one very specific and restrictive way.

And without being allowed to Group, Trade, send mails or use the Auction House, it is a very “Solo” experience. It is definitely more challenging, but is also a lot less social, and Blizzard have verbally stated they want to focus more on the Social Element than the Challenging Element, which I think is great.

The essence of these servers being Hardcore already is quite challenging in itself, and too challenging for most people, considering if they lose a level 60 character, a lot of people simply won’t bother going again.

Also Read: WoW Classic Hardcore: An Elwynn Forest Survival Guide

Class Abilities

There are also a couple of small changes, such as Class-Abilities, which were previously prohibited or the use of certain items.

Number one here would be the Paladin Bubble-Hearth, which was technically not allowed with the Hardcore Addon, but there were a couple of work-arounds. But on the Official Hardcore Server, there will simply be a restriction in place to where Paladins physically cannot use their Hearthstone while under the Protection Effect.

However, nothing has been stated about the Light of Elune plus Hearthstone, so there might be a big favor for the Alliance here.

With the Hardcore Addon, we were also not allowed to use the Auto-Unstuck Features in order to Teleport to Major Cities, and this restriction will not be there on Official Hardcore Servers.

For most people, this won’t really matter much. But for example, as a Night Elf, this means you can use the Auto Unstuck Feature to teleport to Ironforge instead of having to walk through Wetlands, or swim to Westfall, so it definitely has some practical uses.

Minor Changes

Now, let’s talk about some minor things that might not directly impact your gameplay, but are pretty huge changes overall.

- With the Hardcore Addon, we had an Appeal System. On the Official Hardcore Server, we will not have an Appeal System. This means if you die because of a disconnect, your run is over. But, Blizzard have done a lot of work in the back-end to atleast make it so you disconnect as little as possible from the game itself. But if you have terrible internet connection, there’s really not a lot Blizzard can do.

A lot of people have speculated that they could have added a disconnect-protection-mechanic where if you disconnect, you get a protective bubble around your character until you come back in. But believe me, that could be abused and would be just as terrible as anything else.

Imagine if we had such a system, I could just install a flip switch for my internet router next to my PC on a foot-pedal and if I’m ever close to die or in an oh-shit situation, I could just hit that switch and disconnect and get a protective bubble around my character.

- There will be a lot less griefing on the Official Hardcore Server than we had on Classic Era with the Addon. With the Addon on Classic Era, we had people stand on flightmasters with PVP enabled players naming themselves after mobs and forcing you to target them. Basically, people just forcing you into PVP combat then griefing you.

On the Official Hardcore Servers, you have to physically opt in to PVP by typing /pvp in order to get PVP flagged, so that the entire category of griefing is now disabled.

We also saw people drag elite mobs such as Teremus all the way to Stormwind and Elwynn Forest, and mobs will now have a kite-leash-cap, meaning if you try to kite a mob more than 500 yards away, it will reset. So, in this example, kiting Teremus out of Blasted Lands would end up resetting Teremus.

On the other hand, there is a new category of griefs, which Blizzard really can’t to anything about, and that is “Social Griefing” by players pretending to be your friend, joining your dungeon group or raid, then wiping the entire group.

Today I'm going to give you an updated version on how to target farm specific unique items in Diablo 4, but also double your unique drop chance and sometimes even triple it. So there are four components to this article with the last one speed farming being the most important, ideally you should be doing two of these at the same time.

Concept Of Monster Families

I'm going to start off with Monster Families. I know a lot of you are already familiar with the concept, but I'll briefly go over it. Different monsters in the game have a higher chance of dropping certain Diablo 4 Items. For example, if you are a Druid and you're trying to find Tempest Roar, you should be targeting Cultists and Cannibals, because they have a higher chance of dropping Helms.

Let's say you were going to chase Greatstaff of the Crone, well then you would be farming Goatman. Now I know a lot of you in the previous season would rerun the same dungeon, even though it was not a Nightmare Dungeon in Diablo 4. So like Cultist Refuge without opening up a Sigil, you do not want to do that this season.

The reason is that massively increase the chance of a unique item dropping from the rewards at the end of your dungeon, so previously it was one legendary and I think two rare items, now there's a very high chance you can drop two legendaries, but those legendaries can actually convert to unique items as well.

How To Reset Nightmare Dungeons?

This is not only important for Target farming certain uniques in Diablo 4, but you should be doing this anyway just for the experience game, because of how good some dungeons are compared to the others. So to reset the dungeon, obviously open up the dungeon that you want to do first.

Now accept the dungeon like usual when you are in a group, now you want to promote your teammate to party leader, or it might be the other way around, they might promote you. It doesn't matter either way, but you have to exchange party leadership. So in my case, I from loading my friend wolf to party leader. Now he has to decline the party leader invitation or this will not work.

Once this is done, we're going to teleport to the dungeon you can also do this at the start of the dungeon too by the way. Now in Diablo 4, we're going to finish the dungeon you can get your Cliff Awards everything, leave back into town, now whoever was the party leader has to leave the group. Once they've left that group, whoever was party leader, they have to invite you to a brand new group. So you're jumping into their world now, now the dungeon has been reset, so we're going to teleport to the entrance using the open world map and rinse and repeat.

In Diablo 4, there are two more factors that you need to add into this as well, the chances are between 1 to 100 you are going to find at least one of every single unique in the game for your class. I know that's not the case for everyone, it's RNG, some people cannot get say a Tempest Roar and be level 100 and still trying to find this item. So what you want to do is try and farm dungeons that have a way higher drop chance for items in general, and you can get more Diablo 4 Gold too.

Farming Uldurs Is A Good Choice

A really great example that my clan and I have been using, we've been farming Uldurs, the quantity of items that drop is almost double even triple than some of the other dungeons. In fact it's around about two full inventories of just items that can drop on the ground, there is a chance that each item can roll into a unique. So this is just as effective as Target farming certain dungeons, just the sheer quantity makes up the difference.

Speed Farming Is The Most Important

The last which is the most important in my opinion, you should be speed farming. You have to fight the temptation to be pushing dungeons way higher than yourself, so you want to make sure that the monster level is the exact same level as your character in Diablo 4. Because you're farming enemies at the same level as you, they're going to be super super easy, so you don't have to worry about things like damage reduction, too heavily investing in defensive stats, you just want to go completely Glass Cannon.

One of the stats that I've been playing around with that I think is absolutely fantastic that was not good in the previous season, but is now really important for Speed farming and that is the bonus effects after killing an Elite, so it might be x amount of movement speed for 4 seconds after killing an Elite or x amount of damage after killing an Elite.

They can only roll on three specific item slots. So the amulet can roll movement speed after killing an Elite and damage, now your boots can only roll movement speed after killing an Elite and then your pants can run the extra damage after killing an Elite.

Only those three spots make sure that you keep in mind that the movement speed in the game is capped at 100% I believe. Technically you could get 230% movement speed with all of your gear, it's going to hard cap at 100%, so you want to be kind of keeping that in mind.

Outro

This is even more effective now because of the monster density bonus, so just to recap, find a dungeon in Diablo 4 with the specific item type that you're trying to look for, dude dungeon resets with your friend. If you do not have a friend to play with, then go for a higher drop quantity dungeon, which has a higher chance. Because of the sheer number of items and lastly make sure you're speed farming monsters at the same level as you. This is not just for uniques, this is for your experience gain as well.

Dendro completely changed the way we look at Kokomi’s teams and builds. So, today we’ll cover everything you need to know from her best artifacts and weapons to general playstyle and team compositions.

The Jellyfish That Does It All

Kokomi’s biggest strength revolves around her elemental skill.

Her skill simply summons a jellyfish to heal surrounding allies and deal hydro damage to surrounding enemies. The hydro damage is very weak, but more importantly, the jellyfish will apply hydro onto enemies with every tick of damage it deals.

Since the jellyfish lasts for 12 seconds and hits with 2 second intervals, that means you get a total of 6 hydro applications and 6 heals, not including the initial cast, which is extremely strong.

Even though Kokomi’s elemental skill has an 18 second cooldown, you can actually have 100% uptime on her jellyfish thanks to her first ascension talent.

After using her elemental burst, the 12 second timer on her jellyfish will immediately refresh and allow its uptime to extend all the way past the 18 second skill cooldown.

Other things that Kokomi’s burst does is give her attacks and elemental skill max HP scaling, as well as extra healing for the party every time you normal or charge attack an enemy, similar to the way that Barbara functions.

With all that information in mind, I’m sure you can envision two different playstyles for Kokomi. The first playstyle is an off-field support where Kokomi only swaps in to place her jellyfish and refreshes its timer with her elemental burst to support your main DPS. The second playstyle is an on-field driver where Kokomi spends time on-field with the effects from her elemental burst to apply extra hydro to enemies to support reactions for characters off-field, and even deal some of her own damage with an invested build.

These two different ways of playing Kokomi have clear differences in build options, so let’s walk you through how to build your Kokomi for the situation that fits your team.

Off-Field Kokomi Build

Kokomi’s supportive build is very cheap and accessible to all players.

For artifacts, you’re almost always going to want the 4-set Tenacity of Millelith because her elemental skill can keep 100% uptime on the 20% attack buff for the team.

In the cases where you’re running a bloom team that’s not dependent on ATK%, such as using Thoma for burgeon or Kuki Shinobu for hyperbloom. You can also choose the 4-set Deepwood Memories for dendro resistance shred, which increases the damage from bloom-related reactions.

Artifact stats are always energy recharge or HP% in the sands, HP% in the goblet, and healing bonus in the circlet to maximize her burst uptime and her healing potential.

Since this Kokomi playstyle, I usually have her off-field most of the time. Her energy recharge requirements are high. Getting as close to 200% energy recharge is recommended, so usually the sands slot will run an energy recharge sands without extremely efficient artifact substats.

Aside from as much energy recharge as possible, other substats to focus for Kokomi are just HP%, flat HP, and elemental mastery if you run her with Nilou Bloom teams. So, she ends up being an extremely cheap character to build for off-field support.

To hammer that nail even further, Kokomi’s best weapon for off-field support happens to be a 3 star catalyst that all players can easily get to R5.

That catalyst is, of course, the Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers. Not only does it provide a good HP% stat for Kokomi’s healing, but the passive provides a 48% attack buff to the character switching in after Kokomi, which is an absolutely insane damage buff for ATK scaling characters.

There’s really no other reason to run any other catalyst with an off-field Kokomi. The only exceptions are if your team cannot utilize attack buffs, or if you really prefer to rely on having 100% uptime with Kokomi’s burst, then an R5 craftable Prototype Amber is also a viable option for the extra energy it gives to Kokomi.

Regardless, both options are completely F2P friendly and players should have no issues with building Kokomi for off-field support.

On-Field Kokomi Build

Kokomi’s damage build is a bit more expensive in terms of investment, but still simple to understand.

Unlike the off-field build, Kokomi’s best artifact set is now the 4-set Ocean Hued Clam. This set will convert all of Kokomi’s healing into a bubble that deals physical damage every 3 seconds, where an invested on-field Kokomi can easily hit the 30,000 damage cap per bubble before resistances.

Artifact stats to focus for an on-field Kokomi also have slight changes, where now you always want to run an HP% sands, a hydro damage bonus goblet, and a healing bonus circlet. Because Kokomi is on-field with this playstyle, she’ll directly absorb energy particles and naturally have a lower energy requirement.

Instead of the 200% that I described for the off-field build, 160% energy recharge is the sweet spot for any on-field Kokomi, which is a lot more attainable with an HP% sands.

Hydro damage and healing bonus are mandatory for Kokomi’s damage. Hydro damage in the goblet is pretty self explanatory. But the healing bonus also increases Kokomi’s damage while she’s empowered by her burst thanks to her other ascension talent, which grants extra scaling on her enhanced attacks based off her healing bonus.

This extra bonus scales much better than HP%, meaning you’ll always lose both damage and healing power by running an HP% circlet over a healing bonus circlet.

The usual energy recharge, HP%, flat HP, and EM for electro-charged or Nilou Bloom teams is the standard substat focus.

While the Thrilling Tales of Dragons Slayers catalyst can be good for an on-field Kokomi as well, it’s usually outclassed by two weapons. The best weapon for an on-field Kokomi is, of course, her signature weapon Everlasting Moonglow. But generally, this catalyst is not worth your primogems unless you’re a whale or a diehard Kokomi fan like I am who has R5 Moonglow just to flex on the haters.

Moonglow is usually not worth your primogems because Prototype Amber is more than enough for Kokomi, and usually only gets 5-10% less personal damage compared to Moonglow depending on the refinement situation. Not only is this craftable your best F2P option for on-field Kokomi, but its energy passive allows you to ease your energy recharge substat requirements if you have some pretty garbage artifacts.

To summarize, the weapon order for an on-field Kokomi is Moonglow if you have it, and if not just run Prototype Amber. If you’re also out of catalyst billets, then Thrilling Tales is also a viable option for those looking to stay stingy and build the cheapest on-field Kokomi possible.

Freeze Support

Kokomi is such a flexible and universal healer with the utility that she brings to the table that she can practically be used in any team.

However, just to get you started, if you don’t know where to begin, I’ll outline a few teams where she shines in. Of course, it's even better if you have five-star weapons suitable for Kokomi. The way to get it is actually very simple. You just need to buy a Genshin Impact Account.

The first of a few teams that we’re going to talk about today is a freeze team. Off-field Kokomi support is a backbone of many freeze teams. Because she provides outstanding hydro application and her build with both Tenacity of the Millelith and Thrilling Tales can buff your cryo DPS.

Running Kokomi allows you to run two offensive cryo characters as opposed to running a defensive cryo character, like Layla or Diona. So, a team usually has double cryo damage dealers, Kokomi, and an anemo support.

For the cryo slots, you can pick any of the two between Rosaria, Kaeya, Shenhe, Ganyu, and Ayaka as these characters either deal a ton of cryo damage, buff the cryo damage of your team, or do both at the same time.

The anemo support can technically be most anemo characters as long as they have the 4-set Viridescent Venerer equipped. The best option by far is Kazuha, for his elemental damage buffs. But other options, like Venti and Sucrose for grouping, or Jean and Sayu for even more healing, also exist.

Hyperbloom & Burgeon

While freeze teams are strictly for an off-field Kokomi, both an off-field and on-field Kokomi can function in a hyperbloom or burgeon team.

For the on-field Kokomi variants, the team consists of Kokomi, a dendro applicator, and either Kuki Shinobu or Raiden Shogun for hyperbloom or Thoma for burgeon.

The dendro applicator needs to be a consistent off-field option to allow Kokomi the freedom to stay on-field. So, your best options are Nahida for players who have her, or Dendro MC, for the best F2P option.

Collei and Yaoyao also work in this slot. But their abilities don’t last nearly as long as the Dendro MC’s burst. So, they are like tier 2 options if Nahida and Dendro MC are considered tier 1 options.

The final slot can be either Xingqiu or Yelan for powerful single target hydro damage, or a second dendro character from the ones listed before.

Options like C4 Kirara and Baizhu are also viable in the last slot for a second dendro option. But keep in mind that they lack AoE dendro application and cannot be used as solo dendro characters to create dendro cores.

For the off-field Kokomi variants of hyperbloom and burgeon teams, a dendro character, like Nahida or Alhaitham are fantastic for operating as solo dendro characters and easily allow you to run the usual Xingqiu or Yelan in the final slot for a team maximized for damage.

Also Read: Genshin Impact: How To Create The Best Yelan Build? - Artifacts, Weapons & Teams

Taser

The one team that is usually limited to the on-field Kokomi build is a taser team.

This is Kokomi’s classic team composition before dendro took the teambuilding scene by storm, and got significantly better with the introduction of the Ocean Hued Clam set. The team consists of Kokomi with two off-field electro damage dealers, and then either Sucrose to buff the EM of the team, or Kazuha to buff the elemental damage of the team.

For the two electro damage dealers, you can pick any off-field character between Fischl, Beidou, Raiden Shogun, or Yae Miko. The premise of the team is extremely simple, so nothing much really needs to be said about the team.

Kokomi, in particular, not only provides the ability to run two off-field electro characters, but she also consolidates the role of healing and hydro application.

Prior to Kokomi’s release, your only options to use were Barbara for healing, who does significantly less damage compared to Kokomi, or to use Xingqiu and live with the fact that sometimes his rainswords aren’t enough to sustain the entire team’s health bars.

Nilou Bloom & An Entirely New Build

Last but not least, the final team that Kokomi really shines into is a Nilou bloom team.

The introduction of dendro survivability options, like Yaoyao, Baizhu, and Kirara, definitely brought more flexibility to Nilou bloom teams. But Kokomi still remains a staple partner for Nilou.

As an off-field healer, Kokomi can keep her cheap build and sustain the team while Nahida, Alhaitham, or Kirara bear the burden of providing on-field dendro.

For the last slot, usually with Nahida and Alhaitham you want to run triple hydro characters, meaning Xingqiu or Yelan are again the options for the final slot.

In the case of on-fielding Kirara, you cannot use Xingqiu or Yelan while she runs around as a package. So, a second dendro character that applies dendro off-field like Dendro MC, Nahida, Yaoyao, or Collei can go in the final slot.

While the off-field playstyle is a little unassuming, Nilou really changed the way we can build Kokomi as a driver for bloom teams. If you want to play Kokomi on-field within a Nilou team, then an entirely new build path opens up.

Building Kokomi with the 4-set Gilded Dreams or the 4-set Flowers of Paradise Lost and triple EM in the sands, goblet, and circlet actually becomes viable, since Kokomi can become the “owner” of bloom reactions.

In hyperbloom and burgeon teams, Kokomi never focuses on elemental mastery because the reaction damage always depends on the EM of your electro or pyro characters that turn the dendro cores into hyperbloom or burgeon reactions.

However, Nilou’s Bountiful Cores do scale off Kokomi’s EM if she creates them with her attacks or elemental skill. So, that’s why building full elemental mastery is viable on Kokomi.

Not only does Nilou allow you to switch your artifact set, but new catalysts like A Thousand Floating Dreams, Sacrificial Fragments, and Fruit of Fulfillment can be used if you don’t need a catalyst focused on healing.

Of course, if players want to keep their Kokomi build flexible for other teams, you can still on-field Kokomi with Ocean Hued Clam and elemental mastery substats in a Nilou team, or off-field Kokomi with the 4-set Deepwood Memories.

Although you won’t be seeing a flurry of huge green numbers with just elemental mastery substats compared to the triple EM build, Kokomi will still retain solid personal damage with her Ocean Hued Clam numbers.

If you’re on-fielding Kokomi with Nilou, then you’re going to need to pick two dendro characters between Nahida, Dendro MC, Yaoyao, and Collei for the final two slots since all these characters have some sort of AoE dendro application.

Since Kokomi is so flexible, there are definitely other teams, such as a general on-field Kokomi, to drive vaporize, or even specialized teams, like the “Sukokomon” team.

As we all know, Diablo 4's Season 1 was successfully released last week and has received good player feedback. The new season is called Season of the Malignant, and I think Necromancer is the most powerful class in this season.

Malignant Hearts are completely broken and more powerful than you ever thought possible. Let me give you an example of Decrepit Aura, when you have at least five enemies nearby you get an aura that automatically curses enemies with Decrepit Aura for 5 - 15 seconds.

This is Caged Heart of Decrepit Aura item power 608, so not Ancestral, not 800 item power, even there's only a level three Heart, When at least two enemies are near you, gain an aura that automatically curses nearby enemies with enfeeble for 15 seconds, up to a maximum of 21 seconds, helps you get some Diablo 4 Items faster. This is not the strongest version of the Heart can this potentially go down to one single enemy and then it just works perfect on bosses.

Necromancer In Season 1

This is not the only thing, in Diablo 4 Caged heart of the Sacrilegious, we know that walking near Corpse automatically activates an equipped, equipped it needs to be in your skill bar, warp skill every second dealing 36% reduced damage. This works bonus to what you actually do, but the question was does this use your cooldowns. For those wondering Diablo 4, this Heart for Necromancer will trigger Corpse Explosion, if on your bar every second and Corpse Tendril every three seconds roughly, without triggering the cooldown of it.

There's one important key part that a lot of people seem to have missed in the patch notes, the stats you see reflect what a level 20 character would receive as a drop. So each of these is essentially one of the weakest versions, for example the 20 damage reduction right now, I mean that was five enemies close by, this 20 damage reduction could even be more.

We see the absolute basic weakest version, Tempting Fate with 60% Critical Strike damage, how high can this actually go. Now seeing how absolutely overpowered these Hearts can be, maybe the nerfs were warranted to a degree. Obviously Eternal realm players in Diablo 4, but then again that's the way how arpgs go, I'm sorry you bought a live service game.

Blood Summoner Stronger Than Ever!

Knowing now how broken the Hearts actually are, may I present you a potential Blood Summoner build, that will get super duper charged. Because Sacrilegious is now triggering Corpse Explosion every second and every third second Corpse Tendrils. Absolutely super charges our Blood Surge Summoner, why Blood Surge Summoner? Because you truly will never run out of essence again, we are using cool Mages to generate Essence in Diablo 4.

This build usually doesn't run Corpse Explosion, but if we actually now put Corpse Explosion into our skill bar, that's an equipped skill, and we can move Decrepify out. Why can you move to Decrepify out, well that's simple we play Decrepit Aura and Decrepit Aura works on two or less enemies, I mean we might get the one enemy Decrepit Aura so it's a free Decrepify cast without asking everything to do anything, we can move Corpse Explosion in the bar and then in the skill tree as we see here, you have Grim Harvest for consuming Corpses Grand 6 Essence plus Fueled by Death will constantly actually work.

Not only that in Paragon Board, we can go for the flesh eater Note 2 consuming 5 Corpses around 40% increased damage for six seconds, because we constantly automatically consume Corpses, without having to do anything. If you don't know how to build it, Diablo 4 Boosting Service can help you.

Which grants us, bonus Essence the whole time with a Skeleton Mage, followed up with bonus Essence constantly for consuming Corpses, and if we're running out of Corpses we can make bonus ones with Ghastly Blood Mist in Diablo 4, and then at the same time just Blood Surge everything around as the whole time, our Skeletons will mitigate a little bit damage that way we be taken, will fortify with ourselves with our Blood skills and Skeletons.

Eternal Realm Got Shafted

A lot of you were not so excited about Season of the Malignant, but I always expected these Hearts to be absolutely overpowered broken bonkers. It stinks for the Eternal Realm players, but this is how life service goes this is how Seasons go? Maybe just just make this season is for free, give it a try, have some fun, experiment with the hearts, play some new things and even if you only level up to 50. Maybe it brings you some joys and smiles in your face to experiment with all these crazy things.

Today’s topic will be Diablo 4 mechanics. We will be talking about damage buckets, damage, how to calculate damage increases and defenses.

Additive VS Multi

Starting off, we’re just going to quickly go over additive and multiplicative stats. You’ll see stat lines aspects things in your skill tree and your Paragon Board that either have a ‘+’ or an ‘X’ by them.

‘X’ will be better at 99% of the time. There are some instances where it’s not. But it’s safe to think that stats with an ‘X’ will be better than with a ‘+’.

Damage Buckets

This is where people seem to get confused, Damage Buckets.

We have four main damage buckets in Diablo 4:

• Main Stat
• Crit Damage
• Vulnerable Damage
• Additive Damage

Each of these buckets multiplies with each other to get your final damage output. The most confusing bucket is the Additive Damage bucket. If it’s not Crit, Vul, or Main Stat 99 of the time, it goes into this bucket. So, things like core, close, healthy, injured, damage, and so on all go into this bucket.

This is because you have 0% close damage and you get 100% close damage somewhere does not mean you’re now going to double your damage against close targets. It gets put into the added a bucket with the other Additive Stats.

Keep in mind there are hidden stats that go into these buckets that will not show up on your stat screen. For example, Critical Damage against Crowd Control targets gets put into the Critical Damage bucket, but it does not show up as Critical Damage in my character screen.

It’s important that you balance out your damage buckets. If you have 600% Critical Damage but only 200% in your additive bucket, a 25% additive roll would be better than getting a 50% critical damage roll.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Shadowmancer Necromancer Build: Season 1 Endgame Guide

How To Calculate Damage?

How do we calculate our damage increases? I’ll be using my character stats in these examples.

So, we have 285% Critical Damage, 275% Vulnerable Damage, 800% in the Additive Damage, and 900 Dex in this current setup. You can calculate each of these buckets the same. When we’re representing these stats, we start from one for Critical Damage. The 285% would be represented as 3.85 when we’re doing our calculations.

Let’s say we get another 50% Critical Damage somewhere. We would now have the 335% Critical Damage versus the 285% we had before. We then take 4.35 divide that by 3.85. That would give us 1.129. That would mean that we get roughly a 13% damage increase. For our main stat, calculations 100 Main Stat equals 10% damage increase. So, when you’re calculating your Main Stat, make sure to convert it into the damage increase percentage and not the total amount of dexterity, strength, willpower, or whatever stat it may be.

So, say we have a crossbow with Crit Damage, Bone Damage, and Dex. And we’re trying to decide on what roll to get next. We can either go for a 70 all-stat damage roll or a 40% core damage roll. So, our Dex before is 900 and after it’ll be 970. So, we would take the after being a 1.97 and divide it by 1.9 to get a 1.036 or roughly a three and a half percent damage increase. For the additive, we would take the 800% before and the 840% after.

So, 9.4 divided by 9 gives us 1.044 or roughly a 4.4% damage increase. So, we have 3.5% versus 4.4%. If you are needing to get the all-stat roll to hit some Paragon node bonuses, it’s not going to be a huge damage loss.

To sum it up, you take what your stat will be after and divided it by what it was before. So, ‘X’ divided by ‘Y’ equals your damage increase.

Item Power

On to Diablo 4 Item power, how do we calculate our item power damage increases? Suppose you have an 818 sword and an 810 sword. Assuming both stat rolls are the same, you take the average of the damage per hit of both those weapons and divide the larger number by the smaller number, like we did with the damage buckets.

So, our 818 damage range is 989 to 1483. Add those numbers together. Divide them by two to get your average. Do the same with the other weapon. And then, we’ll take the average of both being 1236 for the 818 and 1198 for the 810. Divide 1236 by 1198 to get 1.0317 or roughly at three percent damage increase.

Armor

And lastly, are defenses. For our defenses, we have armor and resistances as well as damage reduction rolls.

Starting off with armor, this reduces physical damage taken from monsters on your level. What this means is that as a level gap between you and monsters increases, the amount of damage reduction you get from your armor is reduced.

In this chart, you can see how much armor you need in order to get the maximum damage reduction against X level of mobs.

The maximum damage reduction you can receive from armor is 85%. So, if you are fighting mobs that are level 154, don’t go over 1300 armor as you’ll be overcapping.

Resistances

Resistances are non-physical resistances damage reduction. So, for every two percent of a resistance stat, you get one percent damage reduction for that element.

If you get hit by a fire attack and you have 20% fire resistance, you have another 10% damage reduction against that attack. This additional 10% is then multiplied with all your other damage reduction rolls that apply to that attack if they were close distant poison, etc.

However, resistances don’t seem to be near is important in Diablo 4 as they are to a game like Path of Exile. I have pretty much completely ignored resistances, and it hasn’t seemed to affect me at all. Maybe down the road with seasons, resistances will become far more important. But for now, don’t stress and worry about how much resistance you have.

Damage Reduction

Finally, we’ll talk about damage reduction.

It’s important to note that damage reduction in Diablo 4 is multiplicative and not additive. So, you can never have a hundred percent damage reduction and be invincible.

If you have two sources of damage reduction, giving 50% damage reduction each your final damage reduction would be 75%. Suppose you get hit by an attack doing a hundred damage you would reduce that 100 to 50 and then you would further reduce the leftover 50 by another 50%, meaning you only take 25 damages. And if you had another 50% damage reduction roll somewhere, it would take the leftover 25 damage and put it to 12.5 and so on.

Genshin Impact has been out for a few years now. There’s a ton of characters to choose from and some are more popular than others. But here, I want to talk about characters that are underrated, although in my opinion still relevant and strong in 2023.

1. Noelle

The first one I wanna talk about is Noelle.

She definitely has gotten the short end of the stick over the years. Because just to start with, Geo doesn’t have that many characters or team comps and no new Geo support units have been released during Sumeru’s cycle. And what’s even worse, when Itto showed up, she basically got overshadowed by him due to how similar both are.

And if that’s not enough, one of her biggest problems is that she doesn’t generate energy from her skill. But it’s 2023 right now and we’ve honestly seen worse energy problems. The thing is Noelle is like a puzzle you need to solve. But once it’s done, you can sit there and admire the result. In her case, you will need to use Favonius weapons on at least 2 team mates if not all 3 of them. By the way, some 5-star weapons are very difficult to obtain. At this time, directly buying a Genshin Impact Account is a good choice!

Gorou is also amazing for her, not just because he boosts Geo damage, but also he can generate a good amount of Geo and Favonius particles for her, which you can catch by swapping to her.

But the saving grace here is that her burst costs 60, which is not the worst thing in the world to have. And also, if you didn’t know, by doing normal attacks, there’s an increasing probability that will let that character generate 1 energy and it just so happens claymore and catalyst users have the best probability chance. So, doing some slashing with Noelle gets that energy restored.

But honestly, the thing I love most about her is that when there are multiple enemies, especially if they hit hard, her team wide healing by using the skill is kinda amazing and gives you a nice amount of team options you can go for when she’s taking care of the survivability.

And truthfully, it’s not the energy problems that’s holding her back, but her final constellation. If you don’t have it, a good chunk of damage will be missing.

However, this is also a bit of an outdated statement because it’s been around since Genshin’s launch. And these days we have her dedicated artifact set. We know how valuable Benny boy is, and Gorou is also there to help her out.

All in all, Noelle’s mono geo teams still hold up really well these days. Sure, she has her some problems. But as time went on, in my opinion, she is still relevant even till this day.

2. Heizou

It’s no secret that Heizou has been often compared to Sucrose or even Kazuha. And things like his underwhelming crowd control or short range normal attacks make him inferior.

But honestly, if you can get behind his playstyle, he is an extremely fun to use character. One punching enemies with his skill that scales extremely well or kicking enemies with a burst that has a low 40 energy cost is one of few things that makes him a great unit.

And the thing is because of how fast and fluid his animations are, he is a superb quickswap unit for teams like Freeze or Vape. At the same time, he is also a great driver for comps like Electro-charged due to the low charged attack stamina cost. And as you know it, charged attacks have no ICD, so you can always create reactions with his sweeping kick.

And after making guides on complex characters for a few years now, you gotta appreciate his simple yet strong passive. punch an enemy with his skill and everyone besides him gets 80 Elemental Mastery boost.

Also, if you are invested into Wanderer or Xiao and have obtained a C6 Faruzan, she is honestly amazing with him and only turns him into an even stronger damage dealer. And don’t forget, he is an Anemo catalyst, which means you can just slap on him Viridescent and Thrilling Tales and he can still land some quick punches before swapping out and buffing the main damage dealer, which works out super well in quick swap teams.

Now, I do have to be honest with you here because my Heizou is C6. However, when he first got released, I had him at C0 for a pretty long time. But I will admit, his constellations, especially C4 and C6, are amazing. But without them, he still works as a great unit for many team comps.

Also Read: Genshin Impact: How To Create The Best Yelan Build? - Artifacts, Weapons & Teams

3. Yae Miko

In the past, I really didn’t know how good Yae Miko was. That was me before Sumeru update. And now that we have Dendro reactions, she’s actually really good.

I think Hoyoverse should honestly stop with releasing characters whose potential is not yet unlocked. Because Yae Miko and Kuki Shinobu are the perfect examples here. Not sure about Thoma, though, they probably didn’t plan him to be a pretty good Burgeon enabler.

Still, the reason why I mention this is that a lot of people think Yae Miko is not that great. She looks amazing and has some of the best voicelines. But when it came to her damage, it just didn’t feel satisfying, especially when Hoyo went back and forth trying to quote unquote fix her and afterwards rolling back the changes.

However, the change that she did need the most was the Dendro element. Here is a funny fact: Aggravate and Spread reaction damage works better when characters can do many little hits which can cause reactions. And because of this, Yae Miko’s totem damage has completely changed after putting her into Dendro teams.

And what’s also great is that her burst isn’t that super mandatory. You could skip the burst in one of the rotations if she didn’t have enough energy for it. What’s most important here is to maintain the totems on the field at all times, so that they can relentlessly attack enemies.

Overall, I think Yae Miko has been underrated for a while now, even after the Dendro element, and I gotta confess. I also didn’t think much of it before I tried her out in Dendro teams. She’s kinda like Keqing to me. Because of Dendro reactions, both of them are now my go-to characters I like to use everywhere.

4. Kaeya

Going back to the classics again, I feel like Kaeya doesn’t get enough attention when it comes to the new Dendro team comps.

First of all, he is a great option when you’re playing a Freeze team. I especially love the fact that even after game’s launch: his damage numbers are pretty respectable, especially when you build him with a Blizzard Strayer set and slap on him one of the premium 5-star swords.

And of course, who could forget the Reverse Melt teams that you can run with him? But what really has set him apart after the Dendro changes were the Fridge team variations. The most prominent one is Hyperfridge. And it’s pretty simple. You build him as a damage dealer. You use either Kuki or Raiden to trigger Hyperblooms and then someone like Alhaitham or Nahida can act as the driver so that there’s enough Dendro application.

You will then choose between several Hydro options so that there are Freeze reactions happening because hitting enemies with Hyperblooms while they are frozen is really a one-of-a-kind satisfaction you’ll get.

Honestly, I am just happy to see Kaeya doing so well after all this time. I know some content creators love to showcase him and that makes me happy. But at the same time, I can see a lot of times people forget he exists and always focusing on the next shiny character. When in reality, you’ve got a cool starter character that you can build and use in many teams, including the new Fridge comp.

5. Collei

I probably haven’t seen this much injustice when it comes to a character getting overshadowed. And it was Dendro Traveler out of all people who did this to our Collei, who we must protect from the world’s harm.

No, but seriously, she obviously has some problems like her skill collision with enemies acting weird or the fact Hoyo decided to put a special limiter on her Burst’s ICD.

But with these problems out of the way, I actually love using her in various Dendro teams, especially when she is equipped with the Sacrificial Bow. This allows her to do her skill twice and if you have at least a few of her constellations unlocked, there’s some good synergy you’ll get out of those.

But even then, she is massively underrated when it comes to Nilou bloom teams. I am honestly still trying to wrap my head around her playstyle in this team. But I am having a blast using her with Nilou. Because after playing this game for so long, getting to experience a pretty unique playstyle is something else.

She’s one of the best choices to go for if you want to have a strong Nilou bloom team. Otherwise, you can still use Collei in Quicken teams or even Burgeon. She’s obviously going to require more focus than when you play DMC, who just drops his flower and switches out.

There’s a couple of important things that need to be addressed when it comes to summon in 1.2 update. These are the 5 considerations you don’t want to miss out on.

Consideration 1: Blade’s Damage

It’s probably safe to say that Blade is definitely one of the more interesting damage dealers, although the fact that he sacrifices his own health to deal better damage is not that ground-breaking. Because Arlan can do it as well. Still, there are a couple of things about Blade that really stand out and we need to talk about.

First of all, we know that the skill consumes Blade’s HP and increases his damage output. It’s not an attack, but more like taking a turn to buff him up. However, he does gain a new turn, although I am not sure how that will work out with supports like Yukong or Bronya. Hopefully, this skill won’t waste their buffs.

Also, unlike Arlan, who doesn’t consume a skill point, Blade unfortunately does use it up. So, if you’re using him in your team, you will need to be aware about the skill point economy, which was one of the best-selling points about Arlan when you didn’t have to care about it so much.

But the biggest thing about him has to be the ultimate. No matter how much HP Blade has, he will set his own health to 50% and deal massive damage. We still don’t know officially how good his damage multipliers are.

Still, what’s exciting here is a strong synergy with Luocha. It just so happens that Luocha triggers his skill’s auto-heal when an ally drops below or to 50%, which is just perfect for Blade’s ultimate.

What’s even better, since Blade also consumes his health with the skill and then attacks afterwards, Luocha’s healing from the field will be amazing for this. Basically, the coffin courier is best buddies with this immortal Stellaron hunter.

Honestly, I could go on and keep delving deeper into Blade’s kit. But it’s pretty much clear that he will excel best when his health is constantly getting reduced. And Hoyo made sure to include a new relic set with the 1.2 update, which is basically tailor made for him. I am not sure how big the Critical Boost is going to be from the 4-set bonus. But hopefully, it’s enough that you can put on Crit DMG body on him and fish for the Critical Rate substats instead.

But what I care about the most right now is how useful Health stat is going to be to Blade. There were some hints that he might scale with it in some way. I am a bit worried when it comes to split scaling characters. It doesn’t always work out for the best, although I am basing this on my Genshin experience. But it will be interesting to see how important HP is going to be when it comes to building Blade.

Otherwise, he seems like a unique damage dealer you could go for, if you’re still in the process of building teams for Memory of Chaos.

Consideration 2: Kafka’s Team

With Kafka, a new team is going to be rising to the top if everything goes well.

Her entire kit is based around Shock damage over time. And there’s quite a few synergies you could pull off with a team like Sampo, Kafka, a healer and another flexible character, who could be Serval as well.

Now, Sampo is probably going to be one of the key team mates for Kafka because this guy’s ultimate boosts DoT damage by up to 30% if it’s raised as a level 10 ultimate.

This is pretty huge. Because both Sampo and Kafka specialize in unloading lots of DoT damage and this debuff on enemies is going to be amazing. I mean, it’s no secret that Sampo has been talked about a lot in the community as one of the best team mates for Kafka. Although even if things sound good in theory, it’s always the damage numbers that bring the clearest results.

And the thing is, from what I understand, Kafka applies Shock DoTs in an interesting way. I am specifically talking about her talent, which will trigger a follow-up attack from her when any other ally in the team attacks an enemy. That same enemy will then get attacked by Kafka and, at the same time, Kafka will also apply Shock DoT.

First of all, in order for Kafka to utilize her kit efficiently, you will need to adjust her speed so that somebody else can attack an enemy before her. And once that is done, when you use her skill, if the enemy is already afflicted by DoTs, they will receive additional damage.

For example, Sampo would need to go before Kafka, apply his Wind Shear on the enemy. Then, if you also have Serval, she would need to go next and then afterwards Kafka could benefit from all those DoTs placed on the enemy.

Obviously, there’s also Ultimates we need to keep in mind. Honestly, I really like a team that’s focused on dishing out tons of damage over time and Sampo is already a beast by himself in Simulated Universe. So, imagine how easy the runs are going to be with Kafka and Sampo together. I mean, I know Simulated Universe isn’t that challenging compared to Memory of Chaos. But even then, this new team is going to be definitely interesting when Kafka comes out.

And the funny thing is, all the DoT characters are going to be available on Kafka’s banner. So, it’s going to be extremely easy to assemble this new team if you’re going for Kafka. And what’s even better, snagging a couple of Eidolons for someone like Sampo is going to be amazing if you can get his 1st, 4th and last Eidolons.

Consideration 3: Luka’s Bleed

Speaking of Kafka’s banner and damage over time, Luka is the new 4-star Physical Nihility character who specializes in Bleeding his enemies.

His whole schtick is playing around the Fighting Will stacks. He will gain after using attacks or when entering the battle by using his technique. And just like Fire Trailblazer, he will consume his stacks and deliver an enhanced Basic Attack, which will deal increased damage against an enemy who has Bleed DoT.

But unlike the Fire Trailblazer, we can see Luka only consumes 2 stacks to deliver the Enhanced Basic Attack, which is great. Because that means he can use this attack more often and unload a lot more damage.

Still, the biggest thing about him has to be the ultimate. First of all, he will gain Fighting Will stacks. But more importantly, the enemy will receive a debuff that increases their damage taken, similar to Welt’s ultimate. And then, of course, he will do some damage.

I am not sure how good he is going to be with Kafka compared to Sampo. We still don’t know officially what his Traces or Eidolons will do. But if his damage multipliers are solid, he could be a great replacement for Serval. Because he does increase the damage the enemy takes, which hopefully also means that he helps increase the DoT damage.

Luka, Sampo, Kafka and a healer could be an interesting team to try out when the banner drops and it’s going to be exciting to see how that works out.

Consideration 4: Banner Value

Now, when trying to evaluate the banners, Blade’s featured banner is pretty decent. Although if you’re thinking of building a team with him, then it’s mostly Natasha that matters here.

However, if you do have Luocha, then you will want to pair him with Blade. So, Natasha would be used in another Memory of Chaos team.

But as for Arlan and Sushang, they don’t really have any synergy with Blade. Arlan has been notoriously nerfed before the launch. So, even if he has a similar kit to Blade, he would be better off in a team that’s built around him. Sushang is a pretty strong physical hunt unit. But all in all, this banner isn’t really that great if you’re pulling just for Blade specifically, unless you still need one of these 4-stars for your 2nd Memory of Chaos team.

Still, Natasha’s Eidolons are pretty good, especially the 2nd and 4th Eidolons. Providing some decent healing for badly damaged allies and gaining energy on hit allows her to maintain everyone’s health easily, especially since her Ultimate only costs 90. It’s the cheapest ultimate in the entire game.

And as for Kafka’s banner, as I already said it, it’s an extremely valuable banner for anyone who wants to build a DoT focused team with Kafka. Sampo’s 4th, 5th and 6th Eidolons are all really good. The 5th one allows him to raise his ultimate beyond level 10, which means more DoT damage boosting on enemies. While Serval’s 2nd and 6th Eidolons are incredibly good for improving her energy and damage output, especially the 6th one. If you’re going to be using her with Kafka, this means it’s going to be extremely easy to maintain Shocked debuff on enemies and enable extra 30% damage for her.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail 1.2: Why Kafka Is The Next Character Worth Pulling?

Consideration 5: Future Warps

When it comes to picking which banner to wish on, honestly it really depends on you, although Kafka’s banner definitely has more synergetic 4-star units that she can utilize.

But we still don’t know much about Luka’s performance and, more importantly, we don’t know how good Blade or Kafka is going to be, despite the rumors about them.

Also, let’s not forget that 1.3 characters have been teased as well. Dan Heng’s new powerful form is going to be a 5-star Destruction Imaginary unit, so I can imagine this guy is going to be a damage dealer. If you don’t have this character in your Honkai Star Rail Account, you have to find a way to get him as soon as possible. And that’s pretty interesting since we’re finally going to be getting a dedicated damage dealer from the Imaginary element.

Fu Xuan is another unique unit we’ll be getting in version 1.3. She’s a 5-star Quantum Preservation unit, which means a new tank is joining the ranks of Gepard, Fire Trailblazer, and March 7th. To me, this is very exciting if you have Silver Wolf, because we can get one step closer to a true Mono Quantum team.

In fact, we will be able to build a Mono Quantum team thanks to Lynx, who is a 4-star Quantum Abundance unit. So, Lynx, Silver Wolf, Seele and Fu Xuan is probably going to be the ultimate Mono Quantum team, you can play in places like Memory of Chaos.

All in all, I would say that Blade’s banner is for those who want to use a cool damage dealer but are fine with 4-stars that have very little to do with him on his banner, while Kafka’s banner is for those who want to build a DoT team.

Finally, 1.3 characters I just talked about will probably have their own 2 separate banners. Hopefully, Fu Xuan and Lynx are going to be on the same banner, so those who already have Seele or QQ and Silver Wolf can build their dream team of Mono Quantum.

The core of Path of Exile is character customization. Most expansions introduce new ways to play the game, sometimes including brand new skill gems. Path of Exile 2 will be no different.

What’s Definitely Coming In POE 2?

In fact, it will be the single largest drop of new skills into Path of Exile in the game’s history. Between introduced skill gems, the concept of skills attached to ascendancy classes, and weapon implicits granting skills as well, once POE 2 hits will be inspired to craft a plethora of brand new builds with a batch of visually pleasing new skills.

We are less than a month out from ExileCon 2023 and the total reveal of everything related to Path of Exile 2. Let’s hop on the hype boat and explore what we do know about all the new skills arriving in this big content drop.

Defined New POE 2 Skills

The long-awaited shapeshifter archetype finally enters Path of Exile with Path of Exile 2. Presently, we’re aware of at least three different shapeshifting forms: the Werewolf, the Werebear, and the Werecat.

The Werewolf will be accessible via a skill gem and function much like an aura. This is probably the case for the other two forms, too. Werewolf users focus on speed, attacking fast and moving fast. The form can be transitioned to and from seamlessly. Inside the form, you will be able to use any skill that makes sense.

The two examples GGG used were Leap Slam and Cleave, although I’m sure many other melee skills will be usable, too. And spell skills are probably not usable in the Werewolf form, although we could be surprised. Similar to the Werewolf gem, the Werebear is also stored within a skill gem, although we never saw it in action. While a Werebear will probably focus on tankiness, its functionality should be the same as the Werewolf.

Personally, I think this will be a form we can briefly swap to and gain major defenses inside. Think of an emergency Vaal Molten Shell or something similar. A huge boss strike is incoming. So, we quickly swap to Werebear form before dancing back to Werewolf or Werecat form.

Unlike the other two former shapeshifting forms, the Werecat form can only be accessed through the Beastmaster ascendancy class, one of three new ascendancies. Due to this, there will probably be more power packed inside this form than the latter two. Plus, it’ll have a specialization in Critical Strikes.

Don’t worry about scaling, either. In POE 2, skills granted by ascendancy classes will scale with the character’s level and not remain static. I’m hoping for a variety of new play styles enabled due to shapeshifting. In addition to adding this entirely new archetype, I really hope it’ll introduce a shift dancing playstyle, incentivizing players to swap between multiple forms and prolonged fights.

The new crossbow weapon class will add a variety of new skills to the game in the form of weapon, implicits, and actual skill gems. Power Shot is a high damage single target attack skill granted by a crossbow implicit, which can be modified by bolt skill gems. In order to have a better gaming experience, I recommend that you prepare enough POE Currency. In this way, you can buy the skill gems you need at any time.

We know of three bolt types: Permafrost Bolt, Armor Piercing Bolt, and Incendiary Bolt. Permafrost deals cold damage and conjures a big field of ice and can freeze enemies. Armor Piercing deals extreme damage, breaking through the armor of enemies. Incendiary sparks a field of fire and can leave corpses burning.

Again, these bolt skills are like auras and can be swapped between to change how your crossbow attack skill of choice functions. They don’t seem to reserve mana, and swapping between them doesn’t have any associated cost.

The Siege Cascade Skill is granted by the Siege Crossbow and essentially acts like the current day's Rain of Arrows skill. You shoot a bolt into the air and it slams down on enemies. Again, your various bolt skills modify how Siege Cascade works.

The second new weapon class coming with POE 2 is spear. Spears boast a host of brand new skills found both on skill gems and on the weapons themselves as implicit modifiers. Every single spear in the game will grant Exiles at least one mobility skill with some granting, too.

One of the spears we’ve seen came with both an engage and disengage skill. The former skill grants increase damage for a short time once used, while the latter unleashes a flurry of projectiles upon use.

Another new skill is Whirling Slash, which creates a sandstorm, which grows each time you use it then explodes when you leave it, dealing huge damage to monsters.

Yet another spear skill gem is Rapid Assault, which does three rapid stabs, then a fourth that does more damage and can possibly stun, rewarding those who position themselves well.

Spearfield creates an area of spears on the ground, which deals bleeding damage to monsters who walk through it. It’s basically a damaging area control skill gem.

Storm Spear fires a lightning projectile, which splits on contact. It is kind of like Lightning Strike.

Related: Will There Be Three New Weapon Types In Path Of Exile 2?

Finally, we have Blazing Lance. Blazing Lance creates a trail of fire on the ground, which can be hit again to Fan the Flames for a burst of damage. All in all, these seven new skills introduced from Spears are absolutely wild.

Path of Exile 2 shall bring a new gem type into the game - Meta Gems. These gems accomplish a niche purpose or enact an odd design pillar, functioning differently from other gems.

Renowned examples are the proficiency, cast on crit, and spell totem support gems. The former can hold all your auras inside it, allowing them to be activated with the click of a button. The latter completely revamps the current spell totem support gem, allowing you to socket multiple intelligent gems into the meta gem itself. For example, you can socket an elemental curse and an elemental skill into the gem and it will know to use the curse first and the spell skill second.

Even though the developers have been steadily revamping and sometimes merely updating the visual effects of existing skills, it’s evident more drastic changes shall arrive at the momentous release of Path of Exile 2.

Some of the speculation we’re about to undergo might be revamped to existing scales or these might be new skills entirely. We’ll have to wait for the end product to see. But there’s sure to be an absolute ton of other visual and animation updates on release, especially with the updated Exile models and bar advanced rigging technology GGG has developed.

Speculated New PoE 2 Skills

Both the Ngamakanui and Aggorat teasers showcased a rapid fire barrage of potentially new Elemental Skills. The Exile in the jungle ruin seems to use a revamped spark skill, curving her hand toward the floor and conjuring a small lightning projectile that randomly zips along the ground.

Afterwards, she either uses a new cold damage skill or gets another revamp skill gem Ice Nova. Finally, the Exile finishes off a group of the infected creatures with a brand new cold damage skill - a meteor of ice. If I were to guess, its name is probably an ice meteor.

Then in the Aggorat teaser, we see the monk Exile use his staff to twirl around another new skill, create a ground targeted arc of lightning and a cone of ice. Both look like completely new scales. Unlike anything else we’ve seen in the melee right now, the monk is also using lots of skills, which could mean a few things.

GGG might have just wanted to show off all these skills and animations. Because they look cool or they could be hinting toward a combo system of sorts with this class.

What if there are new abilities or support gems that incentivize using a variety of skills or damage types to build up for a huge payoff? A combo system of sorts. It’s definitely a possibility, especially for the monk, an archetype known for their wild combo potential.

We’ve seen a dodge roll in the two most recent snapshots of Path of Exile 2. So, how will a tumble like ability enter POE? I’d gander it’s a new skill gem or a basic movement skill, like our basic attack skill. If it’s a new skill gem, we would likely get it very early as a way to introduce new players to Path of Exile’s method of dodging big boss attacks. Roll would be a precursor to Flame Dash and Frostblink, maybe.

Option 2 roll is our new basic movement skill and one of our only movement skills. There is a small possibility we’re about to see a major shift in the way movement skills function in Path of Exile.

Imagine this: we get Roll as a basic movement skill or one of a few movement skill jumps. Instead of having individual hyper focus skill gems, GGG adds the ability for a variety of support gems to modify these new basic movement skills.

Thusly, we could form our own movement skills and save a fair wealth of Flame Dash. But with Flame Trail support and Insta Phase support mixed with the Dash skill gem, you’d have your own with three more supports to use and modify it with. I could see four based move skills possible: Roll, Dash, Charge, and Blink.

As the lots of players were curious about the KR server status, so I thought it’ll be great to share some of those updates & notices for your Lost Ark journey.

Please note: This news is only containing about the improvements and updates on KR server. It does not contain the roadmap of the whole global server.

Raid Updates

Just like the before gold adjustment on Valtan and Vykas, some of the gold reward got adjusted in this update.

Some of the raid was way too easy, but gives too much Lost Ark Gold as a reward. And those higher-tier raids, which need more efforts and times, like Akkan and Ivory Tower, were given too low rewards than the low-tier raid.

Of course, the high-tier raid is also consuming such quantity of gold to beat the raid due to a need of expensive potions and other battle item stuff.

So, now Kakul-Saydon, and Brelshaza Normal drops less gold than the previous version. Also, the high-tier raid and dungeon, like Akkan and Ivory Tower, will give you better rewards than the previous raid rewards.

Also Read: Lost Ark: When & How To Use Esther In Valtan Legion Raid?

The Vykas raid has a really hard mechanic called Medusa mechanic in the Gate 3. And this mechanic will also got patched and removed. So, now you longer need to solve the intricate mechanic during the Vykas raid.

For Brelshaza Normal mode, it’ll drop the ancient material for making or crafting the ancient gear. So, you are no longer to go Brelshaza Normal and hard again to simply upgrade your gear to an ancient level. At the same time, chest opening efficiency was boosted, too. You could make and set your character more fast than the previous version of the Lost Ark.

Besides, the Integrated Dungeon UI can be changed after this update. You can keep use the previous version, but also you can use the newer version, too. It looks simpler and cleaner than the previous version UI.

Additionally, in the token exchange, you can additionally exchange the tripod amulet. Lv.4 and Lv.5 tripod amulet can be exchanged per character. Previous version was a per roster. And this tripod will snap 100 %.

Summer Season Patches

As the summer is here, the new Summer Season event will also begin.

Maharaka Festival Island is opened to start a new event. It’s called Mokoko Pirate Festival. Do you still remember the past event, which looks like Fall Guys?

Not much thing was changed in this update. Mokoko got changes its costume and add one more course during the race. Actually, it’s not bad to play, so try it out if you are playing the game in KR.

Mokoko Pirate Festival opens at every even hour like 2, 4, 6. If you played the Lost ark in this season, in every single content you play, it’ll drop the Event Token, which can be exchanged on the separate event window.

And of course, it contains lots of useful stuff for your Lost Ark journey, like material for honing and legendary card pack and some footstep skins.

At the same time, new Express Season has begun and it’ll give you 1540 support and an engraving setting, which is based on the players’ gameplay data.

But unfortunately, in my personal experience, it won’t provide you enough material for your gear honing. So right now, my Express character got stuck in the dead end and waiting for the next week reset.

But what is really good right now is that it won’t cost any gold for honing to 1490. And as you expect, achieving each section of the item level will give you a lot of useful stuff for honing and other setting. Even the legendary selection card pack is obtainable when you reach 1540.

Ark Pass is also has begun on the KR, too. Just like the other region, Ark Pass is containing lots of useful stuff for honing, cards and some new mounts and pets for your Lost ark journey. And within the pass package, it contains a cool-looking summer background wallpaper on the lobby.

Other Updates

Some of the user convenience patch was also done on this update.

From now on, you can hand over the item to your alt without costing Pheon. It’ll decrease the trading counts, but as I mentioned, it won’t cost the pheons.

Sailing coins and keys were integrated into two types. It is more like shrinking the variation of the sailing item. So, you and I no longer to carry a such many types of coins for exchange in the trading ship.

Also, the ship skin can be changed once more, which is more like a separation of the ship’s function and the appearance. So, you can manage the function and the skin in the separate window.

Engraving function got updated, too. From now on, you don’t have to open the certain engraving by reading an uncommon Engraving Books. All the engraving will be started at level 1. In other words, it’ll opened the whole engraving in level 1 if you already opened the engraving function on your characters.

Warrior class or Shushire character’s body type was adjusted in this update. And one more customizable appearance was also added to the Shushire class - beard. So, now you could customize your Warrior class character with more variation to choose from.

Floors of the tower or spire were also adjusted to 20. Previous version of the tower was consisted to 50, right? But from now on, you don’t have to climb that many floors.

Gear Adjustments

Gear section or tier was updated on this update.

Lot of things happened in the tier 2 and 1, but let us just skip these 2 and move on to the tier 3 right away. The tier 3 section got adjusted. And the change content is more like the compression of the honing session. From now on, you don’t have to make 20 for your gear to reach the 1490 level.

In this update, you only need to hone your gear to 15 to reach 1490 right away. Also, the cap of the max honing level was decreased to 20. And as I mentioned in the raid chapter, you don’t have to go Brelshaza hard mode to make an ancient level gear.

Ancient material also dropped on the Brelshaza Normal, too. So, if you reach the 1490, go to Brelshaza Normal and then you can make an ancient level gear and hone again with more eased honing session.

Besides, the gear effect change conditions are gone. Once you craft your relic gear, you can change your gear set effect right away.

If you used an Express Pass on your characters, you could start right away with your relic gear.

Also, a lot of support for the new player is ongoing right now on KR server in the raid or in many other stuffs. So, if you are playing the Lost Ark in the KR region, it is a nice time to raise another alt or new character.

Emoji Penal

Emojis UI also updated in this update. Emoji panel was added.

More Other Updates

Delain Armen and Balthorr are now can obtainable from the wandering merchant like Wei.

Also, you need to react to the quest sometimes. This express or emotion can be directly accessed through the quest penal on your right.

Brackenhide Hollow makes its Mythic Plus debut in Dragonflight Season 2! So, in this guide, I’ll walk you through the dungeon to help prepare you to take on the Gnolls and stave off the Decay!

By the way, some bosses have lots of high damage in this dungeon. You’d better use WoW Dragonflight Gold in advance to buy some good weapons and armors to equip yourself.

Dungeon Start

You’ll start by freeing captive Tuskarr. You’ll need to release 5 from their cages before you can progress to the dungeon. But there are more than 5. So, you can pick and choose how you want to path through the start of the dungeon.

Watch out for Bracken Warscourges, as these have an AoE fear that needs to be kicked, and they passively increase the damage and reduce the cooldowns of other nearby Gnolls!

This dungeon is full of nasty diseases, such as the Witherbolt cast by Trickclaw Mystics. Luckily, they only cast this ability if there is a Rotchanting Totem nearby, and the bolt can be kicked.

If all else fails, you can dispel the disease. And if you have an Alchemist in your group, they can add an extra safety net by purifying any of the Decaying Cauldrons found around the dungeon.

After the cauldron is purified, everyone can click on it to get a 5 minute extra action button that can be used to cleanse themselves once.

Hackclaw’s War-Band

After you’ve freed five Tuskarr, you’ll get to fight the first boss.

During which, everyone should try to stay as high health as possible since the bosses gain haste based on the group’s missing health. Gash Frenzy is also removed by being healed above 90% health, so you’ll want to do this, anyway!

The nasty combo on this fight is when your tank gets hit by a disorient at the same time your healer gets CC’d by hextrick totem. Break this totem quickly so that your tank can get dispelled since they need to get in front of Rira Hackclaw before Savage Charge goes off and kills someone else in the group!

The other bosses all have other abilities you’ll need to look out for, but most are pretty straightforward. Kick the Greater Healing Rapids to avoid the bosses healing, for instance.

After the boss goes down, you’ll get to head left or right! The left path is a little less kick intensive and is my recommendation for most groups. Though it does feature a lot of group damage from Bone Bolts from the Rotbow Stalkers, which also have a few other nasty abilities, such as the same buff aura as the Warscourges had at the start of the dungeon.

They’ll also throw meat at players in your group, causing nearby animals to fixate them!

Gutshot

Gutshot is the next boss you’ll fight. She’s basically a Beast Mastery hunter, and frequently summons Hyenas and throws traps.

The Hyenas should be picked up by the tank. But they also will fixate on the players that Gutshot throws meat at. You can kite these Hyenas over the traps to root them. You’ll also want to kick Master’s Call to stop the boss from freeing her pets!

After Gutshot goes down, head back across the bridge. Watch out for Stinkbreath’s Stink Breath, which will disorient and damage whoever gets hit. This is a pretty quick cast and will track whoever it’s targeting.

So, if you can react fast enough, you can make sure it only hits one person.

Treemouth

Treemouth is up next, and this boss’s bark is definitely just as nasty as its bite!

The big mechanic to understand on this encounter is the Grasping Vines phase, which works a little differently than it does on Normal and Heroic!

The boss will cast Grasping Vines and pull all players towards it. When the cast finishes, all players within 10 yards get Consumed, which deals some nature damage and locks you inside the boss. If nobody is within 10 yards, the boss gets a massive enrage. So, make sure someone stays in!

Any players who get eaten get the Partially Digested debuff for the next minute, which makes the Consume much more lethal if it happens to them again. So, you’ll want to alternate who gets Consumed each time.

Trash Gauntlet

A final gauntlet of trash stands between you and the Decatriarch after Treemouth falls.

Waves of small adds will spawn routinely until you get to the top. But take your time and make sure to kick the Filth Callers to bring them into the fray.

During this gauntlet, you need to make sure to swap to the summoned totems, as they empower the Fetid Rotsingers to cast Burst of Decay and put a disease on your whole group.

There are some of the Alchemy cauldrons in this gauntlet, too. So, make sure to use these if you can, especially if you don’t have a Disease Dispeller in your group like a Paladin, Monk, or Priest.

The Vile Rothexer is another important mob towards the end of this gauntlet. Stay spread because Withering Contagion will spread if you’re too close to one another, and use your Cauldron or other Disease dispels on this if you can!

Also Read: WoW Dragonflight: How To Unlock The Ability Of Mining And Herbing On Your Dragonriding Mounts?

Decatriarch Wratheye

Decatriarch Wratheye is the last boss, and you’ll need to make sure that you avoid the Choking Rotcloud or else you’ll get a nasty DoT.

If that’s not enough to convince some of you DPS players to dodge it, it also silences you while you’re inside and reduces your damage dealt afterwards!

Make sure to quickly swap to the Rotburst Totem, especially if it shows up in the middle of a Rotcloud. Because if it finishes its cast, you’ll take a bunch of damage and also get a stack of that nasty DoT / Damage Reduction effect.

Brackenhide Hollow is a fearsome dungeon. But I hope this guide will help you tackle its challenges!

The Elder Scrolls Online just got a dark, tantalizing new expansion called Necrom. If you get the expansion, you can build an Arcanist character right away.

But to help you wield their forbidden knowledge, here’s a full guide to the new Arcanist class.

What Is An Arcanist?

For starters, why don’t we talk a bit about what exactly an Arcanist is when it comes to the law?

This creepy new class draws its power from the Planes of Oblivion, known as Apocrypha. Thanks to the knowledge that they’ve acquired from the ancient tomes that they probably weren’t technically supposed to read. They can now use glyphs and runes to conjure all kinds of dark magic.

With their glowing green symbols and Lovecraftian Powers, there’s a bit of a multiverse of madness vibe to the Arcanists. But they’re not just a fun costume for players to try on. Because this new class actually offers a totally different style of combat from anything else in the game and it is proper fun.

How To Use Crux?

The Arcanist is actually the first new class added to Elder Scrolls Online since 2019 and it is a true game changer thanks to a little system called Crux.

If you’ve already made a character, you’ve probably noticed this already. But some of the abilities that Arcanists use generate this dark energy, which you can see floating around them in the form of these little green triangle runes. You can have up to three of these on the go at any given time and they’ll power up all of your skills while also activating various passive abilities.

And as nice as those boosts are, you can also just spend that Crux to unleash even more powerful attacks very handy. Basically, you’re going to want to chain your moves together in the right way, keeping a healthy supply of Crux on the go to power you up and then cash it in on a devastating attack when the time is right.

What Skills Does An Arcanist Have?

The other thing that makes the Arcanist class stand out is how incredibly flexible it is thanks to its three distinctive skill lines. You can mix and match these freely. But these mix of abilities can actually strengthen the way that you play your character.

*If you want to cause pure Anarchist Anarchy, then the Herald of the Tome skill line is the way to go. By peppering your enemies with Runeblades, you’ll be able to chip away their health while generating Crux. Remember, that’s pretty important. You can then use that to convert into a deadly beam with Fatecarver.

If you prefer to get up close and personal, you can use Tome-Bearer’s Inspiration to buff up your weapons or Abyssal Impact to give yourself a nice set of tentacle arms that can be upgraded to generate Crux while they dish out the pain.

*But for all the defensive-minded tanky players, the Soldier of Apocrypha skill line is a really good shot. There’s yet more technically fun to be had with the Gibbering Shield, which forms a Wrigley guard around the player, soaking up damage before dealing it back.

If you’re happy to be your team’s pain sponge, then Runic Jolt will draw the enemies to you with a taunt while also maiming them so that your buddies can tame them down and also it gets you even more Crux.

But to keep wrapped up even tighter Runespite Ward and Fatewoven Armor can offer you magic shields and Increase Armor respectively while Runic Defense grants Minor Resolve to your entire group, which is ideal if you’re trying to tough it out through a larger PVE sticky situation.

*Finally, we’ve got something for the healers out there Curative Runeforms, which is definitely the line to invest in if you want to do some strange doctoring of your own. By summoning Runes with Runemend, you can heal your allies while generating Crux. And after that, you can spend it on a Remedy Cascade, which will patch them up even further and also replenish their Stamina and Magicka. That is massive.

Arcanist’s Domain conjures a vortex that grants a whole range of buffs to anyone standing in it. But the real star of the show here is Apocryphal Gate, which allows you to summon a pair of portals that you and your crew can hop between. This is so useful for making quick retreats or even closing the gap on a foe.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online: How To Make Gold From Necrom? - Good Items To Sell

Which Skill Build Should I Use?

Thanks to these three distinct skill lines, the Arcanist class can be turned towards just about any playstyle.

The Herald of the Tome skill line is obviously the way to go for players who like to focus on dealing damage. If you want to dive in with runes scribbled all over your weapons and tentacles flying everywhere, then it pairs quite nicely with a Khajiit or Dark Elf character.

Or, those who want to focus more on the magic based skills might consider a High Elf since they take 5% less damage while channeling, allowing them to conjure all kinds of Cosmic Horrors without suffering too much.

But if you prefer a tankish build, then you’ll be focusing on the Soldier of Apocrypha line. Being an Imperial here really helps because it reduces the cost of your abilities, allowing you to keep those defensive skills and taunts flowing while you draw the enemy to you.

And if you’re a kindly soul who just wants to keep everyone in good health, the Curative Runeforms will be your best friends. Bretons make great healers since their spells cost less. And Argonians are also effective physicians thanks to their healing bonus.

But the beauty of Elder Scrolls Online is that there are just tons of room to mix and match. So, flip open one of those tomes and just see what sort of Arcanist you want to be. No matter which build you prefer, your Arcanist will be even more powerful with the addition of ESO Gold. Because this way you can use more powerful weapons and armor for your Acanist.

Do you have a plan for immediately what to do the minute Phase 3 Call of the Crusade launches? If you want to maximize the first days of the brand new Trial of the Crusader phase, I've got you covered. I'll explain the five things I'm going to do in the patches from cutting up at gyms to run a heroics and maximizing the new Ulduar Skip Runs.

Phase 3 Release Time

But before we talk about the five things, I'm going to talk about the release time. The Trial of the Crusader and Onyxia's Lair Raid are coming out at 6 PM EDT for the global release on June 22nd. However, the rest of the new content from the Isles of Conquest battleground to the new Epic Gems to the Argent tournament dailies will come out on June 20th.

Since the non-raid portions of the patch aren't on a global release, we should be on the lookout for the patch directly after your server's maintenance. On North America maintenance will be from 10 AM to 1 PM EST Meanwhile, on Europe maintenance will be from 3 AM to 11AM CEST. Phase 2 did originally release at 1:35 PM on Tuesday in North America. So, don't be surprised if things take a few extra minutes.

1. Phase 3 Epic Gems

The first thing I'm going to do immediately when the patch answers, I'm going to talk to Timothy Jones and buy the 10 most important gem recipes.

Here is my list of recipes:

• Rigid King's Amber
• Purified Dreadstone
• Brilliant King’s Amber
• Fractured Cardinal Ruby
• Quick King's Amber
• Solid Majestic Zircon
• Reckless Ametrine
• Mystic King's Amber
• Bold Cardinal Ruby
• Runed Cardinal Ruby

Of course, there are way more relevant recipes you should buy if you have the Jewelcrafting Tokens available. Primarily, I'm going to get one recipe of every gem color to cover all my bases. Also, you shouldn't neglect colors like blue. I mean tanks need stamina gems just as much as casters need spell power gems.

With my recipes in hand, I'll be heading to my factions Emblem of Heroism vendor to stockpile at the gems. I've already converted all my batches to heroism in advance using a macro. But once the patch drops, you can just shift click like any other item.

I plan to primarily buy red gems at first. But since everybody has that idea, you should diversify into other major colors as well. I'll also be heading to the PVP vendor and Orgrimmar to liquidate all my Honor into even more Epic Gems. I've got so many random characters with battleground marks that I converted using a macro. So, I'll be getting at least 100 Epic Gems across all my alts just from past PVP.

Since I do have 450 Jewelcrafting, once I've got all my Epic Gems, I'll be cutting them and selling them on the Auction House. I'm not expecting insane prices since most people will be at work on the patch drafts and the rate doesn't come out until Thursday. Though hopefully at first, they sell for a few hundred WOTLK Classic Gold each.

Also, I plan to wait to gem out my own gear since the prices should drop by raid day. After I clear out my first batch of gems, I'm going to sit down and prospect the 8,000 Titanium Ore I've saved up.

Related: WOTLK Classic Phase 3: What New Dailies Will Be Added To The Argent Tournament?

2. Start Prospecting

I already pre-cleared my inventory as much as possible. So, I'll be able to prospect without taking extra trips. I also pre-saved a Titanium Prospecting macro and I have Speedy AutoLoot turned on to make the process three times faster.

Once I finish prospecting, I'll be cutting the Epic Gems and selling the Titanium Powder on the Auction House. The Titanium Powder should have a very good value since like if they turn into dollar and Jewelcrafting Tokens. You'll also be left with tons of rare and common gems and I think it's worth cutting the rare gems before you put them on the Auction House.

Save Your Kings Amber!

Though there are two gems I’m not going to be cutting, which are the two King’s Amber I’m saving for the next step. The two King’s Amber will be for crafting the Jeeves remote banking robot.

I’ve already pre-farmed all the materials for Jeeves:

• King’s Amber x2
• Titansteel Bar x8
• Field Repair Bot 74A x2
• Field Repair Bot 110G x10
• Handful of Cobalt Bolts x30
• Scrapbot Construction Kit x 20

With Jeeves in hand, I’ll be able to do all sorts of wild and crazy exploits, like making my character insanely big during raids. It’s also just way more convenient for during my 8 million gear sets on my Druid.

3. Argent Tournament

The third thing I plan Argent Tournament to do in the patches is to head to the Argent Tournament to pick up my Argent Pony Bridle and my Argent Crusader’s Tabard.

Those will be picked up from Dame Evniki Kapsalis in the western tent. The Pony Bridle makes my Argent Squire into a second remote bank and he doesn’t require any skills like Engineering.

With my new child in tow, I’ll be finishing off the Black Knight’s quest chain for three Champion Seals. At the same time, I’m hopefully going to knock out the brand new Sunreavers and Crusader Dailies. These are even faster and easier dailies than ever before.

Also, if I get the drop of the Kvaldir Attack Plans, I’ll just knock that quest out real quick for a bonus 21 gold.

4. Daily Heroic Quest

The fourth thing I plan to do is to run the daily heroic quest for five Emblems of Triumph. Although I won’t be able to afford any new Triumph gear in time for ToC on Thursday, my alts will be able to afford one Crusader Orb each if they hit the daily until Thursday.

The price of that Crusader Orbs on the first few days should be at least 2,000 gold since there aren’t any raids for generating them yet. I’ll also be running a few world tours on my Paladin and generate some last-minute purple Sidereal Essence.

Sidereal Essence is a currency that drops one at a time from the last boss in each Heroic Plus dungeon. That takes us back to Crusader Orbs again. You can actually buy a Crusader Orb for three Sidereal Essence that makes just running Heroic Plus, an insanely good gold maker for alts.

5. Ulduar Skip Runs

The fifth thing I plan to do in the patches is Ulduar Skip Runs on every character.

These runs will be perfect for catching on my alts and for getting those last minute 252 weapons and trinkets. In Phase 3, you can teleport directly past Flame Leviathan and XT-002 to get directly to Algalon the Observer. Not only that, but the one hour timer’s been removed and Algalon now drops a guaranteed two Fragments of Val’anyr.

There’s also another skip directly after Kologarn since the Vezax store will immediately open up. This means you can go from Avalon to Vezax to Yogg and complete the raid in under 20 minutes.

Yogg even gives three fragments guaranteed if you do zero light and two fragments guaranteed if you do one light. That’s such a good deal.

Crest of Desire is a very interesting unique helmet. It has almost no stats in just one socket for a gem, which will be upgraded by up to eight levels, 50% in quality and will deal double damage. We’re putting Herald of Thunder there. Spells like these benefit greatly from extra gem levels.

Build Overview

Elementalists ascendancy offers some great offensive and defensive keystones. Mastermind of Discord and Heart of Destruction will increase your damage, especially if you can reliably apply exposure. Bastion of Elements provides a defensive layer against elemental and reflected damage.

To further enhance damage of the Herald, use medium cluster jewels with Dark Messenger and Empowered Envoy, two Storm Secret rings, Lone Messenger keystone and good staff. Your Herald of Thunder skill gem should reach level 30. Note that spell damage and cast speed have no effect on your DPS.

Your character will need a lot of lightning resistance as Storm Secret deals lightning damage to you. You can also use it to your advantage and hook up multiple spells to cast when damage taken. You will also need Life Leech, E.S Leach and Recoup to survive the self-inflicted damage.

DPS Skills

As you kill shocked enemies, a storm attached to you is created, hitting enemies and dealing lightning damage. With Shaper of Storms, all your hits will cause shock. So, that’s one less thing to worry about.

Note that Herald of Thunder cannot inflict Shock by itself. You will use other skills for that.

Defenses

It’s a build that uses maximum life and Energy Shield. Your total health pool should reach 5k or more. Get the Corrupted Soul keystone. It grants ES based on your maximum life. These resources should be leached and recouped back. You won’t be able to use auras. But you can use Arctic Armour.

Clear Speed

Clear speed is good with Storm Secret rings for more frequent hits and Inpulsa’s Armour for explosions.

Single-Target Damage

The damage against bosses is not high enough to take on Uber Bosses but enough for most content in the game.

Budget

All the unique and rare items are extremely cheap. Good flasks and cluster jewels may be the most expensive. So, if you want to make this build, you’d better prepare enough POE Currency.

Gear, Jewels, Flasks

Around the time you finish the Acts, you should already be able to equip most of the unique items. Be wary, with two Storm Secrets and no Agnerod South. You will take a lot of lightning damage unless you plan to mitigate it in some other way. There are a lot of unique items that are best-in-slot. In our case, we’ve used only rare boots, a belt, and an amulet.

Mandatory Uniques:

• Crest of Desire
• Inpulsa’s Broken Heart
• Strom Secret (2x)

Recommended Uniques:

• Agnerod South
• The Annihilating Light
• Storm’s Gift
• Algor Mortis
• Voice of the Storm

Crest of Desire is where you should put your Herald of Thunder to squeeze all the potential this single skill gem has to offer. This is the build defining helmet that boosts the DPS of socketed skills significantly.

Agnerod South pushes your required strength to 158. But it’s the best weapon for this build due to the increase in maximum lightning resistance, level of lightning spell skill gems, lightning damage, lightning penetration, and intelligence.

The Annihilating Light triples your damage. It is the most powerful staff that introduces a few problems that you’ll need to solve - Reduced Elemental Resistances and no extra Lightning Resistance.

Inpulsa’s Broken Heart as a body armor that grants shock immunity, maximum life, increased damage and the effect of shock and makes enemies explode.

Storm's Gift is a nice boost to Lightning Resistance and Energy Shield. It inflicts shock on more enemies, making them good for clearing maps. The Synthesized Implicit mods could be really useful, too.

If you can consistently create chilling areas via skills like Cold Snap, you can use Algor Mortis gloves. These perform better against bosses.

You will rarely deal any Critical Strikes. Combined with a huge range of lightning damage hits, it makes the "Lightning Damage With Non-Critical Strikes Is Lucky" modifier very good. You can get it on the Voice of the Storm amulet.

Storm Secret rings are absolutely required although you will take a lot of lightning damage as hits. It enables your build to have few CWDT setups with a reliable cast frequency. Your Herald of Thunder is vastly improved, striking more often, and creating more storms.

Lone Messenger is a keystone from Calamitous Visions that disables your auras but enhances the effect of the one single Herald you're using.

Put three of the Grand Spectrum jewels in your sockets for 135% increased elemental damage. With the Doryani version of Glorious Vanity, you can transform a keystone into Corrupted Soul for more Energy Shield.

There shouldn't be any issues with getting the required attributes. You don't need to look for Spell Damage, Critical Strikes, or Cast Speed on your gear. Seek Lightning Damage and Penetration instead. Your defense will consist of both maximum life and Energy Shield. Focus on maximum life, it's more beneficial. Get some life in Mana Recoup and have an item with one free suffix, so you can beast craft Aspect of the Spider.

Elemental Resistances, Maximum Life and Increased Movement Speed are the most important mods to look for on your boots. Maximum Life and Elemental Resistances will be the stats that you should aim to get a lot on a belt.

Crusader's Amulet has a prefix, which makes you penetrate lightning resistance. Look for this specific mod. The rest of the mods should be maximum life and Elemental Resistances.

Recommended Annoitment:

• Persistence
• Circle of Life
• Melding
• Whispers of Doom

Recommended Affixes:

• Increased Maximum of Life
• Increased Maximum Energy Shield
• Increased Elemental/Lightning Damage
• Strenth or Dexterity

There are a lot of affixes to choose from on jewels. Aim for maximum life and lightning damage. Corrupting one might result in an implicit mod that makes you immune to Corrupted Blood.

Recommended Affixes:

• 1 Added Passive Skill is Doryani's Lesson (Mandatory)
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Supercharge (Just One, High Priority)
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Storm Drinker
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Scintillating Idea
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Prismatic Heart
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Widerspread Destruction

Large cluster Jewels with the base for increased lightning damage with eight passive skills and two or three of the listed notables should be implemented. You should use two or three of these. Doryani's Lesson is mandatory here. Supercharge is great, too.

Recommended Affixes:

• 1 Added Passive Skill is Dark Messenger
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Empowered Envoy

4 medium cluster jewels with two specific notables listed here are the best way to enhance the build.

With properly adjusted Elemental Resistances, the Wise Oak offers a lot of lightning penetration, which is impactful.

Rumi's Concoction is a great defensive flask that boosts your chance to block spells and attacks.

Bottled Faith increases your Critical Strike Chance that is somewhat irrelevant here and increases damage taken by enemies on Consecrated ground. Don't prioritize it.

Progenesis is the most effective defensive flask in the game, especially when combined with Life Recoup. However, it is very expensive.

Use one magic life flask that would stop bleeding and replenish your life instantly. And depending on your preferences, a Silver or Basalt Flask for more mobility or armor.

Also Read: How Exactly The New Skill Gem System Is Going To Work In Path Of Exile 2?

Skill Gems And Sockets

The build has three fully automated CWDT setups as you're constantly hitting yourself. You can keep them at a low level if you have good Mana recovery.

The first one is a Storm Brand great for applying shock quickly to enemies all around you and triggering Herald of Thunder's Storms.

Conductivity is the recommended curse for this build. It reduces the monster's resistance to lightning damage.

Storm Brand & Conductivity are supported by:

• Cast When Damage Taken
• Hextouch (Optional)
• Culling Strike
• Energy Leech

Link these with Hextouch so that you can increase the gem level of the curse. If your Storm Brand has a high level, link it with energy leech support and abandon Hextouch; if not, just Culling Strike support.

The second setup hosts many various gems. Cold Snap will allow you to generate frenzy charges by killing enemies in the chilling areas it creates.

It's also good with Alger Mortis gloves. Purifying Flame creates Consecrated ground by releasing a wave of fire and physical damage that after its initial burst creates another one. Get a Divergent version for increased damage.

Wave of Conviction applies lightning exposure to enemies hit, reducing their lightning resistance.

Cold Snap (level 1), Purifying Flame (level 1) & Wave of Conviction (level 1) are supported by:

• Innervate
• Life Leech
• Cast When Damage Taken (level 1)

You could implement life leech support for a small portion of the damage to be leached back to you.

The third setup has three spells:

Immortal Call briefly decreases the damage you take from physical and elemental hits.

Phase Run grants you phasing, which increases your movement speed for a duration.

Shock Nova spell deals lightning damage around you, shocking many enemies at once. This skill has a second stage that is similar to the first one.

Shock Nova (level 1), Phase Run (level 1) & Immortal Call (level 1) are supported by:

• Cast When Damage Taken (level 2)

Since you can't use any auras and have a lot of unreserved Mana, Arctic Armour is one of the best spells you can have. It chills attackers and grants you freeze immunity.

Flame Dash allows you to dash to the targeted location, leaving a path of burning ground behind. It will also shock. So, use it to initiate the loop after entering a map.

Flame Dash are supported by:

• Acane Surge (low level)
• Second Wind

Keep Arcane Surge at a low level to make the Arcane Surge buff trigger after a single Flame Dash cast it grants more cast speed and Mana regeneration.

Second Wind support stores an additional charge for Flame Dash and makes it more expensive.

Herald of Thunder is the most important skill gem. Make sure it has high quality and level, which can be done by corrupting it. It adds lightning damage to your skills and creates storms, which are the main source of DPS in this build.

After playing the Diablo 4 betas, I was pretty surprised by how it all felt. And the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. But I kept noticing features that seemed very familiar from other games, primarily MMOs.

The long travel times between side quests, the huge open world that you can freely explore, even seeing other players walking around helping me do random events.

It felt a bit odd because it felt like I was playing an MMO within an ARPG. The combat feels great, the esthetic is dark and gritty again and we were blessed with a new antagonist that everybody seems to love - Lilith.

But as much as I love the idea of these new MMO like systems, such as World Bosses, Diablo 4 is taking a huge risk here and at the end of the day, put simply, Diablo 4 may not be for you.

Feel More Like An MMO Than ARPG

This is all from my time from the Diablo 4 betas. So, take this all with a grain of salt. But the reason why I say Diablo 4 may not be for you is because Diablo 4 feels more like an MMO than it does an ARPG.

In other games like Path of Exile or Diablo 2, you have one town that acts as a Quest hub, and from that one point you go on to different areas, usually on a linear path, killing monsters and hunting for that sweet loot.

In Diablo 4, however, you are left to your own devices. The main focus will always be the story line. But aside from the main quests, you can level how you want. If you want to farm dungeons all day, you can do that. Or, if you’d rather hop from quest hub to quest hub, doing side quests or exploring the world, you can do that.

There’s this weird sense of freedom that is present when playing Diablo 4, which is a refreshing feeling but alien at the same time.

Also Read: Diablo 4: 5 Things You Need To Know! - Status Effects, Save Gold, World Tiers, Paragon Boards and Level Up

Getting Stronger Feels Punishing

There are a few problems with this because with the freedom to play how you want, there are also additional systems now that you may not enjoy. For example, as you level throughout the world, monsters and areas will scale along with your level, which means getting stronger may feel a bit punishing.

There will be power spikes along the way whenever you get a key legendary or rare item. But that quickly diminishes once you start to out level your gear and scaling starts to catch up with you again.

One of the positives of a scaling level system is that you can just hop into a friends’ world and just play with them. There’s no big power difference between characters like in Diablo 3, because everything is scaled down to your individual levels.

My only concern with this system is that the process of slowly seeing my character become stronger and stronger is one of the reasons I love playing ARPGs. And the silver lining here is once you hit max level, scaling doesn’t matter anymore.

New Timed World Events

A big concern of mine is world bosses, simply because of how the world boss system is being implemented. Personally, I enjoyed the world bosses and I think they are a great overall addition to the game. But the bosses themselves are on set timers.

They will only spawn at certain times of the day and you will only have 15 minutes to kill the world boss. If you fail to kill the world boss within these 15 minutes, they just walk away. Literally, just that’s it. Leaving you with nothing and just wasting 15 minutes of your time.

There may be situations where halfway through the fight, people just start to leave. This is another system taken from MMOs like World of WarCraft, where you’re now being forced to do an activity you may not want to do.

My concern is that world bosses might just be the beginning. Seasonal content, such as the Seasonal Journey, which was teased earlier in the development cycle, might include daily or weekly tasks later down the road. I want to log in and play Diablo 4 when I want to, not when I feel like I have to.

Concerns About Hardcore

One thing that I think deserves a mention here is how these systems may affect hardcore players. Because it seems like they’re getting the short end of the stick.

Since Diablo 4 is now going into this MMO like direction, hardcore players are forced to try and kill a world boss that can potentially one-shot people. This could easily be a one-way ticket back to the main menu. Another option would be just to ignore the world bosses altogether, but where’s the fun in that?

There’s also a high probability that hardcore players can be lured into a death they can’t avoid, since there are now other players walking around in an open world environment and there’s no grace period for loading screens or dungeons. It would be pretty easy for players to accidentally or even on purpose kill other hardcore players by luring monsters over by a dungeon entrance, especially now that monsters and areas scale with players levels.

Final Thoughts and Concerns

Overall, I feel like Diablo 4 has a bright future. But at its core, it may not appeal to some past Diablo fans with its time gated content and open world MMO like features.

If you enjoy MMO games in general, I feel like you’ll enjoy Diablo 4 as much as I have. And now you can start preparing for Diablo 4 Gold. After all, Diablo 4 will be officially released in a few days.

However, if you’re looking for a spiritual successor to Diablo 2, I would probably suggest playing Last Epoch or maybe giving Path of Exile 2 a chance.

This all might change post-launch, but it seems like Diablo 4 is walking down a slightly different path compared to previous Diablo games.