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

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

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

Elemental Skill Basics

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

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

Elemental Burst Basics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theorycrafting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Constellations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Artifacts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weapons

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

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

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

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

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

Baizhu In Nilou Teams

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aggravate & Quickbloom

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hyperbloom/Burgeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Tutorials

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

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

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

2. Options Tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Endeavors

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Bank Tips

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

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

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

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

5. Zone Guide

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

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

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

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

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

6. Continuous Attack Passive

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

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

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

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

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

7. Leaving PVP Zones

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. Gear Improvements Passives

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

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

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

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

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

9. Mundus Stones

Number nine on the list is mundus stones.

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

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

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

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

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

10. Free Player Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The action RPG world rumbled when Grinding Gear Games announced Path of Exile 2 during the opening ceremony of ExileCon 2019.

The Announcement And Updates On POE 2

Mere weeks after Blizzard’s showcase of Diablo 4, Chris Wilson and a few other top-level GGG employees walked on stage, announced Path of Exile 2 and played the in-development product in front of the crowd. The people in the venue, Twitch chat, even Reddit, were all floored at the incredible edition and reinvention.

This huge expansion would introduce to one of the best ARPGs out there: two campaigns, one overhauled game. Even Chris couldn’t believe the reception.

The rest of ExileCon 2019 went swimmingly. Various developers spoke about their unique philosophy and development process while working on Path of Exile. The best racers in the scene competed to kill Act 5 Kitava’s first and ExileCon 2019 ended.

From November 2019 to April 2021, GGG remained silent on POE 2’s progress, continuing to release consistent expansions to Path of Exile 1.

Suddenly, in April 2021, GGG spoke out with an update on Path of Exile 2 and showcased portions of the new campaign’s second act, a desert area. Again, it looked fantastic. You can see the updated animations, the breathtaking terrain, two new weapons, the crossbow, the spear, boss, health bars, and so on. And community response to the content on display has also been very positive.

However, all POE 2 information went dark once again after this showcase. We waited for an update, but none occurred. We continued to wait and wait until in August 2022, GGG unveiled they’d be fully elaborating on Path of Exile 2 during ExileCon in 2023, which would be held on July 29th and 30th in Auckland, New Zealand.

Also Read: My Fastest Way To Farm Blight Maps In POE 3.21

The Numerous POE 1 Expansions

Since then, we’ve heard absolutely nothing about Path of Exile 2. In fact, nothing truly new has been unveiled since the Act 2 showcase in April 2021 more than two years ago.

So, what’s the deal? For those who don’t know Path of Exile’s developers Grinding Gear Games (also known as GGG) well, you may think they’re hiding something, something negative. Likely, that’s wrong. Instead, GGG is traveling a path untraveled by many game developers. These days, they’re working, waiting, and staying silent on the Path of Exile 2 product. This way they can focus on delivering and surprising their audience they have in the past.

All the while, they’ve been dropping decent sized expansions to Path of Exile 1. Since announcing Path of Exile 2 called the 4.0 expansion by some in the community as it’s going to be a massive addition and overhaul to the main game, GGG has introduced the following 13 expansions to Path of Exile.

Please do note, every single update also includes other minor but meaningful content, such as balance changes, new unique items, new skill gems, engine improvements, divination cards, new models, updated graphics, and more. These are only the highlights.

3.9 Conquerors of the Atlas in December 2019 was the introduction of a new endgame system, involving Sirus and the Conquerors of the Atlas, multiple different crafting tools and the metamorph build a boss mechanic. It also introduced Awakened Support Gems and new bow skills.

3.10 Delirium in March 2020 added the Delirium mechanic, which changed mapping forever and let us use cluster jewels on our passive skill tree to make our own passive skill trees.

3.11 Harvest in June 2020 gave us one of the most powerful and deterministic crafting systems in Path of Exile. That still exists in the game to this day although being in a nerfed state.

3.12 Heist in September 2020 rolled out a brand new chunk of endgame in the form of Heist, allowing us to discover new forms of every single gem in the game, old and new loot, brand new item bases and upgrade a host of rogues in an endless experience similar to delving and mapping.

3.13 Echoes of the Atlas in January 2021 presented players with the maven endgame fight and the idea of capturing bosses then fighting them all at once in a Grand Arena, The Maven’s Crucible. Plus, it added the Atlas Passive Skill Tree, allowing us Exiles to customize our endgame experience to our liking, unlike any other game out there. Plus, there is Ritual, a new way to barter and earn items while killing monsters.

3.14 Ultimatum in April 2021 surprised us with an amazing risk reward mechanic overseen by the wickedly sly Trialmaster and added multiple new powerful gems to the game like Reap, Exsanguinate, Petrified Blood and Corrupting Fever. All are used to this day in a variety of builds.

3.15 Expedition in July 2021 dropped in a gripping new narrative a brand new content system called Expedition and heavily reworked numerous pieces of character power. The changes are still controversial to this day.

3.16 Scourge in October 2021 summoned forth The Scourge faction and allowed us to clear our areas a second time. But the second run was in a literal hellscape. The league also heightened the skill ceiling with new forms of Uber content for Blight, Legion, Breach and Delirium.

3.17 Siege of the Atlas in February 2022 brought forth another huge improvement to Path of Exile’s mapping system and gave us four new Pinnacle Bosses. It also added Eldritch Currency to the game, which let players of all types craft in their gear. Plus, it began the revamp of rare monsters with the introduction of Archnemesis.

3.18 Sentinel in May 2022 added new ways to buff monsters using Sentinels, completely reworked rare monsters has just alluded to before, added seven Uber versions of bosses to the game and let us play with recombination a new crafting system that smashed items together to create something new but familiar.

3.19 Lake of Kalandra, in August 2022, introduced a new map building mechanic to the game, allowing us to enter the Lake of Kalandra and make powerful rings and amulets. It also further reworked where monsters completely changed the Beyond mechanic, replaced the old monsters with the Scourge, rebalanced hundreds of unique items, swapped the value of Divine Orbs and Exalted Orbs and changed around Harvest Crafting.

3.20 The Forbidden Sanctum in December 2022 launched a roguelike dungeon into Path of Exile, added one of the first character power enhancing account bound items into the game, further reworked rare monsters and walked back on the term Archnemesis, massively buffed a set of end game unique weapons, retooled jewels, ailments and a few other systems and added Ruthless a new game mode for Path of Exile with extreme item scarcity and numerous reworked or removed mechanics.

Finally, we’ve reached the present. 3.21 Crucible in April 2023 added the Crucible weapon combining mechanic to the game, reworked two former large mechanics Breach and Abyss, did a pass on passive skill tree masteries and completely changed up to ascendancies - the Pathfinder for the Ranger, and the Saboteur for the Shadow.

Those are the 13 major expansions to Path of Exile 1 since Path of Exile 2’s announcement at the end of patch 3.8 Blight in November 2019.

Why GGG Is Staying Quiet?

Although GGG has been almost entirely silent about Path of Exile 2, they cannot stop talking about an updating Path of Exile 1 because they are the same game folks.

Path of Exile 2 is a giant expansion to Path of Exile 1. Both campaigns will lead to the same endgame. All this work they’re doing and all this great content they’re adding and iterating on will probably be in Path of Exile 2 in some form.

Us Exiles will be able to slay the Maven as a werewolf. We’ll be able to zoom through maps with a crossbow shouting about bolts. We’ll have boss bars for our favorite foes, from Sirus to the Eater of Worlds. And we will progress through the core campaign battling Merville, Dominus, Kitava and more with the updated gem system.

So, why the silence on the Path of Exile 2 from GGG they’d rather show? It’s a meme in the Path of Exile Community to answer every problem minor or massive with the line: POE 2 will fix it.

GGG stated during their initial and second announcement that Path of Exile 2 will indeed solve some things problems with this skill gem system, poor animations, outdated graphics, outdated design and numerous other areas of the game. But they’ve backed up those statements with evidence and ideas. We know how they’re seeking to improve their game. Because when they’re asked and choose to answer, their answers are concrete about Path of Exile 2 and frank about Path of Exile 1. They’re adding and experimenting in Path of Exile 1 while developing and iterating Path of Exile 2.

Otherwise, they’re silent. They don’t want to talk boldly about Path of Exile 2. They want to show us how they’re going to make an amazing expansion and overhaul to Path of Exile. They take the “when it’s ready” line very seriously when it comes to Path of Exile 2 and we’re going to witness that firsthand on July 29th of this year as we did in April 2021 and November 2019.

When Chris Wilson walks out on stage at ExileCon 2023, he may be passionate, tearful even, but he will be confident in the game. He’s about to showcase to the world as he was at ExileCon in 2019. He believes in his team of developers. Grinding Gear Games is putting in the time and effort to ensure Path of Exile 2 will outlast the competition of new and old.

As many of us begin to reach closer to level 30 on our battle passes, I wanted to review and analyze which light cones are the ones you should consider adding to your lineup and which are not worth taking for now.

There are a total of seven different Light Cones to choose from. Each corresponds to a path in the game, so no matter what characters you have, you should be able to get value out of one of these. Each Light Cone will be timestamped. So, if there’s a certain one you wanted my insight on, feel free to skip to that portion, and the order they are covered does not have anything to do with their usefulness.

Since this will be our first battle pass, I will be reviewing each light code at their superimposition level one just to make things simpler.

Carve The Moon, Weave The Clouds

We will begin with our first Light Cone, Carved The moon, Weave The Clouds for their Harmony, which states at the start of the battle and whenever the wearish turn begins.

One of the following effects is applied randomly. All allies’ attack increases by 10%. All allies’ critical damage increases by 12% or all allies’ energy regeneration rate increases by 6%. The applied effect cannot be identical to the last effect applied and will replace the previous effect.

The applied effect will be removed when the wearer has been knocked down. Effects of the similar type cannot be stacked. This Light Cone has a lot of useful buffs. However, the biggest issue with it is just the lack of consistent support. The best support here being the critical damage and having a 1/2 chance of appearing can be a real coin toss and in the best-case scenario, it would only have 50% uptime, but realistically more close to 33%.

When compared to the consistency of Chorus or Dance! Dance! Dance!, and Planetary Rendezvous, even with the type restriction, it is a hard Light Cone to sell even more so since it doesn’t really boost any of our three main harmony units or change their play styles.

It’s not awful and can be great for damaged showcases if all situations line up, but I wouldn’t recommend it since I like consistency.

Related: Honkai Star Rail: All Details On Combat & Characters - Beginners Friendly Guide

Return To Darkness

Next, we Return to Darkness for the Hunt, which increases the wearer’s crit rate by 12%.

After a critical hit, there is a 16% fixed chance to dispel one buff on the targeted enemy. This effect can only trigger once per attack. Another RNG Light Cone, however I’m a bit more favorable for this one as it does have a consistent boost to a critical rate and a high amount at that.

My only issue here is the chance of this proccing can be annoying, but the spell is not something to take lightly and just that utility alone can make some fights a lot more manageable, such as the fight against the Searing Prowler and Forgotten Hall Stage 12.

Don’t worry, more enemies like this will appear in the future, as well. If you have no plans on building Pella, who is your main source for dispel, this might be a decent pickup even if you don’t run it 100% of the time, just for the small times you may need it.

Nowhere to Run

Next up, we got Nowhere to Run for the Destruction, which increases the wearer’s attack by 24%.

Whenever the wearer defeats an enemy, they restore health equal to 12% of their attack. While not as good as Something Irreplaceable, this could make a good substitute for anyone wanting to throw this on their Clara.

Arlan and Trailblazer Physical can use this, as well. But I think On the Fall of an Aeon works better for them and it’s also free to play.

The only issue with this Light Cone is situations where some other character steals to kill when you needed it to heal. But outside of that, it’s pretty solid and might be useful for some nasty Clara solo.

This Is Me

We are now on to This Is Me for the Preservation, which increases the wearer’s defense by 16%. It also increases the damage of the wearer when they use their ultimate by 60% of the wearer’s defense.

This effect only applies one time per enemy target. This is probably the most optimal Light Cone for Trailblazer Preservation for a good mixture of damage and defense and will help great against fights, such as Cocolia when she spawns her Ice Spears.

Also, I feel like this isn’t my first time mentioning this funky March 7th setup. But for a few of you looking to push her into some weird counter DPS, this is another Light Cone to help push that narrative.

Today Is Another Peaceful Day

Next up, we have Today Is Another Peaceful Day for the Erudition.

After entering battle, it increases the wearer’s damage based on their max energy. Damage increases by 0.2% per point of energy up to 160 energy.

To make this a bit easier to understand, every multiple of 10 is 2%, so a unit with 120 like Himiko will gain 24%, which honestly isn’t bad. However, when compared to the free to play option, The Seriousness of Breakfast, which is super easy to superimposition due to it being free to play, becomes much harder for this to become a worthwhile pick, not to mention on some units like Serval. It’s not good at all and it is not something really worth recommending at the moment.

We Will Meet Again

Second to last, we have We Will Meet Again for the Nihility.

After the wearer uses basic attack or skill, the wearer deals 48% of attack as additional damage to a random enemy that is attacked by abilities. This one is a kind of funky. It doesn’t offer any real boost to your base stats.

However, you get additional damage based on attack on a more support debuffing unit, making it very weird to use. Not to mention, our current Nihility units aren’t the biggest damage dealers, with raw attack numbers being average at best, such as with Welt. Not really something I can say is worthwhile, but maybe someone in the future can make great use out of this.

Warmth Shortens Cold Nights

Lastly, we have Warmth Shortens Cold Nights for the Abundance, which increases the wearer’s maximum health by 16%. When using basic attack or skill, it restores all allies’ health by an amount equal to two percent of their respected maximum health.

In the previous time, I’ve mentioned this Light Cone as being a very good option. Unfortunately, this has not changed and I think it’s great for people who want to do auto battle since I am sure people have noticed by now healers suck on auto battle since they will take until the lowest amount of health before they even consider healing you, which can result in your death.

Outside of that, I don’t think this is too great to pick up since Abundance is one of the rare paths with almost too many good options in their Light Cone choices. Only pick this up if you’re looking to use it for auto battle just for a quick.

By the way, if you want to have the Light Cones or chacracters with five stars, geting Honkai Star Rail Accounts will be a good choice!

No doubt you guys have heard of Elder Scrolls Online at some point. Maybe you gave it a try back in the day and you’re probably sitting there wondering why is this game still so popular even to this day? 

If you haven’t tried it, maybe you’re sitting there thinking: what makes this game special? Why do people play this instead of playing World of WarCraft, Final Fantasy, Guild Wars or another MMO? Let’s go over the several points that differentiate ESO as an MMO and what makes the game just so good.

1. Rich Lore

If you’ve ever played an Elder Scrolls game, whether it’s Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, it doesn’t matter. You know that the Elder Scrolls Universe has a massive amount of lore going on for it. Each race, location, deity and hero has these extensive backstories behind them and Elder Scrolls Online is no different.

This game has a massive amount of rich and extensive lore. That’s been built up over the course of the game’s lifetime and of course this lore draws from the previous Elder Scrolls games, taking inspiration, but it also has introduced a ton of new stories, characters, and locations to the Elder Scrolls Universe.

One of the main reasons why people play this game so much is because it is so story driven because of the lore of Elder Scrolls Online. And if you’ve never given gaming lore a chance, Elder Scrolls is a great place to start, whether it’s this game or the single player games.

2. Level Scaling 

This is something that’s either you love it or you hate it when it comes to MMORPGs. But Elder Scrolls Online uses a level scaling system instead of a traditional MMO, where you level up a character, you ultimately out level zones and you sort of end up at the end of things in a select couple of zones that are the max level areas.

Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t do this. Instead, they have a level scaling system that allows their players to explore any part of the game world regardless of their level and it keeps every corner of the game relevant. This means that you can always find a challenge regardless of where you are in the game. 

If you’re a completionist or an explorer or whatever, this game is definitely right up your alley because it keeps things interesting with its scaling technology. Not everybody is a fan of horizontal progression, but in regard to the world, ESO does it very well.

3. Massive World

If you’ve ever played a previous Elder Scrolls title, you know that this is the kind of game that goes out of its way to be big and detailed and Elder Scrolls Online is no different.

The game world of ESO is massive, and players are free to explore it at their own pace. There are no level requirements for the zones either because of the scaling, so players can explore wherever they want. If you’re somebody that you want to quest and level up in Morrowind because that was your favorite game in the Elder Scrolls series, go over there and explore it or go to some of these regions where Bethesda hasn’t made a single player version of The Elder Scrolls at yet.

It’s completely up to you wherever you go. Across these zones, you’ll find everything from dragons attacking some areas to Oblivion Gates opening in others...... There're tons of stuff to find in each zone. Each zone has its own unique personality. It’s a world worth exploring. 

4. Player Choice 

Elder Scrolls is not a game where you just choose a class, level up the class and you’re stuck in that particular play style.

When it comes to ESO, you can play this game however you want. In Elder Scrolls Online, if you want to be an Argonian Thief, who wears heavy armor or who runs around healing people while also poisoning them with your daggers, you can do that. If you want to be a Necromancer who uses a bow and poisoned arrows, you can do that, too. 

You really can create whatever character you want in Elder Scrolls Online, which can lead to a little of a learning curve. But as you go through the game and as you gather points from leveling up or discovering Skyshards, you can spend them however you want in your skill trees that you unlock as you play the game. It makes the replayability of this game really good.

It also is cool because you’ll probably get to max before even exploring a fourth of all the zones in this game. So, going and checking out new zones and trying out new builds and new styles of playing your character. It’s awesome. 

5. Player Housing 

Player housing is a thing in Elder Scrolls Online and it is very expansive and it is very immersive. In this game, you can purchase tiny houses. You can purchase massive homes and with whatever your creativity desires. 

I’ve been in player homes that are completely vampire themed homes that are all like hunting with animal heads and stuff everywhere to even homes that are pretty much like entire castles that players have made within the giant landmass that you can purchase to customize your home on. It’s pretty wild how in-depth the player housing system is within ESO and I feel like I only scratched the surface of it despite my hundreds of hours in this game. 

6. No Subscription Required 

Unlike a lot of other MMOs, ESO does not require a monthly subscription, and the game is in no way paid to win.

When it comes to this game, if you play it, you can play it as much as you want or as little as you want without having to worry about any sort of recurring fee. 

The only thing really that you get from subscribing monthly to Elder Scrolls Online is you get points to spend in the Cosmetic Shop. You get an infinitely deep crafting bag, which some people would say it’s a little unfair. But it’s just a crafting bag. If you don’t care about crafting, it’s not a big deal. You also get access to all the content and all the expansions up to whatever the current expansion is whatever that might be. 

My first 100 hours in this game or so, I played completely for free with no subscription and I loved the game so much that I did ultimately subscribe to it. But it’s a hundred percent not necessary to progress in this game and to have a good time.

7. World PVP 

If you ever played Elder Scrolls Oblivion, you might remember Cyrodiil, a big landmass with the city in the center. 

In Elder Scrolls Online, the three factions are all fighting for control of that city. The massive scale world versus world combat in ESO, the moment that you try it, you’re going to get hooked to it: catapults and battering rams in all manner of fire and magic and fortresses...... It is wild that all of the this fortress besieging and stealing and whatever to claim the capital city right in the center of Cyrodiil and to claim an emperor for your faction.

Imagine a Classic World of WarCraft High Warlord or Grand Marshal. Because the emperor gets their own unique skill tree and abilities that they can use to dominate on the PVP Battlefield. It’s great. The world PVP in this game is so much fun.

8. Living World 

Something that I think a lot of RPG or immersive MMO gamer enthusiasts will enjoy about ESO is how interactable the world is and how immersive it can be.

In Elder Scrolls Online, if you’re walking along and you see a sword on the ground, you can pick it up. You see a potato, you can pick it. NPCs will lock the doors of their homes and you can break in. You can murder NPCs in this game. You can and get a bounty put on your head where guards will kill you on site unless you pay the fine.

If you are particular classes like a Necromancer and you were to use a Necromancer ability in the middle of town, people will freak out and try to attack you because you’re a freaking Necromancer. You’re raising the dead in the middle of the Town Square. 

So many people love this about ESO just how interactable the world is and how you can really play out whatever sort of fantasy that you want. Whether you’re a warrior, that’s going around and killing dragons to being some cutthroat rogue, who breaks into people’s homes and steals ESO Gold out of their treasure boxes, whoever you want to be, you can be that person.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online: The Unique Mechanics Of Arcanist Class Will Have A Big Impact On Game’s Resource System

9. Rewarding Exploration

Exploration is rewarded tremendously because Elder Scrolls Online is not a linear MMO. You can just kind of go wherever you want.

This is one of my favorite ways to play Elder Scrolls Online: just abandoning the quest that’s right in front of you and just wandering out into the world to see what you find.

As you explore, you’ll find more quests to take part in. You will find world bosses scattered throughout the world that you can fight. You can find delves, which are like these single player dungeons that you can go into. Fight the boss at the end and get an awesome piece of gear, possibly even a set piece of gear. There’s a ton of sets in Elder Scrolls Online that can all do unique things, like making your abilities poisonous, or you can summon like a Daedra. There are lots of stuff in this game in regard to sets.

You can find Skyshards out in the world, which you can collect to get more skill points. You can meet different guilds and factions. There’s a lot in Elder Scrolls Online in terms of exploration. It’s one of my favorite parts of the game.

10. Constant Updates 

Maybe a lot of you reading this article right now play World of WarCraft or Final Fantasy, which are some really large MMO today. And when you hear the term Elder Scrolls Online, you just think: it’s a dead game. It probably gets no content. Nobody really plays it...... 

You would be surprised to discover that a lot of people play this game. No matter where you go in the world, you’re going to be running into players. 

And in regard to the company behind the scenes making the content for this game, they are constantly pumping out updates whether they are new story chapters, dungeons, delves, zones, expansions, new ways to play the game like getting a follower introducing dragons and elsewhere. Whatever you want, these guys are just constantly pumping out new content into this world.

So, there’s always something to look forward to. Even right now in June, the newest Elder Scrolls Online expansion is coming out Necrom with a brand new class. Because the game has this constant steady stream of content, it does not get boring. And even when it does and you decide I’m going to take a break for a couple of months, when you come back, there’s always plenty more to do and plenty more to explore. 

EA Sports have lost the FIFA naming rights, which means it’s no longer going to be releasing FIFA 24. Instead, it is going to be EA Sports FC. So, in this article, we will discuss five new things that have already been confirmed for the new game.

1. There Will Still Be Women In Ultimate Team

*First, we do have women in Ultimate Team. This is something which caught absolutely everybody off guard, but we should have probably seen it coming. We have had the option for quite a while now in FIFA to play with them in kickoff. Also, we did see Sam Kerr on a FIFA cover. I heard the rumor a long time ago and now EA Sports has decided it is going to be happening in EA Sports FC.

So, we are probably going to be seeing both mixed men and women in Ultimate Team. I don’t see how we’re going to be having a separate mode just for women and men. It would be too much for EA Sports to handle, having to release promos new Team of the Week every single week, separately. I don’t see that happening. It’s definitely going to be in some way mixed in.

And, we have seen this tweet of course by Fut Sheriff leaking this and we do have EA Sports on their website, the EA Sports FC announcement page. We do have the UEFA Women’s Champions League that has been confirmed. We do also have the National Women’s Soccer League, which is the equivalent of the MLS. And we also have the Women’s Super League that is the equivalent of the Premier League. All of these are going to be coming.

Fut Sheriff is also confirmed that we’re going to be getting Women Icons and Marta Brazilian is a prediction. So, again, it will be interesting to see how it’s all going to be playing out.

2. Brand Promos

*Next, we do have brand promos in Ultimate Team. Adidas Numbers up was a promo we did see in FIFA 22. That was obvious with the Adidas brand. We have also seen collaboration with the Marvel brand in FIFA 23. Of course, we had Marvel FUT Heroes. And you can get them by using your FUT 23 Coins.

Vincent on Twitter has confirmed that we’re going to be seeing more of these and we do have many announcements already by different brands, for example Pepsi on Twitter. They did confirm that they are partners with EA Sports FC, so I feel like we could maybe see a Pepsi promo and I did make this a concept with Messi.

We could also see perhaps something with PlayStation. PlayStation did also tweet on other social media as well that EA Sports FC and sort of their partnership is going to be continuing. So, I do think that we’re going to be seeing something like this. What impresses me the most is the PlayStation Pack that appeared in FIFA 22. This was given out for free to all PlayStation Plus Members. So, I do think there is going to be a cross with more brands, for example Pepsi, PlayStation and even more brands that we haven’t even seen announcements from.

Also Read: FIFA 23: Best Tips For The Start Of TOTS Weekend League

3. Academy

*The next thing confirmed in EA Sports FC is for the Academy. Now it’s unclear whether this is going to be a separate mode or if this is going to be somehow integrated into objectives. Maybe it could just be a different tab on the objectives page, but this is essentially going to be allowing you to choose a player and then level him up. So, maybe this is going to be working just over time. Every single season, it just going to be upgrading automatically or maybe it could be you’re involved in the progression.

But it will be quite interesting to see how this is going to be working. It should be similar to Future Stars Academy, so it will be quite cool. Obviously, those objectives used to be very popular and I do think now it is going to have that sort of uniqueness. Everybody is going to be able to choose their own player and everyone’s going to have something different. It’s not just going to be everyone’s forced or if they want to participate, they are forced to have this one player. This is going to be quite cool.

Maybe they could also do something different with the Moments mode. I do think that was quite a waste this year. So, that’s going to be revamped if this is going to be involved with that somehow because that we did have a sort of Moments Tokens. Anyway, we’ll see more information from EA but FUT Academy is going to be an EA Sports FC.

4. New Icons

*Next, we do have new icons. This is something which we do see. Every single year, a few new players are added. And women this year in Ultimate Team will also get icons. There’s going to be more leaks and even more announcements, obviously for that.

But we do already have two new icons that have been confirmed. Fut Donk has said that they are in the code and also he mentioned them being in the trailer. I’m not too sure which trailer he is referring to. But Gento is going to be coming. I do believe he’s going to be Spanish. They have given him a left-wing position, and he does look quite decent.

We do also have Di Stefano. This is going to be a huge icon, which is very popular. And he is either going to be Spanish or Argentinian. We’re not too sure. I think maybe he played for both countries or something like that. But this has been going on for a while now. Everybody on Twitter is just debating which country he is going to be representing. Obviously, it’s only possible to represent one, but whichever one it is going to be, I do think Di Stefano should be a very solid icon.

One thing I want to mention here is that the Barcelona Stadium Camp now is going to be coming into EA Sports FC. But unfortunately, according to Fut Donk, this isn’t going to be happening. There were actually some rumors that this was going to be happening. There have been a lot of false rumors, including the Transfer Market being removed or things like that. Do not believe anything until you do see a reliable source and also confirmation from EA Sports.

5. Release Time For EA Sports FC

But the last thing which has been confirmed is the release date by Fut Sheriff. He has said that we are going to be getting EA Sports FC on September 29th and I do believe this is going to be the standard worldwide release date.

Usually, we see Ultimate Edition getting three days before that, so Ultimate Edition will potentially release on the 26th. And then, we do usually get Early Access or EA Play, which includes the 10 hours of the free trial. I mean, you don’t have to actually pay for it.

But there is going to be some sort of something similar to EA Play, but Fut Sheriff did say it’s going to be a little different this year. So, that’s going to be quite exciting and don’t forget: we are going to be seeing more official information from EA Sports in July.

What’s the point of doing damage if there’s nothing to kill?

I’ve been around gaming for way too long and the best groups always have somebody in a role when we’re trying to push harder content. We saw this in Diablo 3 even when it wasn’t really intentional by the designers, players still just figured it out. So, while everyone was worried about all the juicy info that Rhykker got from the dev talk and the service land weekend, I honed in on the subtle drop that supports are going to be required for Diablo 4 endgame.

Let us start with limited deaths and Nightmare Dungeons. The Sacred Nightmare Dungeons will have a death limit of 12. And the Ancestral Nightmare Dungeons will have a death limit of four. Four deaths per run. That’s going to be rough. Who doesn’t die in Diablo 3? They are the guys who use zBarb builds.

What is zBarb? It is also called the support Barbarian and is one of the strongest supports in the game and the addition of Crowd Control Resistance. By the way, if you want to improve your Barbarian, then you have to prepare a lot of Diablo 4 Gold in advance. In the meantime, you can also build more powerful builds.

But here’s the thing and I’ve been playing Rhykker’s video since right after beta weekend because I saw how much damage some people can do and there’s just not enough mobs for everyone to be killing 100% of the time.

Also, from Rhykker’s video, we learned that monsters are going to hit really hard. So, if you don’t spec into defense or some kind of utility, you’re going to die. It is one of the reasons we have zero damage builds in Diablo 3. Speaking of DPS, you’re going to need a Barb to group things again. Here is a side note: I’m very happy about that because I love being a zBarb in Diablo 3.

Then, that’s kind of my next point. Some people just enjoy playing support roles. It’s what I like to do, and this is also a way for casual players or players that just don’t have time to provide their skills to join endgame content. This allows everyone to provide value and play with friends and enjoy the game.The difference is that Diablo 4 supports are going to do more than just buff the party. I’ve been calling them S-Builds (Support Builds).

Let’s get a little deeper into that. The support classes are going to have different roles. It’s really impossible to say which class will have which role because there’s going to be a lot of synergy to figure out with the endgame.

One of the main things is Crowd Control. We know monsters will get CC immune just like in Diablo 3. And just like in Diablo 3, we can’t have everyone trying to CC everything. We’ll end up with a ton of unstoppable monsters coming after us and running all over the place. Veiled Shot just dropped the video on this topic, but he just barely scratches a surface that will need support builds. If you are interested in it, you can check it out.

And then, we’ll have to complete objectives. There’s a lot of endgame to do in Diablo 4. Unless you’re on a mount, you move pretty slowly between objectives and running around maps. So, if an objective focused support role comes in, he can grab the idle. He can run back and put it on the pedestal or whatever you got to put it. That means that we’re just going to be doing boss fight after boss fight and if you want farming, that’s farming.

Also Read: Everything About Diablo 4 Co-op, Open World, PVP & Strongholds

This is going to be the most useful for leveling glyphs. If this works right, we can just form the bosses and clear dungeons a lot faster and while we’re trying to kill stuff, vulnerability is just too powerful not to take advantage of. But if a DPS has to spec into it, then they miss out on more damage. So, if a support class can cause almost constant vulnerability, then they’ll provide more value than trying to do damage. And with all that, the supports are also going to be there for typical reasons: buffing and debuffing monsters. Some can do this better than others. But that’s going to be something to look at once these rolls start to flush out a little better.

As far as the classes go, I love the Barbarian and it has a lot of options for support classes and for damage, there’s a lot of a lot to work with there. Rogue is also going to be probably something to look at. Necromancer has a lot of opportunities with Bone Prison, which I think causes vulnerability. The Sorceress does a lot of CC with her ice build, so that might be a great option for like taking out the world boss.

All in all, we’re going to see supports playing a huge role in the meta for Diablo 4.

Path of Exile is an action RPG that markets itself as being the best ARPG on the market in terms of character customizations. If you have ever played Diablo 3 and thought that it’s very simple or straight up just looking for a serious game to play for the next couple of years, then keep reading as today we will go over the top 10 things that you must know in detail before thinking about making Path of Exile the next big thing in your life.

1. Monetization

First, we got monetization. Most of you already know that you can basically boot up Path of Exile and start playing for free. But is Path of Exile really free to play any sense where you can continue playing without spending any money and compensate for that with your skills?

In your first 50 to 100 hours, you won’t feel the need to purchase anything. That’s until you realize that you are running out of space. Path of Exile gives you four generic Stash Tabs. This can hold pretty much anything. The problem is simple things like POE Currency are more than enough to eventually flood these Stash Tabs.

There are also maps and a bunch of other league specific currencies like Fossils, Catalysts and Scarabs and many others that you have to store. Of course, that’s aside from the rest of your items. In a few words, the game becomes unplayable at some point unless you purchase Stash Tabs.

The bare minimum amount of in-game currency that you have to spend in order to get essential Stash Tabs are: 75 points on a Currency Stash Tab, 150 points on a Map Stash Tab and another 150 points on one Premium Quad Stash Tab, which is required if you wish to participate in the item market.

All of that is going to cost you close to 40 US dollars, which is what I think is the bare minimum that you have to spend in order to keep playing for almost ever.

So, is Path of Exile really free to play? The short answer is no.

2. Complexity

The second point we want to talk about is complexity.

Path of Exile complexity is not actually as hard as people make it out to be. It’s just filled with so much information and details that you have to memorize. If you wish to play the game properly, just to put this into perspective. I spent over 10,000 hours playing this game. More than half of that time is spent on learning. Even today, I still get to learn something now and then.

Path of Exile is not difficult. It just needs lots of time to learn and it only becomes fun once you learn it. Unless you are seriously considering pouring multiple thousands of hours into this game, I don’t recommend playing it.

3. Grind

The third point that you must know in detail before playing Path of Exile is the grind.

Simply learning the game isn’t enough to make POE Currency. If you wish to play it properly, then you should know that: in order to keep up with seasonal players in competitive environments like League, then you have to play no less than 8 hours every day. Some people even play up to 15 hours a day on league launch.

The reason why this matters is that only those who reach endgame early are the ones who make the most amount of currency and those who make the most amount of currency controls the economy. It is basically like real life. It seems unfair, but that’s one of the things that makes Path of Exile the unique game it is and on top of this, it’s possible for you to spend an entire day playing without getting a single good drop.

Path of Exiel is a very RNG heavy game. If you hate feeling unrewarded for your time sometimes, then Path of Exile is simply not for you.

4. Difficulty

The fourth point we have is difficulty. Not to be confused with difficulty or complexity, it is one thing to understand the basics of a game and it’s a completely different thing to learn how to play it.

If you are literally coming from any other ARPG, then you need to know that Path of Exile weakest aspect is visual clarity. Both monsters and players deal with an extremely high amount of damage compared to their respective life poles. And what ends up happening as a result is that you either one shot everything or everything one shot you. You will be in an extremely chaotic atmosphere where you don’t realize what’s happening before it actually happens.

It is the least engaging combat style out of any other ARPG out there and journey Path of Exile biggest downside. It is for this specific reason why Path of Exile is considered difficult. No matter how cautious you are, you will eventually find yourself in a situation where you died and there is nothing you could have done to prevent that.

5. Endgame

For our fifth point, we are going to talk about the endgame.

Path of Exile’s endgame is where it is at. There are so many things you can do and so many endgame bosses to challenge for their loot. There are also so many league content for you to engage with, from many previous updates to enough content to keep you occupied and engaged for thousands of hours. You can go Delve, you can farm Legion, you can do Harvest, you can do Blighted Maps and more.

Best part of it is that every different league mechanic has its own target load to aim for. Basically, Path of Exile’s endgame allows you to specialize in whatever you want. The game even has its own separated passive tree that its sole purpose is to allow you to customize your endgame experience. No other game comes even remotely close to Path of Exile in that regard.

6. Crafting

The sixth important point that you need to know is crafting. In Path of Exile, you build a strong character by purchasing items for it from other people with your currency.

Most of this currency will come by crafting your own items and sell them to these people for profit. Learning how to craft is detrimental to progressing in this game and I’m not going to lie crafting is like a vast ocean.

Now, I know that the landing speed of one person differs from another, but as for me, it took me over 2,000 hours to master crafting in this game. And I did take the game seriously. As for a more casual player, it’s going to take them even more. That being said, don’t let that discourage you from getting into crafting, as you don’t need to learn everything to get started.

7. Multiplayer

Our seventh point is multiplayer. I want you guys to know that aside from the ability to chat and trade with other players, Path of Exile isn’t really a multiplayer game.

Sure, you can invite people to a party and go kill a boss with them or something like that, but you almost never want to do that in 99% of content you go through in Path of Exile with some very few exceptions.

Party play is generally something that people avoid as it slows down their progress. Unless you are XP farming for level 100, odds are you will be playing solo simply because party play doesn’t actually reward you with anything that you can’t get by playing Solo.

In fact, recently, the game developers killed party play by heavily reducing the load that they generate with 3.19 patch. That’s the more reason for you to be playing Solo.

You May Interest: Best Righteous Fire Juggernaut Build In POE 3.21! - Beginner Friendly

8. The Developers

Speaking about the developers, it is the next thing that we are going to talk about.

GGG Dev Team, the creators of Path of Exile are well known for their vision, a vision that’s all about slowing down Path of Exile as much as possible. Now, I’m not talking about gameplay. I’m talking about character progression.

The dev team has been doing nothing but nerfing every possible avenue for players to attain power because they believe that the more you have to grind every day to get what you want, the longer you will be sticking around playing a league. This helps to improve player attention numbers at the cost of every individual player's experience. You are expected to play no less than 10 hours a day to experience everything that this game has to offer.

Basically, the developers want Path of Exile to become a second day job for you, one that doesn’t pay you anything. If you are a busy person with important things to do in real life, then unfortunately, you are not the target demographic for Path of Exile and its developers.

9. The Community

However, with that being said coming, we have the complete opposite of the dev team, which is the community. Allow me to say that despite the inconveniences that come alongside playing such a complicated game like Path of Exile, you get a bunch of people who are willing to sacrifice their time to help the community by making some useful tools to save time.

One good example is Craft of Exile, a website that shows you the possible odds of spawning every single modifier in the game on an item. It also allows you to simulate your next crafting project without having to waste currency on it inside the game.

You can also plan your next build with another useful tool called Path of Building, an application that tells you which passives to allocate in order to better boost your damage and survivability without having to go through trial and error inside the game and more.

10. Future Game Support

Now, for our final point, we are going to talk about future game support.

Path of Exile is an ever-growing game in terms of league mechanics. The gaming graphics even becomes noticeably better with each update.

In the future, GGG is planning on releasing Path of Exile 2. It is not a separate game, but a major expansion to an already growing Path of Exile. This is big because you can start playing Path of Exile now without having to worry about changing games anytime soon.

Path of Exile 2 is an ambition project to expand the main game. It will improve graphics and simplify some complicated game mechanics, like gym linking.

In short, it’s worth diving into Path of Exile now, but only if you are willing to take it seriously. This means having no real life commitments preferably for the next couple of years and yes, this does include marriage anyway.

2023 for Elder Scrolls Online is going to be a very interesting year indeed. Every year, ESO will release four DLCs with big game-changing updates and will release within each quarter of the year.

This year, however, ESO is breaking tradition, but in my opinion, for a very good reason. As much as I love ESO and have done for the eight years I’ve played it, it has its issues. I think anyone who has played the game for longer than two years can agree with me on that. These issues have divided the community and have left some feeling ignored by ZeniMax Online Studios.

For whatever the reason, the majority of these issues have never been addressed or fixed. But, let’s look on the bright side that will all change within 2023.

The first half of this year will remain the same as any other. We have already received our first DLC, the Scribes of Fate, which added two new dungeons to the game: Scrivener’s Hall and Bal Sunnar. Along with that, we have new item sets and of course the usual update, which buffs, nerfs and changes parts of the game.

In June, we can expect to see a chapter. As usual, this year is taking us back to Morrowind with the Telvanni Peninsula, focusing on the city of Necrom and the Daedric Prince, Hermaeus Mora.

Following on from that, in the third and fourth quarter, we won’t receive any new DLC for ESO. We were told that something secret is being planned for the end of the year, something to do with an endless dungeon experience.

However, we are breaking norms and are not receiving another dungeon DLC or Zone DLC. Instead, ZeniMax Online Studios has promised to tackle the many issues plaguing ESO and focus entirely on fixing and updating instead of adding.

Personally, I think this is a great idea. I’ve always said that it’s better to stop adding content and fix what already exists within the game rather than continue adding to what’s already broken. Although I think so, I am also very curious about your thoughts. You can try to answer the following questions. How you feel about the change coming to this year? Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea? Are you looking forward to the fixes and updates or are you worried that it may be made worse by the plan for 2023?

Now, I want to talk about Necrom. The Necrom Chapter for ESO will be releasing on June 5th for PC and Mac and then June 20th for console. Now, although the year's plan is different. This chapter, in comparison to others, is no different.

Related: Elder Scrolls Online: How To Prepare For Arcanist Class Release?

This chapter will take place in the Telvani Peninsula in Morrowind. Our main city is Necrom, which is where the chapter gets its name and is heavily focused around the Daedric Prince, Hermes Mora.

The chapter will allow the player to explore this magical and fungi-infested part of Morrowind, but also have access to Apocrypha - Hermaeus Mora’s realm of Oblivion. Whether Apocrypha will be like the deadlands in regards to size and exploration is yet to be revealed.

However, we know for a fact that we will be able to see a good portion of that realm. What attracts players most in this realm is, of course, is the new class we will be receiving along with the chapter.

Now, a big disclaimer: you must own the chapter in order to be able to play as this new class. The class in question is The Arcanist, a class that heavily revolves around using spells and attacks in the design of our Daedric Lord, Hermes Mora.

Sadly though, unless you’re able to access the private test servers on PC, ZeniMax Online Studios haven’t released anything about this new class as yet. But if your curiosity is getting the better of you, you actually fight and go up against enemy Arcanists in the new dungeon, Scrivener’s Hall. Anyway, if you like this new class, you can prepare lots of ESO Gold in advance to make more powerful builds for this class.

Not only are we getting a new class, but we are also welcoming two new companions to the game. We have Azandar Al-Cybiades, who was an Arcanist Redguard and also Sharp-As-Night, an Argonian Warden.

Companions are a great addition to ESO and I’m sure these two won’t disappoint. Just a shame that ZeniMax Online Studios skipped over Necromancer for a companion.

Tales of Tribute is also receiving a new Patron, which has been revealed as Almalexia, Morrowind’s Healing Mother. Apart from this, we have no information in regards to what she brings to the table quite literally on that one.

All in all, I think this is going to be a very interesting year indeed, with big changes and updates coming later this year and a great-looking chapter coming very soon.

With the AI advancing more and more, we wanted to ask ChatGPT how to play FIFA 23 better. As I asked my questions about it, I was completely shocked by how much information it had to offer. So, if you’re curious about it, keep reading!

Attacking Tips

Let’s start with attacking. I asked the AI how I can improve my attacking in FIFA 23 without knowing what to come. But as it started explaining, it gave me seven unique tips that are too much. Let’s test a couple of them to see if they are correct or wrong.

Quick Passing

The first tip is about passing. “Good passing is the foundation of any successful attack. Use short, quick passes to move the ball up the pitch and create space for your attackers”.

I can agree with this one as it’s one of the most important parts of the attacking. Short passing seems to be working in most of the situations. However, I struggled a bit when I tried to do it in a quick way, as the AI mentioned. Especially when you’re facing good Defenders, they might punish you for the careless quickness while passing.

So, on top of what the AI told me to do, I also paid attention to a couple of factors: the direction that my passer faces, the availability of my receiver, and the behavior of the opposition defense played a huge role with it.

As long as those three conditions were optimal for me, I was able to create space for my Attackers with short passes, as the AI told me to do so. It’s a very nice tip.

Crossing

Next up, crossing. The AI says “crossing the bolt into the box is a great way to create scoring opportunities.” Correct until this point. “Use the right stick to control the direction and height of the cross, and aim for your target player.” Obviously, this is wrong.

I guess the AI might get confused sometimes. Anyway, the initial idea is correct as crosses could be powerful situationally. Use the left analog stick to select their target and power up the cross regarding the distance. The power level of the cross will be decisive on how far it will go.

As I was trying to work with the crosses, I realized that they are powerful like the ChatGPT mentioned, especially when I get on the counter with a man's advantage. As I was exploring the side with my Winger, there has been always one player going into the box and crossing the ball to him allowed me to get dangerous without putting too much effort.

Even though the AI messed up with the controls, the initial idea allowed me to have better attacking options. These are the part of the FIFA fundamentals.

Defensive Tips

But what about defending? Can the AI teach me how to get better in defense? There were again a lot of tips. I am going to choose two of them and see what I can do with them.

Jockeying

First off, it starts with jockeying. “Jockeying is an essential defensive technique in FIFA 23. Use the left trigger/L2 button to slow down and position your Defender in front of the Attacker. This will make it harder for them to get past you”.

That is 100% accurate, as jockeying saves you most of the time. Jockeying allows me to have a very special defensive stance against my opponents and sometimes allows me to retrieve the ball without doing anything else.

However, I’ve seen that only worked out once I positioned my player directly in front of the opponent. If I position my player a bit towards this side or don’t have a strong stance against the opponent, he was able to go through.

So, remember what the AI says. Position your Defender in front of the Attacker while jockeying.

Tackling

Moving on to the next step, we got tackling, which is “another important defensive technique”, according to the AI. “Use the right trigger/R2 button to make a strong tackle or the B/Circle Button to slide tackle. Make sure you time your tackles correctly to avoid giving away fouls”.

With the default configuration, Circle Button allows you to go for a standing tackle and square button for a sliding tackle. That was a bit misleading.

However, the second tip is golden. We can only benefit from the tackles at the right time, which is when the opponent pushes the ball out of his feet for a brief moment.

If you try to tackle in a position where you don’t have the opportunity, you will probably get yourself in disadvantage. So, what I did was to wait for the perfect moment to get a tackle in as I waited for the opponent to make his move while pushing the ball away and made the fitting tackle to win the ball.

Related: FIFA 23: How To Master The Art Of Defending? - Complete Guides On Jockey

Tactics Tips

At the end, we wanted to ask a very controversial question to the AI, which divides FIFA community by far every year. And the question is: what is the best formation to play in FIFA 23?

It’s quite satisfied me with the answer. “There is no ‘best’ formation to play in FIFA 23 as it largely depends on your playstyle, the team you are using and the opponent you’re facing”.

This has been probably our argument for a very long time. Most of the players copied informations that pros or content creators offer without knowing or thinking about how to play with it, just because others get successful with it. That doesn’t mean you will do the same with it.

As the ChatGPT dictates, the best formation for you will depend on your playing style and the players you have available. Experiment with different formations and find the one that works best for you.

For starters, I recommend playing with 4-2-2-2, 4-2-3-1, or 4-4-2. Those are the classic formations which are suitable for every year. But like mentioned, try them out one by one and see if they work out for you. Of course, if you can add more strong players to your team by using FUT 23 Coins, it will be better!

To be honest, although the AI’s answer surprised me, it also worried me a lot. I am afraid that my job will be replaced by it in the future. So I reluctantly asked AI another question: “What do you know about the best player instructions and custom tactics in FIFA 23?” To my delight, AI doesn’t have a definitive answer to this question. Now I don’t have to worry about losing my job.

Anyway, the player instructions should be also set on the purpose. I am going to give you an example of it. Whenever I play with affirmation, which contains a CDM in it, I give that CDM three instructions: Cover Center, Stay Back While Attacking and Cut Passing Lanes.

The reason I put him on Covering Center is that mostly, I have side players to cover the wing and if my CDM also goes towards the wing, the center will be wide open. Putting him to cover Center defines his area to defend.

Cutting Passing Lanes let them move towards the potential passing targets. Even if I don’t control them, that will help me to switch to my intended Defender in the right position and just because he got close to the passing lane by himself, it makes me win the ball easier.

Staying Back While Attacking is often misunderstood. My CDM also joins the attack, but with this instruction, he remains closer to the Midfield. And he doesn’t rush inside like the box. So, whenever you get stuck on the wing and need to reset your attack, you can use the players with these instructions as your target and change the side of the ball. Pretty smart, right?