The Aeromancer is a DPS sub-class of the Specialist. Depending on your Class Engraving, she can be a melee-type or caster-type damage dealer.

Skills

The Aeromancer only has two types of skills. For melee combat, she uses Umbrella Skills. For casting and meter generation, she uses Weather Skills.

Typically, Umbrella Skills have all the utility: Stagger, Weak Point or Party Synergy. Although Weather Skills have utility options, they’re less preferred compared to Umbrella Skills, so Weather Skills are mainly used for damage.

Identity

As for her identity, Sun Shower, you can activate it once you fill up the Raindrop meter. Sun Shower does AOE damage to nearby enemies until the gauge runs out.

While inside Sun Shower, all enemies, including raid bosses, receive an attack damage reduction, which can help mitigate some damage every time it’s up.

Two Class Engravings - Wind Fury & Drizzle

Aeromancer has two Class Engravings. The first one is called Wind Fury, which primarily uses Umbrella Skills. The Wind Fury Aeromancer is very flexible in terms of raid mechanics, such as Stagger Check or Weak Point Check.

The other one is called Drizzle. Drizzle increases your Sun Shower duration by 100% and also increases your Weather Skills damage up to 30% when Sun Shower is active.

So, Drizzle is recommended if you would like to play the Range Caster style of Aeromancer or use Weather Skills as your main damaging abilities.

Let’s start with Wind Fury.

Instead of attack damage reduction to enemies, your Sun Shower will give bonus attack speed and movement speed to your party members inside the AOE circle. On top of the identity changes, you gain bonus Crit chance based on your movement speed and Crit damage based on attack speed.

If you choose this Class Engraving, you would want to have at least a little of Swiftness in general. On the other hand, you don’t want to go Mass Increase, because it would reduce the Crit damage provided by your Class Engraving.

The Wind Fury Aeromancer uses Swiftness and Crit as their main combat stats with a lot of play style variations. This Class Engraving mainly uses Umbrella Skills. They can also use a few Weather Skills as DPS or to generate identity gauge.

However, Umbrella Skills are your primary abilities. The core gameplay pattern of the Wind Fury Aeromancer is to use your preparation skills with the Current Occurrence tripod, then use spender skills with the Reversal tripod. Her preparation skills with the Current Occurrence tripod will give you a very special shield called Current Shield when you successfully land a hit with them.

The majority of the Wind Fury Aeromancer’s damage comes from the Reversal tripod. You need to make sure you always have a Current Shield from the Current Occurrence tripod before you use your spender skills.

Only if you have the shield from the Current Occurrence tripod, do you have a chance to trigger Reversal tripods? This shield is classified separately from any other shields, so you can’t trigger the Reversal tripod with a Protection Rune or shield effects from your support.

Looking a little deeper, you can’t use the Barricade Engraving, because the Reversal tripod consumes the Current Shield before it does damage. But Barricade needs you to be shielded for it to apply.

As for the Engravings, she typically uses Wind Fury, Grudge, Raid Captain, Adrenaline and Hit Master. None of her primary damage skills are positional, so it’s ideal to use Hit Master.

Relic Set

When it comes to the Relic set, the Wind Fury Aeromancer has multiple options depending on your playstyle. Of course, you need to prepare a lot of Lost Ark Gold, so that you can choose the Relic set you want.

Usually, Hallucination with high Swiftness is recommended, since it’s very agile and performs well in almost every situation.

Option two is the Dominion Set. You can go six Dominions or mix with two Nightmares for less mana consumption. The Dominion Set technically does more damage than the Hallucination Set. But it’s not always preferred since it’s a hassle to maintain the set buff.

The final option is the Nightmare Set. Crit will become your primary stat to cover the lack of Crit chance. This option is going to make you slower than the other two options. However, it does the most damage in a shorter damage window.

Gems

As for gems, all you need is to make sure you have Attack and Cooldown gems on your Reversal spender skills.

Then, it varies based on whether you use three spenders or four spenders, one Weather or two Weather Skills.

There are only minor differences among the variations, so the best way to figure out what to use is for you to try it yourself.

Also Read: A Summary Of Recent Lost Ark Updates And Improvements On KR Server- New Contents & Class

Wind Fury Aeromancer

The Wind Fury Aeromancer doesn't rely on many Runes unless you're looking to run a Dominion Set, which will require you to proc Conviction and Judgment before you cast your Awakening.

Since the Aeromancer is a very mana-hungry class, Conviction, Judgment and a few Focus Runes are great for her regardless of the Relic set.

Drizzle Aeromancer

Moving on to Drizzle, if you're looking for a more skill-shot-based and less spammy class so you can focus on your positioning and decision making, then Drizzle is the path you'll want to follow.

Unlike Wind Fury, Drizzle relies on Weather Skills to do damage, while Umbrella Skills take care of utility, like Party Synergy or Counter.

As an Engraving, Drizzle increases your Weather Skills up to 30% while your identity, Sun Shower, is active.

So, your goal as a Drizzle Aeromancer is simple. All you need to do is build the Raindrop meter as fast as you can without using your primary Weather Skills, which are Wiping Wind and Scorching Sun.

When Sun Shower is active, you want to use everything on cooldown.

Standard Stat Distribution

As for the Drizzle Aeromancer's combat stats distribution, she uses Specialization as her primary stat, because her weather skills scale with Specialization and it helps with Raindrop meter gain.

She doesn't have any sort of Crit modifier outside of her Awakening and Party Synergy, so Crit is recommended for her secondary combat stats.

Most of her damage comes from two skills, Wiping Wind and Scorching Sun, during the Sun Shower state. You can squeeze them in two times each in a single Sun Shower once you achieve a certain amount of cooldown reduction.

Gem Setup

As for the gem setup, the Drizzle Aeromancer needs damage and cooldown gems on both Wiping Wind and Scorching Sun. Unless you can cast these two skills twice in one Sun Shower, otherwise you should give priority to the Cooldown gems of these two skills.

Then, all you need to do is place a damage and cooldown gem again for Whirlpool and Rainstorm.

Similar to the Wind Fury Aeromancer, Drizzle also uses Conviction, Judgment and Focus Runes. It's easy to proc Conviction and Judgment with Weather Skills for extra cooldown reduction and mana regen.

However, they're not necessary and the heavy mana consumption can be covered with multiple Focus Runes instead. It's best to have at least two Wealth Runes for optimal gameplay since Drizzle relies on filling the identity meter.

Engravings

Drizzle Aeromancers typically use Grudge, Keen Blunt Weapon, Drizzle, Adrenaline and Hit Master.

Same as Wind Fury, none of her primary damage skills are positional, so it's ideal to use Hit Master.

Relic Set Options

The Drizzle Aeromancer uses Hallucination for her Relic set. She doesn't use Salvation since the bonus attack speed from Salvation isn't that beneficial for Drizzle.

You don't use Nightmare since the damage from her Sun Shower is a good chunk of your overall damage, but it isn't affected by the Nightmare Set, because the identity doesn't consume mana.

Hallucination is the best option here as she has a fairly low Crit rate.

A Rule To Follow As A Drizzle Aeromancer

There's a simple rule you need to follow as a Drizzle Aeromancer: hold.

You need to hold damage skills when you don't have Sun Shower active and you need to hold the meter generator when Sun Shower is about to run out. So, you can fill up the meter as soon as possible.

Usually, you should be able to fill up the whole meter with these two skills, but if anything, you can always use Whirlpool, which is another great meter generator that also does really high damage.

So, this is your emergency button if you have just a little more meter to fill up. Otherwise, you want to squeeze this skill in your Sun Shower rotation for extra damage from the Drizzle Engraving.

Drizzle's damage is heavily back-loaded. Wiping Wind and Whirlpool do more damage on their later ticks and Scorching Sun takes more than two seconds to land all the hits. So, you need to be patient and look carefully for a damage window. In other words, the better you know the fight, the more rewarding Drizzle is.

Conclusion

In closing, both Aeromancer Class Engravings can be as fun as you make it. Whether it is an unstoppable blade to slice and dice your enemy with Wind Fury or calling upon nature's power to strike your enemy with Drizzle, the Aeromancer has a little something for everyone.

This guide will show you eight tasks in The Elder Scrolls Online that you can complete every day. This is what your daily routine in ESO should look like.

1. Collect Your Daily Rewards

Every day that you log into The Elder Scrolls Online, you get a free reward. This can be anything from collectibles, potions and poisons, XP Scrolls, ESO Gold, and other forms of currency.

Claiming your login reward should be your very first action every day.

2. Upgrade Your Mount

You should upgrade your mount skills as early and as often as possible.

There is a stable master in every major town marked with the horse head icon. Talk to them to upgrade your mount’s Speed, Stamina, and Carry Capacity. You can only apply one point every day at the cost of 250 gold.

Note: Mount upgrades are not shared between your characters. So, if you have multiple, make sure to buy an upgrade daily on each of them.

3. Complete Daily Crafting Writs

Crafting Writs are special daily quests for the seven crafting disciplines that offer extra XP and gold for fairly low effort.

Any character at or above level 6 can do the Writs as long as they are certified for the specific crafting profession.

Talk to Millenith or Danel Telleno to complete the certification process. They can be found in all major cities. You can complete your Writs from the local writ board every day.

If you’re on PC, you can use add-ons to speed up the process. But for those on consoles, the best way to improve time spent is by setting your tables to the quest only option.

Your maxed out professions with full skill points allotted to the top passive in the tree have a chance to earn a Master Writ in addition to gold, XP, crafting materials, and Survey Reports that you can use for even more crafting materials.

This will take a few minutes. But the selling prices for materials and Master Writs are a great way to make gold fast.

4. Researching Crafting Traits

While you are completing your Writs, start researching traits. This is especially important for using Transmutation to change your Traits on your gear later or if you are just interested in crafting.

You should always have research active, at least with your dedicated crafter character.

Research takes real time to complete. The more Traits on an item that you have completed, the longer it takes to complete the next one.

Research can take only a few hours or up to a whole month, depending on how many you have left. So, the sooner you start, the better.

There are also skills in the crafting tree to improve research time and the number of items that you can research at one time. This will speed up the process of researching all Traits, considerably.

5. Complete Daily Endeavors

You can find available Endeavor quests in the Activity Finder under the Endeavors tab.

Endeavors include both weekly and daily quests, with a limit of three dailies per day and one weekly per week.

Endeavors reward with gold and the Seals of Endeavor currency, with which you can purchase Crown Crate items that are available with the active crates.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online: The Best Arcanist Build You Need To Try In Necrom - One Bar Stamina Build

6. Random Daily Dungeon

Completing the daily random dungeon for the first time per day will give you a huge chunk of XP, 10 Transmutes, and other items.

It is best to do this once per day every day to get the most out of the rewards. You can do this on Normal or Veteran to get the same rewards and can complete it every day on each character that you have if you are needing the Transmutes.

7. Random Daily Battleground

Just like the dungeon daily, completing the random Battleground daily will give you a huge chunk of XP, gold, more transmutes, and other items.

This is a PVP game mode. But you get the rewards whether you win or lose.

8. Daily Pledges

When you reach level 45, you can start accepting Pledges by reading the Undaunted Enclave Invitation that you receive in your level up rewards.

Pledges our special daily dungeon quests that ask you to complete specific dungeons. You can pick up the Pledges from the NPCs found in the Undaunted Enclave. The Undaunted Enclave is located in the capital city of every Alliance, way rested in Stormhaven, Mournhold, Deshaan and Elden Root in Grahtwood.

By completing Pledges, you’ll receive keys to open monster shoulder chests in addition to some Transmutes, gold, and XP. Make sure to save any Undaunted Keys until you hit the gear cap of a 160 CP.

Pledges can also help you to level the Undaunted Skill Line in which are some very useful passive skill that can be unlocked.

Benefits Of Doing These Tasks & Additional Dailies

These tasks can help you to level up faster, make gold faster, and increase your overall in-game efficiency.

Most of them will only take a few minutes, but will help you to progress and build your character.

These are just some of the dailies available. There are tons of other daily quests gathered throughout Tamriel, including the Mages Guild daily, the Fighters Guild daily, Zone dailies, Tales of Tribute dailies, Arena dailies, and Trial dailies that you can include in your daily routine. So, get out there and explore!

Today, we will be looking at how damage works in Honkai Star Rail.

So first, an in-depth guide on the damage formula, and then we will go through all the ways we can boost this damage, as well as how effective these boosts are.

For example, we will see how strong DMG% is versus ATK%, including any additional DMG% if you already have a ton. We will also look at how efficient crit ratios are, and how speed substats fare versus crit substats, as well as how well defence shred and resistance shred boost our damage, and much more.

The Damage Formula

First, let’s look at the good old classic damage formula.

It is composed of 7 different elements, but some formulas also show 8. We have 3 elements that we can affect by boosting our characters, and 4 elements that depend on the enemies and how we affect them.

So, for character dependent elements, we have our Base Damage, the Crit Multiplier, and the Damage Boost Multiplier.

Base Damage Explanation

First, we have our Base Damage, which is the skill multiplier multiplied by the scaling stat, plus any additional damage.

Seele’s ultimate at level 10, for example, does 425% of her attack, meaning her ultimate’s base damage will be 4.25 times her total attack, which at 3k attack would be 12750 damage.

If it scales off HP or Defense, or anything else, you use those values instead, multiplied by their respective skill multiplier.

How Do CRITs Work?

We then have the Crit Multiplier.

If you crit, your base damage will be multiplied by the crit multiplier, which is equal to 1 + your crit damage percentage. So, if you have 100% crit damage, your crit multiplier is 2, and your base damage will be doubled upon critting.

To find your average damage, you multiply your base damage by your crit rate and your crit multiplier, and add it to your base damage multiplied by 1 minus your crit rate.

You’re adding the damage of a crit with the damage of a non crit, respectively multiplied by their chances to happen.

At a crit ratio of 80 to 160 with our same ultimate damage from before, we do the following calculation, giving us an average damage of 29070.

How Does DMG% Boost DPS?

We then have the Damage Boost Multiplier.

Any damage% bonuses are totaled up and added to the base multiplier of 1, which will then multiply your damage again.

You have general DMG% bonuses that work on all attacks, like Bronya’s DMG% boost on her skill, then you have specific DMG% bonuses, like Subscribe for More, which are only taken into account on Basic Attacks or Skills. Or, another example is Elemental DMG% bonuses, which only work when said attack is of the corresponding element.

If, for example, we have a Quantum DMG% orb on our Seele, and our talent at level 10, we have a DMG% boost of 118.9%, and we thus multiply our previous damage by 2.189, giving us 63634.23 damage.

Next, we are onto the enemy multipliers: the DEF Multiplier, the RES Multiplier, the Vulnerability Multiplier, and finally the Broken Multiplier (this is part of a Universal DMG Reduction Multiplier that enemies have).

How OP Is DEF Reduction?

The DEF Multiplier is first.

It is calculated by a division. The numerator is your character’s level plus 20. The denominator is the enemy’s level + 20 multiplied by 1, minus any defence reduction or ignore effects. And this is then added onto your character’s level again plus 20.

What this basically means is your DEF multiplier depends on two things: the level difference between you and the enemy, as well as any defence reductions or ignore effects.

At the same level as your enemy, you are dividing your level by your level times two essentially, so your defence multiplier is 0.5, and your damage is halved.

As the enemy’s level increases, the denominator increases and your multiplier drops. This is why we calculate with a defence multiplier of 0.476, because we are level 80 versus level 90 enemies.

As we include defence reduction, the enemy level is multiplied by a smaller and smaller number, increasing our division’s final multiplier, until we hit 100% defence reduction, where we will now be dividing your level by your level, giving us a defence multiplier of 1. And Defence Reduction doesn’t go further than 100%.

Versus a level 90 enemy with a level 80 Seele, equipped with the 4 piece quantum set, we will ignore 20% of their defence and multiply our damage by this long number, dropping our damage to 33848.

Why To Fight Weak Enemies?

The second multiplier is the Resistance Multiplier.

You have the base resistance multiplier of 1, and then you subtract the subtraction of the enemy resistance with your resistance reduction or penetration. So, if the enemy has 20% resistance, you get a resistance multiplier of 0.8. If they have 40%, 0.6, etc.

If you have resistance reduction, you are removing this resistance, and any further reduction still counts towards your resistance multiplier, now boosting your damage. If you have 20% resistance reduction on an enemy with 20% resistance, they now have 0% resistance, and your multiplier is back at 1. If they have 0% resistance, your multiplier is at 1.2, and so your damage is increased.

This is why we generally bring DPS to an enemy with a weakness corresponding to our DPS’ type, since any enemy that is weak to an element has 0% resistance to that element, and so your base resistance multiplier is 1.

Including Seele’s A4, which gives us 20% RES PEN, versus a Quantum Weak enemy, we now have a resistance multiplier of 1.2 on our damage, increasing our damage to 40617.6.

Vulnerability Modifiers

Next up is a very simple one, the Vulnerability Multiplier, which is indicated by text saying increased damage received or increased damage taken by enemies, like Welt’s A2, or Silver Wolf’s signature Light Cone. By the way, if you haven't pulled Silver Wolf by now or find some of her Light Cones too hard to get, buying a Honkai Star Rail Account would be a good option.

You have a base multiplier of 1, and any vulnerability modifiers will increase it by their respective percentages. Say we have Welt on the team with his 12% vulnerability, we multiply our damage thus far by 1.12, increasing our damage to 45491.7.

Why Breaking Is Important?

Finally, we have the Broken Multiplier, which is part of enemies’ total damage reduction, and is dependent on the toughness bar. The broken multiplier is 0.9 when the enemy has a toughness bar, and 1 when they don’t.

So, you gain a 1.11x damage increase if you hit a broken enemy, meaning if you can save that juicy ultimate for when the enemy is broken, it’ll give a final nice boost.

TLDR On Boosting Damage

Now, onto how we boost our damage.

For an easy summary, we boost our damage by boosting each of these multipliers. So, we increase our trace level or scaling factor for our base damage, then we increase our crit ratio for our crit multiplier, and add DMG% buffs for our damage.

Applying def reduction debuffs or gaining def ignore will boost our def multiplier, the same with resistance reduction for our resistance multiplier. Inflicting vulnerability will boost our damage too. And finally, breaking an enemy’s toughness bar will grant us more damage.

But then come the questions of balancing stats. How much attack% I should have? How much crit should I have? Is DMG% better than ATK%? What if I have 100 DMG% already? And that is what part 2 of this guide will explain.

DMG% VS ATK%

Our first comparison is DMG% versus ATK%. This also works for any other scaling factor, like DMG% vs ATK HP% on Blade. At no buffs DMG% beats ATK%, due to characters and light cones having a base attack, and the gloves relic piece having a flat 352.8 attack.

For example, 10% of damage is worth a lot more than 10% of attack. This only further increases as we add ATK% buffs and main stats to our units. Adding an ATK% main stat skews the difference in favour of damage% even more. If we only add a damage% orb instead, ATK% becomes a bit stronger than damage%.

However, we will naturally be building a lot of attack%, and damage% only comes from the orb, set bonuses, and ally buffs. Attack% can be on the chest, boots, orb, rope, and also comes from a ton of set bonuses and ally buffs.

So, as you can see, two attack main stats make DMG% very favourable even with a DMG% orb. Even with a 66% buff from Bronya’s skill, it still comes out ahead.

DMG% VS CRIT%

DMG% versus CRIT% is similar, except they are both multipliers onto your base damage. CRIT also has the problem of only being valuable if you have enough of it.

For example, from no DMG% or crit buffs or pieces,100% damage is equal to a crit ratio of 55/110 in boosting your damage. Getting a better crit ratio improves the damage boosting capabilities of more crit, but it also doesn’t mean DMG% should be wasted. With a lot of DMG%, crit becomes very valuable, but so does crit with a lot of extra damage%.

ATK% VS CRIT%

Finally, in this three way match up, we have ATK% vs CRIT%, which is compared in increments of 2 substats, so 2 ATK% subs versus 1 crit rate and 1 crit damage sub. This is considering a base crit of 5 to 50.

For example, crit stats without initial crit are useless, and attack% is favoured even after two main stats. Now if we have a favourable crit ratio, any additional crit stats are worth a lot more.

So, don’t go adding some crit to a unit when you won’t hit a high enough ratio for it to be worth it. This also shows that DPS does want crit, as ATK% is pretty saturated, and it’s why we go crit chests on our DPS to avoid any DPS loss.

The Perfect CRIT Ratio

Now, onto Crit Efficiency, this one is a classic from Genshin Impact, and just shows, depending on your crit rate or crit damage, how effective extra crit damage or rate is to the perfect 1 to 2 ratio.

This shows that, for example, 50 crit rate to 100 crit damage is a nice ratio, but having 15 extra crit rate, or 30 extra crit damage, won’t impact your ratio too much, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the perfect crit ratio.

We can also see this in the average Crit Multiplier, which is how we find our average damage dependent on our crit rate and crit damage. We used this earlier in the Seele calculation to find our average ultimate damage.

At the base 5 to 50 crit ratio characters have, our average damage is not increasing by much at all. But we also see that whilst the perfect ratio will boost our damage by the most amount, not having a 1:2 ratio is still great for damage.

Speed Breakpoints

Now, we are onto speed and their comparisons.

Remember, speed varies a lot, and speed can make tuning buffs better, or worse, and this is just showcasing how effective speed is for DPS turns and damage gain.

We first have the standard speed breakpoints. You have probably already seen this from Grimro. It shows how to get additional actions per cycle in the first 8 cycles.

For example, if we want 10 actions by the 6th cycle, we need 154 speed. This also shows the infamous 134 speed breakpoint. That gives us an additional action every 3 cycles, including the first cycle.

So, we get 2 actions in our first cycle, and then 6 in our 4th, and so on so forth. As for effective damage gain, we compare how many actions we get to the standard 1 action per 1 cycle.

So, getting two actions by the first cycle is a 100% damage gain. But 3 actions by the second cycle is only a 50% damage gain, since you’re already supposed to have 2 actions. This doesn’t mean you should just go for 161 speed breakpoints for damage gain. It just shows the potential.

SPD% VS ATK%

To further showcase that just going for speed is bad for DPS, we now have two comparisons: speed substats versus attack subs, and speed versus crit. These are my favourite comparisons, since they show the breakpoints really well.

SPD versus ATK shows 1 minimum sub of speed versus 1 minimum sub of attack. Obviously, having more attack will win until you hit a speed breakpoint. And having stats is important too.

Going for just speed for more turns won’t give you much gains, unless you have the stats to do damage. This also shows how important speed boots are for DPS gains. But that too much speed is unneeded as well.

With attack% buffs and a mainstat, getting an additional attack main stat does not prove as significant as speed boots, since we get our damage multiplied by more than 8 cycles, and we are closer to a future breakpoint for even more damage.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail 1.2: 5 Things You Need To Know About Imbibitor Lunae - Stats, Ultimate, Skill, Technique & Gameplay

SPD% VS CRIT%

SPD% versus CRIT% is the same concept, but with the added nuance of crit needing a good ratio to be worth in the first place.

If you hit breakpoints, it’s great, but so is the value of the crit for your damage. You will be needing a good crit ratio in the first place, but getting extra crit is very valuable for damage.

DEF% Reduction

Now let’s look at the defence shred.

As we saw with the formula earlier, and as we can see in this graph, it’s an exponential DPS increase as you stack more and more defence shred.

Pela’s ultimate will give us a 26.5% damage boost, Silver Wolf’s talent and ult 38.4%, but combined they give us a 95% damage boost.

RES Reduction

Resistance shred gives us a linear boost instead. But we can see the value of the resistance shred for our Resistance Multiplier.

The more resistance the enemy has, the more gain we get from the resistance shred. But since we aren’t bringing our DPS to a fully resistant enemy, this doesn’t mean much to us.

We want to be fighting enemies of our elemental weakness for the most damage.

DEF VS RES Reductions

Next, let’s compare defence reduction and resistance reduction in their effect on multiplying our damage.

Versus a weak enemy, defence shred comes out ahead of course, but takes time to ramp up versus resistance shred, which is linear.

Also remember, defence shred can max out, and resistance shred doesn’t. So, having a combination of both will improve our damage a ton.

We can also see, for example, how effective Silver Wolf is in boosting our damage. Versus a non weak enemy, we get a 95.53% damage boost to our damage, which can boost our whole team’s damage.

Combined with Seele’s A4 and the quantum set, our damage goes insane.

Vulnerability

Adding Vulnerability is an additional multiplier, and very simple.

Every % of vulnerability multiplies our total damage by an additional %. It is linear and having it on the enemy is great for damage boosting.

Broken Multiplier

We then have the Broken Multiplier and its effects on our DPS. It’s even smaller than vulnerability in its complexity.

You either gain 11% DPS from attacking a broken enemy, or you lose 10% potential DPS by not attacking a broken enemy.

So again, try to hit them when their toughness bar is broken. But it’s okay if you don’t. It’s just an additional boost of DPS.

Break Damage Boosts

So that’s all the damage multipliers for standard damage, and how they fare versus each other. Let’s also quickly look at break damage and how it scales on our level.

So, Break Damage scales exponentially on our level, and is why it was so slept on in the past. It still won’t beat out standard DPS builds unless you break a lot, which is always tricky to calculate, or unless you are a support like Asta that doesn’t traditionally do a ton of damage.

Level is very important for break damage. Going from level 40 to 50 gives us a 113% damage increase on our break damage at level 40, which is compounded onto future levels.

So, even though from level 70 to 80 we get another 41.66% increase, that’s a 41.66% increase on our break damage from level 70, which is a 62% increase over the break damage from level 60, and so on.

With future break effect supports and buffs, the break effect will be very strong.

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.

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.

Recently, I have often been asked how do I find Shockwave Aspect or Aspect Of the Trampled Earth and so on. And most of the time, it’s kind of just luck. But there actually is a method that is faster than others to find legendary items very fast. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Helltides Overview

The fastest way to get lots of legendaries is by doing Helltides properly and there are a lot of tricks to make the most out of a Helltide.

Now, Helltides last for exactly one hour. And during that time, events are actually going to occur more frequently. They’re going to reset faster. Monsters are going to be dropping Aberrant Cinders, which can be used to open Helltide chests. Besides, the monsters are higher level than you, which means great XP and Diablo 4 Gold gains.

Not only that, but Helltides are the only place where you can obtain Forgotten Souls, which are a crafting material needed for fifth and final level upgrades for your gear.

Remember that Helltides only occur in World Tier 3 or 4. So, if you aren’t there yet, you’ll need to unlock it first. And it is worth mentioning you lose half your Cinders if you die, so try not to do that.

Now, it will occasionally rain meteors during Helltides and that means there’s a chance to spawn an Elite after the rain is over in close proximity to you. These Elites are pretty tough but are definitely worth fighting for their drops of Cinders and other Diablo 4 Items.

There’s also an Elite monster called Kixxarth, the Helltide assassin, who wanders the Helltide. Slaying him rewards a high amount of Forgotten Souls. So, it’s absolutely worth trying to take him out if you can.

Within a Helltide, there are ore nodes and plants that drop Aberrant Cinders and Forgotten Souls, which are called the Fiend Rose and the Screaming Hell Veins. Both of these are worth harvesting if you see them, especially since Fiend Roses can only be found within Helltides.

Finally, there are mystery chests. This is a special type of Helltide chest called the Tortured Gift of Mysteries, which always contains at least one legendary item, but can drop four or more, depending on your luck. These chests require 175 Aberrant Cinders to be opened and will not show up on the global map, but instead appear on your mini-map when you’re in close proximity. And it is a guarantee that there will be at least one in every zone.

How To Get The Most Out Of Helltides?

The trick to getting the most out of these Helltides is to open up an Interactive Map on your second monitor and hide everything besides mystery chests, shrines, and events.

Then, you’re going to want to locate a cluster of shrines and events somewhat near a mystery chest. And your ideal path will lead you to first pick up a shrine and then start an event and then immediately go to another event and so on.

And events are going to be refreshing really fast. I actually found that I did an event, walked away for probably 60 seconds, and then came back and the event was already refreshed with a different event. So, it’s actually really great if you can find a cluster of events to just go back and forth between.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Pure Minions Summoner Necromancer Build: Necromancer Endgame Build

Tricks For Doing Helltides

The reason events are so important during Helltides is that the density of monster spawns, which means you’re going to be farming more Aberrant Cinders. Also, the Obols you’ll acquire from the events can be used to gamble at the Purveyor of Curiosities for yet another chance at more legendary items and the aspects you’re looking for.

But keep in mind that the mystery chests marked on the Interactive Map are only potential spawn points. And that it’s not guaranteed that there will be a chest there. So, always leave yourself some time before the end of the Helltide to ensure you can use all of your Cinders. Because they will be lost at the end of the Helltide.

Now, the mystery chests are the most expensive chests requiring 175 Aberrant Cinders and accordingly offer the most loot. Another trick you can use if you’ve unlocked World Tier 4 is to gather Aberrant Cinders in World Tier 3. Then, once you’ve found a mystery chest, Town Portal and change to World Tier 4. Then, return to the chest using your Town Portal and open the mystery chest for World Tier 4 loot, using World Tier 3 Aberrant Cinders you gathered.

One last thing to keep in mind is that shrines take a lot longer to refresh than events. So, once you pick one up for the first time, I wouldn’t worry about going out of your way to get to that same shrine again. Because it’s probably not refreshed. Just look for another nearby shrine along your path.

Personally, my favorite shrine is Channeling. You get unlimited resources and shortened cooldowns. And for some reason, Conduit doesn’t always feel like it’s helpful. So, if I were you, I’d probably avoid that one. Because you also can’t mount up either and I haven’t found a way to turn off Conduit Shrine.

So, those are my tips for getting the most out of Helltides. And in my opinion, this is the fastest way to get all of your legendary aspects. These mystery chests drop lots of legendary items, which you can then extract or potentially even use. And the high frequency of event refreshes will give you the highest amount of Obols basically in the game that you can find, which you can then go to use at the Purveyor of Curiosities for even more chances at finding that legendary aspect you’re after.

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.

I’m going to share with you 10 productive ways you can spend your time in FFXIV while waiting for the queue to pop. And these suggestions are very valuable because they will either save you time in the future or they have worthwhile rewards.

1. Island Sanctuary Gathering

My first suggestion is to gather materials on Island Sanctuary, such as Island Laver or Island Sap.

Island Laver seems to be a popular ingredient needed every single week. And I can sit all of my granaries on it all week long and still never have enough. It’s irritating to have to gather them myself, but what else can I do?

It’s a great idea to gather any materials you are low on on the island during queue. This way, you don’t have to waste your time on it later.

2. Crafting & Gathering

Talking about gathering on the island gave me another brilliant idea: gathering and crafting in general. Both of these can bring you some cash or materials you need to craft things that you want for yourself.

If you’re unsure about what to gather or craft, I would suggest doing a little market research by using websites like Universalis or Saddlebag Exchange. The latter even has a search function that can show you the best-selling furnishing items. For gathering, you can filter your search by materials even down to the material type.

Another reason to gather while you queue is to fill out your logs. This way, if you have a retainer that is a gatherer, you’ll have a wider variety of Ventures you can assign to them. You can actually make a solid income by just sending your retainer out for materials and then selling them on the market board. But if you have not gathered something, then your retainer can’t get it either. So, it’s definitely worthwhile to spend your queue time completing those logs.

3. Shadowbringers & Endwalker Fates

My next suggestion is doing Fates, specifically those in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Because completion of them rewards you with Bicolor Gemstones.

The Bicolor Gemstones are the main reason to do this as they can be used for a variety of desirable items, such as crafting materials, Orchestrion Rolls, Furnishings, Glamours, and even Minions. Some items also don’t become available until you have capped your shared Fates for a particular region. So, that’s just one more reason to farm this during queue.

Fates will also provide XP for any jobs you’re leveling. And if you do enough of them, you’ll also get an XP bonus through the weekly challenges log. So, be sure to do your 5th and 10th fates on the jobs you want XP on the most.

4. Beast Tribes

Speaking of leveling, Beast Tribe quests are a fantastic way to do so as they often give a pretty sizable chunk of XP upon completion.

Another reason to complete Beast Tribe quests is because they offer cool rewards, like Materia, Dyes, Glamours, Housing Items, Mounts, and Emotes.

Pre-shadowbringers, maxing out each tribe, also allows you to do an Allied Tribal Quest for even more rewards, like the Gratuity Emote, for example.

You can do up to 12 Beast Tribe quests per day and it typically takes 10 minutes or fewer to complete three quests from a tribe. It’s so worthwhile and a great way to spend your time while waiting for the queue to pop.

Also Read: Final Fantasy 14 Dungeon Guide

5. Levequests

Going along with the leveling theme still, let’s talk about levequests.

Levequests are an easy way to level battle, crafter, and gatherer jobs. For the latter two, you can often just buy stuff on the market board to turn in. So, if you hate crafting as much as I do, you can level up without having to actually do that much crafting at all.

Levequests can also be used to make FFXIV Gil. Once upon a time, you could just make coffee biscuits and turn them in. Now, it takes a bit more effort on your part. You will need to do the math yourself. Find something that is being sold for cheap on the market board, especially if it’s high quality, and then turn it in and reap the profit.

6. Hunt Marks

Sitting there constantly clicking is pretty boring, but what else do you have to do while you queue?

My sixth suggestion is hunting marks. you guys know how much I love hunt trains, but unfortunately you can’t really do trains while you queue as hunt trains require you to be in a party. However, you can do Overworld hunt marks.

There are different types of seals you can get depending on what expansion you’re hunting in. And, of course, different types of rewards, such as minions, mounts, furnishings, and more.

I would suggest checking out the rewards for each expansion and seeing what you want. Lots of people like to hunt for Centurio Seals because with them you can buy Aetheryte Tickets and save a lot of money on teleportation.

7. Blue Mage Spells

Speaking of hunting mobs, if you’re interested in playing Blue Mage, there are a number of mobs in the Overworld that drop Blue Mage spells.

So, if you don’t have them all, you can farm them while waiting for queue. There are lots of guides online for where to get each spell.

8. Gold Saucer

My next idea is to hit up the Gold Saucer.

Unfortunately, you can’t do any of the gates or your queue will stop. But you can do the mini cact pot or any of the other mini games. If you’re farming MGP, you’re going to want to complete as much of the weekly log as you can, and doing mini-games is part of that.

9. Triple Triad

Speaking of the Gold Saucer, collecting all the Triple Triad cards up to I think Shadowbringers will get you a cute little flying card mount, so you can play Triple Triad with the NPCs in the Gold Saucer or in the Overworld to work on your collection while you wait for queue.

10. Practice Your Rotation

Finally, my 10th and last idea is to practice your rotation.

Lots of players are interested in doing higher difficulty content like Extremes or even Savages. But they often feel hesitant for many reasons. And one of them is often a lack of experience and skill level.

Therefore, you can take that extra time waiting for queue to visit resources (like the Balance or YouTube), figure out what your rotation should be, and test it out on a Training Dummy.

You can start to build muscle memory for this rotation so that once you’re in encounters that require you to dodge mechanics, it’ll be a lot less overwhelming since you’ve built up that memory of where your buttons are and what to hit next.

Do you remember the 1.4 Chasm with Baizhu and Dendro Copium leaks? Cause I sure do. Those were some nostalgic times for Genshin Impact. I’ll tell you that much.

If you don’t remember or know what I’m talking about, all you need to know is that after almost 3 years of Baizhu’s existence in the story, we finally get to play him.

He fills a fairly empty role as a dendro healer and mini-shielder, joining Yaoyao as one of the dendro survivability options. This guide will teach you everything you need to know about Baizhu from his best artifacts and weapons, to general playstyle and team compositions.

Elemental Skill Basics

Baizhu’s elemental skill is quite unique and simple. He sends out a spirit that deals dendro damage to up to three enemies in an area around him and then returns to the player to heal the party.

Unfortunately, the damage scales on attack and the healing scales on his max HP, which means that for the most part, the damage from this ability is negligible as we mainly want to focus on the big heals for the party.

Elemental Burst Basics

Like Baizhu’s skill, Baizhu’s burst also has an attack-based damage and HP based survivability mechanic. Upon casting Baizhu’s elemental burst, it will create a shield for the active character.

This shield only lasts for 2.5 seconds and has a very low damage absorption compared to other shields in the game, but that’s where the rest of Baizhu’s burst come into play.

Not only does the shield have a 2.5 second duration, but it also refreshes itself every 2.5 seconds as well. Everytime the shield refreshes or is broken, your active character will be healed based on Baizhu’s max HP and a dendro spirit will emerge to attack a nearby enemy based on Baizhu’s attack.

With Baizhu’s second ascension talent, the character who is healed by this shield will gain increased bloom reaction damage, as well as increased aggravate and spread reaction damage. This buff is calculated with every 1,000 HP increment that Baizhu has, up to 50,000 max HP. Specifically, aggravate and spread reactions gain 0.8% increased damage for every 1,000 HP that Baizhu has, so that equates to 40% when Baizhu is at 50,000 HP.

Meanwhile, bloom reactions gain a little more than that at 2% per 1,000 max HP that Baizhu has, which maxes out at 100% increased damage with the 50,000 cap.

No matter how small the shield is, blocking any damage with a shield will prevent the character from being knocked off their feet, which means a benefit of Baizhu’s burst is a pseudo-resistance to interruption when his mini-shields block damage.

Theorycrafting

Baizhu is a really cool character on paper, but as we take a deeper dive into his mechanics, he doesn’t come without his minor issues.

*The first issue is very common among other characters and that issue is energy. Baizhu has the standard restrictive burst cost of 80 energy with a 20 second cooldown, while his elemental skill generates 3 to 4 particles on a 10 second cooldown.

Of course, this restrictive burst cost can be met with help from dendro teammates or energy recharge weapons like Jadefall’s Splendor, Prototype Amber, or Favonius Codex.

However, I want you to note that energy recharge benchmarks heavily change based on the type of team you play. For example, teams like Nilou Bloom give Baizhu more field time to absorb energy particles and cast 2 elemental skills while in a Cyno hypercarry team, Cyno often hogs too much time for Baizhu to absorb particles or cast his skill a second time.

*The second issue is lack of AoE damage. His catalyst attacks are similar to Heizou in the sense that they are melee, but they lack the sweeping AoE that Heizou has.

Not only does Baizhu lose the advantage of range, but he also loses dendro application in situations with multiple enemies. Nahida attacks in a fixed line in front of her and can apply dendro to multiple enemies in that line. Once we add in the elemental skills of these two dendro catalysts, it becomes no contest that Nahida is the queen of AoE dendro application.

Baizhu’s burst applies dendro every single hit, but unfortunately, the AoE on each hit is practically non-existent. This ultimately results in a limitation for solo dendro application in specific teams like triple hydro Nilou setups, so he’s not a replacement for Nahida.

Constellations

Baizhu’s constellations are not very game-changing given how much constellations will cost you, so let’s just quickly run through their biggest effects.

Like many other first constellations, Baizhu gains an extra charge on his elemental skill with C1. This is a solid first constellation that gives him better energy generation and flexibility when it comes to certain team rotations, but it’s nothing to chase after.

C2 grants Baizhu to unleash a miniature elemental skill every 5 seconds when your active character hits an enemy. Because C2 is a miniature version of his elemental skill, the healing is 20% of what his normal skill would heal for, but the biggest catch of C2 is that it also can apply dendro, increasing his rate of dendro application.

C4 is a team-wide 80 elemental mastery buff, but this number is quite small even when compared even when compared to 4-Star artifacts like the 4-set Instructor, so it’s a bit unfortunate that C4 is nothing more than a stepping stone to C6.

Regarding C6 itself, it increases Baizhu’s burst damage based on his max HP. And when elemental skills or his C2 effect hits an enemy, it will generate one of his shields from his elemental burst. As you would probably guess, since his shields also launch dendro attacks when they expire or break, creating extra shields once again can increase Baizhu’s rate of dendro application but is very expensive to justify chasing C6.

It’s much easier to pair him with dendro characters like Dendro Traveler and Collei because they’re free, or Nahida and Yaoyao since they’ve been available recently and many players might have them.

Artifacts

Similar to Yaoyao, Baizhu prefers simple healer builds due to his split scaling and low damage multipliers. The two safest artifact sets for Baizhu are either the 4-set Deepwood Memories or the 4-set Ocean Hued Clam.

In the case that no other character on your bloom, burgeon, or hyperbloom teams can hold this set, Baizhu should hold this set to reduce the dendro resistance of enemies and buff the damage output of your bloom DPS. If this is a scenario that doesn’t apply to you, then the 4-set Ocean Hued Clam is your best generalist set.

Baizhu constantly grants big heals to the team when his shields expire or break, so it’s pretty easy to get free damage out of Ocean Hued Clam’s bubble. While this free damage is definitely nice, some may prefer to use Baizhu for solely buffing the team and don’t really care about his damage contribution or healing output.

In that case, the 4-set Noblesse Oblige or the 4-set Instructor are your go to options for team buffs, each with their own strengths. For example, the 4-set Instructor can shine in a Nilou Bloom team, where the ATK% from Noblesse Oblige is negligible with characters like Nilou and Kokomi who have HP scalings.

Another example would be in an aggravate team where your electro DPS may have enough EM buffs from a character like Sucrose, and would prefer the 20% ATK from Noblesse, since maybe you’re not running an attack buffer like Bennett or Kujou Sara.

Choosing between these two sets is purely up to your own evaluation of what type of team you want to build with Baizhu, but both are nice options and easy to farm, so don’t be afraid to switch around later down the line.

Regardless of what set you run on Baizhu, his artifact stats are energy recharge or HP in the sands, HP in the goblet, and HP or healing bonus in the circlet.

Energy recharge in the sands is highly recommended, especially if you run a weapon without an energy recharge stat or passive. Otherwise, it’s pretty standard to run healing bonus in the circlet and HP everywhere else to maximize healing, with HP in the circlet as a substitute if you don’t have a healing bonus circlet yet.

Substat focus should be as much energy recharge as possible, and then HP for healing and elemental mastery for Nilou Bloom teams.

Weapons

I’ve already alluded to the fact that Baizhu heavily relies on energy from his weapons to not have insane energy recharge requirements in artifacts, and already name-dropped a few weapons, so let’s go over the best catalysts right now.

The two weapons that you want to prioritize on Baizhu are his signature weapon, Jadefall’s Splendor and the craftable 4-Star Prototype Amber. It’s undeniable that Jadefall’s passive is wonderful for energy generation, but with how little damage Baizhu does at a base level, the passive’s elemental damage bonus goes to waste.

It’s not recommended to pull for this weapon unless you just love Baizhu, because Prototype Amber exists. Prototype Amber is the F2P option of Jadefall, also providing energy over time when casting an elemental burst.

Some other options aside from these two best options are Everlasting Moonglow and A Thousand Floating Dreams. These 5-Star catalysts are delicacies for whales who have extra copies of them. By the way, if you want to get 5-Star catalysts easily, then getting Genshin Impact Accounts directly will be a good choice! Everlasting Moonglow is just a pure stat stick for healing bonus and HP, while A Thousand Floating Dreams provides a small EM buff in exchange for having no energy recharge stats or passive.

Other F2P friendly options for Baizhu include Favonius Codex and Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers. Just like A Thousand Floating Dreams, the idea of Thrilling Tales is to provide buffs to your team. But it also provides no solution to Baizhu’s energy problems. Favonius Codex is a part of one of the best 4-Star weapon lines in the game and it can work wonderfully on Baizhu given that it provides a hefty amount of energy and he doesn’t need to focus damage stats.

Baizhu In Nilou Teams

Moving into the last section, teams are pretty standard for Baizhu given that he doesn’t really do anything special. He’s a solid choice in the several different dendro archetype teams and Nilou Bloom highlights that flexibility he provides to teams.

The Nilou and Baizhu pairing always runs the pair plus one more dendro character and one more hydro character. Without Baizhu’s healing, most of the time, the hydro slot had to be Kokomi or Barbara for healing, unless you also have Yaoyao.

Baizhu adds a layer of flexibility to choose an offensive hydro character like Xingqiu, Yelan, Ayato, and Childe, but you can also still choose the defensive options with Kokomi and Barbara.

The second dendro character should provide sustained dendro application, which means Nahida is your best option, and Dendro MC is your best F2P option.

However, Collei and Yaoyao’s shorter duration of dendro application also work fine if you decide to on-field Baizhu for dendro catalyst attacks, or have Baizhu’s C2/C6, which increases his rate of dendro application off-field.

Also Read: Genshin Impact: How To Win While AFK?

Aggravate & Quickbloom

Another archetype where it’s easy to see the effects of flexibility that Baizhu provides to teams is in quicken and aggravate.

Before Yaoyao and Baizhu, these teams were locked into two options. Either you forfeited a second electro DPS to run Dori or Kuki Shinobu for healing to keep Kazuha or Sucrose in the squad, or you dropped Kazuha/Sucrose for a defensive option with Jean, Sayu, Kokomi, C6 Diona, etc. With Yaoyao, and now Baizhu, this issue is solved.

What makes Baizhu an upgrade over Yaoyao in these aggravate teams is Baizhu’s ascension talent, that provides extra aggravate and spread reaction damage. This can be non-negligible, especially for characters like Cyno who take a long time on the field and get a lot of aggravate reactions in one rotation.

Generally, the team consists of your main electro DPS, Baizhu, and off-field electro DPS, and either Kazuha or Sucrose in the last slot for extra buffs, or an off-field hydro character for a “quickbloom” setup which offers both hyperbloom and aggravate reactions at the same time.

Main electro DPS characters are your on-field characters like Cyno, Keqing, Raiden, or Razor, while the off-field electro DPS characters are more along the lines of Yae Miko, Fischl, and Beidou.

The hydro characters you can pick to pair with characters like Cyno or Keqing for quickbloom are generally Xingqiu, Yelan, or Kokomi, given how sustainable their off-field hydro application is.

Hyperbloom/Burgeon

The last team archetype to consider is hyperbloom and burgeon, which use very similar options to that of an aggravate team.

However, instead of an on-field electro DPS, we now have a dedicated off-field hyperbloom and burgeon trigger with Kuki Shinobu and Thoma, respectively. Other teammates should include a mandatory hydro character and a flex slot that usually consists of another hydro or dendro applicator.

99% of the time you’re going to want to select a second dendro character in the last slot, given that Baizhu’s dendro application is slow and pyro can eat up your dendro application with burning. The options outside of Baizhu generally include Nahida, Dendro MC, Yaoyao, or Collei as per usual.

Unfortunately, since Kuki and Thoma are going to be off-field triggers for hyperbloom and burgeon, it will be hard to make use of Baizhu’s ascension talent for the extra bloom reaction damage. This is because the effect only lingers for 6 seconds and the effect only refreshes for the on-field character.

It’s a bit of an inconvenience to switch back into Kuki and Thoma constantly, so generally, don’t worry about utilizing this buff too much.

If you’ve logged into the game even once, you know that the scale and scope of ESO are absolutely enormous. Because of the huge variety of things that can capture a player’s attention, a lot of really helpful features can go unnoticed.

Along with that same vain, some things that might seem obvious to long time players may be obscure to those new to the game. So, here, I’ll be pointing out ten of those features that every ESO player needs to know about.

1. Tutorials

Our first feature is located in the Help menu of all places.

The devs have put together a huge amount of information in the Tutorials area to help new and old players alike learn more about the game. The chapter and DLC sections really just include descriptions of the associated content, but the sections before and after those like Player Basics, Character Progression, Combat, Battlegrounds, and the like contain some really helpful tidbits of information about several aspects of ESO.

While you won’t become a professional PVPer just by reading through the Alliance Warfare section, for example, you will have at least a general understanding of the topic, so I definitely recommend checking the Tutorials out, especially if you’re new to the game.

2. Options Tips

The second item on our list is really an amalgamation of different settings changes that will help new and veteran players alike get more out of ESO.

Up first is the Performance versus Fidelity setting. This setting appeared back in June 2021 and allows you to swap between high-quality graphics in Fidelity mode (4k for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 and 1440p for the Series S) and high-speed performance with Performance mode at 60 frames per second.

Performance mode results in a bit of a loss to graphics with the visuals coming in at 1080p, but it’s well worth the loss in largescale or complicated content, such as Cyrodiil or some dungeons and trials.

The audio area really allows you to customize the way you want the game to sound. Every aspect of the audio can be reduced or increased based on your preference. If you’re doing a lot of group content, I highly recommend turning up the player voice option to be louder than everything else so you can easily hear callouts from your goupmates.

Another little feature that I just recently found out about in this area is the ability to change the intro music to that of previous chapters. I definitely recommend checking out the Elsweyr chapter intro if you’re not a fan of the current chapter’s music, or you’re just looking for something a little different. It slaps.

There are just a couple of settings in the gameplay section that I want to highlight, but they’re both gamechangers if you haven’t used them before.

First, you can change the color of enemy ground effects to really pop out at you, which I’ve found is super helpful in fast-paced content. I’ve set mine to bright pink, but you can change yours to any color you like.

The other modification I recommend making is switching your ground abilities to a quick cast. When it’s set to automatic, you have to press the button twice to cast the ability. Changing this setting will automatically cast your AoEs in the area of your reticle, which really makes combat feel a lot smoother and more intuitive.

A quick change I recommend making in your camera settings is your third person field of view. If you’re unaware, you can hold the down button on the d-pad and pull back on the right joystick to expand your third-person view. This camera setting allows you to expand it even further, which is really helpful in all kinds of content.

If you’re the social type, you can have your text chat display on screen with the hud chat display setting. Additionally, if you’re in multiple guilds, you can change the text color of each guild chat to differentiate between them easily .

The last few options I recommend changing are in the Combat area.

First, we’ll look at the attribute and ability bar settings. Typically, the more information you can get in ESO, the better off you’ll be. Adding your attribute and ability bars to your display, turning on attribute numbers and percents, and activating front and back bar ability timers will help you keep up with your resources and improve your AoE and dot uptimes.

Next, you can turn on combat text to see how much damage you’re doing with your abilities. There’s something innately satisfying about watching all those numbers pop as you crush your enemies.

The final setting I recommend turning on is the buffs and debuffs option. By keeping up with the buffs, you’re giving yourself and the debuffs you’re applying to your enemies, you can really improve your overall damage per second. These options changes are undeniably powerful tools that will help any player get more out of every aspect of ESO.

3. Endeavors

The Endeavors system is a daily reward system that allows players to earn rewards by completing various tasks and objectives. It was introduced with the Waking Flame DLC back in September 2021.

Each day, you can complete certain tasks in exchange for a specified quantity of Endeavor currency and a small amount of either ESO Gold or experience. These tasks may include activities, such as killing monsters, completing quests, crafting items, or using specific abilities.

Five Endeavors are available each day, but you can only earn the rewards from three of them. Additionally, you can complete one of three weekly Endeavors that include more extensive requirements and reward greater amounts of the Endeavor currency and gold or experience.

The Endeavor currency can be used to purchase various rewards from the Endeavors store. These rewards include items from the variety of crown crates currently available in the Crown Store, such as mounts, skins, non-combat pets, costumes, and more.

The Endeavors system is account-wide, meaning that tasks completed by each of your characters count toward each of the daily and weekly Endeavors. This reward system is great because you’ll basically complete Endeavors passively by just playing the game.

Although it does take quite a while to amass enough of the currency, Endeavors are essentially a way to obtain crown crate rewards for free, so I definitely recommend taking advantage of them as often as possible.

4. Bank Tips

For our fourth spot, I’ve recently heard a few misconceptions about how the player bank works, so I wanted to quickly describe some of the attributes of the bank to hopefully help clear up any confusion for newer players.

First, your bank is account-wide. All of your characters can access the items you store there from any banker in Tamriel. Additionally, if you don’t have ESO+ and use your bank to store your crafting supplies, you can access them on any crafting station in the world without removing them from your bank.

Along that same vein, gear stored in your bank can be deconstructed or used for research at any crafting station without removing it from the bank as well.

I hope this explanation helps clarify the player bank and its uses for those of you who are new to ESO.

5. Zone Guide

Number five on the list is a great tool that isn’t directly introduced in regular gameplay and is therefore often missed entirely by new players: the zone guide.

If you’re unfamiliar, the zone guide is a feature that provides you with a comprehensive overview of the current zone you’re in. It can be accessed on Xbox by pressing select to go the map, then holding down the X button.

The zone guide is really helpful for getting a zone to 100% because it points you in the direction of your next objective, whether that’s the remainder of the zone quest, a delve or public dungeon you haven’t explored, or a set station or skyshard you haven’t discovered.

The only thing the zone guide can’t help you find is the lorebooks in the zone, but it does give you the name of each book, which is helpful if you need to google the location or search for it in some other guide like The ESO App–another tool that I highly recommend.

When you’re having trouble finding a location or the next quest giver, be sure to try out the zone guide!

6. Continuous Attack Passive

The sixth item on the list is the Continuous Attack Passive in the Assault skill line.

Continuous Attack provides some PVP-based buffs, but those aren’t what we’re after. What really makes this passive shine is that it provides Major Gallup at all times, thereby increasing your mount speed by 30%!

When you first create your character, you’ll probably be able to run faster on foot than on your mount, so this passive is really nice for helping you get to the next part of your adventure a little more quickly.

To gain access to Continuous Attack, you’ll first need to reach rank 3 in the Assault skill line, and the only way to do so is by participating in PVP activities, such as Battlegrounds or Cyrodiil. Even if you’re not really into PvP, you’ll definitely want to do a few daily BGs to unlock this helpful passive.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online: How To Get Undaunted Keys? - Quick Guide

7. Leaving PVP Zones

Speaking of PVP, number seven is another topic I’ve seen discussed in several posts over the years: easy ways to leave Cyrodiil and Imperial City.

Travel in these PVP zones is different from PVE in that you can’t just select a wayshrine and travel to it in exchange for gold. In Cyrodiil, transitus shrines are used to move from keep to keep, and in Imperial City there is no fast travel method other than dying, which causes you to lose half of the Tel Var you’re holding.

You can choose where you revive after dying in Cyrodiil, but if you don’t want to give the enemy alliance the satisfaction of murdering you to death, then there are a couple of quick and easy ways to leave both of these zones.

One option is to queue for whichever campaign you’re not in (that is, either Cyrodiil or Imperial City). Then, you can either use the wayshrine at your alliance’s home gate in Cyrodiil or just walk through the exit door of your alliance’s base in Imperial City.

If the other campaign is full, then another option is to just queue for a random dungeon or battlegrounds match. After you leave the dungeon or BG, you’ll be in the PVE zone you were in before going to Cyrodiil or Imperial City.

If you’re more of a PVEr, who casually PVPs from time to time, I hope this helps you stay safer out in the streets and sewers!

8. Gear Improvements Passives

For our eighth spot, be sure to take the gear improvement passives in each crafting skill line before upgrading your gear’s quality.

Each of the Blacksmithing, Clothing, Jewelry Crafting, and Woodworking skill lines contains a passive in which you can invest up to three skill points to reduce the cost of improving your gear.

For example, with no skill points in the Resin Expertise passive, it takes 20 rosin to upgrade a woodworking item from epic to legendary. After maxing out that passive, only eight rosin are required for the same upgrade. That’s a whopping 60% reduction in the improvement cost!

With the high cost of legendary improvement materials, it kills me when I hear about someone who upgraded their gear to gold quality without these passives.

So, if you only take one piece of advice from this guide, please make it this one!

9. Mundus Stones

Number nine on the list is mundus stones.

The boons you gain from these stones are some of the most important buffs in the game, and yet I’ve met some newer players who weren’t even aware that these stones exist!

If you’re in the same boat, there are 13 mundus stones scattered around Tamriel, each of which provides a unique bonus to your character. Some of these boons are more powerful than others, but they’re all helpful in some capacity, so I recommend taking the first one you come across and then swapping it for one of the more useful bonuses when you get the chance.

If you’re a member of a well-established guild, you might get that chance sooner rather than later, as most fully-stocked guild houses will have all 13 stones available for use in one place.

As I mentioned before, each mundus boon is useful in its own right, but as a DPS main, I tend to lean toward the thief for PVE and the lover for PVP.

Of course, the choice of stone depends on the content and the rest of your build, but these boons will generally serve you well in most damage dealing applications. No matter what role you play in ESO, make sure you pick up a mundus boon early on in your adventures.

10. Free Player Home

The final topic on our list is how to get access to free (or essentially free) player homes.

Housing is a huge aspect of ESO, so much so that some players make it their number one focus. If you’re the creative type, or if you’re like me and just looking for a place to store all the furnishings you pick up through questing and achievements, you can gain access to several houses without spending a dime on crowns or even using your hard-earned gold.

Many large cities will have a sign posted somewhere with a quest marker labeled “Seeking Tenant!” Through completing this short quest, you’ll receive a player home in the respective city.

Keep in mind that you can only claim one such home per character. Also, you’ll still see the “Seeking Tenant!” quest on new characters even if you’ve claimed that city’s home is on a different character in the past. So, make sure you only do the quest in a city where you don’t yet have a house.

These homes are typically very small, but they’re great starting points for the aspiring designer. If you’re looking for something a bit more substantial and you have access to the Elsweyr chapter, you can complete a few achievements to earn the keys to a fairly large house in Rimmen: the Hall of the Lunar Champion.

The home has four rooms, each of which is unlocked by completing a different achievement or quest. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki has a great guide on how to unlock the entire home.

The house has plenty of space for any housing aficionado. Be sure to complete the required achievements so you can get your own little slice of Tamriel. So, I know I said that was the last item on the list, but I do have one last bonus tip for new and old players alike: don’t be afraid of veteran content!

My advice is to pick up a couple of base game undaunted pledges, queue into them on vet with whatever role you’re most comfortable playing, and see what it’s all about. Of course, there are some challenges you’ll probably want to hold off on until you have a good bit of experience, like vet DLC dungeons, hard modes, trifectas, and things like that. But most of the base game dungeons can easily be completed by a group of CP 160 characters, even on hard mode!