Here is the Widowhail Toxic Rain Pathfinder build for POE 3.23.

This build presents a departure from the conventional approach of focusing on gem level stacking to maximize the level of Caustic Arrow or Toxic Rain. Instead, it leverages items such as Widowhail and The Adorned to amplify the modifiers present on other POE Items utilized within the build. It boasts a substantial life pool exceeding 7,000, offering the necessary damage output, clearing speed, and resilience required for safe progression up to level 100.

Throughout this guide, I will provide an overview of the endgame configuration as well as present several medium budget and early game setups. Let us commence with the discussion.

The Mechanics Of The Build

The mechanics of this build revolve around utilizing a Toxic Rain setup. This skill fires projectiles upward, which descend upon enemies, inflicting chaos damage and leaving behind spore pods that persist for a specified duration.

While these spore pods remain on the ground, they continuously deal chaos damage over time to nearby foes, with the potential for this damage effect to accumulate. By saturating the area with spore pods, the build capitalizes on Toxic Rain's stacking damage over time effect, which forms the foundation of its single-target damage output.

To effectively clear expansive areas teeming with monsters, Caustic Arrow comes into play, providing broad coverage across the screen. When linked with Arrow Nova Support, the skill disperses projectiles in all directions, blanketing the entire screen with caustic ground.

A notable aspect of this particular build is its synergy with The Adorned unique Jewel, enabling significant life stacking within the life pool. This substantial life reservoir greatly contributes to a player's longevity and progression potential, facilitating advancement towards level 100.

Different Gem Setups

In the primary skill setup, Toxic Rain should be linked with Efficacy, Empower, Awakened Vicious Projectiles, Awakened Void Manipulation, and Mirage Archer.

A medium-budget alternative to this setup would utilize regular support gems instead of Awakened ones, with Cruelty Support replacing Empower.

On a low-budget 4-link configuration, I recommend linking Toxic Rain to Vicious Projectiles, Efficacy, and Mirage Archer. Prioritizing Mirage Archer increases the total number of pods spawned around enemies, thereby enhancing single-target damage.

Also Read: What Content From Affliction League Can We Expect In POE 3.24 Or Later Expansions? - My Personal Speculation

For the Caustic Arrow setup, link Caustic Arrow with Awakened Arrow Nova, Empower, Awakened Void Manipulation, Awakened Vicious Projectiles, and Awakened Swift Affliction.

In a medium-budget version of this setup, substitute regular support gems for the Awakened ones, and also use Cruelty Support instead of Empower.

Note that while Cruelty Support may not be the most effective support, it serves as a convenient placeholder in a red socket before transitioning to Empower.

For a low-budget four-link setup, link Caustic Arrow with Vicious Projectiles, Swift Affliction, and Arrow Nova.

In the aura gem setup, this build reserves Grace and Malevolence on its Mana pool. Grace provides significant evasion, while Malevolence enhances damage by scaling both damage over time multiplier and skill effect duration, prolonging the duration of Toxic Rain pods and Caustic Arrow's caustic ground. Additionally, Haste Aura is linked to Divine Blessing and Inspiration Support. If Mana is insufficient for casting Haste Aura, running a level one Divine Blessing reduces Mana cost, and acquiring Mana efficiency nodes on the passive tree increases available Mana.

For Utility Gems, Toxic Rain of Withering is linked to Mana, Forge Arrows, and Culling Strike to maintain wither stacks on resilient enemies and dispatch bosses with less than 10% health. Despair further reduces the chaos resistance of cursed enemies, while a level 3 Immortal Call linked to Cast When Damage Taken provides an additional layer of defense.

Grab These Masteries

The masteries that this build will want to grab in its endgame setup will include:

• 20% Increased AoE while wielding a bow
• Recover 4% life when you use a flask
• Prevent an additional 3% of suppressed spell damage
• + 50 to maximum life

For earlier progressions of this build, useful masteries to have early on will include:

• +12% Mana Reservation Efficiency
• 8% Increased damage per Aura/Herald affecting you
• Auras have a 10% increased effect on you
• +15% spell suppression while your helmet, body armor, gloves, and boots have evasion rating

Ascendancy Passives

The ascendancy passives for this build will be acquired in the following sequence: Nature's Reprisal, Nature's Adrenaline, Master Surgeon, and finally Nature's Boon.

Once the build attains a sufficient level of resilience, there is an option to forego Master Surgeon and reallocate a point to a smaller ascendancy node for increased flask effectiveness.

Bow

For the bow, you'll first want a bow to start with a four-link bow with high attack speed and any damage over time modifiers.

Subsequently, aim to acquire a low-cost corrupted six-link bow, preferably with damage over time modifiers.

In the mid-range budget category, consider crafting or procuring a Thicket Bow with a +3 modifier, coupled with attack speed and a damage over time multiplier.

Lastly, as the final upgrade, invest in a well-rolled Widowhail once you have obtained the endgame quiver. The Widowhail offers significant multipliers to the modifiers present on your quiver.

Quiver

For the quiver, you'll ideally want to start with a broad head quiver for some attack speed and use this item slot to fulfill any stat attribute requirements or elemental resistances early on.

You'll eventually want to upgrade this item to something that has at least 2 damage modifiers on it, such as damage over time multiplier or increased damage with bow skills.

Finally, a hunter influence quiver (Drgon Arrow) with high life, multi-movement speed, and attack speed will serve as the basis for the endgame setup with Widowhail. With a 246 Widowhail, a quiver like this will provide a total of 276 max life, 76% attack speed, 27% movement speed, and 152% damage over time multiplier.

So, there's incredible upside potential for running with a Widowhail setup.

Helmet

For the helmet, you'll likely start with one that fulfills life stat attributes and elemental resistances.

You want to upgrade this to a helmet with similar stats but on a better item base and with eldritch implicits that provide 6% physical damage shift and 20% reduced mana cost of attacks.

Once you're able to fix your resistances with 100% uptime from flasks, you'll want a helmet with high life, high resistance modifiers, fire spell suppression, more physical damage shift, and +2 to socketed area of effect. This will both increase the overlapping of pods shot by Toxic Rain as well as the gem level of skills like Despair, which will be socketed in the helmet.

Body Armor

For the body armor, early gearing options will include items like a Tabula Rasa, a six-link corrupted body armor, or anything with high life and elemental resistances.

Once resistances are fixed by your flask setup, you'll want to opt for a Lightning Coil, which greatly improves the build's physical max hit. An endgame version will incorporate vaal implicits like +1 to socketed gems.

Gloves

For the gloves, you want to start with a pair that has high life and elemental resistances.

You'll eventually want to upgrade this to a better item base and also roll eldritch implicits that provide chaos damage over time multiplier and spell suppression.

Once you've capped your spell suppression, you can instead opt for Pierce on the implicits for more clear speed. The endgame version of this will look very similar to the helmet with high life and resistances, high suppression, +2 to area of effect, and increased damage during flask effect.

Boots

For the boots, the main modifiers you'll want to prioritize early are movement speed and elemental resistances.

An easy upgrade for this socket will be a pair of boots with high life, high movement speed, high resistances, and Eldritch Implicits that provide action speed and Elemental Ailment Avoidance.

The final version of the boots will have a high chance to avoid shock, high spell suppression, high life, movement speed, and onslaught on kill.

Belt

Initially, the belt slot serves to meet stat attribute and elemental resistance needs with a sturdy belt.

Over time, the aim is to transition to a Stygian Vise equipped with life and resistance, allowing for the addition of an Abyss Jewel with life and phasing on kill.

The ultimate belt configuration entails a Hunter influence Stygian Vise boasting high life percentage, increased flask effect, and a 20% reduction in flask charges used. This reduction in flask charges is essential for maintaining 100% flask uptime, a critical aspect of the build’s functionality.

Regarding the rings, they primarily serve to address stat attribute and resistance requirements while other gear pieces are upgraded.

It’s advisable to prioritize high stats or resistances in these slots to maintain flexibility elsewhere in the build. Once all other gear pieces are upgraded and finalized, the ideal modifiers for these rings include high life, damage over time multiplier, increased chaos damage, and reduced mana cost for non-channeling skills.

Amulet

The amulet is also another socket that remains fairly flexible in terms of modifiers you can roll.

Useful modifiers early on will include things like life, resistances, stat attributes, and damage over time modifiers.

However, to make this build truly invincible against small attacks, a Defiance of Destiny will eventually be used. This item allows you to regain missing life before every hit is calculated. Starting with a low roll of Defiance of Destiny and gradually upgrading to higher rolls would be my recommended path of progression for this item slot.

Cluster Jewels

Cluster jewels play a crucial role in maximizing the build’s efficiency in clearing speed, damage output, and access to jewel sockets, particularly significant upon obtaining The Adorned jewel.

Incorporating 3 medium cluster jewels called Luminous Shrine, this build highlights Wicked Pall, Touch of Cruelty, and Unspeakable Gifts. Notably, Touch of Cruelty remains unallocated within the build, relying solely on Wicked Pall and Unspeakable Gifts. These notable modifiers greatly enhance the build's chaos damage output and facilitate enemy explosions, causing a quarter of their life to be dealt as chaos damage. It's the explosions triggered by Unspeakable Gifts that drive this build's exceptional clearing speed during mapping endeavors.

As for the medium cluster jewels, there are 3 Dragon Curio featuring Shrieking Bolts and Repeater for heightened projectile damage, alongside one Pandemonium Scar cluster jewel housing Peak Vigour and Spiked Concoction. Peak Vigour enhances maximum life by 8%, while Spiked Concoction provides both attack speed and Alchemist’s Genius upon flask usage. The Alchemist’s Genius buff increases flask charges gained by 20% and flask effect by 10% during its duration, crucial for maintaining maximum flask uptime.

Jewels

For the jewels, common placeholders for jewel sockets will feature useful modifiers like percent max life or damage over time multiplier.

However, once an Adorned jewel is obtained, you’ll want to roll eight corrupted magic jewels each with 7% increased max life and 8% chaos damage over time multiplier. With a 129% Adorned jewel, this will grant a total of 128% increased max life and 146% chaos multi from the magic jewels alone.

In the final jewel socket near the Herbalism passive, a Lethal Pride will be used to gain some much-needed strength as well as another 10% physical damage from hits taken as fire damage.

Flasks

For the flasks, it is important to run a Ruby, Topaz, and Sapphire flask, which all have long durations that allow the build to sustain them permanently.

By keeping 100% uptime on these flasks, the build is able to take advantage of the resistances granted by the flask and will have an easier time upgrading gear pieces.

An important thing to note is that every magic flask will need the Flagellant’s prefix modifier. This modifier allows the flask to gain 3 charges when hit by enemies, which fills the flask quickly when being hit by multiple mobs.

A reduced Mana cost suffix will also need to be crafted on one of these magic flasks in order to lower Mana cost and allow the build to eventually drop Mana Reservation Efficiency nodes from the passive tree.

To finish things off, a Flagellant’s Quicksilver Flask Of The Cheetah and Progenesis will be the final flask in the build setup. Before upgrading to Progenesis, however, the build could run a bleed immunity life flask while it still has Master Surgeon allocated.

…

The New Life festival has begun in ESO, bringing with it a 100% XP boost to celebrate the holidays!

The event was originally set to end January 3rd. But ZOS has heard the complaints on the forums and extended the event to January 9th, giving you ample time to catch up with this year’s ticket items.

Introductory Quest & How To Join The Event?

To join the event, pick up the New Life Festival quest from the Crown Store and use it to locate the New Life Herald Breda, found south of the city of Windhelm in Eastmarch close to the Kynesgrove Wayshrine.

There is also a portal at all impresario tents that will teleport you directly to the New Life festival tent. The intro quest simply tasks you with talking to Breda.

Breda’s Bottomless Mead Mug

Once complete, you will unlock the Breda’s Bottomless Mead Mug collectible, which used to provide a 100% XP boost, but this has changed!

100% XP Boost!

You can enjoy the XP boost automatically every time you sign in throughout the entire event period. And its benefits stack with other XP bonuses!

How To Get Rewards?

There are a total of 10 daily quests. And when you complete 1, you’ll be rewarded with a New Life Festival Box.

Reward Box Contents

Within them, you will have a chance to receive the following goodies.

You can complete the dailies and collect these boxes on each of your characters.

New Life Daily Quests & Achievements Information

The New Life Festival Quests will send you all over Tamriel.

There’s a quest for each playable race in the game. For example, the Khajiit themed quest will send you to Reapers March.

There are achievements tied to each quest that you pick up from Breda, a few of which are straightforward.

Fish Boon Feast Achievement

In Shadowfen at the fish boon feast, catch 5 of each fish to get Fish Boon Angler.

You can do this over the time of the event or across multiple characters. This one will probably take the longest since RNG plays a part.

You can use any bait as long as you are at a New Life fishing hole, even the junk bait.

Lava Foot Stomp & Castle Charm Challenge Achievements

For the Lava Foot Shuffle and Castle Charm Challenges, it’s as simple as waiting for a second player to come along and performing your actions at the same time.

Snow Bare Plunge Achievement

The Snow Bare Plunge achievement says all you need to know.

Drop down to your knickers and jump in the water. Just one time is needed.

Stonetooth Bash Achievement

At the Stonetooth Bash, have some of the event recipe Betnikh Twice Spiked Ale ready to drink after you eat your meal.

The recipe comes from the reward crates, but you could ask other players as well.

War Orphan’s Sojourn Achievement

The War Orphans Benefactor achievement requires you to make a ESO Gold donation, and then complete the optional objective to kill the encroaching wildlife also in one trip.

The last couple can be a little more challenging, but you can remedy it by working in a team!

Signal Fire Sprint Achievement

Signal Fire Sprint requires you to light all of the braziers within 35 seconds.

You’ll want to start at the Brazier next to the Skyshard in town, then work your way around to the others.

You can use spells to run faster, like Rapid Maneuvers in the PvP skill line. Or, you can just work with someone else and they can light some of the Braziers.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online: A Complete Guide To Endless Archive Portals To The Unknown! - Puzzles, Quests & Upgrades

The Trial Of The Five-Clawed Guile Achievement

And the Trial of Five-Clawed Guile in Reapers March challenges you with unlocking 3 chests in 35 seconds or fewer.

Again, work with someone else, if they have the ability to force lockpicks even better.

Mud Ball Miscreant Achievement

The final achievement is Mudball Miscreant.

Throwing a Mud Ball is easy. When the quest is active, you simply need to have the leader in-front of you to use a Mud Ball on them. You could also use the collectible Mud Ball Pouch reward from the event drops when the quest isn’t active.

The challenge here can be finding the Alliance leaders. The locations listed here are in order based on quest progress in the base game.

New Life Celebrant Achievement

Completing all of Breda’s quests once will award the New Life Cerulean dye.

Magnanimous Title

And completing all of these quests, plus learning all 9 New Life crafting recipes and the full Skinchanger motif that drop from reward chests, will unlock the Magnanimous title.

Crystalfrost Skin

And finally, there’s one more achievement, Newly Charitable. This achievement rewards the Crystalfrost skin.

To unlock it, complete 12 of the New Life, Deep Winter, or Imperial Charity Writs that drop from reward crates.

Completing one of these holiday writs awards you with a Refugee Gift box. These contain a tradeable page of the Rkindaleft Dwarven weapon style.

Old Life Observance - No Achievement

There are no achievements tied to the Old Life Observance daily.

Simply go to the shrine on the map, write a message and burn it for a reward box.

How Many And How To Get Tickets?

In addition to the event boxes, you get 3 tickets per day of the event for completing 1 of the New Life daily, equaling out to a total of 60 tickets!

Remember that you can only hold 12 at one time.

Impressario

During New Life, the Impresario offers all fragments of the Passion Dancer Blossom, and all of the fragments for each morph of it released this year.

So, if you’re missing things that you wanted, you can use this event to catch up!

You can also pick up bound style pages for the new Morningstar Frostwear set, or a New Life Festival Brab Bag.

New Life Grab Bag - What’s In The Bag?

The New Life Festival Grab Bag can contain these items if you don’t already have them in your collection.

If you already have everything in the grab bag, you won’t be able to buy one.

Other Ticket Merchant Inventory

And you have some other options for spending your tickets, so use the large amount of them that this event provides wisely!

Snowglobe House Is For Sale!

This event is also the only time to pick up the Snow Globe House.

It is a Crown Store exclusive, but it is a great value. And it will provide you with an instant, free fast-travel to Breda throughout the entire event period.

…

In 1999, the St. Louis Rams transformed from a 4-12 underdog to Super Bowl champions, a story of unexpected heroes and incredible triumph. Like the Rams, we’re diving into the NFL’s mid-season, where every team has the potential for a legendary turnaround.

If you have enough Madden 24 Coins, you can choose one of the teams and improve the players so you can win more games!

Team 1: Philadelphia Eagles

After last year’s heartbreak in the Super Bowl, the Philadelphia Eagles are on a mission of redemption. With a stellar 8-1 record, they’re a force to be reckoned with.

Jaylen Hurts, their charismatic leader and quarterback, is at the forefront of this revenge story, backed by a blend of seasoned veterans and bright stars. This season is shaping up to be the Eagles’ year of glory.

Fun Factors

• Revenge Narrative: Capitalize on their drive to avenge last year’s Super Bowl loss.
• Jalen Hurts’ Leadership: Harness the skill and leadership of their star quarterback.
• Starpower Roster: Leverage the experience of veterans and the zeal of rising stars.

Challenges

• 2023 season: Stay on top in a highly competitive conference.
• 2024 season: Address potential retirements and maintain roster strength.
• 2025 season: Continue evolving the team’s strategy to stay ahead of the curve.

Team 2: Baltimore Ravens

Next up, the Team 2 Baltimore Ravens, with Lamar Jackson’s MVP-caliber performance, are in prime position to dominate their division, especially with key rivals facing setbacks.

Their defense, led by Roquan Smith, is formidable, echoing their championship-winning days. This season presents a golden opportunity for the Ravens to assert their dominance.

Fun Factors

• Lamar Jackson’s Magic: Utilize his exceptional abilities to outmaneuver opponents.
• Dominant Defense: Leverage their robust defense for strategic advantages.
• Super Bowl Hunger: Channel their intense desire to claim another championship.

Challenges

• 2023 season: Aim for a deep playoff run, capitalizing on current strengths.
• 2024 season: Reach the Super Bowl, building on this season’s momentum.
• 2025 season: Focus on retaining star players while nurturing young talent, aiming to become Super Bowl favorites once more.

Also Read: Top 5 Madden 24 Offensive Playbooks

Team 3: Detroit Lions

Let’s explore Team 3, the Detroit Lions’ surprising rise: The Dawn of a New Era.

Under Dan Campbell, the Detroit Lions have transformed into a formidable force.

Their newfound spirit, with Jared Goff delivering his best football and standout players like Amon-Ra St. Brown, David Montgomery, Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta and Aidan Hutchinson, is electrifying.

The team’s stellar offensive line only adds to their strength. This isn’t just a team, it’s a movement, and everyone’s rooting for their success.

Fun Factors

• Dan Campbell’s Leadership: Embrace the team’s newfound confidence and aggressive style.
• Hunger for Success: Channel their long-standing desire to overcome years of setbacks.
• Talented Roster: Utilize their exceptional talent on both offense and defense.

Challenges

• 2023 season: Achieve the Lions’ first playoff win since 1991.
• 2024 season: Make a deep playoff run and plan for the future quarterback.
• 2025 season: Aim for the Super Bowl and start building a lasting dynasty.

Team 4: Cleveland Browns

Now, let’s turn to the Team 4 Cleveland Browns and their quest for glory: Defense Leading the Charge.

The Cleveland Browns stand out this season with the NFL’s best defense, a unit that’s been the backbone of the team.

Despite a mediocre performance from Deshaun Watson, who’s now out for the season, their defense has kept playoff hopes alive.

The Cleveland Browns face a unique challenge: a playoff-caliber roster hampered by a quarterback quandary and limited draft stock due to the Watson trade.

Fun Factors

• Dominant Defense: Capitalize on their league-leading defensive prowess.
• Quarterback Challenge: Navigate the season with a rookie quarterback stepping in.
• Building for Future: Embrace the challenge of strengthening the team without much draft capital.

Challenges

• 2023 season: Secure a playoff spot and honor the defense’s stellar performance.
• 2024 season: Address the quarterback situation by either finding a replacement or enhancing Watson’s play.
• 2025 season: With the quarterback issue resolved, keep the roster intact for a deep playoff run.

Team 5: Chicago Bears

Next, the Team 5 Chicago Bears' quest to rewrite their story: Unleashing Potential.

The Chicago Bears entered the season with high hopes, especially for quarterback Justin Fields. But things haven’t quite clicked yet. While Fields has shown flashes of brilliance, the team is still searching for the right formula to unlock its full potential. This season is critical in determining the future direction of both Fields and the team.

Fun Factors

• Justin Fields’ Growth: Harness his unique abilities and eagerness to improve.
• Historical Prestige: Revive the glory of a storied franchise.
• Draft Capital: Utilize their significant upcoming draft picks for a major team upgrade.

Challenges

• 2023 season: Evaluate Fields and the roster to make strategic decisions for the future.
• 2024 season: Execute a successful overhaul using draft capital, treating it as a foundational year.
• 2025 season: Aim for a playoff appearance and their first playoff win since 2011.

Which team’s journey captivated you the most?

…

Here are the top 3 game changer passes in EA FC 24.

1. Nutmeg Flair Pass

Nutmeg Flair Pass is the combination of a new skill move and either short pass or through pass. So, when you perform this pass, you have to press these buttons quickly.

First of all, you have to learn how to perform the Nutmeg Flair skill move where you hold both the L1 and R1 or LB and RB at the same time holding the right analog to the direction you want your player to move to.

This skill move is 4-star rated, so you need four and above star skilled FC 24 Players in your team then the pass. As you press these buttons to perform the skill move, you don’t wait until your player finishes the move, then you pass. Please remember to press the pass button when your player begins the animation of the skill, aiming the left analog towards the player you want to pass the ball to.

According to the way, FC 24 is hard. Some tricks, like Ball Roll Pass, are no longer have that surprise effect. Everyone expects them, so it’s easy to defend against.

And that’s when the Nutmeg Flair Pass comes in. It’s easy to perform it against any opponent. The animation of the trick is a little faster than the Ball Roll Pass.

This is the way I perform this trick. For example, here, I pass the ball to my player inside the box. I see that I have this pass, but I can’t directly turn and pass because I expect my opponent to anticipate that. So, I first take my first touch into the space to bait the opponent that I’m moving forward.

The opponent was ready to block this pass, but he realized that I’m moving forward instead. So, he changes his plan and tries to follow my player.

Now everything is moving according to plans. I perform the skill pass to my Striker Rashford, control the ball into the space, and score.

2. Lobbed Pass (Cross)

Another overpowered pass is the Lobbed Pass under the cross-section. Crosses in FC 24 are too overpowered.

The reason is these playstyles, for example, the Whipped Pass playstyle. Let’s talk about two crossing scenarios.

Short Corner Cross

The first one is the corner trick cross. If you haven’t conceded this type of cross goals from the corner, then you’re playing another football game, not FC 24.

To perform this corner trick, you follow just four easy steps:

1. Choose the corner taker. You need a player with Whipped Pass playstyle or even Dead Ball and Long Ball Pass can work.

2. You need 2 players in your setup. And to call another player, you tap on R1, the second player will be available.

3. Create a crossing space. When you pass the ball to this player, you have to control the ball towards the byline to trick the opponent that you’re driving through the byline and so it drives his attention away from this player. Then, it immediately turns and passes to that player.

4. The last step is to pull out the cross. You have to control the ball. This is so important. In your game plan tactics, you need to increase your corner bars to three and above. This always sends one player to the far post. So, when pulling out the cross, you aim towards the far post and hold ‘square’ or ‘X’ on your controller, three and a half bars of power. And lastly, it will be upon you to finish this beautiful goal.

The reason why this pass works so effectively is that the opponent’s defenders tend to push towards the ball side when you play the corner shot, leaving a big space for the far post. So, when you cross many times, you will find yourself with a free header or space to score your goal.

Normal Cross

Now, this cross if you see the card Bacha, just wait for the worst to happen.

When you run down the wing, take one second and look at the opposite side of the pitch. When you see your player running towards the goal, hold the ‘square’ or ‘X’ button, load up to four bars of power while aiming towards that player, and the cross will leave you speechless.

To effective and consistently pull out those types of crosses, get yourself players with Whipped Pass playstyle, like the Bacha card has a playstyle +. If you don't have this card, you may consider using your FC 24 Coins to purchase one directly.

But even if you don’t have those players with playstyle, it doesn’t discourage you from pulling out the cross.

But one downside of this is consistency. Players with playstyles are more consistent in that action than players without.

3. Lobbed Through Pass

The number three overpowered pass is the Lobbed Through Pass.

If you want to effectively improve your counterattacking game, then you need to always implement this pass into your attack.

The pass is overpowered, and it's so consistent, meaning there's less room for errors.

To pull out the pass, since it's a through pass, you need a pass receiver running into the space. And if you don't have, you can manually send your player forward by either using the pass and move technique.

Press both the L1 + X or LB + A, your player after passing the ball will run straight forward.

Then, we have the L1 trigger, you in the left analog towards the player you want to send forward, then, you tap on L1 or LB and that player will definitely run straight forward.

Then, to pull out the pass, you need some space in front of the ball holder. Aim the left analog towards the running player, load up some power three to four bars, and the ball will be directly sent towards your player. Use this pass to improve counterattacks and score many goals.

The good thing about FC 24 is that attacking mechanics are many and so overpowered, but still there's some limit in attacking like building up through the middle.

…

This is a guide to the Council of Dreams fight in WoW Dragonflight Patch 10.2 Amirdrassil raid on Normal and Heroic difficulty.

Of course, if you have enough WoW Dragonflight Gold, you can equip your character well. This way you'll have an easier time dealing with bosses once you understand their mechanics!

Intro

As protectors of the realm, the Council of Dreams each have their own way of fighting. Pip uses his deadly illusions to bewilder his foes, while Urctos unleashes his raw power to crush them. Aerwynn employs her intelligence and skill to control the situation and lead her fellow council members.

To put it simply, the Council of Dreams is a classic council fight, three bosses at once. You will fight Pip (the trickster faerie dragon) , Aerwynn (the naturalist dryad) and Urctos (the fearsome werebear) together. And they must all die together. Urctos, our bear, is the only one that can be tanked so feel free to drag him towards the other two as best you can.

Each boss has their own set of moves, complete with an ultimate ability that they do at full energy. Their energy does starts staggered so you only get one ultimate in a time.

What we need to do is direct these bosses against each other to counter those ultimates. I’m going to run through the basic moves first, then look at the ultimates, and how to cancel them.

Urctos

Let’s start with Urctos!

He’s big. He’s a bear, and he uses Agonizing Claws on his tank. Mitigate that and swap on one or maybe two stacks, whatever’s comfy.

Urctos will aim a Barreling Charge towards his tank. You can see the direction it’s heading from the big arrow.

You actually want lots of people to stand in front of this to reduce the big raid AOE he does at the end, so stack up in front of the charge.

Aerwynn

Aerwynn spawns flowers around the room, steer clear of those for now.

She also chucks out nasty poisons that need to be dispelled, so spec into a poison cleanse if your class can and help out.

Pip

Pip does a big Wind Pushback ability, watches out behind you, and doesn’t get shoved into a flower.

He also polymorphs people into ducks, which is a whole thing.

What To Do If You’re A Duck!

1. Use your Quack to get a sprint and be a fast duck!
2. Run over three of those flowers on the ground to clear them!
3. After you’ve eaten three flowers, you can now use Preen to stop being a duck.

You could also wait twelve seconds for the duck form to expire, but that sucks because we want to clean up the floor and twelve seconds is forever. You’re busy.

The Ultimates Of Different Bosses & How To Stop Them?

Next, let’s look at the ultimates and how to stop them.

Urctos does Blind Rage at 100 energy, channeling ramping raid damage. To stop this, somebody in duck form needs to exit duck mode while on top of him. Doing this turns the bear into a duck and calms him down considerably.

Aerwynn’s Ultimate is Constricting Thicket, which is also stacking raid damage. To stop her, you need to hit her with Urctos’s Barreling Charge. Urctos’s tank points the charge arrow at Aerwynn. He crashes into her and problem solved.

Pip’s Ultimate is Song of the Dragon, a big damage absorb that goes onto everyone in the raid. If you still have that absorb after 12 seconds, you’ll be stunned with a huge DoT. So, you actually want to take damage on purpose to clear off your absorb. Stand in a flower until your dancing lady debuff is gone and you’ll be fine.

Also Read: WoW Dragonflight 10.2: How To Get A Full Set Of 450 Aberrus Tier On Every Single Character?

On Normal, that’s it!

On Heroic, we have a couple of upgrades.

Urctos’ Agonizing Claws becomes a frontal cone, so watch where’s he’s pointing and don’t be in front unless you’re the tank. That’s tough because of how much we’re moving in this fight, so keep an eye out.

Standing in the Barreling Charge on Heroic now debuffs you for 30 seconds. Do not soak back-to-back charges. And, when you exit duck form on Heroic, anybody in this ring around you is going to become a duck. It’s contagious.

Run out of the raid before you Preen to avoid ducking people and give some space around Urctos during his ultimate, so you can drop the duck bomb on him without clipping anyone.

You could also pass duck form around on purpose with for the sake of clearing more floor or timing it perfectly with the Blind Rage.

I don’t know if you’re gonna need to do that, but it’s an option if you’re stuck. And that’s the Council of Dreams! Hopefully, by mastering these mechanics, you can defeat these endgame bosses more easily.

…

Here, I want to introduce you what pros in New World do - five tips that will help you to be the best. I will go over how to best earn gold and level up your skill at the same time, what is the best time to buy legendary tools, tips for buying houses and trophies and why do you need a legendary bag.

Tip 1: Gather, Refine & Sell

When you’re wandering around the lands doing quests or just exploring the world of Aeternum, you can come across different materials such as Iron Veins, different mote flowers, fibers, or rarer variants of wood.

I always recommend that you pick them up and store them for later in one of the many storages you have available. You might be tempted to sell them as soon as you gather them.

However, I would recommend that you refine them first and then sell them. This will net you fewer New World Coins, but it will give you a valuable refining experience that you could not gain if you had sold them.

So, in a nutshell shell, I recommend that you gather everything you see, then either refine them now and sell them or restock them up, refine them later, and sell them in a bulk. In the long run, you will end up with a lot of skills, experience, and gold.

Tip 2: Legendary Tools - A Worthy Investment

When you reach your max level or unlock the ability to equip the best gathering tools, the rarest form of this equipment is legendary represented by its orange color.

They give you a fifth perk that gives you a chance to get a mote when you gather something. You have two options: cheaper Orichalcum or more expensive Mythril tools. Now, your argument against it might be that both are too expensive.

However, they are 100% worth it. Let me elaborate on why. From a pure gold return investment, they are worth it.

Let’s say that you buy a logging axe for 3K gold, it has an Earth mote perk. You go on your logging session and you get 100 motes from it. Now, 100 motes are a bit less than 100 gold. However, you can store these motes and later turn them into higher tier versions and you again get just pure added gold from it or arcane experience.

There is also another example of why they can be useful. Let’s say you are good at weaponsmithing and you can make tier five Honing Stones. They are used by many in-game players. You can make them from Death & Fire Quintessence.

So, while you are gathering to make something else, you can in the meantime farm motes as well to make these stones at the same time. You can do this for other trade skills as well. So, in this sense, you can now think about what trade skill you are going for and then from that you should know what items you can make and look for tools that have motes that can help you in making such items that you can sell or use for yourself.

Also Read: New World: How To Farm Rawhide In Rise Of Angry Earth? - Best Locations & Tips

Tip 3: Choosing The Right House

You have been nicely collecting gold, get your trade skills up, and you have your eyes set on one of many professions, like armoring, jewel crafting, engineering, and so on. You know you will need to get a house and later on trophies as well, but you might feel a bit lost about what to buy is because there are a lot of options.

In a nutshell, houses come in four tiers. The fourth is the most expensive at 20K gold and the first is the cheapest at 5K gold. They’ll give you a place you can teleport to, just like an inn.

Tier 4 has a 2-hour cooldown and Tier 1 is 5 hours.

Next is the space for storage chests. When placed in your house, they give you bigger settlement storage. Tier 1 house has 1 slot and Tier 4 has 4 slots. The best chest is a Golden Steel Storage Chest with 1,000 space. So, a Tier 4 house with four chests gives you 4K more space. That is quite a lot of space, if you ask me.

All house tiers do have five slots of trophies and here comes an argument: if it’s worth buying the best house? Tier 4 or the cheapest at Tier 1?

For a long time, I have been debating what advice to give. When it comes to buying houses, it all comes down to your preference and play style, how much New World Gold you have, and so on. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Buy one of the Tier 4 houses in your settlement of choice.
2. Fill them with the best storage chests so you get this 4K space. This will be your main crafting hub. You will be able to refine, craft, and sell your goods.
3. Then, buy 2 Tier 1 houses as you just need them for trophies that will be needed.
4. The rest of the storage space can be separated from all the other settlements as the transfer of materials between them is free.
5. In the end, you end up with a simple one main town and plenty of space for the beginning of your journey.
6. If you think you need more storage space and you have too much gold, then you can always sell it and buy the biggest mansions in Aeternum.

Tip 4: Trophies - Enhancing Your Abilities

Trophies give you a global buff depending on what trophy you pick.

In general, you have gathering trophies that give you Gathering Luck, crafting trophies that give you a bonus to gear score to crafted items, combat trophies give you more damage to certain types of enemies, and the loot luck trophies.

So, what trophy to pick is totally up to you and what you are doing. In general, each trophy stacks up to three times and you can have five of them at the same time in your house.

As a note, at the endgame, you can combine your trophies into one ultimate trophy so you can have all combat, crafting, and gathering trophies at your home. The components can be bought from your faction vendor and you can craft them with your furnishing skill.

The main question I ask myself is if minor or basic trophies are worth it? I would say that minor, so the lowest tier is better or more worthwhile than basic or medium tier ones.

My reason is that they are very cheap compared to others and they give a significant amount of a buff that they are worth your money even in the short or long term. Then, when I would have all of them, I would slowly upgrade them to the best tier.

Little steps make all the difference.

Tip 5: Legendary Bags - Lasting Benefits

One of the questions you might have asked yourself is: Are Legendary Bags worthy?

Let’s take a look. They give a fifth perk called Lasting Consumption that makes your consumables last longer, such as your food buff, Honing Stones, Proficiency Boosters and so on.

When you play at the game at in-game level and when you want to maximize your damage output or just make your gathering run more efficient, you want to have this perk on your bags.

In the long run, they will pay off by you not needing to buy more consumables. Therefore, you spend less money and that alone is the reason why I have been using them for quite some time and I have to tell you they are 100% worth it.

Getting all of these elements of the game all at once might be a daunting task and too much. But remember New World is an MMO and MMO is not a sprint but a marathon. So, take your time and enjoy the game. With time, you will get enough gold to buy all these items. It’s part of the journey of your adventurer.

…

Lords of the Fallen has nine classes, each with a different melee weapon, ranged weapon, and item.

Introduction

While it shows you the stats of the character, those might not make sense if you're not familiar with souls-like games.

And even if you are you don't get stats on the weapons, it doesn't show how much stamina each attack cost and you don't know how long things like windup animations take for each weapon.

After playing the opening with every class, there are three which stood out as the best, though two of them require getting a particular Lords of the Fallen Item while you're still in the tutorial.

A quick note: two factors that didn't come into play for determining which class is best were Armor and Starting Health.

At the first boss and beyond, most things do so much damage. It doesn't matter which class you pick. Getting hit was almost always a reason to panic, so one class taking slightly less damage didn't matter nearly as much to survival as their damage output.

Orian Preacher

If you want to focus on dealing damage, pick the Orian Preacher.

Despite some middling initial stats, the Orian Preacher Hammer and its two-handed combo attack easily makes them one of the best starting classes. But that's not the only thing making them great.

On basic light and charge heavy attacks, the hammer deals decent damage doing both physical and holy damage, which is a separate type of damage, like fire damage.

While even light attacks carve a chunk out of your stamina, it deals more damage than most other starting weapons and is even faster than several of the weaker ones. So, just using normal attacks, the Orian Preacher is still among the best.

But what makes it arguably the best starting class is the Orian Preacher Hammer's two-handed combo attack. In Lords of the Fallen, using L1 + R2 does a unique multi-hit attack, which changes whether you have one weapon in an empty hand, a weapon in each hand, or two-handing a single weapon.

While it costs all of the Preachers' stamina until you start leveling it and has a lengthy animation, it delivers three consecutive attacks that devastate enemies. The first two deal about as much damage as your normal two-handed attacks, but the third does around double that amount.

If you can time it correctly, you can one shot many of the enemies at the opening. You will also get a lot of Lords of the Fallen Vigor from this.

That said it does have drawbacks. You're vulnerable during the combo. So, if you don't stun an enemy, they may power through your attacks and hit you before you can finish. You're also exposed after the attack since it takes up so much stamina.

Thankfully, the hammer is still an incredible weapon. So, a cautious approach single hit dodge roll repeat strategy works well against strong and sturdy enemies as long as you're patient.

And finally, it short range means if you want that hit, you'll need to get close. But the Orian Preacher also has a great ranged attack thanks to Magic. The starting spell deals at least as much damage as the mid-powerered range attacks from the other classes.

But the real kicker being able to shoot the spell 17 times, which is far more than the number of times. You can use the ranged attacks on non-magic classes.

Also Read: Lords Of The Fallen: How To Get Fast OP +9 Weapons Early? - Best Deralium / Upgrade Material Farm

Udirangr Warwolf & Blackfeather Ranger (For More Mobility)

But if you want more mobility at the cost of less damage, try the Udirangr Warwolf or the Blackfeather Ranger.

Keep in mind, they'll only get close to the Orian Preacher's damage output after you find the Wooden Cross.

During the tutorial, when you get the prompt about how to use ranged weapons, look for a body hanging above a nearby enemy. If you hit that body with a ranged attack, it will drop the Wooden Cross weapon.

While the the item description for the Wooden Cross says "not designed as a weapon", that's a lie. It is more powerful than several starting weapons. And the L1 + R2 combo attack when using both the Wooden Cross and the starting weapon of the Warwolf or the Blackfeather Ranger in each hand makes for a powerful pairing.

While less damaging than the two-handed hammer combo, those two classes have more starting stamina than the Orian Preacher. So, you'll still have stamina after that big combo attack finishes, allowing for a follow-up attack or dodge roll.

Whether you want the strength of the Warwolf, the fashion of the Blackfeather Ranger or the raw power and magical abilities of the Orian Preacher, you're likely to have an easier time starting Lords of the Fallen with one of them.

…

Icecrown Citadel is the last major raid in Wrath of the Lich King. With that, every class is getting some of the most insane gear and crazy DPS upgrades that they possibly can throughout this entire phase to end off feeling like god.

But you might be a little confused on how exactly you’re gonna get all of your gear, how do you get your tier gear, what are the fastest ways to gear up your character, and what are some of the catch-up mechanics.

So, here, I’m going to try to break that all down for you.

ICC Raid Intro

Before getting into the raid itself, the patch will launch two days early on NA and one day early on EU. This will give you some time to catch up your character with any of the gear you don’t have yet from the last few phases that could be some of your business items.

How To Get All Of Your Gear?

Specifically, I’m talking about trinkets mostly, like Comet’s Trail, Death’s Choice, Flare or Rain. You can actually get these just from running the new Titan Rune Gamma dungeons. These are the heroic plus pluses.

The easiest way to do this is to just queue up for your random dungeon finder because this should ignore any lockouts. This means that by just doing this method, you can spam these all day and get an infinite amount of these as well as you can also buy some Primordial Saronite from this and probably make a ton of WOTLK Classic Gold on day one through the first probably two weeks. This will catch you up very quickly.

How To Get Tier Gear?

We probably won’t have the Vault of Archavon bosses released yet. You don’t want to do VOA on the patch day. Wait until the raid launch because you probably will lock yourself without being able to actually defeat the boss.

But the new boss will drop some tier pieces as it always does and these tier pieces will be from the 25 Man difficulty. This will save you a ton of emblems because emblems are the only way we’re actually going to be able to get our tier gear and even upgrade our tear gear. So, there’s a major change in the way we actually get our Tier 10.

In the heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader, as long as we got a Vanquisher token or whatever token for our respective class to drop, then we could instantly turn it in for the max level of tier gear. This is no longer the case. We actually have to upgrade our gear in order to get the highest rank, which is going to start out at item level 251 (lower than the gear we have currently). Move up to item level 264 and then into item level 277 for the best gear in the game.

To get each piece, it’ll either cost you 95 emblems or 60 emblems if you’re just grabbing these shoulders or gloves. This means that if you do get the gloves as well as the legs to drop in Vault of Archavon, this will save you 155 emblems that you needed to get to get this tier gear as well as this will be upgraded tier.

Or, if you actually just get the normal version, this is really useful for you, too. Because if you do it from 10 Man, you can just upgrade it initially. But, you need to turn in your old gear to upgrade it into the next level and then one more time to get that heroic loot.

In total, if you don’t get lucky and get any drops from Vault of Archavon, then you need to have 405 emblems to get your entire set of Tier 10. And if you farm every single emblem you can each week, then you can get up to 104. This means it’ll take you at least four weeks to get all of your tier gear.

And then, you also need to get the marks to even be able to upgrade them, so the mark drops are as follows.

Also Read: WOTLK Classic Phase 4: Changes Coming To Fall Of The Lich King - Raid, Dungeons, Collection Content & More

How To Get Marks?

Any of the endgame bosses in 10 Man heroic or 25 Man normal versions will drop the 264 marks. The endgame bosses are Deathbringer Saurfang, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Professor Putricide, Sindragosa and the Lich King. That’s five opportunities from normal mode 25 and again heroic 10 Man to get some of your marks to be able to upgrade your tier gear.

If you’re in heroic mode though, you will actually get two of those normal marks to drop and one heroic mark to drop, so you can upgrade it again. It’s going to take you at least a couple of weeks to get all of your tier gear and then to start upgrading it.

How To Get More Emblems Of Frost?

But you can also use emblems for other items. Within ICC itself, there’s an Emblem of Frost vendor that you can go to and he has a ton of things for you, such as trinkets, relics, off hands, cloaks, belts, chess pieces, and your PVP gear. You might actually still get some of your best in slot items from this vendor.

Since you might need even more Emblems of Frost, here’s a quick breakdown of how you can get as many that you can each week.

First of all, there’s a new heroic daily and you can get five of these each day. That means you can get 35 per week just from doing the heroic dailies. Then, there is a new weekly raid quest that will give you 10 each week. From doing the bosses in Vault of Archavon on 10 and 25 and difficulty, you’ll get two emblems each and each boss you kill in ICC will give you two of these.

So, in 10 and 25 Man, clearing all of the bosses will give you 48 per week because there’s 12 bosses. Within the raid itself, there’s a weekly quest you can do on 10 and 25 Man for five each. That’s 10 per week.

An Item level jump from phase 3 to phase 4 is massive with the correct gear:

• If you’re just going into normal 10 Man, you will get 251 item level loot and then the Lich King will give you two 258 item level gear.
• If you do heroic 10 Man, then you will get 271 gear from the Lich King and 264 item level loot from normal bosses. This is also the same item level you would get from normal bosses in 25 Man (the 264 gear).
• But if you just do those bosses on heroic, you will instantly start getting 277 item level gear.

The Fastest Way To Gear Up Your Character

Now, the heroic Lich King is ridiculously hard. Even though he does drop 284 item level weapons, it is really going to be a struggle for most guilds. For quite a while, some people think it’s mathematically impossible to do it on day one without doing 10 Man splits. And we’ll find out on the stream when it happens in race to world first on the 12th where we either see people do 10 Mans to be able to defeat it or not.

But most groups will be opting to kill Lich King on normal for quite a while and he drops 271 item level weapons for you. These are going to be huge upgrades out of the gate, no matter what. Not necessarily as good as the best in slot in the entire game, but they are very strong, just a little weaker than your normal heroic items that are 277.

So, if you want your absolute best weapons, you’re definitely going to want to try to kill a heroic Lich King. But again, I would actually focus on gearing up your characters way more before you really go into this. Because he is a very hard encounter that we have still only heard of one group on all three PTRs ever being able to down it just yet.

Now, I wouldn’t doubt at all that other raid groups haven’t taken them out by this point, but this is how you’re going to completely gear up your characters in the next phase to be ready to move on towards.

…

I wanted to have an open discussion with the Diablo IV community to see what players are thinking about for the new content. We’re seeing a lot of changes coming to Diablo 4 Season 2, and when there’s a massive amount of changes it can be difficult to navigate what the new best practices are.

Whether the balance and content updates are good or bad, only time is going to tell. But one thing I know is, right when Season 2 launches and I create a new seasonal character, I just have no idea what content I’m going to tackle first.

Gold Farming Dilemma

The first topic I want to talk about is how exactly are we going to farm Diablo 4 Gold in Season 2?

We know from the live stream that “whispers are going to have a substantially increased amount of gold”. But beyond this, I mean Greed Shrines are probably still going to be a meme. But this still leaves me thinking, did they nerf gold farming?

Other than picking up ambient gold dropped from enemies, normally we would just farm gold from picking up trash rare Diablo 4 Items and sell them at a vendor, hence the saying Salvage Oranges and Sell Yellows. But with the new update, these junk yellows are now just going to drop as crafting materials instead.

So, I’m not really sure what the new best method is going to be. The best ways to farm gold might just be climbing high tier Nightmare Dungeons. Hopefully from the update, whispers are in a much more competitive position in endgame that people actually have a reason to do them besides just leveling 1 to 50.

And it’s also important to mention it was revealed in the live stream that we have a new content type downstream from whispers in the form of an endgame boss, but the relevance of this content will largely depend on its loot table for unique items.

I think that Nightmare Dungeons still have a competitive advantage anyway, considering they’re still the only way to level glyphs for the Paragon Board.

It was also mentioned during the live stream that glyph leveling got buffed, meaning they’ll give more glyph experience. So, maybe this will give us more time away from nightmare dungeons to pursue new content without worrying about glyph leveling as much.

Vampiric Powers & Theory Crafting

It’ll be interesting to see what we come up with as a community moving forward for the best practices in farming gold in endgame. So, let’s talk about Vampiric Powers.

We’re looking at a total of 21 new Vampiric Powers, 14 of which require 1 to 3 pacts, and the remainder requiring 6 pacts. We know the sanguine circle has 5 total slots, armor I believe can have a total of 5 pacts at once. So, technically, we should be able to equip 5 of the strongest vampiric abilities, right?

The question I think is how hard are pacts going to be to line up properly. It would be miserable if you got a god roll armor drop in terms of affixes, just to realize you’re missing all the pacts you need to finish your build.

They said in the live stream that there will be a way to inject or remove pacts from armor. I just hope there are no restrictions that only allow us to do this a limited number of times. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want this system to be easy, but I also don’t want it to be impossible.

It’s going to be interesting to see how these affect our build options and to also see if there’s any Vampiric Powers that are basically going to be so overpowered that it’d be dumb not to pick it.

Here’s a full list of the Vampiric Powers coming to Diablo 4 in Season 2:

• Anticipation (1 Divinity)
• Coven’s Fangs (2 Divinity)
• Domination (1 Ferocity)
• Feed the Coven (1 Eternity)
• Hectic (3 Divinity)
• Hemomancy (3 Eternity)
• Infection (1 Ferocity)
• Jagged Spikes (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity)
• Prey on the Weak (2 Ferocity)
• Rampart (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
• Ravenous (3 Ferocity)
• Resilience (2 Eternity)
• Sanguine Brace (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
• Terror (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
• Undying (1 Eternity)
• Major Vampiric Powers (6 Pacts Required)
• Accursed Touch (6 Divinity)
• Bathe in Blood (3 Divinity, 3 Eternity)
• Blood Boil (6 Eternity)
• Call Familiar (3 Ferocity, 3 Divinity)
• Flowing Veins (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity)
• Metamorphosis (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity)
• Moonrise (6 Ferocity)

From a quick observation, it’s obvious that some of the lower pact requirement ones are going to be weaker and probably switched out later.

Accursed Touch kind of reminds me of a marked for death type ability that spreads out like Rabies on Druid.

Bathe in Blood is the channeling Vampiric Power that we saw in the developer live stream. Personally, I don’t see this being used much. I mean incinerate Sorcerer isn’t really in a good spot and I can’t think of many channeled abilities off the top of my head.

Call Familiar, the Vampiric Power that spawns the bat seems like it might be another meme ability. But I mean, this could potentially be great on Death Blow Barbarian or on a Firewall Sorcerer.

Also Read: Changes In Season 2 QOL In The Latest Diablo 4 Developer Live Stream! - Multiplicative EXP & Uber Unique Farm

I could totally see a Pulverize Druid or Blood Lance Necro using the Vampiric Power called Blood Boil. It just seems like it’d synergize easier with existing builds that are centered around overpower.

Flowing Veins sounds like it’d be great on any damage over time classes like Poison Rogue or Blighted Necro. And maybe we’ll actually see a Poison Druid build for season 2.

Metamorphosis sounds like it’d be absolutely hilarious on a Sorcerer using Oculus. The unique item that makes you bounce around randomly from using Evade.

It also looks like we might see some interesting basic attack builds come out finally using the Vampiric Power Moonrise. I know that I’ve been reading comments on Reddit from people who want to use basic attacks in a build that’s more competitive. And this might be the way to do it.

Looking at some of the lower pact Vampiric Powers, it looks like Undying might be great on any class that spams abilities like Corpse Explosion.

Unless Vulnerable gets nerfed to death from the Damage Rework, Prey on the Weak might be an absolute must have on most classes. It says that any mob affected by Vampiric Curse is automatically made vulnerable, which provides a new route for any build that needs an extra source of damage.

I’m seeing some good attack speed opportunities like on Moonrise and Ravenous. Even if you don’t go a basic attack build, this could be an answer for any classes that are resource hungry.

Endgame Exploration

The other thing I wanna talk about is how do you guys plan on spending your time in endgame?

Personally, for me, I’m definitely going to rush endgame to check out the new bosses. I’m actually curious to see how difficult these new bosses are going to be. Are they more like dungeon bosses? Or are they challenging to fight and it’s going to take time to learn the fight?

I think if they’re like dungeon bosses, I’m going to be pretty disappointed, because right now dungeon bosses even with the added health, are just really meant for casual players. I think Duriel King of Maggots is most likely going to be like the Uber Lilith fight, which I’m kinda crossing my fingers. They have news on an Uber Lilith rework in the campfire chat on October 10th.

I’m hoping with the new endgame flow that I’ll find it worth it to switch between running Helltides, doing some Whispers, grinding some high tier Nightmare Dungeons, and after all of that actually getting some decent loot from The Ice Beast, the Galvanic Saint, Lord Zeer, and Varshan.

So, Item Power is going to more closely follow enemy level in Season 2.

Multiplicative Experience Points

I’ve been thinking, do I prioritize gear or prioritize experience points?

The way I’ll first tackle it is I’ll see how fast the new leveling experience is in Diablo 4. And if it’s fast enough, I might actually just continuously raise the tiers of the nightmare dungeons I’m doing. At least until I find some really good affixes on gloves, weapons, boots and amulets.

After that, I’ll probably consider the odds of finding anything better will be so slim that I might as well just level more efficiently instead.

By the way, if you didn’t catch it in the live stream, experience point bonuses in Diablo 4 are now going to be multiplicative, not additive. This is huge considering once you’re in World Tier 4, you’re getting 400% more experience points, which means your 15% bonus on top of the 400% bonus isn’t like a 6% increase in experience points anymore. You’ll get the full 15% of whatever the 400% value is after it’s calculated.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how all of these changes sound. I’m excited to see the live stream on October 10th with information on the balance changes to damage, gear and classes. We’ll ultimately have to be the judge on whether or not it’s executed properly on October 17th.

…

Here’s a build guide for my Minion Life Stacking SRS Guardian. This is not a zoom build, but can clear all contents comfortably.

Our main map clearing skill is the Summon Sentinel of Radiance, the RF 2.0 minion. Though it lacks in mobility, its fire aura is nothing to scoff at.

For single target, we use our Summon Raging Spirits with Minion Instability to boost our DPS.

Ascendancies

For the ascendancies, allocating Radiant Crusade is a priority as it is a very powerful skill when clearing the campaign.

The Sentinel combined with Convocation and the increased cooldown of Convocation can carry you to early yellow maps with little to no investment. It’s so powerful that I recommend getting this, even if you’re playing other Templar ascendancies and just change to your needed ascendency afterwards.

It takes 20% of the hit damage you get. Only downside is that it’s very slow moving and it has a 20s-base duration, so you need to keep resummoning it once in a while.

Next one we get is Bastion of Hope as it can greatly help us in maxing out our attack and spell block. We trigger the attack block using Shield Charge and the spell block using any of our spells.

Allocating Radiant Faith next gives us a lot of Armour and Energy Shield.

Last, take Time of Need to help us with Curses and Elemental Ailments and regenerate one 100% of our life every 4 seconds.

Also Read: How To Climb The Ranks In POE 3.22 TOTA? - 8 Tips

Passives

For the passives, focus on pathing to the minion damage and minion life nodes on the left side of the tree.

When you get the Sentinel, allocate Convocation Cooldown Recovery Rate in the Minion Defense Mastery and the Minion AoE in the Minion Offense Mastery.

Next, we get the Reservation Efficiency nodes so that we can fit our defensive auras and path to Eldrich Battery to help with our Mana costs, all the while allocating Life, Minion Life and Minion Damage nodes along the way.

After that, we focus on maxing out our block chance by allocating shield nodes and using a Rumi’s Concoction Granite Flask. For the low-budget version, we can take Death Attunement. If you still can’t reach level 25, take Raise Spectre and Whispers of Doom for the double cures.

The next big upgrade would be getting an Elegant Hubris Timeless Jewel with two minion notable (Axiom Warden), either for minion life or minion damage.

Amanamu’s Gaze is a big boost to our DPS, but it is quite expensive.

Equipment

For our equipment, Tavukai is a required unique that damages our SRS to trigger Minion Instability.

Remember to get one with a negative Chaos Resistance to speed up the death of our SRS.

You can also use Noxious Catalysts to further speed up the process if you’re using an uncorrupted amulet. We use a Replica Siegebreaker so that any minion that dies leaves a burning ground for 20% of their life.

You can resummon the Sentinel to trigger this effect and since it’s our minion with the highest life, this would be a big boost to our damage.

Weapons

For our wand, we use the Rapture Edge Convoking Wand with plus one to all minion skill gems and a free suffix to craft our trigger mod.

For our shield, we use a shaper influenced shield (Havoc Sanctuary Archon Kite Shield) with the recovery percent life when you block. This is one of the most important mod for our defense because of our max block. You can push getting a Fossilised Spirit Shield with plus one to all minion skill gems and other minion modifiers if you have the POE Currency to spare.

The helm (Carrion Veil Hubris Circlet), gloves (Rune Grip Crusader Gloves), boots (Ambush Hoof Crusader Boots), and body armor (Gale Suit Saintly Chainmail), are pretty standard rares with the reservation and block chance mods, only required for the high budget version.

Rings

For our rings, we use bone rings (Mind Eye) and prioritize getting minion life and damage mods. Don’t forget to max out your resistances, reach your attribute requirements, and try to get as much chaos resistance as you can fit in.

Flasks

For our flasks, Progenesis is a great addition to our defenses but is not required. You can replace it with a Rumi’s Concoction for the low-budget version and an Amethyst Flask or a Bottled Faith for the high-budget flasks version.

A quartz flask (e.g. Masochist’s Quartz Flask of the Lynx) is a must, since we’re always diving in the center of packs. Try to get immunity to bleeding and corrupted blood in your life flask (Chemist’s Divine Life Flask of Assuaging). For the last two flasks, we use a basalt flask (Transgressor’s Basalt Flask of the Tortoise) and a quicksilver flask (Masochist’s Quicksilver Flask of the Bear).

For the animated Guardians equipment, we use Dying Breath to increase our minions DPS, Legacy of Fury to scorch nearby enemies, Eye of Malice to further decrease the enemy’s resistances.

Try to get a helmet with a life region corrupted mod: Gravebind in combination with a Crusader armor (Saintly Chainmail) with explode mod to further improve our clear speed.

The specters we use are Pale Seraphim for its increased damage taken to buff, Xoph’s Loyal to cover enemies in ash, and Tukohama’s Vanguard for the 25% fire exposure.

Gem Links

For our gem links, we use SRS, Awakened Burning Damage, Unleash, Minion Life, Predator, and Empower.

We put Flammability and Elemental Weakness in our trigger wand (Rapture Edge Convoking Wand).

Remember to put your Animate Guardian linked with minion life in the shield so we can easily swap it out when our AG is in danger.

We link our specters in Stone Golem with Feeding Frenzy and Combustion.

For our auras, we use Malevolence, Summon Skitterbots, Tempest Shield, Determination, and Defiance Banner. We use Flame Dash and Shield Charge for our movement skills. We use Molten Shell to boost our defenses and Convocation to recall our Sentinel. We have an extra slot in our trigger weapon, which you can use with a minion or spell of your choice.

For the low-budget version, you can swap out Burning Damage and Empower with a concentrated effect in Hypothermia and link Malevolence with Divine Blessing.

Conclusion

This build’s standard gameplay is popping our flasks, then summoning the Sentinel. Use Shield Charge to place yourself in the center of a pack and Convocation to recall your Sentinel and watch everything around you die use your SRS and Signal Prey for tanky rares and bosses.

Remember to resummon your Sentinel every 20 seconds or you could end up dying when you dive in a pack and your Sentinel is not up. Also remember to Shield Charge once every 4 seconds to keep your block chance maxed.

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In this leveling guide, we’ll be exploring the most effective strategies for leveling up in Diablo 4. We’ll dive into various methods to rapidly advance your character during the early stages, and how to optimize your late-game progression with different activities. I’ll even share tips on how to quickly level your alts.

Additionally, we’ll take a look at bonuses that can further enhance your experience points. Stay tuned as we go over the path to getting to level 100.

Intro

Leveling up from 1 to 50 can be a breeze, especially for your first character, as you’ll naturally progress through the story. However, if you’re looking to power-level an alternate character, I’ve got some practical strategies to share.

First, consider selecting the ‘Skip Campaign’ option when creating your alt. Once you’re in the game, focus on completing Whispers. Instead of rushing through objectives, take the time to clear out groups of mobs you encounter along the way.

Here’s the key: prioritize Whispers that lead to dungeons. Why? Because not only will you earn experience points from the dungeon mobs, but you’ll also receive a substantial bonus upon completing it.

Don’t forget to turn in your completed Whispers at the Tree of Whispers for even more experience points.

If you’re playing during Season 1, your best bet is Dindai Hollow. It offers straightforward objectives and plenty of elite enemies. After finishing the dungeon, simply exit, open your map, and select ‘Reset Dungeons.’ Repeat this process until you reach levels 20 to 30. These practical tips will have your alternate character leveling up efficiently in no time.

Also Read: Diablo 4: Top 7 PvP Tips Everyone Should Know

Level 20-30

If you find yourself in the level range of 20 to 30 and are eager to optimize your leveling experience, turning your attention towards strongholds is the way to go.

Among the top recommendations, I’d suggest exploring Kor Dragan northwest of Kyovashad, Onyx Watchtower southeast of Ked Bardu, and the Temple of Rot directly south of Ked Bardu.

In Kor Dragan, our primary focus will be on these specific circular objectives. As you venture into these areas, be on the lookout for tumors that need to be destroyed. Each tumor is surrounded by elite enemies, and upon destroying a tumor, another elite will emerge. To sweeten the deal, as you reach the end of Kor Dragan, a challenging boss encounter awaits, promising you a substantial boost in experience points.

To maximize Stronghold grinding, it’s crucial to understand how to reset a Stronghold. Instead of wrapping up with the final objective after defeating the boss, simply access your menu and select ‘Leave Game.’ Upon logging back in, you’ll find yourself right at the entrance, with the Stronghold reset to its initial state.

Level 50

Once you’ve reached level 50, it’s time to do a capstone dungeon. To gain access to the Cathedral of Light, you’ll need to transition to World Tier 2. You’ll find this cathedral in the church in Kyovashad. The initial phase of this dungeon follows a standard pattern: gather animus and confront a boss at the end.

However, unlike most dungeons, there’s one more section to conquer. In this new stage, you’ll have to eliminate all enemies and conclude the dungeon with a final boss. While it’s possible to attempt the Cathedral of Light before hitting level 50, exercise caution as it poses a considerable challenge compared to earlier dungeons.

The smoothest way to do a capstone dungeon is to get the assistance of a high-level friend to guide you through it.

Level 50-70

Leveling 50 to 70 is all about Nightmare Dungeons.

To enter a Nightmare Dungeon, you first need a Nightmare Sigil, which would be located in your consumables tab.

To get your first Nightmare Sigil, I recommend doing whispers until you get a nightmare sigil from opening a whispers cache.

Here’s how to read nightmare sigils. At the top, we have the name of the dungeon. In Season 1, the fastest nightmare dungeons for leveling are: Uldur’s cave, Sarat’s Lair, Mariner’s Refuge, Hoarfrost Demise, Immortal Emanation, and Domhainne Tunnels.

The level of the mobs is determined by the sigil tier plus 53 in World Tier 3 and plus 54 in World Tier 4. Nightmare Dungeons contain random benefits and detriments known as dungeon affixes.

The best benefits are reduced cooldown on kill, magic find, Diablo 4 Gold find, battle hardened, quick killer, and increased critical strike. The worst detriments are Drifting Shade, Lightning Storm, Stormbanes Wrath.

If you get bad Nightmare Sigils, salvage them at the occultist. Then, use the sigil powder to craft new Nightmare Sigils.

In a recent patch that increased the mob density, Nightmare Dungeons are by far the fastest way to level.

The key to efficiently leveling in Nightmare Dungeons is finding the sigil tier that you can complete the fastest. Get your clear times somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes. If you find yourself dying or taking longer than 5 minutes to clear a Nightmare Dungeon, try doing a sigil with a lower tier level.

Gearing yourself appropriately, choosing the right build, efficiently using paragon points, and getting better legendary aspects are all ways to boost your clear speeds. Faster clears equals more experience points.

To break away from the grind, do some Hell Tides. Hell Tides offer plenty of elites just like Nightmare Dungeons, the drawbacks not being able to choose the levels of the mobs you fight.

Leveling with Hell Tides isn’t as efficient as leveling with Nightmare Dungeons, but you do get some awesome Diablo 4 Items and equipment opportunities with Hell Tide chests. Running too many Nightmare Dungeons in a row can lead to fatigue and burnout.

World Tier 4

To get into World Tier 4, you’ll need to clear the last capstone dungeon. Set your world tier to World Tier 3, and head east of Kyovashad to the Fallen Temple. The recommended level to take on this challenge is level 70. You’ll either need to be well geared or have a high level friend to carry you through this capstone.

The last boss is Elias, and this is definitely one of the hardest bosses I’ve encountered in Diablo IV. Unfortunately, the best way to level in World Tier 4 is still Nightmare Dungeons. It is currently the fastest way to gear, level up, and the only way to level glyphs.

Eventually, Diablo 4 will have a World Tier 5, which hopefully comes with new content to grind with.

Level 70 - 100

Leveling from 70 to 100 is going to take substantially longer than anything we’ve done so far.

Lastly, to boost your experience points even higher, be sure to use potions during dungeons, this offers a 5% bonus, party up with someone for an extra 10% bonus, and don’t forget to use your seasonal blessings for a 20% bonus.

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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.

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