When thinking about each new class in Path of Exile 2, we really try to think about what can make combat feel different from all the others. For the Mercenary, that difference is the crossbow.

A crossbow is fundamentally different from a regular bow because it fires instantly instead of needing to be drawn back. This means that you need immediate feedback. Clicking the fire button should make the character shoot instantly. Just like in a shooter.

As soon as we experienced that, we realised that there are a lot of design lessons to learn from shooters, and so we fully embraced them. No matter what kind of weapon you want to choose, as long as you have enough POE Currency, you don’t have to worry!

Different Features Of Mercenary’s Crossbow

In Path of Exile 2, we have crossbows that look like sniper rifles, shotguns, and assault rifles.

But in order to really get shooter-like gameplay, we wanted to go further. In Path of Exile 2, we now support WASD movement. You can now walk around in any direction, independent of aiming.

In fact, if this is your preferred method of gameplay, you can use it on any class regardless of what weapon type you are using. You can change between Click to Move or WASD at any time.

You can only hold two crossbows at a time, but Path of Exile 2 is all about interesting combinations of abilities. And this is where Ammo skills come in. This is a Burst Shot crossbow and right now, I have Armour Piercing Ammo equipped, which makes it very effective when facing a group of enemies, since it pierces right through them.

But there are other ammos, too. For a bigger single target, it might be a good idea to switch to Incendiary. The more projectiles hit the target, the stronger the ignite, so you will want to get up nice close and personal with this one.

If you have a bunch of targets running at you, you might want to slow them down. In this case, you could switch to Permafrost Burst Shot. Shooting a bunch of smaller enemies at range will chill them, and potentially even freeze them in place.

Also Read: Gameplay & Walkthrough Guide For Druid In Path Of Exile 2

Once you have some frozen enemies, though, you can switch back to Armour Piercing. Shooting a frozen enemy with Armour Piercing Burst Shot will explode the ice, doing a huge amount of damage to all nearby enemies.

Another feature crossbows have is attachments. This is a grenade launcher. When I equip it, it appears on the underside of the crossbow. These attachments are just like skill gems, so you effectively get extra skill slots, and you can augment these with support gems just like regular skills.

These grenades take a while to explode, so it’s a good idea to pair them with some kind of crowd control, like Permafrost Burst Shot. We have other grenades too, though. This attachment is a Flash Grenade. It does barely any damage, but it does do a huge amount of stun. It can be a great opener before you run into combat.

Oil Grenade is another one of the attachments. Firing one of these grenades coats the ground and nearby enemies in oil. Oil slows enemies down, so it’s another useful crowd control mechanic.

Another useful thing oil can do is to be set on fire. Any burning enemy or explosion will ignite the oil, causing extra burning damage. One of the problems with Burst Shot crossbows is that each pellet doesn’t do much damage individually. This means that if enemies have Armour, then it will be very effective preventing that damage.

But thankfully, you can equip an additional crossbow in your second weapon set to deal with the weaknesses of your primary weapon. This is a Rapid Shot crossbow. Rapid Shot is great for closing on enemies because you can shoot while running.

In Path of Exile 2, you now have the ability to use some skills while moving. Being able to create skills like this opens up a lot of new design space and allows you to really increase the pace of combat.

The Armour Piercing version of Rapid Shot slowly erodes a monster’s armour. Once the armour is fully broken, you can easily switch back to Burst shot to deal much more damage.

Being able to run while shooting with Rapid Shot is also great for when you want to perform a fighting retreat.

Using Permafrost ammo with Rapid Shot is also useful if you need to retreat. When you shoot the ground, it creates ice crystals. If you draw monsters back over these crystals, they explode, chilling the monsters. It’s great if you want to set up a safe zone before pulling the next pack.

Slowing enemies down can come in handy if you want to use the Incendiary version of Rapid Shot. Using this skill requires that you charge up a little before it fires, but as it continues to heat up, it will do more and more damage.

It has a really large clip size, so you can just keep firing and firing with it. But the other really useful feature is that when the crossbow is heated up, it adds extra fire damage to any grenade that you launch.

Explosive grenades will work equally as well with Flash or Oil grenades, too. If you use it with Oil grenades, the oil will catch fire immediately.

Another crossbow type that you can find is Power Shot. This one works just like a classic sniper rifle. Use it with Armour Piercing ammo and it will penetrate armour on targets, so it’s a good idea to use when something is really tough.

Now this skill has another interesting interaction with Armour Break. If the enemy has its armour broken then your power shot hits a weak spot and does a huge amount of single target damage, with a bunch of extra stun for good measure.

Now, the Incendiary version of Power Shot is more like a rocket launcher. It does a big explosive blast at a distance.

One of the really useful features of this version is that you can explode any grenades that happen to be on the ground. This combo also works really well with Incendiary Rapid Shot. I’m going to charge up the heat on my crossbow, shoot out a bunch of grenades, and then start the fireworks with a Power Shot.

The Ice version of Power Shot creates frost walls at a distance. This is great for crowd controlling monsters in tight passages. The wall segments have other uses, too. If they get destroyed by monsters, then they will explode doing a small amount of damage.

Do you remember that Burst Shot combo with frozen enemies we did earlier? That works with ice walls, too. Let’s put Burst Shot back on. Now I can fill up this area with ice walls, then shoot them with Armour Piercing Burst Shot for a huge amount of damage.

Conclusion

And that’s the Mercenary. It feels totally different from anything we’ve seen before and shows you the range of what is possible in Path of Exile 2.

In Elden Ring, you’re going to find many different items. But the Deathroot item is something that you are going to need for not only a questline, but also to get some really great rewards in Elden Ring.

So, here, I will show you where all 9 of these Deathroots are located in Elden Ring. Also, I will take you through the questline that’s going to start here at the Bestial Sanctum.

If you want this process to go smoothly, you'd better use Elden Ring Runes to buy some good weapons and armor to improve yourself!

Undead Mariner 1

But before we get to the Bestial Sanctum, let’s go ahead and gather all of the Deathroots within Limgrave and Liurnia.

Your first Deathroot is going to be found in Summonwater Village. You can start at the Summonwater Village Outskirts Site of Grace, and you can run into the village. There’s going to be a Tibia Mariner there. You need to kill him and grab the first Deathroot.

Deathtouched Catacombs

Staying in Limgrave, you’re going to Deathtouched Catacombs.

Head to the Deathtouched Catacombs and you’re going to go through the entire dungeon in order to kill the end boss. You will fight a Black Knife Assassin for the boss of this dungeon.

But after you defeat the boss, there’s a chest there. Open it up and that’s going to be your second Deathroot.

Undead Mariner 2

At this point, we’re going to move into Liurnia of the Lakes.

Right on the east side on the map, there’s going to be another Mariner. All you need to do for the Deathroot is to kill him and grab his Deathroot from him.

Black Knife Catacombs

At this point, you’re going to continue north all the way up until the Black Knife Catacombs.

You want to make your way through that dungeon all the way until the boss room. At the end, you will fight a Cemetery Shade with a bunch of skeletons.

But after you kill him, you will have access to the chest in the middle of the room. Grab that chest and there is going to be your Deathroot.

Guraanq Questline Check In

At this point, we’re going to go visit Guraanq, possibly for a second time, depending on if you started this questline or not already. I will assume that you have. But if you have not, you need to head here to the Third Church of Marika.

Right behind it is going to be a portal that will drop you off right here in front of the Bestial Sanctum. Gurranq Beast Clergyman is going to be there and you need to give him all the Deathroots you have received so far.

You should have 4 at this point, and that will net you the Ash of War:Beast's Roar, Bestial Vitality, Bestial Sling, the Clawmark Seal, and the Beast Eye (which is going to allow you to detect when other Deathroots are in the area).

There is something to take note of here within Guraanq’s questline, because after you give him the 4 Deathroots, the next time you come back to him, he is going to try to attack you because he’s gone mad. You need to get him down to half health and then he will calm down. You need to rest at the Site of Grace and then give him the rest of your Deathroots in order to complete the questline.

Undead Mariner 3

The next area in the Lands Between you want to venture to is the Wyndham Ruins in Altus Plateau.

There’s going to be a Mariner there who you need to kill, and he is going to drop for you your next Deathroot.

However, in order to get to Altus Plateau, you need to get two separate pieces of a medallion - Dectus Medallion (Left) & Dectus Medallion (Right). The first of which is going to be located at Fort Height in Limgrave, and the second piece is going to be located all the way to the east in Fort Faroth in Caelid.

Once you have both of those medallions, you can go up to the lift and you can get right into Altus Plateau to find this Deathroot.

Gelmir Hero’s Grave

Next up, you’re going to be heading into the Gelmir Hero’s Grave, and you will be following the Chariot all the way down the lava path until you get to the point on the right where you can jump down a little hole that will take you directly to the boss door.

And after defeating the Red Wolf boss, there’s going to be a chest at the very end of the room, and that is going to hold your next Deathroot.

Also Read: Elden Ring: How To Find All 13 Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones?

Undead Mariner 4

Next up, we are going to head north to the Mountaintops of the Giants, where there is yet another Mariner who you need to kill in order to get the next Deathroot.

Take out the skulls rolling around, dispose of the Mariner, and that Deathroot will be yours.

Giants’ Mountaintop Catacombs

You’re now going to head to the Giant’s Mountaintop Catacombs, where you need to make your way through that entire dungeon to get to the end boss fight. It can be a little tricky to get through, but if you feel like you’re going insane, you’re going in the right direction.

Destroy the Ulcerated Tree Spirit at the end of this dungeon, and in a chest at the end of the Boss Arena is going to be your second to last Deathroot.

Hidden Haligtree Path

At this point, we’re going to need to pick up our very last Deathroot, which is located in the Hidden Path to the Haligtree.

Now, there is a very special way you need to get here. You’re going to need the entire Secret Medallion. The first half is going to be located in the Liurnia of the Lakes, given to you by Old Albus, and the second portion of the medallion is going to be located in Castle Sol, on the Mountaintops of the Giants.

After you defeat the boss, continue running through that area and take the lift up, and you will be able to grab this medallion at this location.

You’re then going to take it back to the Grand Lift of Rold, go up to the lift, and it will give you a second option to lift the Secret Medallion, and then you can access this area.

Now that you have access to the Hidden Path to the Haligtree, you’re going to see that your Beast Eye is going to quiver. So, I want you to follow the path (the invisible pathways) until you get to the portion where you can jump off and fight one of the very large Land Octopus.

Right behind that octopus is going to be a lever, which is going to open the boss door. Dispose of the octopus, pull the lever, turn around, and follow the path all the way until you see the golden boss fog. You will not miss it because it’s going to be directly in front of you.

But before you fight this boss, take off your weapons, because it’s going to be a Stray Mimic Tear, and whatever you have equipped, it will also have equipped. So, it can be either as easy or as hard as you want it to be.

After defeating the Stray Mimic Tear, there is a chest in the back of the room. Open that chest and you will receive your very last and ninth Deathroot.

Finish Guraanq Questline

At this point, we’re going to tie up loose ends with Guraanq, so you’re going to head back to the Bestial Sanctum in Caelid, and you’re going to approach him to give him your final remaining 5 Deathroots.

After you give him the 5 remaining Deathroots, you are going to get some really cool dialogue from Guraanq, and then you are also going to be rewarded with a few different Elden Ring Items.

And just a side note here, you can also return every single Deathroot as you get it.

And after you do his entire questline, you will receive an Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone, Gurranq’s Beast Claw, the Beastclaw Greathammer, the Stone of Gurranq, and the Beast Claw Incantation.

That is going to be the entirety of Guraanq’s questline, as well as all 9 Deathroot locations.

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

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

Team 1: Philadelphia Eagles

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

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

Fun Factors

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

Challenges

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

Team 2: Baltimore Ravens

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

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

Fun Factors

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

Challenges

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

Also Read: Top 5 Madden 24 Offensive Playbooks

Team 3: Detroit Lions

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

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

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

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

Fun Factors

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

Challenges

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

Team 4: Cleveland Browns

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

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

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

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

Fun Factors

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

Challenges

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

Team 5: Chicago Bears

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

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

Fun Factors

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

Challenges

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

Which team’s journey captivated you the most?

BizzCon launched to exciting fanfare, moderate disappointment, some controversy, but overall satisfaction. And in that controversy, we have Season of Discovery.

Season of Discovery is Blizzard’s take on Classic Plus. It has completely changed how classic will be played, and what at its core is that it is still Classic WoW. The changes are staggering and amazing.

By the way, if you want to be far ahead of other players in WoW Classic SOD, having enough WoW Classic SOD Gold must be the key to your victory!

Quick Summary Of Content

The most exciting change of Season of Discovery is none other than the Rune Engraving system.

It’s a new class augmentation, where by exploring the world, doing quests, killing bosses, or whatnot, you are able to equip spells, abilities, some item effects, some abilities from other classes, some racial abilities, and some enchantment directly onto your armor, and acquire those passives or abilities.

When we start the game, the level cap is only 1 to 25, and we only have access to three armor slots: chest, legs, and hands. Whilst I will dive into runes for all classes later in this guide, some noticeable runes are Crusader Strike for Paladin and Wild Strikes for Druids.

Now, these two abilities are quite incredibly powerful whilst they alone don’t change the game. Considering that you can get three abilities like this at this power, at level 25 is staggering. This doesn’t even account for reaching max level and having the ability to unlock over 10 abilities, depending on if you can equip runes on weapons, shields, and trinkets.

But because discoveries are secret, and no one knows where they are. You’re probably saying it’ll be datamined. There’ll be 50 YouTube videos and 20 icyvein guides before Season of Discovery even launches. And whilst typically you’d be right, in this case, you’re wrong. Because one of the best decisions that Blizzard has ever made is the following chain: there is no public beta, alpha, or anything.

Every single person is going in blind. The only knowledge we have of the game is what they’ve said to us during BlizzCon, and the people that actually got to play the BlizzCon demo for the 10-man raid Blackfathom Deeps.

Another facet to the game is the following. There are now new tanks and healer combinations. The meta has been shifted, and many classes can do things that they couldn’t do before, like Shaman, Warlock, and Rogue tanking. Also, Paladin is fixed and can properly tank now......

Level Banded Content Phases

Now that you know what runes are, and you learn what the level cap at the start of Season of Discovery is, you’re probably asking, what does that mean?

It’s a new system that Blizzard has designed, called Level Banded Content Phases. And what this means is that Phase 1 of Season of Discovery is capped at level 25, and after a period of a few weeks, it will increase to level 40, the cap for Phase 2.

The phases are as follows, based on Blizzard purposefully leaking the next three 10-man raids, which are: Gnomeregan, Scarlet Monastery, and Karazhan Crypts after Blackfathom Deeps.

Now, though, based on the dev interviews, here we have the following phase bands. Phase 1 being Blackfathom Deeps at a level cap of 25. Phase 2 being Gnomeregan at a level cap of 40. Phase 3 being Scarlet Monastery at a level cap of 50. And Phase 4 being Karazhan Crypts at a level cap of 60.

Whilst Blizzard didn’t announce a Phase 5, I wouldn’t be surprised if Phase 5 was 40-man raids being redone. There could be a Phase 5, which starts at level 60 with a completely new 40-man dungeon raid, perhaps Dire Maul. And then Phase 6 is Molten Core remastered and onwards.

So, with those phases explained, why did Blizzard choose Phase 1 being level 25? Blizzard said that the feedback during the classic betas back in 2019 was that people enjoyed it and it was a fun time rediscovering, exploring and doing things at the level 25 cap back then. So, they chose their cap based on that, especially since it allowed them to redo and reuse old content, especially low-level content that people wouldn’t visit again otherwise.

Another major reason is since phases last a few weeks, assume between 4 to 10 weeks per phase, it means you’ll never be too far behind as a new player or someone with IRL responsibilities. You can always jump back, jump back out, play other games, not feel pressured or compelled to grind to max level immediately. You’ll have plenty of time to do that.

And the final reason is that they add exciting, unique and new content with each level banded content phase: new items, new quests, new NPCs and mobs, new discoveries and world quest, new PVP and more. And they can do this over the course of a year or two.

The other main reason is that it allows them to treat each phase as a mini beta within itself, testing what works, is overpowered, is meta, isn’t meta and allowing them to give breathing room to make each consecutive phase better and better.

With level banded content phases covered, let’s talk about the last bonus of the system. That is a new mechanic. There will be a massive XP boost to previous phases, allowing you to catch up faster or level up alt faster with every new phase. I don’t know what this XP boost will be, but I assume it’s 2x experience, maybe even as high as 5x experience. We’ll have to wait and see on that front.

Also Read: WoW Classic SOD: How Forced Faction Balance Affects The Season Of Discovery In Hidden Ways?

Endgame Content

Now that we know we’re stock at level 25 for 4 weeks minimum, up to perhaps as long as 12 weeks, what is the endgame for such a low level?

As I said earlier, there are now new 10-man raids, taking all dungeons and remixing them into raid content. And the first of these level-up raids is Blackfathom Deeps. They’ll be taking familiar settings and characters, giving them new mechanics, changing the quest around these dungeons and making it feel like a legitimate raid. Blizzard’s goal here was to make the world feel more alive, tempered and past, allowing us to take an Azeroth for all its glory and prestige.

Since Blackfathom Deeps got a full-on redesign, let’s dive into this exciting and wildly new content. Blackfathom Deeps is an ancient elven ruin with evil stirring within, familiar but mysterious. Most of you probably don’t even remember the bosses there. But even if you do, they are now completely different.

With a 3-day lockout, much like Zul’Gurub, we’re going to have plenty of time to master this level-up raid and figure out everything there is in there and every little secret. And there are plenty of secrets in Blackfathom Deeps, for example, the secret of the Black Feather Artisan, which sounds like an incredible crafting recipe skill set, as well as the mysterious new world buff Boon of Black Fathom.

And now, let’s dive into the bosses. BFD has seven new bosses, all fully reimagined encounters, and all quests and loot for BFD have been completely remastered and remade. You now have level 25 loot being better than perhaps even level 40 classic loot. Don’t quote me on that, as I don’t have a full item list, but what we did see is pretty incredible, since this is essentially level 25 raid loot and not dungeon loot.

But onto our first boss, who is Baron Aquanis, who is no longer a quest NPC and is now the first raid boss. He’s empowered by Fathom Stones, which have to be disabled, as well as jumping puzzles and a very obnoxious knockback. This knockback throws you off the platform, during which you have to jump puzzle your way back up, only for the ability to be off cooldown, so he knocks you down again. Kind of annoying as far as combat mechanics go, but it’s very interesting, nonetheless.

Then, we have Ghamoo-ra, now the second boss of the raid instead of the first of the dungeon. And he’s protected by a magical barrier, which we have to break through to be able to burn down the giant turtle.

The third boss is Lady Sarevess, a Naga Sea Witch with a retinue of Blackfathom Elite, and we have to turn her own spells against her to stop her from overwhelming us with unending adds.

The next four bosses we have almost no information about, but here they are: Gahz’rilla, the Void Murloc, followed by Lorgus Jett, and then Twilight Lord Kelris, before finally we confront Aku’mai, the Voidscale Hydra.

And that summarizes Blackfathom Deeps. I’m beyond excited to dive into this new content and see just how fun and intuitive it really feels.

Rune Breakdown

Next, I would cover runes in more depth.

As I already said, they’re treating each phase almost as if it’s a beta in of itself, which means runes will only get progressively more wild and interesting, seeing how players lean into them and how the class balance turns out.

Since Rune Engravings can be found all over the world, from quests, dungeons, raids, bosses, PvP, and who knows what else, I can’t cover every rune at the moment, just those that we know of.

At level 25, we only have access to chest, legs, and hands. Runes are permanent essentially a new talent system, which can be applied and removed at will, with no limitations or costs. You simply have to be out of combat to apply and unapply runes. The greatest benefit that runes provide to the game, though, is the simple fact that formerly faction-unique bonuses, buffs, and racials are now available for certain classes, removing that faction buffer. They are also making talent respecs cost far less, but they didn’t tell us how much less as of now.

Every class has its own runes. There is an insane amount of new abilities for player to choose. But it’s going to be a great few weeks as everyone attempts to figure out the new meta, only for the next phase to come out and completely invalidate every single guide that people write. This is good for creativity, exploration and fun. It’s terrible for min-maxes and meta chases, since your meta will never be meta for more than a few weeks or months at best.

Class Design Goals

This all ties neatly into the fact that Blizzard wants to shake up the meta with Season of Discovery, changing the concept of metas and data mining.

Meta in Season of Discovery will never be consistent or stable and thus don’t chase metas. Otherwise, expect to level a new character in every phase and completely learn a new class every phase for the most OP and broken character of that phase. Some of you will do that, that’s for sure, though.

Nonetheless, Blizzard wants to give each class something to brag about. They want to stick with what’s popular in the sense of abilities, item effects and more. Rather than just give random or terrible runes to people, they want to let people let loose and have fun.

Some of the runes will be new and unique spells never seen before. Some will be from future expansions, but they did say that they want to stay true to classic overall and not introduce anything too modern. So don’t expect spells from beyond WOTLK Classic or maybe even Cataclysm. They want to focus on class fantasy and make sure every class feels true to its fantasy.

New PvP Content

Finally, we move on to PvP, the lifeblood of WoW for some people. And what they’ve done cooked up for PvP is phenomenal and amazing.

Allow me to introduce you to Ashenvale, which lore-wise is a hot spot of war between the Alliance and the Horde since the days of Warcraft 3. And now it truly is a war between the Alliance and the Horde, not just in quest or Warsong Gulch.

Welcome to the Ashenvale PvP Zone, a massive zone-wide PvP event that will completely change how Ashenvale operates and make it a bloodbath.

On the side of the Alliance, we have the Priestess of the Moon, the leader of the Alliance forces in Ashenvale. On the side of the Horde, we have The Farseer, the leader of the Horde forces in Ashenvale. These two bosses are empowered by numerous other clans, which buff each respective leader. And whichever side can figure out a bug and blitz through into the enemy boss and kill them will get the whole experience nerfed.

Jokes aside, like Alterac Valley, you will have to defeat the numerous camp bosses to make the Priestess or the Farseer a weak enough to be defeated.

And as a special unique feature at level 20, you’ll be able to acquire a mount solely for usage in Ashenvale as a PvP unique mount, so it’s not to make the massive Alterac Valley size battlefield and event take 7 hours to complete.

But unlike Alterac Valley, there is no player cap on an open world PvP event, meaning you and your teammates will be able to group together in a massive 5 FPS 400 MS experience, where you don’t know if your side is winning or losing because there are 800 people in Ashenvale pvping at the same time or layering.

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

1. Nutmeg Flair Pass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Lobbed Pass (Cross)

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

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

Short Corner Cross

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Normal Cross

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

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

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

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

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

3. Lobbed Through Pass

The number three overpowered pass is the Lobbed Through Pass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intro

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

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

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

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

Urctos

Let’s start with Urctos!

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

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

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

Aerwynn

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

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

Pip

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

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

What To Do If You’re A Duck!

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

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

The Ultimates Of Different Bosses & How To Stop Them?

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

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

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

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

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

On Normal, that’s it!

On Heroic, we have a couple of upgrades.

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

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

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

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

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

In this guide, we’re going to be going over thrown utility in Dark and Darker and what exactly can affect their damage since I often find people don’t really loot or use these Dark and Darker Items as often as they should when they give such a massive advantage in fights.

Explosive Bottles And Oil Lanterns

Let’s start with the Explosive Bottles and Oil Lanterns, also commonly referenced as Mollies.

Explosive Bottles: Throw an explosive bottle at a target location that will cause a bottle that creates a fiery explosion upon impact, scorching the surrounding area and inflicting area-of-effect (AOE) damage to all within its blast radius. It is lootable. The damage it deals depends on its tier. The higher the tier, the higher the damage it deals.

Oil Lanterns: When in someone’s hand, emits light that illuminates the surrounding area. Additionally, it can be thrown in a similar fashion to an explosive bottle, leaving fire that deals 3 magical damage per second. They can be found in loot chests.

These throwable utility items will deal no impact damage and instead spawn a ground AOE that deals 3 magic damage per second, no matter the Rarity.

Right now, I’m actually not sure what rarity does for Explosive Bottles. It seems like it only affects the sell price to the vendor. The duration and base damage are the same across the board. Anyway, if you want these bottles, be prepared with plenty of Dark and Darker Gold.

Since Explosive Bottles and Oil Lanterns are magic damage. Their damage will increase with Magic Power Bonus, + Additional Magic Damage and + True Magic Damage, all at 50% scaling.

The burn effect or tick damage can stack up to 3 times and randomly appear in the AOE. This is why Explosive Bottles may sometimes seem ineffective and other times very powerful.

Here’s just five ticks at plus 4 magic damage on my Fighter. Of course, the duration is a bit exaggerated here for demonstrational purposes since usually won’t cook for more than 2 or 3 ticks if you just run through them. Still, it’s a decent amount of damage.

Francisca Axes And Throwing Knives

Now, let us look to the Francisca Axes and Throwing Knives, which do a single instance of on-hit physical damage.

Here is a rule: just follow basic weapon damage for most time. So, + Additional Physicial Damage, + True Physical Damage, and any form of physical power will increase the damage from these two utility items at 100% scaling. This is where perk and spell bonuses make things a little crazy.

As not only do they benefit from weapon perks, like the Barbarian’s Axe Specialization, and Executioner for Francisca Axes, they will also benefit from any kind of Applied Damage Buffs, like the Cleric’s Divine Strike and the Wizard’s Ignite.

At full buff, this can cause some absurdly high damage numbers, even with absolutely no gear. For example, I can hit in the high 60s with the Starter Kit Franciscas Axes, which deals only 18 damage at base.

Note, that’s over three times the base damage.

All we need are our two strength skills, our applicable Barbarian perks, and a base gear Cleric to give us Divine Strike and Bless.

You can even throw Ignite on for more damage as it still applies to utility items even though the VFX doesn’t appear.

Another key feature of thrown physical utility is that it has a fairly strong on hit slow, actually very strong on hit slow, as they currently sit at 25% and 20%. These stats are both higher than the long sword and it sounds kind of crazy.

Now, Ironmace has addressed the effectiveness of these two utility items in the past by adding both damage and velocity falloff, making them slightly less effective at longer ranges.

However, an in-game mechanic that people often don’t know about is that you could hold down or charge up your throw over a couple of seconds to bring it up to maximum speed. And it honestly makes a pretty big difference.

One last note on these two thrown utility items is that it will trigger any on hit skills or perks, like the Barbarian’s Achilles Strike and Reckless Attack, the Fighter’s Victory Strike or the Rogue’s Rupture, Weakpoint and Poison Weapon.

Even though it doesn’t show up on the training dummy and yes, they’re not damaging utility items. But throwing torches and lanterns also can be used to apply Achilles Strike and Rupture.

Conclusion

Now, I know this isn’t exactly game-changing knowledge for those who have been playing Dark and Darker for some time, especially those who’ve been around since the early play test and witness firsthand the Francisca Axe is at their peak power.

But the bottom line here is that these items still scale up to be incredibly strong and they’ll give you huge advantages in PVP. They’re definitely worth looting and buying for cheap price since chances are your class is already optimized to deal with high damage with them.

In this FC 24 guide, I’ll show you all of the F techniques and how we can get the most out of them in proper situations. I’ll also reveal my secret favorite method this year that allows me to score many goals than before.

This means you will be able to win more games and earn more FC 24 Coins!

1. Precision Shooting

Before we start with the specific finishing techniques, we will take a look at the new future that affects the finishing directly, which is the Precision Shooting.

Some of the players have been complaining about the Assisted Shooting being complete garbage and they miss easy goals. If you’re one of them, now you have an option to correct this.

As you create scoring opportunities in the game, you will not have the option to take advantage of Precision Shooting. This shooting mechanic demands that you sharpen your aim when setting up a shot. It will also increase the power of the shot, meaning the ball will head towards a target at faster speeds.

Compared to the default Assisted Shooting, you are more in control of choosing the direction of the shot. That means you will have to aim perfectly with your left analog stick while shooting and the input will be directly reflected with your shot.

Let’s understand the main difference between the Assisted and Precision Shooting. With the Assisted Shooting, you choose one of the sides to shoot to. The direction of the left stick doesn’t have to be exactly towards the goal. You just pick a side and go for the shot with the Precision Shooting.

However, you can’t do that. You have to aim directly towards the goal. Otherwise, it will go miles out.

To enable Precision Shooting, go to settings menu and look for the ‘Gameplay’ settings option.

After entering it, scroll down to find the “Shoot Assistance” option once you do set it the Precision from default. The question is, should you actually use the Precision Shooting?

There is no right answer to that if Precision Shooting or Assisted Shooting is better. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and it’s actually all about if you’re willing to take your time and become better at it. Because you need a bit of patience with it. If you think you don’t want to use it, just don’t turn it on.

2. Finesse Shot

Let’s move on to our first real finishing technique, the Finesse Shot.

With this method, your player shoots the ball with the inside of his foot and adds a fensive curve to it so that it becomes harder for the keeper to catch it.

To be able to perform a Finesse Shot, hold on to your R1 & RB button and power it up with your shooting button. They work incredibly fine both in one versus one situation and from the distance.

Whenever you can get the ball towards your player's strong foot, feel free to give your shot a little curve by using the Finesse Shot. Preparing the perfect Finesse Shot, however, has a little thick. You need to set your player with an angle between 30 and 45 degrees towards the goal. With this angle, you can aim for the perfect finesse path and that will surely enhance the curve.

In a very simple example, we get past the opponent here. Because I know I want to go for a Finesse Shot, I don’t go straightforward instead give myself an angle, which favors my strong foot. And as the keeper comes out, I finish the position with a Finesse Shot.

With FC 24, playstyles were introduced, and there’s also playstyle for Finesse Shot. Players with this playstyle are extremely dangerous, especially if they have the Finesse +. You can see those playstyles on the player page and whenever you try to execute that specific mechanic, they will glove above the player’s head.

So, definitely look out for them. And if you have players with Finesse playstyle, fear no distance, take a look at the goal, and go for a Finesse Shot.

The question is how much power do I need with the Finesse Shot and where do I aim at? If you’re using Assisted Shooting like I do, you can just choose one side with a left stick angle around 45° towards the goal. This usually is the optimal direction.

The power changes depending on the distance from the goal in the Box. You can score any Finesse Shot with the power around two bars. However, the distance shots require more power. That is why I recommend shots with around three bars of power.

3. Outside Foot Shot

There will be times where you will find it hard to get the ball towards your strong foot. But don’t worry, there is indeed a perfect method to use in those situations as well. This finishing technique is called the Outside Foot Shot.

To be able to perform an Outside Foot Shot, hold on to your L2 & LT button and power up a shot while the ball is close to your weak foot. This will help you avoid using your weak foot and instead shoot with the outside of your stronger one. In my opinion, it is as strong and reliable as Finesse Shots in the current state of the game.

The trick for the Outside Foot Shot is to aim a bit further away from the far post. Don’t worry, with the curve this meta itself gives, it will reach the goal and get in if you use it correctly.

The answers to where to aim and how much power is needed are the same with the Finesse Shots. Make sure to remind yourself of the distance.

Of course, there’s a playstyle again, which enhances this shooting type and it’s called Trivela. It gives your Outside Foot Shot a better curve and with that an accuracy. So, if you have FC 24 Players with that playstyle or even playstyle +, make sure to try this method out.

4. Power Shot

Those two are very strong, but they’re not the only finishing types you will need. Sometimes, you need power to beat the keeper and that is why we have Power Shots since last year.

To be able to execute a Power Shot, hold on to your both L1 & R1 or LB & RB buttons together while shooting.

There are two things you need to watch out for with this method. Aiming with your left stick is extremely important as Power Shots get aimed manually. It is very easy not to hit the goal with it if you use your left stick carelessly.

Secondly, your player will need some time to prepare the Power Shot and become vulnerable for tackles in that time. You either need some space and time before you go for a Power Shot or a player with a playstyle Power Shot +.

Power Shot + significantly reduces the time penalty of this method and you shoot the ball rapidly as if you’re going for a normal shot.

5. Chip Shot

Next up, we have a very situational method that was very strong in previous titles but fails to impress me in this one, which is the Chip Shot.

It allows us to make the ball fly over the keeper if he tends to get out of his goal. You need to hold on to the L1 & LB button while shooting to chip the ball over the keeper.

However, like I’ve said, it is very easy to fail with it. You might fail with the Chip Shot if you’re too close to the goal. If the keeper baits you as if he’s coming out and then gets back, then you might fail again.

From my experience, it’s only viable to go for a Chip Shot once the keeper completely overcommits with coming out of his goal. Once he does that, make sure to chip the bolt towards the fire poost so that he won’t be able to get a single touch to stop it.

Here, I get the ball behind the defensive line and expect the keeper to come out. He exactly does that. And just because I’ve given myself a little angle towards the lower side, I find it very easy to chip the ball over the keeper towards the fire poost and score an easy goal.

6. Timed Finishing

Now that we’ve seen the finishing techniques, I will show you how to empower them.

In my opinion, this method takes the finishing to another level. I’m talking about the Timed Finishing.

Timed Finishing is a high-risk and high-reward mechanic that could either enhance your shot or blew everything up depending on your performance with it. The mechanic is simple.

Once you power up a shot, you have to press the shooting button a second time as your player is about to hit the ball. If you can time this correctly, you’ll see that the cursor above your player’s head glows green.

This will give the ball a better accuracy and speed towards the goal. If you can time it correctly, it will either glow red or gray. That means you need to practice more on it to get a better feeling about it.

The way I advise players to practice it is to get yourself first into an offline match, such as squat battles, and only focus on the mechanic itself. Then, try it out against real players in online matches.

Trust me with time, you will surely get a better feeling and talent on it and it will be much more natural to you.

Timed finishing can be used with different finishing methods that we have previously showed you and will greatly increase the success rate of any shot. Practice makes it perfect.

7. Near Post Shot

Finally, I want to give you my favorite method for the finishing this season. I feel like every other season this gets changed, but with FC 24, Near Post Shots became stronger than ever.

Even if sometimes it looks incredibly hard, they go in magnificently. One of the reasons that I prefer Near Post Shots is that because players tend to move their keeper towards the fire poost and open the near one. Even without that, the Near Post Shots are strong.

To make them more consistent, I advise you to use the green time finishing and make sure you blast the ball in.

The newest Genshin Impact update contains a lot of new and insane content and these are the top 5 new features coming with the 4.2 version.

1st Feature: New Zones

So, with this new update, comes many zones.

There’s a lot of peculiar landscapes we saw during the livestream. And from what I understand, these zones will be on the east side of Fontaine and you’ll get to visit places like this foggy forest with a strange tree.

One of the main things about this zone in particular is that it has these contaminated bacterial zones that you’ll find all over the place and you’ll need to cleanse them by utilizing a new aberrant ability, which are those temporary skills you obtain while underwater. But we’ll learn all about this more from a new world quest that will explain what’s the deal with those contaminations.

Still, we’re not done yet. There’s another cool place called the Fathomless Tower that we’ll get to explore and it will be a critical point in the storyline that explains some of the things about the Primordial Sea, so I am personally interested to learn more about it. And besides, who doesn’t love a good old mysterious tower exploration?

And when it comes to questing, it’s been officially confirmed that Act V of the Hydro Archon quest will be included with the 4.2 update and on top of this, Furina’s personal story quest is also going to be available.

2nd Feature: New Events

As always, we’re getting a bunch of new events.

Now the main one is going to be focused around this cute mechanical penguin that you’ll need to fix and improve together with Freminet.

The event is made up of 3 stages:

In the first one, you’ll need to play a small mini-game where you guide the penguin to its objective on this grid, while in the 2nd stage will require you to go underwater and look for parts to use on the Penguin.

Finally, the third stage will be a combat mini-event, and here you actually get to fight alongside your mechanical penguin friend. He will apply different effects for the battle and to me. This looks like the coolest part of this main event.

Now, if you put in the effort and finish this quest, then the biggest reward is going to be a free copy of Freminet, which is pretty cool. But you know what’s even cooler?

Bongohead is making a return. That’s right, the pokemon-esque Fungi event is making a return, and it seems like the developers made optimizations for this event, so I am interested to try it out.

Another event called Graph Adversarial Technology Experiment Log or, as I like to call it, just exchange stuff with your friends event. So basically, submit photos, use patterns or exchange them with your friends and obtain this new unique gadget called Zoom Lens that allows to zoom in before taking a photo.

Finally, Misty Dungeon is also making a return. This combat event is known for being a pretty cool place to test various characters you don’t have since you can use their trial versions.

And as always, Leyline overflow event will also be available sometime during the new update.

3rd Feature: New Characters

So, with the 4.2 update, we’re finally going to be able to pull for the legendary archon Furina, who is a 5-star Hydro Sword user. If you want to quickly experience this 5-star character in the new version, buying Genshin Impact Accounts directly will be a good choice!

And from what it looks like, she can switch between Ousia or Pneuma by using her charged attacks. And this will matter because her skill will summon Hydro companions to the battlefield and they will differ depending if she was aligned with Pneuma or Ousia.

I am a huge sucker when it comes to cute little critters, but Furina goes over the top by summoning more than 1 of them!

However, I think the biggest thing about her is her burst. To put it simply, it will deal some Hydro DMG and then put the whole team into this special state and whenever someone loses or gains HP, their damage and healing will be boosted.

It’s clear that Furina will be a unique hybrid that boosts the team but also applies Hydro with her skill, which will be an important factor to consider.

But on a lighter side, one of Furina’s passives decreases the CD of aberrant abilities you use underwater and get this. When one of her summons from the skill are on the field, she can walk on water. Talk about powercreeping Kokomi.

Moving over, Charlotte, a 4-star Cryo Catalyst, will also be available to summon for. I think it’s funny that Hoyoverse decided to release 2 Cryo Catalysts back-to-back, which was one of the element & weapon combos that we’ve never had prior to 4.1.

But I think it’s a good that they have done this because playing a Cryo Catalyst is pretty funny with all things considered. So, it really shouldn’t be locked behind a 5-star.

Also Read: Genshin Impact 4.2: Details About Furina Buffs & Changes

But, what does Charlotte do? Her skill shares some similarities to Nahida’s skill, so she can tap it and deal some damage or hold it down and take a snapshot with her camera of several enemies.

Now, I am not sure what kind of potential this skill has, but you gotta admire her Normal and Charged attacks. They look so satisfying. It makes wanna build her as a damage dealer no matter how unfit this may be.

And there is a reason why I mention this. Her burst will create this field and deal damage to enemies inside. But at the same time, it will also heal your characters. So, I think this burst kinda gives away the fact that Charlotte is going to be a healer. But no matter what, I will still try to build her as a damage dealer because those Normal Attacks look too good.

And remember those Zoom Lens I’ve mentioned. Charlotte has a unique ability that allows her skill to take pictures mid combat when using this gadget. So, it’s interesting to see that while you can use this gadget with any character, she has a special use case for it.

But, let’s quickly talk about the banners now. In the first phase, Furina as well as Baizhu will have their own featured banners. But what’s interesting is that it will be possible to pull for Charlotte during this phase as well. So, both new characters are available during the first phase while in the second phase, Ayato and Cyno will be the featured characters.

So, if you have saved up a lot of Primogems and your plan is to pull for Furina, chances are you might also obtain Charlotte, so two Steambirds with one stone.

Obviously, in the first phase, you’ll also be able to pull for Furina’s signature weapon, so keep that in mind.

4th Feature: New Enemies

This time around, the new weekly boss is going to be a massive whale. And I know what you’re thinking – how fast a whale player will beat this whale, right?

Anyway, this is actually a pretty interesting fight because during the first phase, this big beefy boy will unleash tons of AoE attacks. So, you’ll need to run around like crazy and dodge them.

But what’s interesting is that you’ll notice he has this thingy below his health bar. From what I understand, there will be special ways to build it up because you’ll need to defeat the Whale this way.

However, what’s really cool about this fight is that the whale will literally suck you into his belly and then a new foe, a really cool foe shows up and you need to duel him to death. So, this fight seems to be pretty complex but interesting and hopefully it won’t get tiresome after repeating it over and over for materials.

And speaking of repetition, a new world boss called Hydro Tulpa will be waiting for you, so you can slaughter him and take its materials to level up your characters.

He looks pretty cool. I like his design, but like with every other world boss, they’re just there to get demolished within a minute.

5th Quality Of Life

When it comes to Quality of Life changes with 4.2 update, there’s actually quite plenty of them.

First of all, the weekly boss fights for new players had to be a bane to deal with, especially when you pull that sweet new character. And you realize that you can’t level their talents if you haven’t unlocked a specific region and completed its Archon quest.

This changes with 4.2 update and now, you can just quick challenge any of the weekly bosses even if you haven’t unlocked their fights through the story.

The next one on the list is a feature that I wanted to see for a long time and that’s giving more control over your quests. Up until now, if you used one of those keys to unlock a hangout or a story quest with a character, often you would end up causing some conflicts for other quests, like when it says a character is busy in another quest. So annoying.

But, now you can choose to just unlock a quest and then later you can decide to accept it, which means fewer characters being busy when you need to complete other quests. You will even get to see a window with pre-requisite conditions for a quest, so you’ll know what to expect.

Now, when it comes to the next quality of life feature, it’s pretty small but still matters and it will increase the amount of pins you can have on your map from 150 to 200. There will also be a batch delete function for pins, so you don’t have to go around and keep selecting and deleting one pin at a time.

But then, there’s probably the most important change, at least for me, and that’s Genius Invokation TCG getting sped up. Basically, there will be an option to enable where every single animation gets accelerated. And from the previews I saw, it actually looks like the game doesn’t feel sluggish anymore and I’ll be real.

Part of the reason why I didn’t really get into this game mode was literally because of how slow it felt and I kid you not. This might actually convince me to go and play this mode again, because I still haven’t unlocked everything.

And what’s even better, you’ll also be able to share decks with each other, thanks to the Sharing Code feature. So, now, I can just copy top meta decks and enjoy my life as a slacker.

Finally, Stellar Reunion has been optimized. This event for players who return after taking a break from the game will offer more relevant rewards, and you can even get story keys if you haven’t collected them.

Different Path of Exile players may have different preferences. For example, some people like to create unique characters, others are looking for extra challenges, and some just crave the thrill of intense battles. Therefore, GGG will hold three events in November based on the preferences of different players:

1. Krangled Passives (November 3 - November 10)
2. Blast From The Past (November 10 - November 17)
3. Shifting Stones (November 17- November 24)

Today, we’re diving into the intricate world of one of the special events, the Krangled Passives.

About Krangled Passives Event

Krangled Passives is the first event.

In this event, the passive skill tree and all ascendancy trees are jumbled. Minor passive skills, notable keystones, minor ascendancy skills, and major ascendancy skills have been internally scrambled within those categories. This means that a notable passive skill remains a notable passive skill, but it’s now randomly assigned.

Additionally, all players will be working with identical skill trees, but the Scion character class is not accessible in this event. The GGG team has introduced a range of additional POE Items for players based on their level achievements.

The rewards become increasingly valuable as your character’s level rises. The top three players overall will receive a full microtransaction bundle.

Tier S -Totem Build

Totems will be the first build that comes to mind. This is because Totem life bonuses are somewhat dispersed throughout the standard passive tree.

Ancestor Totem attack builds may function effectively with a Krangled skill tree. But I believe that native spell totems, such as Holy Flame Totem and Spell Totem Support builds heavily rely on the Ancestral Bond keystone.

Consequently, these Spell Totem setups may not perform as well in this special event compared to the base game. Nonetheless, we believe that investigating totem builds is a worthwhile endeavor during this event.

Here are some builds you can follow: Shockwave Totem and EA Ballista.

Tier A - DOT Build

In the regular game, damage over time is typically balanced in comparison to instant damage, which is often reliant on Critical Strike.

This balance remains consistent in this special event, although critical strike is hard to get here. So, we’ll need to locate the various damage multiplier nodes spread across the skill tree.

Notably, elemental damage has captured our attention, as it appears to hold the most promise in this event. This is because elemental damage can be amplified by various statistics and it’s already in a favorable position in the base game.

Here are some builds you can follow: Toxic Rain Ballista and Cold DOT.

Tier B - Trap (Elementalist Build)

In the case of Traps and Mines, it is important to note that the majority of Trap and Mine builds heavily depend on Critical Strikes.

However, it is worth mentioning that there are Trap and Mine builds designed around elemental damage. And we anticipate that the Trap and Mine builds will be one of the most popular and effective choices in this event.

Here are some builds you can follow: Righteous Fire + Fire Trap and Hexblast Mines.

Also Read: POE 3.22 November Events 2023 Is Coming Soon! - Everything You Need To Know

Tier C - Minion Build

Next up are Minion builds.

The critical components of the passive tree that enhance minion abilities are widely dispersed, which may pose challenges.

However, it is essential to stay vigilant as a particular ascendancy class might offer a concentrated pool of powerful minion related bonuses.

If such an ascendancy exists, there is a chance building around minions still works. But for now, we have to wait and see.

Here are some builds you can follow: Absolution and Poison SRS.

Tier D - Build Around Crit

We think Critical Strikes are going to be the hardest or near impossible to pull off in general.

In the normal game without the Krangled tray modifier, there’s a synergy involving a base tree. Critical clusters grant you both Critical Strike multiplier and Critical Strike chance together in the same cluster.

This is important because you need to have both stats for either of them to become good.

Here are some builds you can follow: Lightning Arrow and Spark.

Last Notice

There is one last to notice: when it comes to builds you want to, have a look and see or any of the base classes are ahead just due to having more options or better patterns. Of course, no matter what your options are, you’ll need to have plenty of POE Currency to craft these builds.

And one of the things you’ll notice if you look into this is that some of the ascendancies have more notables than others. The Witch starting area is stacked with more notables than the rest of the tray is. And that means there’s more chance for those notables to be good now.

This doesn’t guarantee that these ascendancies or that the witch class are going to be better than other options. It just means that they have more chance to be good.