These are all the differences between Path of Exile 1 and its independent sequel, Path of Exile 2 that we know about after the conclusion of ExileCon 2023.

Crafting In POE 2

As it currently stands, crafting is entirely different in Path of Exile 2.

Firstly, the Crafting Bench no longer exists unless there is a replacement that has not been detailed yet. This means you can no longer add an extra affix to your gear with ease, whether it’s Fire Resistance, a bit of Maximum Life, or a few points of damage.

Additionally, metacrafting might be gone with this removal, too. This means all the metamods like suffixes cannot be changed that enable players to craft powerful items might no longer be accessible. This system was originally added to Path of Exile 1 in 1.2 Forsaken Masters and was seen as a good update by many. It’s going extinct in POE 2.

Alongside the removal of the Crafting Bench, multiple crafting currency items have been changed or removed in POE 2. Orbs of Alteration, the POE Currency that allow you to re-roll the affixes of magic items are gone completely. So are Orbs of Scouring, the POE Currency that allow you to transform a rare or magic item into a normal item. Chaos Orbs have also been changed.

Now, they randomly remove one affix and add another. Essentially, they’re re-rolling a single affix on a rare item, not all of them as they used to. As you’ve seen in the picture below, every currency item is getting a facelift with the sequel. The art looks objectively incredible.

Vendors & Gold

Sticking to the currency subject, vendors will not trade you shards or full-on currency orbs in Path of Exile 2. When you sell them items, they will give you Gold.

This Gold can be used to purchase POE Items from various vendors who are supposed to have well stocked actually decent items in their shops.

Plus, you’ll be able to use Gold to gamble for items, even unique items. It’s a bit like POE 1’s Gwennen Gambling system in Expedition.

Flasks are getting a major shake-up in POE 2. Normal monsters will no longer grant flask charges instead, only magic, rare, and unique mobs will. This drastically decreases the rate at which your flasks recharge.

Plus, flasks will no longer fill entirely upon visiting a town. You must use a well in the town to refill them. Utility flasks are also catered to be reactionary, not enhancements.

We don’t exactly know which flasks will remain in POE 2. But we do know Quicksilver Flasks currently do not exist in the sequel to POE 1. These are the flasks that increase your movement speed.

Big Boss Changes

The core mechanics surrounding boss fights are also updated in POE 2.

Corpse rushing or the act of respawning and rushing an already injured boss, is dead. If you die during a boss fight, you’ll need to begin the fight from the beginning. In the same vein, logging out midfight will no longer save you from Deadly Strikes. When you log back in, you’ll zone in to the moment you left. The boss will have no mercy on you. This kills the log out macro used by many hardcore POE players.

Unlike POE 1, every single area in the game will have a meaningful boss encounter. Most are as in-depth as the present-day Pinnacle Bosses. This will lead to POE 2 to launch with at least 100 distinct bosses in the campaign. This doesn’t account for a new endgame or Pinnacle Bosses.

Bosses are also integral even to base POE 2 character power progression. Certain optional bosses and core bosses will reward statistical character-based passive bonuses upon killing them. This function is in a similar vein to the current kill or ally with the bandits questline in POE 1 Act 2, except it appears the bonuses are varied and far more frequent.

For example, one boss might grant +5% Fire Resistance while another might increase your Maximum Life by 50%. Additionally, bosses will now be a good source of great items the first time you kill them. In the campaign, the first time you kill each boss, it will have a huge bonus to rarity, encouraging you not to skip them.

Those aren’t the only big boss changes. You are also able to stun and freeze bosses in POE 2. Each boss has a custom stun animation. Many bosses and creatures, for that matter, can now be much larger too as they’ve redone how hitboxes work. All hitboxes in POE 1 are square, but in POE 2, they can greatly customize that and allow for huge encounters.

Skill & Gem Updates

As discovered in 2019, we no longer socket gems into our gear. We socket support gems into skill gems.

A further difference between POE 1 and POE 2 revealed in Exilecon 2023 is that we initially find uncut gems and then can choose what gem to transfer support those into, selecting from dozens of scales.

Uncut gems are various tiers, which allow access to each different tier of skill gems. Firestorm might be a tier 2 skill and always begin as a fifth level gem while Fireball might be a tier 1 scale and always begin at first level.

POE 2’s new gem system will not be brought into POE 1. The system shall remain distinctly different. Many skill gems are also hyper fixated on a specific situation or use, as you can have up to 9 six-Link skills in POE 2.

Touching on support gems briefly, many don’t add raw damage anymore and instead focus on adding quite specific mechanics to your skill gems. Pure damage adding supports do still exist, but they’re fewer in number.

Unlike POE 1, weapon swapping will be important and consequential in the sequel in POE 2. You can tie specific clusters of your passive skill tree alongside specific skill gems to either of your weapons.

For example, you can have a fire damage ax and a cold damage ax. When you use a certain slam scale tied to fire damage, you will pull out the attached fire damage ax and use a passive skill tree tied to dealing more fire damage. When you use a different slam skill tied to cold damage, you will automatically swap to the cold damage ax and the version of your skill tree tied to enhancing cold damage.

This could allow characters to actually build out a weapon and skill specifically for bossing accompanied by another set catered to clearing huge packs with the ability to swap seamlessly between. The two the possibilities here are absolutely ridiculous.

Layered on top of these gems and weapon differences is the fact that GGG is designing many skill gems to be tied to specific weapons, an amount far larger than in POE 1.

The most prominent example at Exile Con was the Warrior demos, using the two-handed mace. Many of the skills used were either tied explicitly to maces or, even more specifically, two-handed maces. This is intentional, meant to give each weapon an identity.

Additionally, weapon implicits are going to be far wilder. For example, a mace implicit might destroy enemy corpses if they are killed with a critical hit, while a dagger might break an enemy’s armor by a certain amount upon crit. This is far more very than POE 1 where, for example, sword implicits are all tied to accuracy rating.

Also Read: Everything We Know About Path Of Exile 2 So Far - 11 Points

POE 2 Character Classes

In Path of Exile 2, there are 12 character classes. The only class missing from Path of Exile 1 is the Scion, which wouldn’t mesh well with the new class identities GGG is going for with the sequel.

The six new classes are the Warrior, the Sorceress, the Mercenary, the Monk, the Huntress, and the Druid.

Like the initial six, each is tied to a specific attribute or attribute combination. Each of the matched classes starts at specific points on the new massive passive skill tree. But they all have unique gem rewards and a set of three new ascendancy classes attached.

Each of the 12 POE 2 classes has their own batch of three ascendancies, stacking up to a total of 36 total ascendancy classes. All of these ascendancy classes are different to the ones in Path of Exile 1.

For example, the Ranger in POE 2 can ascend as a Beastmaster, a Tactician, or a Survivalist. But in POE 1, she can become a Deadeye, a Pathfinder, or a Raider. These sets of new ascendancies will greaten the divide between the predecessor and its sequel.

As will the fact that you do not ascend via the Labyrinth, there is a new Ascension mechanic in POE 2.

Lots Of Small POE 1 & POE 2 Differences

Now, here’s a barrage of miscellaneous differences between the two games.

Passive skill tree masteries will not be in Path of Exile 2. They’re a POE 1 only feature for now.

Portal Scrolls now have about a 2.5 second casting animation during boss fights, only you can be knocked out of the animation. This is similar to how the Portal gem in POE 1 functions.

Many league mechanics are unlocked by specific quests. For example, the revamped Delirium mechanic is unleashed upon interacting with a quest involving the strange voice. In POE 1, most league mechanics just occur randomly at first.

The world map is massive, sprawling, and far more detailed than Path of Exile 1’s.

Player characters, our Exiles, speak much more and dynamically adjust choices we make during our playthroughs. For example, if we zoom past NPCs without speaking, they’ll remark to us and will retort.

Fewer items drop from monsters. Vendor shops are more incentivized. Perhaps this is a campaign-only concept with loot becoming a bigger slice of the pie in the late game.

Area maps are much larger and they feel much larger due to the lower overall speed of movement. Fortunately, they do appear to be swarmed with monsters and boss fights.

All item icons will have a consistency between them, unlike in POE 1, wherein some icons might be cartoony or just enhanced pictures. Iconic unique items, like Headhunter and Chaperone’s wrappings, will be in POE 2.

Staves as a weapon will always include a mana free spell skill attached as implicits, while Quarterstaffs will fulfill the melee staff experience.

Resistances no longer go below zero. The new resource Spirit is used for all skills that usually dealt with Mana Reservation. There will be new support for it on the passive skill tree and items.

Scepters are extremely minion and aura focused weapons now. Additionally, Traps and Mines are now actual weapons, not skill gems.

Complete Wrap-Up

Overall POE 1 and POE 2 are both ARPGs set in the world of Wraeclast developed by Grinding Gear Games.

They do appear to have fundamental differences, especially when it comes to maintaining resources. But I’m confident both will be excellent games to play and I plan on continuing to play and cover both of them as long as I’m having fun.

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.

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

The Jellyfish That Does It All

Kokomi’s biggest strength revolves around her elemental skill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off-Field Kokomi Build

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On-Field Kokomi Build

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freeze Support

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hyperbloom & Burgeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taser

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

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

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

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

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

Nilou Bloom & An Entirely New Build

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Necromancer In Season 1

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

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

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

Blood Summoner Stronger Than Ever!

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

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

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

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

Eternal Realm Got Shafted

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

Playstyles are brand new for FC 24 and look like they’re going to have a great impact on gameplay.

Here, we’re going to break down each individual playstyle and talk about what they are and what they’ll do. You’re going to want to stick around to hear about some of these playstyles because some of them do actually grant unique abilities to players.

What Are Playstyles?

First, what are playstyles?

They are essentially replacing the trait system that we’ve seen in Ultimate Team. Playstyles are going to give players extra abilities that go beyond just upgrading attributes. Besides, upgrading attributes is actually not easy, because you need to prepare a lot of FC 24 Coins.

Playstyles +

There are also playstyles + that in EA’s own words enhance their signature abilities Playstyles to a world-class standard.

Think of Howland’s Power Shot or Sam Kerr’s Finesse Shot, reflecting elite players’ abilities to play at a level that few others can reach. With that in mind, let’s now break down each playstyle.

Power Shot

Up first, we have the Power Shot. This, when applied, is going to do pretty much what it suggests it will do improve the power over short and the speed in which it’s performed.

The upgraded version of of it, Power Shot + will mean a strike is produced in even quicker time and with more power. This will be given to a player who is known for taking powerful shots outside the box.

Dead Ball

Next up is the Dead Ball playstyle.

This will be given to players who are known for being set piece specialists. When applied, this will allow a player to deliver a ball with increased speed, curve, and accuracy, and also the ball trajectory preview line will be increased.

For the playstyle plus version of Dead Ball, the speed, curve, accuracy will improve further and the trajectory on will actually be at maximum length.

Chip Shot

The Chip Shot is the next playstyle to discuss.

This will allow the shot type to be performed quick and with great accuracy. If you have the Chip Shot + version, the EA website says Chip Shot will then have exceptional accuracy.

Finesse Shot

Now, we come on to the Finesse Shot.

We all know how Finesse Shot overpowered they have been over the years. Players who try and place the ball when shooting a girl will have this and the playstyle will increase the accuracy and add a small curve. Also, the shots will be produced much quicker.

The upgraded version will see shots perform significantly faster and with maximum curve and accuracy.

Power Header

Players who are known to strike with power with headers could have the Power Header playstyle.

The gameplay effect is pretty much as you’d expect. A more powerful and accurate header will be produced with the post version, having maximum power and accuracy.

Pinged Pass

Those were the shooting themed playstyles. Now, we move on to the passing ones and we’re going to begin with Pinged Pass.

This will increase the accuracy of through balls. Swerved passes will have more care and Precision passes will travel even faster.

The upgraded version will allow for far more accurate through balls. Swerved passes will have maximum curve and Precision passes will travel at top speed.

Honestly, this playstyle sounds amazing. It’ll be given to players who are known for splitting defenses with a pass.

Incinsive Pass

The Incinsive Pass playstyle will be given to a player who is known for making high-speed ground passes. And the gameplay effect is passes will travel faster along the ground without impacting the trapping difficulty of the receiver.

The playstyle plus here means that the ball will travel even faster.

Long Ball Pass

Now, we have the Long Ball Pass to discuss.

This, like it suggests, helps with lobs and lofted through passes. They become more accurate and travel even faster.

The effect of the Long Ball Pass + here is that they’re even more accurate and faster and ultimately become hard to intercept. A player who is known for performing such passes will have this.

Tiki Taka

The Tiki Taka playstyle will help with first-time ground passes and even use Back Heels when appropriate to distribute the ball.

The upgraded effect will mean they have even greater accuracy and short distance ground passes become exceptionally accurate.

Whipped Pass

The final passing themed one is called the Whipped Pass.

This is for players known for making high-speed whipped crosses into the box. The gameplay effect is that crosses will have higher accuracy, travel faster, and come with more curve.

The Whipped Pass + means that they’ll be even more accurate and faster, have more curve and driven crosses come with exceptional power.

First Touch

The next section is Ball Control playstyles. First Touch is the name of the first one. This is for players who are known for an accurate First Touch in difficult situations.

The playstyle effect has reduced error when trapping the ball and is able to transition to dribble in faster with greater control.

And the plus version of this has minimal error when trapping the ball and then is able to transition into dribbling with much faster and greater control.

Flair

The Flair playstyle will be for players who are known to try flamboyant moves.

The effect that this has is fancy passes and shots are performed with more accuracy. And that Flair animations will happen when appropriate.

Playstyle plus for Flair means fancy passes and shots have even greater accuracy.

Press Proven

The Press Proven playstyle is for players who are known for keeping possession under physical pressure from an opponent.

And the gameplay effect here is that the player keeps close control of the ball when dribbling at jog speed and can shield the ball more effectively.

The upgraded version has the player keep the ball exceptionally close when jogging with the ball and allows them to shield the ball even more effectively against stronger opponents.

Rapid

Players who are known to use speed and knock the ball ahead of their opponent could have the Rapid playstyle.

This effect allows them to reach a higher sprint speed when dribbling and has a reduced chance of error when performing knock-ons.

The upgraded version will allow them to reach an even higher speed and the chance of an error is even more reduced.

Technical

Now, we come on to the Technical playstyle and this is for a player who regularly uses technical dribbling to beat an opponent.

The gameplay effect is that a player will reach a higher speed when performing a controlled sprint and will dribble with more Precision when performing tens.

The Technical + version will allow a player to reach an even higher speed and be even more precise.

Trickster

Next, we come on to the fun one, the Trickster.

We’ve seen Vinícius in action in the video trailers using this playstyle. It’s for players known for performing skill moves in 1v1 situations. The Trickster playstyle grants an ability to perform unique flick skill moves.

And the upgraded version grants the ability to perform more unique ground and flick skill moves and also makes the player more significantly agile when strafe dribbling. I get the feeling that this playstyle will be pretty popular.

Block

Let’s now talk about some defensive playstyles and the first one sounds pretty amazing. It’s called Block. And it’s for a Block player who is known for performing elastic and overreaching blocks.

The effect that this will have is it’ll increase the reach when performing blocks and improve the ability to make a successful one.

And then the place that I’ll post variant here is that you’ll have an even greater reach when performing said blocks and also improve the ability to make a successful one.

Bruiser

Then, we have the Bruiser.

This is for a player who is known for winning possession by just being physical in general. The playstyle effect is that it’ll give player greater strength when in those physical tackles. And the playstyle put here is even greater strength when in those physical battles.

Also Read: Things You Might Have Overlooked In The EA FC 24 Gameplay Deep Dive

Intercept

The Intercept playstyle helps with what you’d expect it to. It increases the reach and improves the chances of returning possession when performing interceptions.

The Intercept + gives an even greater reach and an even more improved chance of returning possession. This is for players known for performing interceptions and keeping the ball.

Jockey

The Jockey playstyle is the next one to talk about. And this is for a player who is known for being successful in 1v1 situations.

And the gameplay effect here sounds very good. It increases the Max Speed of sprint jockey and improves the transition speed from jockey to sprint. So, it’ll definitely help out in those defensive situations.

The Jockey + here is increased Max Speed even more, and it also greatly improves the transition speed from jockey to sprint even further.

Slide Tackle

Another playstyle that I’m definitely interested in is the Slide Tackle.

This grants the ability to stop the ball directly at their feet when performing a Slide Tackle.

The Slide Tackle + version gives improved Slide Tackle coverage. This will be for players who are known for often performing Slide Tackles.

Anticipate

The final defensive one to talk about is called Anticipate. This is for a player who is known for having a high success rate get in ball position on tackles with a low foul win rate.

The playstyle effect here is going to be improved chances of a stand tackle success and also grants the ability to stop the ball directly at their feet when performing a stand tackle.

The upgraded version of this playstyle significantly improves the chances of stand tackle success.

Acrobatic

It’s time to talk about physical playstyles.

Acrobatic is the first one, and this is for a player who tends to perform Acrobatic passes, clearances, or shots. This playstyle will allow players to perform volleys with improved accuracy and also gives them access to more acrobatic volley animations.

The upgraded version here means that volleys will be performed with more accuracy and there is also more unique acrobatic volley animations available.

Aerial

The Aerial playstyle is for players who are known for having a high success rate when in Aerial battles both offensively and defensively. This one’s going to allow players to jump higher and also improve their aerial physical presence.

And the upgraded version here means that they’re going to be able to jump even higher.

Trivela

I feel like we’re all still recovering from the Trivela meta of FIFA 23. But Trivelas are going to have their own playstyle in EA FC 24.

They’ll be for players who are known for passing, crossing, and shooting with the outside of the foot. The effect this playstyle will have is contextually triggers outside of the foot passes and shots.

And the Trivela + here is that there’ll be a reduced error on outside the foot passes.

Relentless

The Relentless playstyle sounds very good for box-to-box Midfielders because that is going to reduce fatigue locks during play and increase fatigue recovery during half time.

The effect of Relentless + sounds pretty interesting:

• Greatly reduces the long-term fatigue effects on attributes, reaction time, and defensive awareness
• Reduces fatigue loss during player
• Significantly increases fatigue recovery during half time

So, like I mentioned previously, for Midfielders who are running a lot, this is going to be great. This is for players who are known for covering a greater area of the field compared to other players in the same position.

Quick Step

For those of you who love to sprint, the Quick Step playstyle might be of interest to you. Because the gameplay effect here is that a player will accelerate faster during an explosive sprint.

And the upgraded effect means that they’ll actually accelerate significantly faster during said explosive sprint. And this is obviously for players who are known for having that quick best of speed when running on and off the ball.

Long Throw

The final of the physical playstyle is called Long Throw and you’ll never guess what this does.

Of course, it allows players to perform throw-ins with increased power to cover more distance.

The upgraded playstyle plus version does allow them to cover maximum distance. This will obviously be given to players who are known to throw the ball favor then the average player.

Far Throw

We’re going to end by talking about the Goalkeeper playstyles, which are a little different to the others. And a couple of the Goalkeeper playstyles are actually be a Goalkeeper exclusive. So, we’re gonna focus on the others. We’re going to start by talking about Far Throw.

If a Goalkeeper has this, they can target players further away with front passes.

Footwork

If they have the Footwork playstyle, a Goalkeeper will perform saves with their feet more frequently.

Cross Claimer

If they have the Cross Claimer playstyle, a Goalkeeper will try to intercept across if they can get to it slightly before the opponent.

Rush Out

And if they have the Rush Out playstyle, a Goalkeeper is more aggressive when coming out the box to gather those loose balls, whether they be over the top three balls or long through balls.

Blade is probably one of the biggest surprises when it comes to the meta. So, here, I am going to talk about his place in the meta, things that you need to know about him, whether you have him or not, as well as cover some important questions, like how game-changing some of the build decisions are. And most importantly, I will showcase the most insane teams you can build him.

New Teams

Let’s first talk about some amazing teams you can build with Blade and how unique some of them are.

Now initially, you might think that Blade has access to limited amount of team mates he can utilize. But surprisingly enough, quite a few characters work well with him.

*So, the first team that’s really strong is made up of Welt, Dan Heng, Blade and one of the healers. What’s great about this comp is that Welt boosts Dan Heng’s damage by consistently applying Speed debuff. Dan Heng can do that himself by using his skill, but it might not land due to the enemy’s effect resistance. So, it’s easier to apply Speed debuff with Welt since you build him with Effect Hit Rate.

But not only this, Welt can also equip on himself Pearls of Sweat and reduce the enemy’s defense in addition to increasing the damage they take by 12% thanks to his Ultimate’s trace. So, both Dan Heng and Blade can dish out some nice damage.

And what’s even better, you only need to use Blade’s skill every 3 turns. You literally cannot use it until the buff runs out. So, it’s easy to manage the skill points in this team.

*Now, the next team is an F2P variation. Pela, Natasha and Fire Trailblazer or any damage dealer is the way to go here. Pela works as an excellent DEF debuffer, so Blade can hit for big damage, while Natasha puts in the work as a freeby unit to keep Bladie alive.

But you might be wondering: Why use Fire Trailblazer? Isn’t he a shielder and that works directly against Blade’s whole purpose of losing HP against enemy attacks and building up his talent to deal damage?

The thing is, Trailblazer’s shields are paper thin, so even if Blade gets hit, he will very likely get damaged as well. So, someadditional damage mitigation won’t hurt him, since you do need to consistently keep an eye on his health.

But either way, you can just replace the main character with any other damage dealer or even support. The purpose here is to utilize an F2P team. However, we did get the final Eidolon for the fire version and it gives a nice 30% DEF boost, which works both for shielding and damage.

*Next, let’s talk about his top meta team, which is made up of Luocha, Silver Wolf and Bronya. Obviously, Luocha is the best healer for him due to how the auto heal works if Blade drops below 50%, which is convenient when he uses his ultimate.

But the character I wanna talk about here is Bronya. No joke, this team is disgusting when it comes to clearing hardest challenges and Bronya helps here big time. By himself and using my build, which I’ll talk about in a moment, Blade hits for 62k damage with his ultimate, 67k with follow-up from the talent and 30k with Enhanced Basic Attack. Really amazing numbers considering he is unbuffed. But when you plug in Bronya, his damage increases from 40% to all the way to 70%. That’s insane if you think about it.

But the irony here is that Bronya is Blade’s best Harmony support because the majority of his damage scales with HP. So, Bronya’s DMG boost works super well for him, unlike other damage boosters.

For example, if I use Tingyun instead of Bronya, she is nowhere close to the Guardian of Belobog. Bronya ends up as a better booster than Tingyun by almost 25% on average. In fact, Tingyun’s skill boost is really weak on Blade. Unless I am missing something here, it boosts by like 10%.

But the number is kinda inflated because all of my damage comparisons so far have been tested against 3 targets, which is the ideal amount for Blade. And it only gets worse with a single target. However, her Ultimate boost is great for him but it’s not consistent compared to Bronya’s skill.

So, while Bronya is the best Harmony buffer for Blade, Tingyun kinda works, same for Yukong, who can boost Blade’s Crit values.

And as for Asta, she’s just not worth it for him, unless you have no other better option. But, this meta team with limited 5-star units is insane although we’re obviously looking at a premium comp here.

However, the thing that I love most about Blade, aside from his edgy approach to life, would be the fact that he works as an amazing sub-damage dealer for any team. If you have no idea who could fill the last slot when building a team, you can just add Blade and put him to work.

I think that’s the best-selling point about him. He has a pretty self-contained playstyle. He doesn’t ask for too many skill points and he delivers amazing AoE damage.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail: Everything You Need To Know About E0 Blade - Relics, Planar Ornaments, Light Cones & More

Meta Analysis

So, Blade is a strong and versatile damage dealer. What about his place in the meta?

First of all, we have to look at the upcoming Memory of Turbulence changes. The first one that’s coming up will make Blade pretty tanky and after each cycle he will unload damage. The stacks he gains here will require him to get hit or consume HP. So, without a doubt, this next Memory of Chaos cycle is going to be tailor made for him.

Afterwards, later in August, when using follow-up attacks, all resistance of the hit enemies will be reduced by 30%, which is huge and Blade’s damage will increase significantly, helping you end the fights with more cycles left.

Now another cool thing that was added in 1.2 update is the new Forgotten Hall made up of 6 stages. Two most prominent bosses here are Yanqing, who has a weakness to Wind and summons a lot of these annoying but squishy swords.

So, Blade can easily take care of them while in the last stage, Kafka who is also weak to Wind, has 2 of these enemies that keep respawing. But 3 targets total, the most perfect amount for Blade to unload all of his damage.

Basically, the new Forgotten Hall is going to be super easy with Blade, while the next two upcoming Turbulence changes are going to help him big time in clearing Memory of Chaos.

Right now, if you care about his pull value and you are still in the process of building a 2nd team, he is perfect for clearing the hardest content.

Build Considerations

Now, one more thing I wanna talk about would be Blade’s build considerations. I won’t delve deep here and instead.

Maybe you’ve noticed that he has dual scales with both ATK and Health. The thing is ATK is much more inferior compared to HP. And so, when it comes to picking a Rope, hands down HP mainstat is his best option.

And as for the rest of the relics, there’s a lot of talks going on whether it’s better to go for HP or SPD boots. And the truth is, if you have SPD boots, use them, and try to aim for 134 Speed, which is the breakpoint against the current highest level enemies in Memory of Chaos. And this allows Blade to act twice quite often, assuming he doesn’t get debuffed or frozen.

However, HP boot isn’t that far off from SPD boots. They provide a sizeable damage increase. So, if you don’t have SPD, then definitely go for HP.

And as for the rest of the stats, you can see them here:

• Body: Crit Rate / DMG
• Boots: SPD / HP
• Sphere: Ele DMG
• Rope: HP

Substats: Crit Value > SPD > HP% > ATK%

However, what I really wanna talk about would be the new relic set. I honestly didn’t expect it to be so good for him because essentially Blade can easily maintain the 16% Critical Rate from the new set and it’s literally achievable on turn 1. It’s by far his best relic set and everything else wane’s in comparison.

However, you still need to farm for it. In the meantime, Musketeer or the Wind sets, whether 4-sets or double 2-sets are good substitutes. Like, I have a pretty mediocre build here due to how much unluck loves me and it still works out super well for him.

Still, not everything is sunshine and rainbows with this guy. Unfortunately, Blade has some of the worst Light Cone options. I mean, it’s not that they are bad, but only a few are worth mentioning. Mutual Demise, a 3-star cone is a great option if you need a ton of Critical Rate, although he needs to stay below 80%, which isn’t always easy to utilize.

Then, there’s Herta’s shop 5-star cone. But since ATK isn’t that valuable to him and weakness break takes time to inflict, it’s a good but not an outstanding option.

But here’s where things get interesting. His best 4-star light cone has to be A Secret Vow, already at Superimposition 1. It catches up to S5 Herta’s shop light cone, assuming the enemy has more HP than Blade. But at S5, this light cone is by far the strongest thing you can equip on him. That is, until you get his signature cone, which outperforms S5 Secret Vow, although by not that much. So, if you have the 4-star Secret Vow, you’re good to go with just that, since eventually at some point you will get more copies of it.

But don’t take my word for it. I’ve heard some people haven’t managed to get a 2nd copy of Sacrificial Sword since Genshin’s launch. Still, these are basically the standout light cones. Everything else falls either below or somewhere close to these. But keep in mind, Secret Vow and the signature light cone are basically the best options to have.

Initial Thoughts

So, what do I think about Blade?

He is hands down the strongest damage dealer when it comes to 3-targets scenario. He easily outdamages Jing Yuan, which makes me feel kinda sad since I didn’t expect the power creep to show up so soon. And the fact that with 1.2, he also got an insanely good relic set is just a cherry on top.

Now, while he does have a simple playstyle, he only consumes a skill point every 3 turns, which is a godsend when it comes to managing them. And so, he becomes a really good sub-damage dealer whenever you need to fill out that last spot for any team.

Still, he does suck at early game because keeping him alive is a burden that will befall one of the healers and his best team is really limited. Like literally, you need 2 limited 5-stars and Bronya. It also doesn’t help he has a weak selection of Light Cone options.

Also, I mentioned that he only consumes 1 Skill Point. But at the same time, his enhanced basic attack does not recover SP, which was a bit of a surprise to me. But it’s not the end of the world, truth be told.

All in all, Blade is an exciting damage dealer to say the least. If you have a character like him on your Honkai Star Rail Account, that’s great! I am actually surprised that a big amount of his damage comes from the follow-up attack, which is his talent. So more than anything, make sure not to use tanks like Gepard and March 7th with him, since you want this guy to lose health and use that talent as often as possible.

But otherwise, I am satisfied the way he turned out, although I kinda wish he can get another damage booster similar to Bronya because she does improve his damage massively.

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, we saw many videos talking about why people quit playing Lost Ark. We heard many complaints about Lost Ark users since it was released. But nowadays, they’re a lot more serious than we think.

Population is massively reduced in global and there are not enough users inside the game. There was a region emerge with various updates, but still Lost Ark does not seem to improve in ways players want. That’s why we thought of some solutions.

1. One Chaos Dungeon & One Guardian Raid Per Character

Normally, we run two Chaos Dungeons and two Guardian Raids per character. It takes almost 30 minutes to finish it. If you only have one or two characters, there is no problem.

However, Lost Ark users are recommended to raise 5 more alts instead of the main. It means that three hours are needed for daily homework. That’s a lot for dailies. So, it must be reduced at least half.

Plus, it’s better if players can choose between Chaos Dungeon and Guardian Raid. Chaos Dungeon is a solo content and Guardian Raid is a co-op. Solo content is fine, but new players can easily get rejected finding a party for the Guardian Raid. If it’s allowed to earn all rewards only by running Chaos Dungeon, it will be less stress-consuming for new players who need to spend time finding a party.

2. Adding Roster Bound Rest Gauge

Roster Bound Rest Gauge is a same concept of Rest Gauge that can be shared between characters.

Let’s pretend that you only do dailies for your main character and have several alts. Then, you can get additional bound rest gauge for not playing your alts.

When you have enough roster bound rest gauge, you can decide to apply all at one character. As a result? Plenty of honing materials for your main. This is important because adding a roster bound rest gauge can provide players a chance to focus on their main.

3. Light Of Salvation Rental Service (18 Awakening)

What is the most problematic component for gatekeeping in Lost Ark? Absolutely, cards.

DPS classes need a lot of Light of Salvation to enter higher end contents, but new players need to spend a lot of time to get them. If they don’t want to spend their time, they need to spend lots of money. But that’s pay to win.

Some can say there are new player’s cards, but nobody wants new player’s cards. Players want Light of Salvation, so why not rent them?

Let’s make players spend Lost Ark Gold and rent Light of Salvation (18 awakening) weekly. Then, new players can buy their time until they collect Light of Salvation for themselves.

4. Selectable Legendary Card Packs For Clearing End Contents

This one is also for lowering the difficulty of collecting cards. Lost Ark legion raids are really well made, but rewards are not satisfying.

To make players challenge more, motivation is a must. When they clear the raid for the first time, why not give them selectable legendary card packs? In this way, players can be motivated as they can get legendary cards they need.

5. Change Of Pheons

Pheon system is very complicated because it’s related to monetization of Lost Ark.

So, I want to compare the needs of users and corporations to find an adjustment. In the aspect of Lost Ark users, Pheons are nothing but a taxation of the company. The best way is to get rid of Pheons.

However, in the aspect of Smilegate, Pheons are their monetization model. Players can exchange gold to blue crystals, but it’s more efficient to just buy the blue crystal package they sell. It’s also important for them to make a profit.

As an adjustment, I suggest one solution. Pheons should not be applied on stones and tripods. Unlike accessories, Pheons that can be spent are Limitless. We only need to buy five accessories for our setting, but we don’t know how many Pheons will be spent on stones and tripods.

6. Adding Mechanics That Can Recovery Mistakes

In Lost Ark legion raid, one player’s mistake can kill everyone, and the raid becomes more difficult as they move on to the next legion commanders.

However, we think that’s not a great solution. We don’t want to spend 20 minutes per gate again and again until no one makes a mistake. We think it’s better to add some mechanics that can recover mistakes.

For example, let’s pretend that we are in Brelshaza gate 6. Players get killed when over four floors are destroyed. When someone made a mistake and accidentally destroyed one more floor than it should be, the stagger bar appears below the boss for once. Then, they should stagger the boss and the floor resurrects as soon as the boss gets staggered.

In this way, every try will be more meaningful.

7. No More Meaningless Grinding

In Lost Ark, there are lots of collectibles we need to farm: Island Souls, Mokoko Seeds, Masterpieces, Giant Hearts, Skill Points and more.

We personally think collectibles in Lost Ark are very well designed compared to other games. However, there is a worthless grinding content in Lost Ark. It is the Tower.

Tower is a grinding content, which you need to clear every single floor until you reach the top. It’s not fun at all. Survival mission gives so much stress to players. Then, do rewards worth it?

No. Rewards are not enough to replace our time. And can we ignore them? Of course, no. There are skill points are runes we need as a reward. To sum up, Tower is not enough meaningful content we must do.

Fortunately, Smilegate changed the number of floors of towers. Now, the Tower of Shadow and Tower of Fate (tier 1&2) only have 20 floors. It is a great change.

However, the Tower of Destiny, which is tier 3, still has 50 floors. Some of the floors in the tier-3 tower have difficult missions to solve. But they are not rewarding enough.

Therefore, we believe the tier-3 tower must be changed to 20 floors, giving all previous rewards.

Also Read: Lost Ark: Fastest Way To Get 20 Island Souls In 2023

8. Livestream Communication

Since we played Lost Ark in both KR and Global, we noticed that Lost Ark Global does not communicate with users often.

For better communication, Amazon should create a team, which can deliver important notices or discussions they had with Smilegates. Then, Global users can know what’s going on between Amazon and Smilegate.

9. Additional Honing Support For Global Server

Between Lost Ark KR & Global, content gab is one of the big complaints.

To solve the problem, Amazon released so many main contents in less than a year. And we all know, when there’s a new legion raid, we need time to progress our gear to reach the given item level.

However, the time was too short. People had to do dailies again and again and create several alts to catch up. In other words, there was no support of Amazon to provide additional ways to help them catch up main contents in a short period.

We think there should be an increase of honing chance and more horizontal contents, such as islands and summer events for extra hunting materials. Maybe secret merchants can sell honing materials, too. There are plenty of ways that can back up the speed of content release. Don’t make Chaos Dungeon and Guardian Raid the only method to obtain honing materials.

That’s all we wanted to talk about Lost Ark Global. We just want to see the game changing positive ways so that more gamers can jump in.

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

1. Noelle

The first one I wanna talk about is Noelle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Heizou

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Yae Miko

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Kaeya

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

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

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

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

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

5. Collei

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

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

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

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

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