I am pretty surprised at how good Chain Lightning is in Diablo 4 Season 2. I take down bosses almost 30 levels higher in only 8s. I soloed all Uber Bosses pretty easily, including Duriel that I slayed it without even knowing its mechanics.

With further optimized gear and fully upgraded Vampiric Powers, I chilly beat nightmare dungeon Tier 100 fast at only level 86 multiple times, with no elixir and sometimes no death.

The build has the damage to nuke everything plus the survivability to facetank everything. Be prepared with plenty of Diablo 4 Gold if you want to make such a powerful build.

Key Synergy & Aspects

We use two DPS skills in this build, Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning.

We use Chain Lightning directly on the skill bar to take down both melee and ranged monsters fast for speed farming.

We also use Ball Lightning indirectly for insanely high AOE damage from two sources:

One from the Enchantment Slot where all Critical Hit trigger a static Ball Lightning on the ground at a decent chance, unleashing massive AOE damage. Make sure to get high Crit Chance from gloves and two rings to feel like a Thor.

Another source is from the Ultimate, that every Chain Lightning we cast during the Ultimate will randomly cast Ball Lightnings and melt everything around.

I made the build that it has almost 0 Cooldown Ultimate. We use the Anticipation Vampiric Power to get 20% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction. We use Overflowing Energy that translates Crackling Energy to Cooldown Reduction plus two Crackling Energy generators, one from Destructive Chain Lightning and one from Wizard's Ball Lightning for further Cooldown Reduction.

And I recommend getting one extra Cooldown Reduction Stat on Helmet or Amulet so that it feels like we have 0 Cooldown Ultimate and just use it whenever we want.

But why do we want two indirect sources for Ball Lightning in the build?

This is because Ball Lightning does absolutely insane damage in Season 2. It gets 200% benefit from bonus attack speed and we get tons of bonus attack speed in this build.

We run the Accelerating Aspect on a two-handed weapon for 50% attack speed. The Ultimate adds another 25% attack speed as we have close to 0 Cooldown Ultimate.

Plus, we get another 48% from the Ravenous Vampiric Power. If we have Esu’s Heirloom, we get another 75% movement speed for 3s after using evade. This goes back to another 30% attack speed buff from Ravenous.

And we get another 14% attack speed from gloves. This is already 167% bonus attack speed in total that we more than quadruple the damage of Ball Lightning.

On top of that, we run the Gravitational Aspect to keep the Ball Lightning around us to not waste any Ball Lightning DPS and further improve its damage by another 25% multiplicatively.

As a result, we melt monsters, elites and bosses that are even 70 levels higher than us.

Infinite Mana

We will need infinite mana first to run the build smoothly.

To achieve infinite mana, we will use the Recharging Aspect that we get mana from each Chain Lightning bounce and Invigorating Conduit to recover 12 mana per crackling energy pick up.

Build Tankiness Effectively

Survivability becomes much more important post level 70.

We use Ice Armor in this build to get unlimited barrier for 6s. Plus, the 0 Cooldown Ultimate we basically get infinite barrier because we have the Protection passive that All Cooldown Skill cast grants a Barrier equal to 30% of our Maximum Life. Plus, the random Lightning Spear casted from the Ultimate.

We run the Snowveiled Aspect so that we have both Teleport and Ice Armor as Unstoppable Skill to stay safe if we are getting Crowd Controlled. And we get tons of extra Armor as the Armor bonus is buffed from 10% to 30% in 1.2.0.

In this build, Chain Lightning applies 100% Uptime for Vulnerable to all monsters with the benefit from the legendary node in the Static Surge Board. This is also why we don’t need the passive on Frost Nova.

So, we also take the Ice Armor passive to get further barrier to be really tanky. I can facetank butchers easily with Ice Armor on and even facetank T100 sometimes at only level 86.

We also run the Everliving Aspect for another constant 25% damage reduction as all monsters are Vulnerable. And make sure to get 70% All Resistance in World Tier 4 by combining the Resistance Stats on these 4 positions. We can also tweak the Paragon Board Nodes and use Gems if necessary.

Last, get at least 2% Total Armor Stats on these 4 positions. With the Aspect of Disobedience, we are super tanky and facetank everything. I will fast scan my full gear that passed T100 at level 86. I carefully selected all stats on each piece and I used Maximum Life stats on Rings to improve my survivability to just challenge T100.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Ball Lightning Sorcerer Build: Season 2 Best Tank Endgame Build Guide

Skill Tree

For the Skill Tree, we use Firebolt in Enchantment for burning synergy.

This is combined with Devouring Blaze for further crit damage. If our base crit chance is below 25%, replace Devouring Blaze with Elemental Dominance and replace Firebolt with Chain Lightning in the Enchantment for better performance.

If we got a Recharging Aspect that is above 2.5, we can remove all points from Invigorating Conduit and put them to Conjuration Mastery + Precision Magic for further damage.

Paragon Board

As mentioned earlier, the most important node in the Paragon Board is the Static Surge legendary node that enables our Chain Lightning to apply Vulnerable states to all monsters plus some mana regeneration. We will unlock it the first thing after we are on the second board.

Vampiric Powers

For Vampiric Powers, I recommend using:

• Resilience. It is the best Vampiric Power to help us survive in high tiers.
• Ravenous. It gives us 40-75% extra attack speed for great synergy in the build Anticipation. It helps us get, close to 0 Cooldown Ultimate for much more damage and survivability.
• Accursed Touch. It does great AOE damage to further speed up farming.
• Prey on the Weak. It helps us get another 16% multiplicative damage boost as we apply 100% Vulnerable Uptime to all monsters.

Without Gravitational Aspect

Unfortunately, the Gravitational Aspect is only dropped randomly and cannot be target farmed.

If you haven’t got one, I recommend using the Unbroken Tether Aspect for greater Chain Lightning Synergy or the Control Aspect that can be codex imprinted if you don’t have the Unbroken Tether either.

Skill Rotation

There is no specific skill rotation in this build Skill Rotation.

We are pretty flexible to fight enemies both in close range or at a distance. As the Ultimate is free, just cast Ultimate, keep pressing Chain Lightning and witness everything melt in seconds.

Ending

I really like this Chain Lightning build because it has extremely high attack speed, insane damage, superb survivability and free to cast Ultimate to greatly boost damage whenever I want.

I am not only having a blast but also having lots of fun running it.

Here, we’ll talk about the Witches Festival 2023 for the Elder Scrolls Online.

Witches Festival

The Witches Festival got introduced 2016 and usually returns each year mid or end of October.

The Festival is part of the Base Game and you don’t need any DLCs or ESO + to earn unique rewards or event tickets.

How To Start The Witchmother’s Festival?

If you never participated in the past years in the Witches Festival, you have to complete the quest ‘The Witchmother’s Bargain’ first.

Open the Crown Store and use the free quest starter Crow Caller to summon the Witchmother and start the quest. She will request you to obtain a pumpkin, a sample of guts, and an Essence of Death.

The quickest way to obtain pumpkin and guts is to look at the guild traders and buy them with ESO Gold.

If you don’t want to spend gold, you can find guts by looting small animals and fleshy undeads. And pumpkins can be found in containers or on the ground throughout Tamriel or you can purchase them from the NPC Grocers for 150 gold.

To obtain the Essence of Death, you must kill a boss of any delve. Delves in Cyrodiil are not working to earn Essence of Death.

Once you have all three ingredients (Guts, Pumpkins & Essences of Death), you will be directed to the Witchmother’s Brewery in Auridon, Glenumbra or Stonefalls. You may use any of these three locations, regardless of your alliance. Even so, the quest will still direct you to your alliances zone.

After you deliverd the requested ESO Items to the Witchmother, she will start to prepare her brew. Complete the quest ‘The Witchmother’s Bargain’ to receive the Witchmother’s Whistle Memento.

Double XP - Witchmother’s Whistle Memento

Use the Witchmother’s Whistle memento to summon the Witchmother’s Cauldron. This will grant you and your party a two hour 100% XP buff that stacks with all other xp bonuses.

You can’t use the Memento in Cyrodiil, but you can activate the buff before you enter Cyrodiil to use the double xp buff there.

You don’t have to drink from the Witchmother’s Cauldron in order to gain the xp buff. But if you decide to taste the Witchmother’s Brew, you will transform into a skeleton for a limited time.

If you completed the quest in previous events, you don’t need to acquire the Crow Caller or complete the quest again. You can just open your memento collection, go to tools, and there you can use the Witchmother’s Whistle Memento.

Witches Festival Rewards & Plunder Skulls

During the event, all bosses and monsters will drop unique Plunder Skulls and Dremora Plunders Skulls, which will contain amazing Witches Festival themed loot.

Plunder Skull has a chance to contain the following spooky items:

• Witches Festival Furnishing Recipes
• Witches Festival Furnishings
• Witches Festival Recipes
• Witches Festival Provisioning Recipes
• Various Creepy Crawlies
• Various Crafting Materials
• Dremora Plunder Skulls

You can acquire Dremora Plunder Skulls in addition to the regular Plunder Skulls. These will be the first Plunder Skull drop you receive for each type of boss each day.

A Dremora Plunder Skull contains all the same items found in a regular Plunder Skull, but it also includes a Dremora Motif page based on the type of boss you defeated.

• The Final Boss of the Dragonstar Arena, Maelstrom Arena, Blackrose Prison Arena or Vateshran Arena drop Dremora Motif pages for Bows and Legs.
• Dark Anchor, Geyser Bosses, Dragons and Harrowstorms drop Dremora Motif pages for Daggers and Gloves.
• Delve Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Staves and Belts.
• The final boss of a Group Dungeon drop Dremora Motif pages for Helmets and Maces.
• Public Dungeon and Quest Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Shields and Boots.
• Final Trial Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Swords and Chests.
• World Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Shoulders and Axes.

Dremora Plunder Skulls may also contain the following additional rewards:

• Grave Dancer Style Pages
• Witches Festival Writs
• Glenmoril Treasure Maps
• Runeboxes with more collectibles

Witches Festival Writs

The Witches Festival Writs work much like Master Writs. They can be traded, mailed, and sold.

Once you accept the contract, however, they are bound to you.

If you complete 13 Witches Festival Writs, you will earn the Witch’s Infernal Hat and for completing 28 Witches Festival Writs will earn the title “Witch”.

By completing Witches Festival Writs, you also have a chance to find Hollowjack Style pages.

Tome Of Forbidden Appetites Memento

There can be found also new items inside Dremora Plunder Skulls.

You can collect a new Memento, the Tome of Forbidden Appetites Memento. And you can also find a new Outfit Style, the Crowborne Hunter armor Style.

Ghost Netch Pet

Furthermore, you have this year a chance to obtain the new adorable Ghost Netch pet.

Collect and Combine ten possessed shreds to unlock the Ghost Netch pet.

Witches Festival Dailies - Plucking The Crow Quest

In 2021, ESO added a daily reaptable Witches Festival Quest.

You can start the Plucking the Crow Quest at the Impresario’s tents or inside of Olyve’s Brewery.

For this quest, you have to gather 50 cursed feathers. Cursed feathers can be collected by opening any Plunder Skull.

After you have collected 50 cursed feathers, return to Olyve’s Brewery and follow the instructions.

Then, use the portal to fight & defeat the Crowborne Horror.

Completing this daily repeatable quest will reward you with three Plunder Skulls.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online 2024: Whitestrake’s Mayhem Event Is Back! - A Comprehensive Guide

Witches Festival House - Exorcised Coven Cottage

During the Witches Festival, you have also the opportunity to purchase a unique house.

The Exorcised Coven Cottage will be purchasable via the Crown Store or for 250,000 gold during the Witches Festival if you have the Witches Festival Achievement ‘An Unsparing Harvest’ unlocked.

This spooky and cozy little cottage is located in Glenumbra and is only available during the Witches Festival.

If you complete all achievements related to the Witches Festival, you can unlock the ‘Sun’s Dusk Reaper’ title.

Witches Festival Event Tickets

You can also earn Event Tickets during the Witches Festival.

You will earn 2 Event Tickets per day per account by defeating any boss monster in the Elder Scrolls Online. That can be, for example, a boss from a quest, in a delve, dolmen, world boss, trials, etc.

Don’t forget to loot the boss to get your Event Tickets.

Impresario Event Merchant

Of course, the Impresario Event Merchant is also opening her store during the Witches Festival.

This year, she is offering:

• Passion Dancer Blossom fragments,
• The first fragment for the Hoardhunter Ursauk mount,
• Witches Festival themed furnishings
• Hoardhunter Ursauk Mount
• Witches Grab Bags
• Crowborne Hunter Style pages
• Crowborne Hunter Style
• A Tome of Forbidden Appetites Memento
• Ghost Netch pet & more

Witches Grab Bags

Several rewards from previous Witches Fesitvals can no longer be found in Plunder Skulls.

These rewards are now inlcuded in the Witches Grab Bags, which you can purchase for 2 event tickets from the Impresario Event Merchant.

Inside the Witches Grab Bags you can find:

• Skeletal Marionette Memento Fragments for the Throwing Bones Memento
• Apple Bobbing Cauldron Memento
• Skeletal Marionette Memento
• Hollowjack Spectre Mask
• Pumpkin Spectre Mask
• Scarecrow Spectre Mask
• Thicketman Spectre Mask
• Marshmallow Toasty Treat Emote
• Witch’s Bonfire Dust Memento
• Bonedust Pigments for the Witch-Tames Bear Dog
• Witchmother’s Servant Style the Ghastly Visitation Memento
• Bound style pages for the Witchmother’s Servant Style

Indrik Vendor

The Indrik Vendor will also open her shop during the Event.

She offers during the fourth quarter of 2023:

• Nascent Indrik feathers
• Pure Snow Indrik berries & Crimson Indrik berries
• Frost-Light Indrik Pet & Rosethorn Indrik Pet

Philius Dormier

Philius Dormier, the Impresario’s Assistant, will also open his shop during the Witches Festival.

He offers during the fourth quarter of 2023:

• Unstable morpholith pet fragments
• Dagonic Quasigriff Mount fragments

Forza Motorsport has been around for 18 years and has made some great strides with every release. While some have been better than others, it has remained near the forefront of simulation racing games.

Turn 10 Studios’ latest game in the series claims to be a new era for not only the Forza franchise but racing games in general. In a lot of areas, it backs those claims, but it falls short in a few too many spots that keep it from being an all-time great racing game.

Pros

First, let’s talk about accessibility. Forza Motorsport has some of the deepest accessibility options I’ve seen in a racing game. Whether you are a longtime racer completely new or need help for a variety of reasons, you can tailor the game to what you need. It’s basically Turn 10’s way of ensuring all are welcome to play.

There are over 500 Forza Motorsport Cars to choose from at the game’s launch, which is quite a bit less than the 700 the past games have offered. Still, the offerings are strong, with a mix of modern and classic cars of all different classes.

For the most part, each car feels unique, with some offering tighter turning while others just zip through the course with no remorse. Getting comfortable behind each car you choose is arguably the best gameplay aspect Forza Motorsport has to offer.

All 20 courses in the game at launch are beautifully recreated. Every inch on the track looks spoton to what you would see in real life, if not better. Even the sound design is a second to none experience that helps immerse you into each race.

The game features a day and night cycle that is incredible when running long races. I suffer from an astigmatism, one of the symptoms aside from general blurry vision, causes bright lights to display differently to my eyes in the dark. When racing at night, the lights cause the same vision issues. I would suffer driving at night in real life without my glasses or the wrong pair. Personally, that’s one of the aspects I absolutely love.

Cons

But with everything Forza Motorsport does right, there’s quite a bit it does wrong. Race settings are limited to one of the three rule sets. Rather than be able to do races where you have full damage or rewinds on, you have to choose between one or the other. It’s an unnecessary limitation, especially if I’m playing free play races by myself.

Speaking of damage, that’s one area where the game really disappoints. Even with full damage enabled, you can drive full speed into a wall or a car and your vehicle will only show various scratches on the surface. Sure, there will be damage within your car like your suspensions or whatnot, but that takes away from a bit of the realism Turn 10 was likely aiming for.

Your car looks the same, whether it’s cosmetic or full damage after taking a major hit. For a game with as much attention to detail in areas, like rain, track surface, and dirt, the damage omissions are a real head scratcher .

Then, there are little things that bother me like not being able to cycle through cars when looking to buy them. By that, I mean once you get to the end of the list instead of going back to the beginning, you have to manually go backwards through everything.

Another one is searching for liveries for your car. It often takes a long time for them to load up, which leads me to just backing out and doing something else in the game.

Again, these are small things, but it’s enough to annoy me when playing. Career Mode is where you spend most of your time outside of the game’s Multiplayers. And to be completely honest, it’s a big letdown. It follows a basic formula of practice, race, upgrade your cards if you can and repeat. There’s no real feeling of investment in the mode aside from trying to earn Forza Motorsport Credits (in-game currency) to buy or upgrade more cars.

It would be nice if there was more of an atmosphere surrounding the events in your career. Multiplayer allows you to race with friends in private lobbies or online with others around the world. There are featured races to take part in after you complete qualifier races as well as other events like Rivals, which essentially are time trials.

Conclusion

Overall, Forza Motorsport is a fun racing game. Each car feels enjoyable once you learn its nuances and the tracks all look incredible. It’s just a disappointment. It comes with a run-of-the-mill career mode that doesn’t keep you wanting to play for enjoyment, but more a feeling of requirement.

With content updates during its life cycle, Forza Motorsport can become a great game in its own right. For now, however, it remains just a solid game with a little too much empty space off the track.

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Orian Preacher

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Udirangr Warwolf & Blackfeather Ranger (For More Mobility)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here, I want to talk about the first hint of POE 3.23 that we were given by GGG two days ago, make some wild and unfounded predictions, and then try to use those predictions to figure out a plan for the rest of the season.

GGG’s 3.23 Timeline

If you haven’t heard, on October 9th, GGG released their initial timeline for the next 3.23 content expansion. They said they were initially going to have the next league start in November, but moved that to quote early December.

Apparently, there are some big changes coming. Maybe some new POE Items will also appear. I assume they mean that the mechanic is big and needs some time to be fleshed out and coated.

But, it’s possible they mean something bigger to the game itself, something like big changes to the passive tree or atlas tree or maybe even something that modifies and hopefully shortens the campaign. That would probably be a pipe dream. But I’m sure we’ll hear about it soon.

TOTA Events?

One real prediction I have relates to these end of season events: they’re going to have three, each lasting about a week. My first thought was some kind of race. But I’m pretty sure these events will 100% have to do with the Trial of the Ancestors. However, no matter what kind of event it is, it is very necessary to prepare sufficient POE Currency to improve yourself.

The use of the word tournament always felt a little awkward to me with TOA, but it would be very easy to create a kind of sub season event using Trial of the Ancestors.

Imagine a week-long contest where the most powerful minions turtle were removed from the warrior pool or where all the Chieftain damage was reduced by 100% or where the only minions available are those little dinky ones that you start with.

My prediction is that the final 3 weeks of the season will be three themed events for Trial of the Ancestors, featuring significant modifications to the gameplay of that mechanic and it sounds like it could actually be a lot of fun.

So, I definitely want to make time for it, maybe even figure out a Ruthless TOA build. But when exactly?

Predicting 3.23 Release Date

We know that they said the next league will start in early December. I don’t know if they’ve officially committed to this, but Crucible, Sanctum Lake of Kalandra and Sentinel all started on a Friday. That leaves us five possible days.

I doubt they would intend on starting on the 22nd or 29th of December, otherwise why say in early December?

Also Read: Best Strategies To Farm Divine Orbs In POE 3.22 TOTA League - 3 Ways

At least December 1st, 8th, and 15th, take note Exiles, that means that those three-week-long events could start as early as November 10th, just over 4 weeks from now.

But let’s see if we can narrow it down between those three dates even further. Looking at what other games are being released, there’s pretty much nothing. I’m seeing a re-release of some Arkham stuff. There’s a dragon quest game, something with Warhammer. I don’t even know what that is.

Honestly, this looks pretty barren, so there are no restrictions for when they could release something. And since Diablo 4 Season 2 starts a new season on October 17th, that looks like it’s not going to have an impact on the Path of Exile season either way, but more distance would be better particularly for those week-long events.

Because of that, I doubt that GGG is targeting a December 1st league start that leaves us the 8th and the 15th. This sounds obvious, but why say we’re targeting early December if you mean the literal middle of the month? I mean, in that case, the word ‘early’ just doesn’t need to be there. So, based on that, I’m now calling it we get the next league start for the new Path of Exile league on December 8th, 2023.

My Plan

Now, let’s just assume that I’m correct. And we’re going to use that to try to come up with a plan for the rest of the season.

If the next league starts on December 8th, then we will get those three-week long events starting on November 17th. That means we have about five weeks and just a couple of days more left in the normal part of Ancestor league.

And I want to push more of that late end game. I was trying to figure out all the classes and the atlas. I really wanted to have one Ruthless guide per starting class. And lucky for me, I only have one left and Cold DoT Witch is a darn nice endgame class.

I also haven’t forgotten about the Blight. What I decided is that I wanted to make a Ruthless specific Blight guide. So, I’m leveling that Cold DoT Witch back in my SSF, where my atlas tree is already prepped and ready for it. That means that over the next 3 to 5 weeks, you all can expect a lot of watching me take a shot at all of those endgame bosses and when I get frustrated with Ruthless bossing, then I’ll just be Ruthless blighting so you can expect a whole lot of Ruthless specific Blight content as well.

I’m really looking forward to POE 3.23!

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

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

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

ICC Raid Intro

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

How To Get All Of Your Gear?

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

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

How To Get Tier Gear?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How To Get Marks?

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

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

How To Get More Emblems Of Frost?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fastest Way To Gear Up Your Character

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gold Farming Dilemma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vampiric Powers & Theory Crafting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Endgame Exploration

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

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

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

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

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

Multiplicative Experience Points

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

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

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

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

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

If I wanted to look through every single squad, every team, and every league on FIFA, it would take me hours. Sure, it can be tempting to do this when you’re trying to pick your next career mode save. But what if I told you there was an easy way to always get the best team with just four simple steps?

Here, I’ll be showing you my step-by-step guide to help you choose the ideal Career Mode save every single time. Of course, if you want to dominate FC 24’s Career Mode, you still need to prepare a large amount of FUT 24 Coins to upgrade your players.

Just like everyone else, I used to start dozens of saves. I would play one preseason game, then get bored with playing Career Mode. Since I started thinking a little more about what I actually wanted to do in my save rather than just picking the first one, I thought of my saves are now averaging closer to a full season.

Step 1: Choose Your Playing Location

The first thing you need to find out is the general area of the world you want to play in.

If you’re totally unsure, this could be a continent. But if you’re a bit more confident, then it could be a specific nation. Each continent on FIFA has different strengths and weaknesses.

Europe offers a fully licensed Cup Competitions with the Champions League, the Europa League, and the Conference League as well as having the biggest selection of leagues to choose from. The sheer amount of teams and leagues here means there’s always going to be multiple options that meet the criteria you’re setting.

North America only features one league, but the MLS is a totally unique experience. Annoyingly, they don’t actually have any Cup Competitions here and this can make the journey a little less fun.

South America also only has one licensed league, but you can play in Brazil if you don’t mind the fake players. You do get to play in a license continental Cup Competitions with teams from leagues that aren’t actually playable in Career Mode and it does provide a chance to explore football in a totally different culture.

Finally, we have Asia, which is probably the most underrated Career Mode continent. Asia includes an unlicensed continental competition and features a surprising amount of leagues, including the Saudi, Indian, and Korean leagues, which I barely ever see anyone doing saves in.

Hopefully, at least one of these regions sounds like exactly what you want in your next save. When you’ve decided on a continent, drill down and have a look at some of the nations inside it. Each nation has a different feel. They’ll play in different ways and they have different atmospheres. This can make neighboring countries feel unique on the pitch.

Belgium, Holland, and Germany are totally different in Career Mode, despite having very similar cultures as nations. Throughout this guide, I’ll give you some examples of the system working.

So, let’s say that I wanted a fairly long save. I think Europe has the deepest league structures on the game, so that’s the ideal location for this first step of our example.

Also Read: EA FC 24: 3 Most Promising And Exciting New Dribbling Techniques!

Step 2: Define Your Desired Save

The second and probably most crucial step in selecting the perfect Career Mode save is to decide on the type of save your most interested in doing.

You can generally categorize teams into one of these four main groups.

On FIFA, I’d say every single league has at least two teams who are capable of winning the championship who call these the Championship Contenders. These teams are instantly competing for league titles in cups in Season 1. They typically feature the best players and are considered the top teams in that nation. Bayern München, Ulsan Hyandai, and Inter Miami are examples of this kind of team.

The majority of leagues also have a selection of Historic Teams. These are the teams that might have experienced success in the past, but are not currently at their peak. They often have large fan bases, maybe even impressive stadiums. But they also usually have a squad of very average and very overpaid players. I would say that D.C. United, Everton, and Rosario Central are all Historic Fallen Giants.

The majority of the rest of the teams that aren’t Championship Contenders or Historic, I would call Middle Of the Road Teams. These teams are maybe a few strategic signings here and there from becoming title contenders. While they may have a couple of top players in their team, usually up front to be honest, they usually lack the overall quality usually in defense to compete for the title. Think of Crystal Palace, Al shabab, and Orlando City. That’s three good examples of teams that are fairly average, but are very close to being very good.

Finally, the most common type of team to use on FIFA is the Road To Glory Teams. This option usually is a longer term challenge where you have to rebuild an entire squad. Typically, Road to Glory saves involve a newly promoted team or someone who’s looking to establish themselves in a higher division. This generally includes the two or three worst teams in every single league.

If you like the sound of one of these four categories, then that’s great because now you’ve got a location and you’ve got a career path.

Let’s go back to our Europe save example. I said I want it to be long, so surely a Road To Glory Team would be ideal for us here. We’ll be taking over one of the worst teams in the nation that we pick.

Step 3: Determine Your Team’s Level

For step three of our system, we also need to determine what kind of team rank we want to be using.

If you’re someone that doesn’t enjoy using 50 rated players in the lowest leagues of island, you might be looking for a 3-star team here. If you want to be trophy hunting, you also want to be in a really bad league. You might be interested in trying to find a 1-star title contender.

Have a think about how good you’d like your starting point to be because this will easily narrow down the amount of teams and the amount of leagues you can use from the continent you’ve picked.

You’ll never ever get a 5-star Polish team in Career Mode or a 0.5-star French team, so this is the step that will filter out most of the teams in this system.

I could easily pick a 4-star team for my European Road to Glory save. There are loads of teams around that rating in Germany, Spain, England, and Italy. If I wanted a long Road To Glory though, I’m going to pick a one and a half star team, which means we’re going to have a team from League 2.

Step 4: Utilize SoFIFA for Team Search

Now, let’s round off our system. If you’re struggling to find the team with the in-game tools, you can have a quick search on SoFIFA.

You can easily search for teams with certain overall ratings and you can also check things out like the squad’s average age or the amount of potential that every single team has if that’s important to the kind of career mode you’re looking to do.

Back to our example. It looks like AFC Wimbledon could be the ideal save for me. It’s in Europe. They’re at the lowest level in the country and they’re the right star rating to match with everything that I’m looking for. They definitely seem like the perfect save for me to start.

So, let’s quickly run through two other examples of using this system just so that you understand exactly how it works.

I said Asia is fun, so let’s try and find a cool team from there. I fancy playing with a Historic Fallen Giant save, so that’s a team that’s around two and a half stars in Asia. Last year, we could have picked Guangzhou Evergrande who actually spent £1.7 billion on a new 100,000 seated stadium that they never finished. But they’ve actually been relegated on FIFA 24.

Suwon Bluewings is the team we probably go for then: four Korean titles, two Asian Champions Leagues between 1997 and 2008, but nothing since. They have a decent squad. Some of our players are in the 70s, but the majority are in the 60s, so they are actually going to be able to be fun inside Career Mode.

Let’s do one last example. How about a 3-star Middle Of The Road Team in South America? I want to use licensed clubs with real players, so we only have Argentina to choose from. This makes it super easy to see that we actually have several options here. I guess I’d have to just pick on the history kits and stadium I like the most.

We actually have some pretty big teams for a save in this kind of area. We have Newell’s Old Boys, Rosario Central, Banfield, Unión de Santa Fe...... There’s so many choices. So again, one of these is likely to be the perfect Career Mode save for me on my next go.

Hopefully, you can now understand how the system works that I use for every single save I do.

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

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

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

Ascendancies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Passives

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

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

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

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

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

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

Equipment

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

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

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

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

Weapons

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

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

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

Rings

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

Flasks

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

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

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

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

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

Gem Links

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Do you want to get that Level 40 mount by the time you actually hit level 40 or get that Epic Mount at level 60? If you do, you must have enough WOW Classic Hardcore Gold. Here is a guide to help you obtain raw gold, specifically while leveling.

Intro

I’m doing this mostly from a Solo Self Found perspective. Because I believe that even if trading is allowed, some players will play on a Solo Self Found basis. And for raw gold, most of it comes from vendoring items anyway, so you can do it completely without having to rely on other people to buy whatever you are selling.

Having access to raw gold early will also be incredibly valuable as the purchasing power of each individual gold is at its absolute peak early in a server’s lifespan. And the purchasing power will go down every single day as more and more people get access to raw gold.

What I mean by purchasing power is that 100 gold will get you more stuff in Week 1 than 100 gold will in Week 2, due to how inflation works. This is important because of, for example, investments or if you just want to stack up on some materials, you might want later and get them while they’re cheap.

Get Skinning

Advice number one is to grab Skinning.

Skinning is an insane profession to have while leveling. Because it simply benefits everyone in terms of increasing the amount of gold you get while leveling up.

Skinning also allows you to skin beasts for additional materials. And although they do not give the most amount of additional to begin with, this scales incredibly well with your level.

By level 10, you might have gained a couple extra silvers. But, by level 40, you will most likely have obtained anywhere between 10 and 40 extra gold, depending on how you level.

Some of the locations where you can farm for the most raw gold per hour, you actually end up killing beasts. In that case, having Skinning will further increase your gold per hour from those locations, pushing you closer to that 40 gold extra by level 40, which is basically half of your level 40 mount.

And especially on Hardcore Servers, many people will choose professions that benefit their profession in terms of survival. Two big professions here are Alchemy & Engineering.

Alchemy is mainly supported by Herbalism, and Engineering is mainly supported by Mining. This means the most popular professions on these servers will be Alchemy, Engineering, Herbalism and Mining.

This is important. Because that means while everyone is leveling up, there will be a lot of skinnable mobs just laying on the ground giving you free skill-ups & free Hardcore Gold. And there are many locations you will find during your Hardcore Journey where you can just sit in one location and skin other people’s mobs, like, for example, the Yeti Cave in Dun’Morogh.

So seriously, if raw gold is something you’re looking for, I always recommend Skinning. Even if you want to have Herbalism & Mining eventually, I would use Skinning while leveling up to 60, then swap professions & farm herbs and mining veins with that level 60 mount. This is also because Herbalism & Mining nodes will be incredibly competitive at launch and will slow down your leveling process, while Skinning you can pretty much always keep up with your level.

Now, when farming raw gold, there are mainly 2 different farms you want to think about: Humanoid Farms & Beast Farms.

Humanoid Farms will give you raw gold by itself through looted silver values, and it will give you Cloth, which you can either sell for vendor loot, or turn into Bandages for even more gold before selling it.

The bonus of Humanoid Farms is that they also have a bigger drop rate on Grey, White & Green items, specifically grey items like Weapons, which can vendor for about a gold per piece (plus / minus). This means in some cases, Humanoid Farms can be better in terms of gold per hour, but they also rely more on RNG because a lot of gold comes from those Grey weapon drops.

From Beast Farms, you will get a very steady amount of gold per hour due to your gold value being derived from what the mob actually drops on a regular basis. Whiskers from Cats, Mane’s from Wolves, Crocodile Pelt and so on, even Gorillas drop a lot of good vendor value items.

For Beast Farms, you can also obviously increase that gold amount by having Skinning, like we just talked about earlier.

Also Read: WOW Classic Hardcore: How To Make Gold From Level 30-40?

Raw Gold Farming Locations

So with this being said, let me show you some of my favourite locations for where to farm for raw gold in Classic WoW.

First off, let’s cover 4 different farming locations I personally use in order to farm enough gold for my level 40 mount, all of which are beast farms and you want to have Skinning.

You have the Tigers in Swamp of Sorrows. Now, I say Tigers here because they will usually give you the most valuable items, but the tigers are also found throughout the entire zone, where you will also find crocodiles & spiders, which are definitely worth killing.

You also have the Gorillas in Stranglethorn Vale. And here, I will show you 2 different farms that are pretty close to each other, giving you 2 different places to farm.

These Gorillas have a pretty lucrative loot-table and will give you the best raw gold you can get at this level, especially if combined with Skinning.

And the farm I personally do the most: Tigers in Badlands.

This one is incredibly slept on and I don’t see many people farming here, which is why I personally really like it here. Because there’s almost never any competition, and they can drop really good vendor-value items, like Long Soft Tails, Bristly Whiskers, and Wicked Claw.

You also have some farms past level 40. For example, my personal favourite is this one killing Steeljaw Snappers in Tanaris.

This one is very known from farming Turtle Meat and as a pretty decent experience farm. But these turtles also drop pretty good vendor loot, even better if combined with Skinning.

How To Maximize Your Raw Gold?

With farming covered, there are a couple more steps you can take to maximize how much raw gold you make and how to make sure you can afford your level 40 mount and get closer to that level 60 mount.

First off, you can save a lot of gold by not training all of your class abilities. Let’s be real, in Classic WoW you get way more abilities than you actually need, at least while leveling. And many of your abilities are only useful in very niché situations, in which case I rather not learn them until I have to and save my gold instead.

Exactly what you should and should not train depends on each individual class. But personally, I only train spells I use on a regular basis, plus any class-buffs I get access to and any defensive abilities I get.

As a Warlock, for example, I can opt not to train Soulstone, I can also choose one or two demons and therefore only train abilities for the demons I actually use. I can also save gold by not training every single curse I get access to. Because personally, I don’t use all of them until very high levels, anyway.

Plus, some classes get a free level 40 mount, like Warlocks & Paladins. But, pick and choose which spells to actually train and upgrade, and you can save a lot of gold while leveling.

When questing, if the quest doesn’t offer an upgrade, pick the item with the highest vendor value. This sounds obvious. But some leveling addons have auto-complete enabled where they automatically pick items in slot 1 or slot 2 or anything your class can use, or maybe you personally also always choose whatever Cloth Item you get from the quest if you play a Cloth Class. Then, check if it’s an upgrade atferwards.

So my advice here is, check if the quest offers an upgrade before accepting a quest reward. And if there are no upgrades, choose whatever has the highest vendor value.

Of course, if you want to involve trading and using the Auction House, you can also make a lot more gold.