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Donato Greenholt
I will guide you through a fun build for the Occultist featuring a new Transfigured spell - the new Cold Snap of Power in Path of Exile 3.23. It is seemingly the ideal spell, with very high base damage and effectiveness of the added damage, a 10% base Critical Strike Chance, and very fast cast speed. The only downside here is that it has a cooldown, which you can bypass by sacrificing power charges.
The Cold Snap itself can generate power charges on critical strikes, and if you pair this spell with the Power Charge on Critical Support at max quality, you will have over 100% chance to gain power charges when you hit with Critical Strike. With such a high base crit chance, it is trivial to reach the cap.
The Occultist is the best ascendancy for this skill. It grants you a lot of cold damage, access to additional curse, and boosts your damage and area of effect for each power charge you have. However, if you rely on energy charges to scale up your damage, spending energy charges to avoid cooldowns can be very contradictory.
The Cold Snap of Power removes the damage over time portion of the original spell but has much better hit damage. You will be easily able to Freeze or heavily Chill all enemies in the game. You will get insane damage bonuses for every additional power charge you obtain. The build is moderately tanky due to high evasion, immunity to Elemental Ailments, and a high amount of maximum life sourced from the Utula's Hunger. You can use Enfeeble as your third curse, heavily reducing the damage of affected enemies. The clear speed is great. Your cold snap can cover a wide area, shattering all enemies caught by it. The single-target damage is very good and scales with your investments very well.
You will need the fundamental unique items to start playing with this build. Rare items with basic defenses will be sufficient at first but should be upgraded as soon as your POE Currency allows.
Interacting with your charges demands unique items. The Utula's Hunger armor grants a lot of maximum life and significantly reduces the price of all other items since you don’t need maximum life. modifiers on them.
The unique Jewels are very powerful, even in the most basic version. Void Battery grants additional power charge, cast speed, Critical Strike Chance, and a lot of spell damage. You should use 2 of them. You might be tempted to use the Malachai's Loop shield for even more power charges, but it makes spending them very difficult.
The Badge of the Brotherhood is another important element of every power charge stacker. It raises your frenzy charge limit to be equal to power charges, which in this build means 36% more damage and cast speed. It also lowers the cooldown of your Frostblink.
To take full advantage of the maximum power charge, you can use Ralakesh’s Impatience Boots. These boots make it easier to gain Frenzy and Endurance charges, which are usually hard to generate. Charges must be generated in order to spend them.
Militant Faith converts nearby Keystone into Inner Conviction Keystone, which grants you more damage per power charge but disables generating frenzy charges, which you bypass with your boots. Ideally, it should give you useful bonuses for each devotion but doesn’t convert any of the picked up notables. Atula’s Hunger grants tons of Maximum life and lowers the burden on your other items. It should be corrupted for plus 2 levels for AOE gems and linked to tainted fusings. Doing so will make coloring with tainted chromatics much easier, as those ignore the attribute requirements of items.
Watcher's Eye is a very useful jewel for this build. You can use it to obtain Spell suppression, Life Leech, redirect a portion of physical damage to be taken as Elemental, or simply boost your damage with Hatred or Zealotry. The Heatshiver helmet can be corrupted to give additional power charge. It would grant you tons of damage, but you would need to get plenty of mana reservation efficiency on your Jewels or readjust your aura setup. It also doesn’t provide an energy shield, which would make sustaining casting harder.
On your rare items, you will need Spell suppression, Resistances, and Attributes to improve the damage. You should look for cast speed and Critical Strike multiplier. It is important to have a corrupted implicit on any of your Jewels that grant 2% reservation efficiency, so your Leech won’t stop once you fill 50% maximum life with Petrified Blood. You can get a lot of mana reservation efficiency, with Essence and Eldritch implicit. It should also provide Attributes or Resistance.
You can opt for an additional power charge, but you would probably need to readjust your auras, as it is hard to have both modifiers at once. At first, you can use a regular rare armor with bonuses to maximum life, spell suppression, energy shield, resistances, and Aura effect. When doing so, though, you will also need maximum life modifiers on all other rare items. It is easier to assemble, but you will miss roughly 1,000 maximum life and 2 bonus gem levels for your major spell.
Here, you should focus on defensive bonuses such as Resistance, Spell suppression, or Attributes. Although there is some damage to consider, the primary significance lies in the Eldritch implicits that apply Unnerve and Exposure on enemies. Energy shield recharge rate can significantly improve your sustain.
Your belt is another defensive item. Look for resistance and strength. You can craft a modifier that grants energy shield regeneration while a rare enemy is nearby to improve your sustain. You should use the Stygian Vice for the additional Abyss Jewel socket. Abyss Jewel is the best target to obtain the corrupted implicit that grants reservation efficiency. In addition to that, it should offer maximum life, Resistances, Attributes, and, if preferred, cast speed and Critical Strike multiplier. Jewels do not count as equipped items.
On your rare rings, you should get a lot of Resistances and Attributes to improve your damage. You should look for cast speed and crit multiplier. Make sure you can sustain the improved cast speed. Crafting mana cost reduction will also help in that regard. Make sure to concentrate on maximum life, missing resistances, and Critical Strike multiplier. It can also provide a bit of mana reservation efficiency, which will be essential if you want to use a helmet with an additional power charge.
Thanks to Cluster Jewel, you can get the Doryani's Lesson notable, which grants your life Leech. Pair it with 2 other useful modifiers depending on your budget. The Cold to the Core notable is effective in this build because you require numerous attributes for your gems. Taste of Hate is a great defensive flask that grants a decent amount of protection against physical and cold damage. Make sure to not include it when you balance your resistance, as the uptime on this flask is not perfect.
For your remaining flasks, I recommend using Quartz Flask with mana cost of skills reduction, Jade Flask with an evasion rating bonus, Quicksilver Flask with cast speed bonus, and a Life Flask with bleeding.
Cold Snap of Power deals with high cold damage in the area. Cooldowns can be avoided by consuming power charges. It has the highest Critical Strike chance in the game and has a 30% chance to generate a power charge if you critically hit an enemy. You can use the Spell Cascade Support for better area coverage and potential overlaps if you aim correctly, but it is harder to land 3 hits than it used to be before the change.You can instead use the Bonechill Support to increase the damage of the single hit, making it easier to Freeze.
Grace grants a lot of Evasion rating and helps you improve it further. It also has very potent available modifiers on the Watcher's Eye Jewel. Purity of Elements grants immunity to all Elemental ailments and provides plenty of Elemental resistances, which saves you a lot of trouble gearing up.
If you have enough resistance, you can swap it to Zealotry Aura. Petrified Blood delays the damage from incoming hits, making them easier to manage. It makes your Leech more effective and enables the Pain Attunement Keystone for 30% more damage. Vitality grants life regeneration and allows you to gain Life Leech via Watcher’s Jewel. To decrease your mana reserve, you can keep it low. You should link your main auras with the Enlightened support to reduce their mana reservation.
You will also need a bit of reservation efficiency in your gear. The Herald of Ice inflicts cold damage on your spells and detonates it around foes that have been crushed. You could replace it with Arctic Armor to gain physical damage reduction while casting. The Arrogance causes linked auras to reserve life instead of mana. If you get at least 1% Global reservation efficiency, your Leech won’t stop upon filling the Petrified Blood limit. Zealotry improves your spell damage and critical strike chance. You can also use the Hatred Aura instead.
The major difference comes from the relevant modifiers on the Watcher’s Eye. The Divine Blessing changes your permanent Aura into a temporary buff that doesn’t reserve any mana but requires an upfront mana cost, which you can pay using the Energy Shield thanks to the Eldritch Battery Keystone.
Frostbite is your primary curse that lowers the cold resistance and makes your freeze last longer on the affected enemies. Enfeeble lowers the damage and accuracy of your enemies. You can also use Temporal Chains to slow them down and further improve the duration of your freeze. Elemental Weakness lowers all Elemental resistance of your foes. You can use the third curse thanks to the Whispers of Doom notable.
Arcanist Brand is a brand skill that can attach to an enemy and cast all linked spells in rapid succession. Thanks to this skill, you will apply all 3 curses with one button. To apply your curses, you can also use the new Bane of Condemnation, which has a higher cast speed but significantly lower area of effect.
The regular Bane is not a good choice, as it lowers the effectiveness of your curses. Frostblink is a very good movement skill for this build. It deals enough damage to kill weak enemies, and the cooldown is heavily reduced by your amulet. If you find yourself out of charges very often, you should consider using any skill with a fast hit rate. You might need this setup against bosses if your Critical Strike Chance is still low or if enemies can steal your power charges. It shouldn’t be necessary during regular gameplay. Steelskin creates a protective barrier that absorbs incoming damage and stops bleeding effects.
You should kill all Bandits in Act 2 to be rewarded with 2 additional passive tree points by Eramir. For your major Pantheon power, you should pick the Soul of Arakaali, as it helps you with mitigating damage over time effects, which are the major weakness of Petrified Blood builds. As the minor Pantheon power, we recommend using the Soul of Shakari. It further reduces the damage you take from Poisons and Chaos Damage.
You will need a very high Critical Strike Chance to reliably generate power charges, so you should use any other cold spell to level up. You can start scaling crit early, but the best choice would be any cold damage over time spell, for example, the regular Cold Snap. It doesn’t require crit and scales very well with just cold spell passives.
During the campaign on the passive tree, you will pick up 2 additional maximum power charges. The third one should be allocated by the anointment on your amulet. This build utilizes 3 very powerful Keystones:
In Path of Exile: Affliction, as you venture through Viridian Wildwood, you can find a new Unique Shield: Flawed Refuge.
This new item seems to be overlooked by many. This guide aims to break down the usefulness of this new unique item versus existing mechanics to mitigate the impact of upcoming penetrating hits.
So let’s see what this new Unique Shield does: it adds Armor and Evasion. This is a very poor base type, so it doesn’t have much effect even after increasing it. And there are a lot of extra attack block opportunities here too.
Then we have two big modifiers on this shield. You take 100% elemental damage from hits that block and 40% elemental damage from hits that take physical damage. Both statistics immediately exist in the game in other forms.
What we have access to in the game is dedicated to transferring physical damage to another damage type, such as Lightning Coil, which is very popular now. It converts 50% of physical damage taken on hit as lightning damage.
But this modifier on this Flawed Refuge Shield is to transfer 40% of all elemental damage you take into physical damage, with Fire, Cold, Lightning damage coming from hits.
So the reason there isn’t a lot of discussion about this shield is mainly because it’s quite niche meta. The focus now is on shifting as much physical damage as possible into other damage types so you can mitigate the damage through resistance. But that doesn’t mean there’s no use for Flawed Refuge.
So let’s first look at a basic example of Flawed Refuge.
Let’s say a character has 75% elemental resistance and 20,000 points of armor. It takes 3,000 lightning damage without a shield, which is mitigated by 75% resistance.
However, when equipped with a shield, it will take 750 lightning damage, 40% of which is treated as physical damage. Therefore, 1,800 points of damage are considered lightning damage and 1,200 points of damage are considered physical damage.
It can mitigate lightning damage by reducing resistance to 450, and armor can mitigate physical damage. In this case, it reduced physical damage by 77%, bringing it down to 276 for a total of 726 damage taken.
So you can see that the damage taken is very similar in both calculations, but in this case, Flawed Refuge setting is slightly more effective at mitigating the damage taken.
How about more damage? Let’s say the character takes 10,000 lightning damage. Without a shield, lightning damage is mitigated purely by 75% resistance.
Taking 2,500 points of spiritual damage when equipped with a shield, 6,000 of which are treated as lightning. Resisted by 75% of resistance, bringing it down to 1,500 damage. The remaining 4,000 points of damage are treated as physical damage.
In this case, armor provides much less relief. Because it does more damage, the armor reduces physical damage by 50%, bringing this down to 2,000 for a total of 3,500 damage taken.
You can see that due to the nature of the armor application, Flawed Refuge setup is much weaker when taking larger hits.
There is one very important thing to note here, however, and that is the type of damage taken after the mitigation occurred in the second example. The unshielded setup takes 2,500 lightning damage, while Flawed Refuge setup ends up taking 1,500 lightning damage and 2,000 physical damage. This is important for damage type properties.
Let’s talk about Non-Damaging Ailments first. These Ailments are based on damage taken from specific elements.
The severity of Non-Damaging Ailments is measured based on the amount of damage taken relative to Ailment Threshold of a specific type.
So if we take the previous example. Assuming 10,000 points of lightning damage are a critical hit, this means it has the inherent property of causing shock.
In this example, Flawed Refuge setting reduced lightning damage by 40% compared to the normal setting after mitigation. Although it takes overall more damage, the portion of damage taken as physical damage does not cause shock by default. As such, Flawed Refuge setups may suffer from weaker shocks, so this isn’t limited to Non-Damaging Ailments either.
So now let’s talk about Elemental Penetration. I believe this will be the main use case parameter for this shield damage type, another property related to that specific damage type.
Let’s look at another example. A character with 80% elemental resistance and 25,000 armor with 3 Endurance Charges. The character takes about 13,000 points of cold damage and has 25% Cold Penetration without a shield, with damage mitigated purely by resistance. In this case, penetration provided 55% relief.
A character equipped with a shield takes 5,850 points of cold damage. 7,800 points of damage are treated as cold damage, which is mitigated by resistance reduced to 3,510. Then the remaining 40% is considered physical damage. Combined, this will provide a 61% physical damage reduction, bringing this down to 2,028 for a total of 5,538 damage.
Flawed Refuge setting in this example does less damage. Because it avoids Cold Penetration which takes 40% damage. And it’s also worth noting here that characters may also take weaker cold damage due to taking much less cold damage.
Note that Overwhelm has a damage type attribute related to physical damage, allowing damage to bypass a specified amount of physical damage reduction.
For example, in Expedition, you can explode a wreckage, causing all monsters to overwhelm 100% physical damage reduction. But if you’re using this shield normally, you probably don’t want to do that.
Next, let’s talk about some synergies you can take advantage of with a Flawed Refuge.
Starting with the most obvious one, that’s Divine Flesh. You can get this Keystone from Glorious Vanity Timeless Jewel, and it causes 50% of all elemental damage to be treated as chaos damage.
When used with Flawed Refuge, a total of 90% of elemental hit damage will be diverted to other damage types. This combination of mechanisms is therefore powerful in mitigating the effects of elemental penetration.
Keep in mind that you still need to limit elemental resistances, as 50% of elemental damage will still be calculated as normal over time.
If you have enough POE Currency budget, you can also add Doppelganger Guise to this synergy to make it even more powerful. This is a unique Body Armor dropped from Uber Maven. This reduces physical and chaos damage by 40%, and combines perfectly with Divine Flesh and Flawed Refuge.
In this case, no matter what type of original damage you took, just using modifiers will mitigate most of the damage.
Then there’s Fourth Vow, another unique Body Armour. It applies full armor calculations to chaos damage taken on hit and when combined with Divine Flesh. This one is powerful at negating the effects of large amounts of elemental damage.
However, when combined with Flawed Refuge, it creates an interesting setup. You’ll be motivated to stack a lot of armor to mitigate all incoming damage types from hits.
Remember that armor is applied to each damage type individually, which is why split damage types are very effective for the application of armor to mitigate damage.
As such, Flawed Refuge has some synergy with Juggernaut’s Unbreakable Notable and its natural ability to mitigate physical damage through armor stacking and Endurance Charge generation.
In this case, Juggernaut will transfer a portion of elemental damage into physical damage. This will allow him to provide more mitigating late resistance against the resulting smaller hits.
Damaging Ailments work differently than Non-Damaging Ailments. Damaging Ailments are Poison, Bleed and Ignite, whose application is based on the damage of the original attack rather than the damage taken.
Therefore, transferring damage to another type has no effect on whether the hit causes Damaging Ailment or the severity of Damaging Ailment caused.
For example, there’s a chance that Ignite’s fire damage hits will still deal Ignite based on the full fire damage of the hit, even if you have Flawed Refuge equipped.
Meanwhile, this also means that the transferred physical damage you take using Flawed Refuge will never cause Poison or Bleed to you by default, even though you also have a chance to suffer from these diseases due to vulnerability and so on.
Finally, let’s talk briefly about this modifier on the shield: You take 100% elemental damage from blocked hits. Be very careful here as these modifiers will stack and end up making you take more damage than your initial attack.
For example, if you use this shield for Glancing Blows, which causes you to take 65% of the damage from blocked hits, you’ll end up taking 165% of the elemental damage from blocked hits. That’s 65% more damage than if you didn’t block it here, so be aware of that.
That’s it for this guide. I hope you all enjoyed Affliction League and I’ll see you in the next one.
I will explore the inner workings of Frostblink of Wintry Blast CoC Occultist build, which is my favorite of many new emerging cold CoC builds in Path of Exile 3.23. It offers superb mobility, as it teleports the character just like the regular Frostblink does. However, due to the lack of cooldown, you can hook it up to a well-established Cast on Critical Strike and Cyclone gem combo.
The additional upside of this alternate Frostblink is more damage per chill effect on the enemy, which should be capped at 30%. The chill is removed on hit with this spell, so to apply it once again, you will use the basic Frostblink, as it is one of the very few instant cold spells that will not disrupt the channeling.
The greatest benefit of using a mobility spell is the main damage source, as Bronze body armor, with its unmatched local increases to gem level for ascendency, we’ve selected occultist due to the obvious synergy with cold damage and critical strikes from forbidden power stacking maximum power charges normally yields tons of crit chance.
However, in this situation, it also provides a larger area of effect and area damage. The unique items that have to be used are also heavily tied to charges of all kinds, especially Ralakesh's Impatience boots, which treat you as if you’re fully charged. You’re dealing damage with your Frostblink cast on Cyclone that has 100% Critical Strike Chance with a high crit multiplier. You will benefit from Inner Conviction and Pain Attunement. Void Beacon and Frigid Wake are excellent additions.
Enemies will take magnified cold damage. The build has a high spell suppression chance, spell block chance, Elemental damage recoup, and a sizable hybrid life pool. It cannot withstand big physical damage hits unless you’re willing to tweak the build to make it tankier at the cost of damage. Clear speed resembles that of a Flicker Strike, but you can also use a regular Frostblink to close the gaps. It’s really fast. Single-target damage is also more than enough, tens of millions of DPS.
The build uses many cheap Uniques with rares to cap resistances. You will harness the power of charges with Ralakesh's Impatience, Willclash, Malachai’s Loop, and Graven's Secret. With this combination, the character is treated as though it had all its basic charges.
You will also benefit from the absorption charges, which result in a lot of life, life recoup, and spell block chance. Other unique POE Items to implement are Badge of the Brotherhood amulet and Bronze live body armor for more damage. Willclash is an enormous bonus to spell block chance. When combined with other items, characters are treated as if they had all 10 or more power charges, and they do not lose these charges when blocking.
The damage and defense stats are also generous. Malachai’s Loop increases spell damage and grants 2 extra maximum power charges. The extra 5 levels to the Frostblink spell socketed in Bronze live will result in much more damage. Corrupt it for an extra 2 gem levels AOE gems if you can afford it, double corrupted if you like to gamble.
It could potentially increase the level of Frostblink by up to 8. Ralakesh's Impatience boots cause you to be treated as on maximum power, frenzy, and endurance charges. Conjuring these in any other way would be too inefficient and difficult. You can still benefit from Inner Conviction Keystone or absorption charges. The build is not very tanky, so using the Graven's Secret belt is quite a good idea. It grants you an extra maximum power charge and tons of life recoup from the elemental damage you take.
Use Badge of the Brotherhood to benefit from an additional 7 or more frenzy charges. These make you deal more damage and increase the cooldown recovery rate for Frostblink.
You may struggle with capping your Elemental resistances if you put Polaric Devastation on, but if that’s not an issue, consider it for extra damage, crit chance, and to cover enemies in Frost. They will take increased cold damage, and their crit chance gets reduced by 50%. A good Precursor's Emblem with +1 to max power charges is immensely powerful in this build.
Keystone of inner faith is available in the Dominus variant of Militant Faith and deals with more damage per power charge. The devotion mod shall increase your damage, grant you some Elemental resistances, Mana regeneration, or reduce the Mana cost of your skills. Shaper of Storms, Shaper of Winter, Mastermind of Discord, and Heart of Destruction are suitable keystones if you need more damage.
Shaper of Winter is particularly good to upgrade your chill and freeze for improved durability. Look for Bastion of Elements or Nine Lives, Elemental Penetration, and extra Critical Strike chance can be found as Hatred or Zealotry mods on a Watcher’s Eye. Grace offers more evasion and blind on hit. The abundance of unique items leaves you with very few rare items that will be mainly used to fix the missing resistances and attributes.
You can craft the prefix to never miss with Cyclone on your weapon. Reduce the mana cost of skills and gain Spell Suppression, Chaos Resistance, and Blocking. You need some sort of melee weapon to use with Cyclone. We recommend a claw with its instant life and mana on hit, but most weapons will do.
Craft a prefix to make your hits unavoidable and seek modifiers for Critical Strike chance and global crit multiplier with spell damage. Acquire some maximum life, resistances, and spell suppression on the gloves. Other mods are of lesser importance.
Cold Exposure and Unnerve can be gained as eldritch implicit modifiers. Rare rings are where the bulk of your resistances and attributes reside. For prefixes, get maximum life and reduce the Mana cost of your skills. You’ll probably still need a bit more resistances and attributes, so try to gain them on your rare Jewels.
If that’s already covered, go for suitable Critical Strike modifiers. You can use 1 or 2 of the cold themed Large Cluster Jewels. To proliferate freeze, you need to look for Elemental resistances, Elemental damage, cold penetration, and Blast Freeze. Medium Cluster Jewel here you may find additional Critical Strike Chance with crit damage or AOE for better clear speed. We recommend one vast power for around 30% increased area of effect.
Bottled Faith increases your Critical Strike Chance and damage as long as its consecrated ground affects you and your foes. Your block chance is high but not capped. Use room’s concoction flask for more spell and attack block chance. For magic flasks, you can pick up diamond, quartz, jade, and life flasks. Their suffixes shall increase your crit chance, evasion rating, and reduce the mana cost of skills. Life flask shall stop bleeding.
Frostblink of Wintry Blast is more suited for a trigger build, as it has no cooldown but cast time instead. Although it cannot be chilled, it deals more damage to chilled enemies and removes the chilling effect at the same time. Cyclone is used to trigger Frostblink. You can easily move and attack at a high rate. Link these 2 with cast on Critical Strike, Empower, Inspiration, and Power Charge on Critical Support gems.
A regular Frostblink is the mobility spell, which is also used to chill and freeze. Link it with Bonechill and Unbound Ailments for a more powerful chill effect, which translates into more damage. Zealotry guarantees you to have more spell damage and more Critical Strike Chance. Hits against tough enemies will create consecrated ground.
Use Grace for more evasion, which is excellent with Ghost Dance. You can swap it for determination if you prefer to take less physical damage from hits. Instead, Hatred simply grants more cold damage. If you feel like your damage is enough, use Tempest Shield or Arctic AR armor instead of it, maybe even both if you can fit them in. Link 3 skills with Enlightened to reserve less mana.
Numerous incoming hit damage is taken as dot instead of petrified blood on. It can provide you with a high life regeneration. Affects the bottom half of your life pool. Link it with Arrogance and Enlightened support gems to be just below half of your life pool permanently.
You will take less physical and Elemental damage by Immortal Call in a few moments. Frost Shield drains your energy shield to form a protective stationary sphere inside of which you take less damage and have an increased Critical Strike chance. Link both with cast when damage is taken to save your character from dangerous situations.
Enemy marked with Assassin’s Mark takes increased damage from critical strikes and is more likely to be hit with such strikes. Link it with Mark on Hit to apply it automatically against rare enemies. Activate VRF for a brief but potent bonus to your spell damage. Use Shield Charge to move around faster if there are no enemies nearby. Frostbite lowers cold resistance.
Manually kill all the bandits. It’s probably the best option. Alternatively, help Alira. This would get you extra Elemental resistances, Global Critical Strike multiplier, and 5 mana a second. It is a good option for starters.
For a major god, pick Arakaali. We don’t expect to cap chaos resistance anyway, and too much damage over time may be dangerous. As we went heavily into hit damage mitigation with block chance, petrified blood, and recoup. Minor God is less important. Abberath seems like the best pick. It reduces ignite duration for you.
The passive skill tree follows the outermost ring on the top. It’s the most efficient way to allocate all the maximum power charges and grab 2 large jewel sockets for cluster Jewels. The rest of the points are spent on maximum life, Critical Strike nodes, cold damage, reservation efficiency, and spell suppression.
For keystones, get Pain Attunement, Ghost Dance, and something to turn into Inner Conviction. Allocate 50 extra life and 15% increased life if there are no life mods on your body armor.
As life masteries, reservation efficiency as a mastery life reservation efficiency is reservation mastery crit multiplier against unique enemies and extra gem level to Critical Strike gems. As critical masteries, increased damage per charge as charge mastery, and maybe lucky spell suppression if you have any points left and low suppression chance.
This guide is about the new Righteous Fire skill for a Hierophant in Path of Exile 3.23. The build uses Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion skill, in contrast to regular RF, not only sources its damage from maximum mana instead of maximum Life but is also affected by all modifiers to spell damage, including increased spell damage from the Indigon helmet. It’s one of the most potent sources of damage that’s rarely explored in dot builds, as the dot damage doesn’t scale with it unless it’s specifically stated.
To get more damage from Indigon, get a lot of maximum unreserved mana and then spend it very quickly with Arcane Cloak to recover all this mana back. Use Armageddon Brand of Volatility with Brand Mastery that recovers 10% of your maximum mana after the brand expires, which happens after merely one activation. When mapping, there's no need to do it since you'll also gain mana on killing with Thrill Killer and/or Mind Drinker.
Hierophant is the ascendancy that specializes in mana, with passives such as Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought. These nodes grant mana damage, reservation efficiency, area of effect, and energy shield, which the build heavily relies on. The damage is sourced entirely from the Indigon. It has a damage cap that you’re able to reach with enough mana, which is sourced from items and passives.
The fire damage over time can be improved with burning damage or dot multiplier modifiers on a weapon. It’s a durable build with over 10k energy shield, a lot of evasion, and reduced Elemental damage taken. It has a low block chance and almost no armor, but the high ES pool combined with Arcane Cloak guard spell will protect you from getting killed in one hit.
Clear speed is great and restricted only by your movement speed. To reach meaningful single-target damage, you will need to spend some POE Currency. The price is high, as expected from an intelligent stacking build, but it can be assembled on a moderate budget.
The build requires a lot of unique POE Items. Your focus is on mana and intelligence. Intelligence grants mana and energy shield, making it important with Shaper’s Touch gloves. It grants Evasion. mana will affect your damage with the Indigon helmet. Transfiguration of Mind adds AOE due to the Sanctuary of Thought. Strength grants mana and energy shield. Indigon increases energy shield and your spell damage alongside mana spent recently, which is the main reason to stack mana and use Arcane Cloak.
All spell damage modifiers affect the damage over time of Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion. You can’t reserve mana, but you can reserve life, and the Prism Guardian Shield is the most efficient way to do so. Socket your most expensive and important auras here. The Ivory Tower protects you from chaos damage and grants tons of energy shield regeneration, intelligence, and mana.
There is no replacement for this armor. Legacy of Fury boots will significantly improve your damage with powerful Scorch and Explosions on killing. If you can't find any resistances, mana, or intelligence, consider replacing them with rare boots. Use Shaper’s Touch gloves to gain tons of mana with energy shield from strength and evasion from intelligence. Cyclopean Coil is a reasonably priced belt with a lot of maximum mana, attributes, and freeze immunity. Use it before you’re able to afford a better one.
Astramentis is the amulet with a lot of attributes that we recommend using in this build. Eyes of the Greatwolf with suitable rolls will undoubtedly be very expensive. You’re looking for increased intelligence, strength, or all attributes with life regeneration, global defenses, fire damage, or maximum mana. Put Shavronn's Revelation on your right finger to gain tons of maximum mana and energy shield regeneration. Since you don't regenerate mana, the downside won't be a problem. Socket Healthy Mind Jewel near Cruel Preparation to gain much more mana, intelligence, and mana on Split Personality.
A rare amulet can be an excellent option. Look for maximum mana, attributes, and resistances. The best ones will have a synthesized implicit or shaper suffix for increased attributes. On a ring, you shall get the usual mana and attributes, especially intelligence. You will probably need some dexterity too for the Grace skill gem. You can obtain mana, energy shield, attributes, chaos resistance, and Elemental spell damage from Jewels. Use large cluster Jewels to create a suitable environment for 2 of your Split Personality jewels. There are quite a few notables to look for. Most importantly, Scintillating Idea from a lightning cluster Jewel for a 20% increased maximum mana.
Mana and intelligence from Clarity are the best modifier to get on a Watcher’s Eye. Another great one is the Malevolence dot multiplier. Excellent additions may manifest as Clarity, Discipline, Grace, and even Purity of Fire. It may be hard to cap your resistances after you put most of your resources into intelligence, strength, and mana. It can be done with Ruby, Topaz, and Sapphire flasks if you’ve opted for the Traitor Keystone. While searching for burning damage modifiers on your items is an option, prioritize mana and intelligence instead.
Life regeneration will affect your ES with Zealot's Oath and is very important. You need a weapon with a lot of maximum mana and various types of fire damage over time modifiers, attributes, and dot multipliers are too very valuable. We can craft some of these modifiers. Look for boots that offer attributes like movement speed, mana, and resistances. For Eldritch mods, seek life regeneration per endurance charge and maximum fire resistance. On a belt, you can increase your attributes via Hunter or Elder suffix. Try to get some intelligence from the crafting bench. energy shield, maximum mana, and resistances are good too.
Ivory Tower protects you from chaos damage until you have no mana. Use Coruscating Elixir flask to shift incoming chaos damage to affect energy shield if your mana has been depleted and to take less fire damage. You may also use a regular Ruby flask if your chaos resistance is high and you don’t run out of mana. For other flasks, get a Topaz flask with bleed immunity and a Sapphire flask with increased movement speed if you’re using the Trader Keystone for permanent flasks. These are your 3 flasks. If not, you should also get a Forbidding mana flask with a crafted mod for life regeneration during flask effect and a Quicksilver flask with increased movement speed.
Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion deals damage based on your maximum mana to your character and enemies around you in the form of fire damage over time. Link it with Burning Damage, Swift Affliction, Controlled Destruction, Elemental Focus, and Arcane Surge support gems.
It’s important to use some kind of channeling skill with Armageddon Brand of Volatility. Scorching Ray is the top choice because of its powerful fire exposure. Armageddon Brand of Volatility is supposed to recover 10% of your maximum mana when it expires, which it does after activating once. Allocate the specific Brand Mastery to achieve it. It’s a substantial source of mana recovery during boss fights. Link these 2 with Cast While Channeling and Infused Channeling support gems.
The following 3 auras shall be socketed in the Prism Guardian Shield:
Malevolence makes you deal more damage over time and increases your skill effect duration if you have no mana reserved. Eternal Blessing support allows you to have one permanently blessed aura of charge with an increased aura effect. Link Malevolence to it. Clarity does nothing with Shavronn's Revelation, but it unlocks some of the best mods on a Watcher’s Eye. If you don’t have it, use Vitality instead or alongside it if you have enough life. Link it with Arrogant support.
Your entire mana pool has to remain unreserved. Activate Arcane Cloak to spend 64% of your current mana and gain up to 2,000% increased spell damage from Indigon. Spending a minimum of 16,000 mana in just 4 seconds is necessary to reach this aspirational cap, but it's not practical to attempt with any other skill. Link it with Less Duration and Swift Affliction to use it again sooner. Flame Dash's ability is the curse that lowers the fire resistance of your enemies. If you don’t want to cast it, get a slightly worse Elemental Weakness on hit as a corrupted glove implicit, as we did. You can link your curse gem to Hextouch support to proliferate the Hex.
Shield Charge is simply used to travel faster. Spending mana within Sigil of Power enhances its strength, leading to reduced damage from enemies.
Kill all the bandits in Act 2. You will need the two extra passive skill points the most. For a major God, we recommend the Soul of Arakaali to take less damage over time and less chaos damage over time after an upgrade, which is good if your chaos resistance is not yet capped. The selection of minor Gods offers a variety of bonuses. We recommend something to take less physical damage or less damage over time against the type of damage you struggle with the most. We have picked Shakari for better protection against poison.
The passive skill tree resembles an S shape to squeeze out more mana and intelligence from forbidden jewels. So if you don’t have them, opt for a more optimized shape. Aim mostly for maximum mana, some energy shield, and intelligence. Fire damage and damage over time are less important. Eternal Youth will be transformed into the Traitor Keystone. Allocate also Zealot Oath, Iron Will, Pain Attunement, and a single brand cluster. Get passive energy shield regeneration and shift the stun threshold to ES. Two energy shield masteries lessen damage taken. As for mana recovery after using Guard skill, as mana Mastery, increased attributes as attribute Mastery, and mana recovery when brand expires as Brand Mastery.
In this guide, we will deep dive into WoW Dragonflight Season 3 crafted gear.
Crafted gear is still a force to be reckoned with in Season 3, despite a slight nerf. The max item level caps at 486, just 3 levels shy of the highest Myth gear.
But don’t let that deter you. It’s still a solid choice. For Stardust, no RNG headaches here, as crafting gear allows you to target specific slots and items, offering a strategic advantage to your gearing journey. So, you can plan ahead and farm the Reagents needed.
Speaking of Reagents, let’s take them one by one and go over the changes this season brought.
Each crafted gear piece requires an Enchanted Crest crafted by Enchanters through the work order system. Or if your main character has enchanting, you’re in luck. It can save you some WoW Dragonflight Gold there.
Enchanted Crest Recipes are found in the Emerald Dream from outdoor activities like rares, treasures, and the Superbloom Event. The drop chance is quite high as well.
Same as last season, we have 3 Enchanted Crests:
The Whelpling crest is utilized for lower-level blue gear, providing an item level of up to 447. Although this is fairly low considering it can drop from outdoor activities as well, it can prove very useful for solo players. On the flip side, the Wyrm and Aspect crests are reserved for epic-quality gear. This is the most powerful gear you can craft, but you also need another Reagent for that.
In WoW Dragonflight 10.2, all crests go directly into the currency tab rather than your bags. Due to this change, an item had to be implemented to convert the crest into a Reagent, allowing for easy transfer to the crafters. This is done by the Nascent Wyrm’s Dreaming Crest, and there are 3 kinds of them: one for each type of crest. All can be purchased from the enchanting vendors throughout the Dragonflight zones.
For example, to craft the highest crest, you need to purchase the Nascent Aspect’s Dreaming Crest by handing in 60 normal Aspect’s Dreaming Crests. To put things in perspective, gathering this amount is equivalent to completing 5 level-16 keys in time or taking down around 6 Mythic bosses. It does take some effort and time, but the high item level makes it worthwhile.
Additionally, you can obtain a free Enchanted Wyrm’s Dreaming Crest through specific milestones. One is rewarded for defeating Fyrakk as part of the main campaign, including all the difficulties. While the other is granted upon reaching Renown 20 with Dream Wardens.
So far, we have covered the enchanted crests. Now, the second reagent that you have to provide for high items is the Spark of Dreams.
This item is basically replacing the old sparks that we had in Season 1 and 2. You can create it by combining 2 Splintered Sparks of Dreams and 250 Flightstones.
There are 2 known ways to earn a half spark. The first way is by completing the “A Worthy Ally” weekly quest offered by the Renown keeper. It requires farming 1,500 reputation with Dream Wardens. The second way is by completing any of these 2 quests offered by Malicia for PVP players. You can find her in the Valdrakken’s PVP Hub.
As you may anticipate, you can generate a spark weekly by receiving one half spark per week. However, there is a unique opportunity to earn an extra spark through the one-time quest “Dreams Unified” offered by Lady Moonberry. Upon completion, you’ll have 2 sparks. But keep in mind, this occurs just once per character.
If you join in later in the patch, you do not need to fret. There’s a catch-up mechanism in place. Splintered Spark of Dreams can be obtained from raids, dungeons, PVP, and weekly activities until you reach the current spark count.
Since we pretty much cover all the universal Reagents across crafted pieces, let’s see how it works in practice.
Firstly, you need to reach out to an enchanter, open a work order for your chosen Enchanted Crest, and find a crafter for your desired gear piece. Consider the cost, quality, and Reagents needed. Many people in trade chat or your guild can help, so don’t be shy.
Besides the spark and the crest, the other Reagents vary depending on the item, and it’s not necessary to provide them yourself. The crafter can also contribute, but take that into consideration for the payment.
The quality of the Reagents is also very important, as it can help to make it faster. The ingredients can be gathered throughout farming, or you can purchase them directly from the Auction House.
So, the consistent Reagents are the Spark and the Enchanted Crest, and these will determine the final item level. If you provide only the spark, then it will be between 450 to 463, depending on its overall quality. However, it’s best to save your spark and enhance the piece further by cooperating crests. The Wyrm crest elevates it from 463 to 476, while the Aspect crest achieves levels from 473 to 486, making it very powerful.
Crafting weapons requires 2 sparks instead of 1, translating to approximately a month’s effort. Hence, it’s crucial to be strategic about the items you choose to craft, considering the sparks don’t come in as quickly.
Aside from that, crests also have a weekly cap of 90 per week, which, of course, increases every week. A good approach is to take notes from the best-in-slot gear guide for your class and spec.
Don’t forget that you can also add Draconic Missive of the Fire Flash for your preferred stuns and Embellishments for some extra Flare, providing fun effects on the piece.
Some items come with building Embellishments, such as the Elemental Lariat, and are so totally worth a look.
All in all, Embellishments give a powerful touch to the gear, and you should always utilize them, but you cannot equip more than two at a time.
Also, keep in mind that if you’ve got any crafted gear from Season 1 or 2 lying around, you can give it a refresh by adding the new Reagents.
Plus, it might even save you a bit of gold, especially if you reach out to the PvP same crafter. That’s all good and well for the PvE players. Now, let’s go over to the PvP side.
Honor and Conquest vendors offer items that let you convert professionally crafted gear into PvP gear. You can find them both in the Valdrakken’s PVP Hub. There are 3 (Greater Verdant) Crests of Honor, which will increase specific slot item levels to 476 PvP item level.
They are sold by Seltherex and they cost different amounts of Honor, depending on the slot you want to use them for. Honor is obtained from doing all types of PvP activities, ranked or unranked.
For the advanced players, there are 3 (Lesser Verdant) Trophies of Conquest, which will increase the gear’s level to 489. These are sold by Calderax and they cost different amounts of Conquest again, depending on the slot item.
Conquest is only earned from rated PvP activities and it has a weekly cap. Season 3 started with a 1,350 limit and it keeps increasing by 550 every week.
Don’t forget that the PvP item level is only enabled during Arenas and Battleground matches. In the Outdoor World, then it’s the actual item level on the piece that counts.
WoW Season of Discovery Phase 2 will open up with Gnomeregan for its level up raid and Stranglethorn Vale for its PVP event zone. But how has Phase 1 gone, and how have people reacted to it?
In the case of Phase 1 on Blackfathom Deeps and Ashenvale, people have loved the experience. Myself included.
There has been a rush of people spamming Ragefire Chasm for Horde, Stockades for Alliance and Wailing Caverns & Deadmines for both to get geared up for Blackfathom Deeps.
The bosses were tougher than some people expected, with many wiping and struggling on later bosses. However, the loot experience and freshness of the content made it a genuinely pleasant experience.
Regarding the PVP event zone, people seem to be enjoying it. It’s an overall okay experience. Blizzard has been fine-tuning and monitoring player reception and feedback to the event, both raid and PVP. Overall, it’s good but could be better and not as good as people expected.
This doesn’t even account for the rush to get runes. The world feeling alive and active, seeing thousands upon thousands of players spamming these low-level dungeons because we’re stuck here for a few more weeks, and almost no one is bored yet.
Leveling has been fun. People are gearing up alts since the level cap is 25, and it’s not difficult to do. SoD Gold itself is now a valuable commodity, with people proud of their 50g. However, buying gold with real money trading is $1 per gold, which is exorbitant. But then again, if people are selling, that means some are buying.
Overall, Phase 1 is incredible and leaves people excited about what’s coming next.
And that is Gnomeregan and Stranglethorn Vale (STV) in Phase 2.
Gnomeregan isn’t an iconic dungeon or place, aside from the fact that the Gnomes still do not have their homeland restored after 20 years.
But what are the bosses of Gnomeregan, and what kind of changes can we expect from this dungeon?
When you go into Gnomeregan, you open up with Grubbis, a trogg that is rather brutish, but overall, a simple fight. Since this is the opening boss, I don’t think the difficulty of Grubbis will increase by much, but his loot table will definitely change.
Grubbis spawns after a short roleplay event in which you clear waves of mobs, avoiding the dynamite explosion before he comes out hollering. I wonder if they’ll keep this event or if they’ll remove it. It makes sense either way.
The second boss is Viscous Fallout, another simple boss. You simply have to clear the trash mobs around it so you can pull it without pulling extra packs, which will wipe your party. As far as being changed for a raid boss, I assume they’ll make it, so you have to fight some of these trash mobs with it. So, I expect it’ll start with some ads that pull regardless of clearing the ads around the Viscous Fallout.
Then, we move on to the third boss, Electrocutioner 6000, which is a simple boss. Most of the bosses are simple and, for the most part, spank and tank. But that’s just for Gnomeregan, the dungeon. Once it becomes a level-up raid, this will definitely change. I can assume that this mob will have a new deadly mechanic, as with most of the other bosses.
The fourth boss is also the most hated boss for Feral Druids in Classic due to the need to farm Manual Crowd Pummelers. With Season of Discovery, that is no longer the case, as we get a new and improved version of Manual Crowd Pummeler called the Automatic Crowd Pummeler. This new item is a permanent item with a 3-minute cooldown that you can use infinitely. I don’t know if they plan to remove the original version, but they likely will. As for the boss itself, the changes that’ll be implemented are likely going to involve giving it actual mechanics and things you have to keep an eye out for.
The fifth boss of Gnomeregan is the Dark Iron Ambassador, who is a rare that isn’t guaranteed to spawn. This mob will probably get turned into a named mob and given an expanded nature within the raid.
Finally, we have Mekgineer Thermaplugg, the big bad end boss of the dungeon and soon-to-be raid. This kind of boss was very likely going to be as brutal as Aku’mai has been in BFD. In the classic dungeon, like the rest of Gnomeregan, he is a spank-and-tank boss. However, for the level-up raid, expect him to have some new brutal abilities that’ll test your ability to clear this level-up raid. I don’t know what those abilities will be, but with how difficult Aku’mai has been for some people, this boss will also likely be very difficult to clear.
Now that we’ve covered the six bosses of the dungeon, let’s talk about what more they will add or change in the raid.
Gnomeregan is a level 30 to 35 dungeon for the most part. So, with it being turned into the endgame raid of Phase 2, that means the dungeon mobs and bosses will be pushed to level 40.
That also doesn’t account for the fact that BFD only had six bosses, and one of those bosses was just a named rare with no abilities. In contrast, BFD, the level-up raid, had seven full-named bosses with a whole loot table and abilities.
So for Gnomeregan, we can expect 1 to 3 new bosses, new events, new quests, and a massively changed loot table.
As BFD has shown us, the loot table of the dungeon versus the raid is staggeringly different.
The loot table of the level-up raid is significantly larger than the loot in the BFD dungeon. So, we can expect similar loot changes to happen to Gnomeregan, whose current loot table is rather pitiable.
I won’t guess as to what items they’ll add to the loot table. But considering the amount of insane and awesome loot that BFD got, expect a few new purple items, fantastic new gear, crafting recipes, elixir crafting recipes, a new world buff, more quests, and perhaps even more than what I’ve listed.
A great note for players is that getting to Gnomeregan for Horde will be much easier than it was in Classic. Players will be able to essentially teleport to Gnomeregan and not have to do the long and arduous trek that Horde players had to do to get to Deadmines in Phase 1.
Now, moving on to the PVP content - Stranglethorn Vale, the PVP event zone.
This is an iconic zone, and one that I would wager money that most people have had a terrible PVP experience on. Either you got griefed or you were the griefer.
For anyone that played on a PVP server, it’s an absolute core in experience for not just Vanilla players but Classic players to be ganked or murdered in Stranglethorn Vale. People have been ganking and abusing low levels in this zone for a long time, and I expect this to only get worse in Phase 2 of Season of Discovery.
Between the Gurubashi Arena for the trinket, the fishing event, and the whole zone being turned into a massive PVP event zone, some of the most iconic questing in where one of the go-to zones to level up...... All of these facets coming together is going to make this place absolutely wild come Phase 2.
If you aren’t one of the first people to get to level 40 early on in Phase 2, I would highly recommend leveling up in another zone to avoid experiencing the hard ganking that will probably happen. This advice is only for people that play on a PVP server. If you play on a PVE server, have fun! It’s going to be a great experience.
I personally don’t know if there’s going to be a reputation involved with the STV PVP event similar to how you get Warsong Gold reputation for doing the Ashenvale event zone, but I would guess that even if we don’t get a reputation, there’ll be more events and things happening at the Gurubashi Arena and fishing event. Additionally, even if we don’t get a new reputation, a Wrathty based reputation will likely get earned through the PVP event zone.
Whether it makes sense or not, law wise doesn’t hold much weight. The experience is what truly matters here. Having a Trollbane murdering trolls is a beautiful concept, and I say that as a Horde and Troll main.
Now, shifting focus from PvP & PvE to Blizzard’s handling of Season of Discovery.
Buffs and nerfs have been coming out pretty quickly. Changes in the quality of life are being implemented almost instantly. They’ve been monitoring feedback and reception in Phase 1. And so far, despite Hunters being nerfed twice, the game is still balanced. Yes, Hunters remain the strongest DPS even after the 2 nerfs.
Regarding Runes and how they feel, Blizzard has done a phenomenal job. Runes feel great, especially as a Druid player. Being able to spam Wrath infinitely at no Mana cost has made leveling up and playing the game much easier and enjoyable.
However, I’m personally not fond of how quickly all the runes were discovered. Given the huge player base in Season of Discovery, it’s not surprising that all the runes were found so rapidly.
I hope that the next set of 12 runes for each class introduced in Phase 2 takes longer to discover and involve more interaction and unlocking. Considering the numerous new zones and places to uncover these new runes in Phase 2, I believe it will indeed take longer to find all the runes.
To give Blizzard credit, the decision to place the Warlock Metamorphosis rune inside BFD wasn’t the smartest, but they’ve acknowledged this mistake and stated they won’t repeat it in the future. They’ve made adjustments, allowing players to acquire said rune both inside and outside BFD.
Overall, with phases lasting 4 to 12 weeks at most, the content being enjoyable and well-positioned makes the game feel like a much-improved version of Classic.
I can honestly say that Season of Discovery is my favorite version of World of Warcraft to date. Hopefully, when they finish Season of Discovery and fully unveil WoW Classic Plus, they’ll incorporate all they’ve learned to provide us with an outstanding and long-term future for Classic Plus.
Next we will talk about the first 6 druid runes in WoW Classic Season of Discovery and where to find them. There is a good balance in these 6 early druid runes of healing, balance and feral spec. So hopefully this season of discovery druid rune guide helps you get a good range of abilities early in the game.
Starting out with the first Rune, the Fury of Stormrage. This Rune completely reduces the Mana cost of Wrath, and you get it from your class trainer in Teldrassil. Up in the tree at level two, they give you a quest to go out and defeat some grills. Doing so, they will drop the Luna Idol. Once you hit level four, you can equip the idol and complete its requirements, which in this case are to defeat six creatures affected by your Moonfire. So go learn Moonfire, go out and hit things with Moonfire, then defeat them six times. Click the idol again, and you’ll get the Rune, nice and easy.
Next, the Living Seed Rune, which is a healing rune that plants a living seed on your target when you critically heal them, going off after 15 seconds for extra healing. You want to be around level seven or eight for this. Search for Glade Flowers around Teldrassil. Here’s what they look like. Keep an eye out, as they’re quite spread around. Just have this in the back of your mind while you’re doing other things.
Click on three Glade flowers, combine them to make the Glade Crown. Take it to Teldrassil at Starbreeze Village, where you can find a big Wooden Effigy. Use the crown, which you combined with the flowers, to spawn a level seven Elite mob. This shouldn’t be too hard. Once you’ve defeated it, it drops the Living Seed Rune. If there are other people, you can group up for this, but it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.
Another healing Rune, Lifebloom, a powerful heal over time, especially for the early levels. You want to be around level 9 or 10 for this. Head to the northwest of Teldrassil where the Harpies are. Once there, a skeleton can spawn. Click on this skeleton to summon a spirit. Then, you need at least one other player to help you channel a big portal that appears. Just channel the portal, and you get the Rune. It’s really as simple as that. There should be lots of people doing this quest right now, lots of movement around in this area.
If you party up with people, everyone who helps gets a copy of the Rune, so that’s really useful. You don’t have to worry about people taking it. The only hard part about this is waiting for the remains to respawn. If somebody does this quest just before you, there’ll be nothing here, and you won’t know where it spawns. Just hang around, wait for people to turn up, group up, and wait for these remains to spawn. Keep looking around; eventually, it’ll spawn. Grab it, click the portal, and get the Rune.
Number four, Sunfire. This is a big damage rune also located in Teldrassil. This deals big damage upfront and then damage over time as well. To get this, head to a specific tree in Teldrassil. You’ll notice a little circle at the entrance as a sign that you’re in the right spot. Look for lunar stones on the tree, cast Moonfire on each of these four stones, and a lunar chest will spawn at the base of the tree where the circle was. Open the chest to get your Sunfire Rune.
All you need for this is Moonfire. If you’ve got it, you can head here and get it, or you can just wait until the quests take you into this area. Once you have Sunfire and Fury of Stormrage, you have a huge damage ramp early on that is just so nice on a druid.
Now it’s time to get onto the feral stuff, your animal druid stuff: Mangle. Okay, this is the Mangle Rune. This replaces your Claw ability and lets enemies take additional damage from bleeds and Shred. To get this, be level 10 in Teldr Hil and go defeat Rageclaw, a level 10 normal mob in the central cave of Ban'ethil Barrow Den. Once you’ve defeated him, it drops the Idol of Ursine Rage. Equip the idol, keep Rage in bear form above 50 for 60 seconds.
The easiest way to do this is to go to the starting zone and aggro a really low-level mob, like a level one or a level two mob. Hit it once to get aggro, then turn your back to it. It will start hitting you in the back because it’s such a low level, and you’re in bear form. It won’t do much damage, so just stand there and take the hits. Your rage will grow and grow. You just have to stand there for 60 seconds.
If you’ve already moved on to Darkshore and the mobs are a bit higher, maybe find someone who can heal you while you do this, or just pop a heal over time. Go into bear form and just tank it out. Move from pack to pack to regain health, but this shouldn’t be too hard. This is a very fast way to do it, so time it for yourself, around 60 seconds. Just keep your rage above 50, and then that will complete the idol. All you do is click the idol again, like all other idols. Click the idol again once you’ve passed the requirements, and you will get your Mangle Rune.
Finally, Lacerate, the sixth and final early easy game Rune. That’s Lacerate, a rune for your bear form that deals bleed damage over time and also generates threat. Leave the starter zone of Teldrassil and go to Darkshore.
Now you need to collect an item here called crab treats, which can either be dropped from the fur bogs at around level 12 just south of the town Oradine or fished up right on the docks of Warden when you land. If you land, go talk to the little fisherman just south of Warden. Get a fishing rod from him and fish there. You can fish these up. Or you can go fight the fur bogs. Once you’ve done that, you’ll get crab treats. Now you need to go to the beach, which is just south of Warden.
As soon as you get here, you can do this. Look for the young Reef Crawlers. It’s important to get these and not the ones further south, which are higher level and harder to fight. Feed them the crab treats, and they will come up to you, like a little cute animation. You’ll get the Lacerate Rune, and that’s it.
That’s it. Six super easy early game runes that give a good mix of balanced healing and feral abilities and should keep you pretty comfy on period all the way up to level 20. The next runes are scattered more around the world and require higher levels to do.
Starfield has a lot of choices. Some of which are a no-brainer. While others are still being debated. And then, there are some choices that are just straight up stupid. Chances are, you probably made some of these stupid decisions during your playthrough without knowing.
So in this guide, we’re going to be taking a look at the worst decisions you can make in Starfield.
Early on in the main story, you’re going to find yourself in a keyless city hunting down an artifact with Sam Coe, close to its whereabouts lying in the local Galbanks Vaults.
But there’s one small predicament: in true Western fashion, the bank is being held up by a gang of bandits. What’s worse is that there are hostages inside who are all fearing for their lives.
Seeing as the gang is unwilling to talk to the rangers, you’ll have the opportunity to act as a mediator and negotiate with the group of deadbeats and try to resolve the situation. However, if you’re incompetent enough, then you’ll have the opportunity to completely ruin the heist.
If you did find some way to slip into the bank without convincing the bandits to stand down, then you’ll find the crew’s leader waiting for you inside the vault with a hostage in tow.
By now, any sane player would have killed the thief and enjoyed being brandished as a hero. But you’re not the same player, are you?
Simply wait for the gang to give up on trying to negotiate with the Galbank employee, and he’ll kill him right in front of you.
The funniest part of this quest, however, is Marshall Daniels’s reaction, who, despite being mortified by your incompetence, still decides that you’re Freestar Ranger material.
With characters as stupid as this, it’s no wonder you’re the one getting everything done.
Andreja’s questline is filled with twists and turns, but it climaxes at the end when you must confront Tomisar, a high-ranking official within the House Va’ruun and Andreja’s only link to a home.
After spending all of two minutes arguing with Tomisar, you have to choose one of 3 options: kill Tomisar, let Andreja kill Tomisar, or, for whatever reason, let him go.
Option 3 may seem fine enough. However, it’s a choice you’re sure to regret after you make it. From a story perspective, this makes little sense. You just spent the past hour trying to avenge Andreja’s friends. Now, you’ve suddenly grown into a soft spot.
And despite Andreja’s threat of reporting Tomisar to the High Council, for some reason, I don’t think they really care about what happens to those outside the House of Varun.
From a gameplay perspective, well, you do miss out on some pretty sweet robes. It’s perfect for anyone trying to roleplay as a Sith Lord.
Ultimately, the choice of whether to kill or spare Tomisar is yours, and don’t worry about upsetting our new goth mommy, as our standing with you is unchanged regardless of the choice you make.
Fallout 4 really spoiled us with the amount of romance options that were available to us.
Not only did we have a greater number of potential suitors, but you were also able to flirt, develop relationships, and sleep with all of the potential partners or wanderers, so long as you keep all your lovers out of sight from each other.
But trying to do the same thing in Starfield is a big mistake. It seems like everyone in Starfield is monogamous. And since all the characters you can woo are members of Constellation, word gets around much faster.
Although you’re free to flirt with whoever during the early stages of a relationship, the more serious your bond becomes with a potential soulmate, so to do the consequences.
If you’re caught chatting up other members after you’ve popped the big question, then your partner will lose your trust, and without saying the right things, you may end up in divorce court.
Ever since their inception in Morrowind, followers have become a staple in Bethesda games and only get better with every new game.
We’re now at the point with Starfield, where followers are pretty much a must, and going through the game as a lone wolf is less of an option and more of a hindrance. Bethesda’s companions have gone from glorified mobile storages to full-fledged characters with desires, needs, and characteristics.
In gameplay terms, your followers can also do a lot more than carry your burdens and fight mud crabs. They comment on their surroundings, engage in conversations, and can even speak on behalf of the player.
And that’s not to mention the world of romance options, which allow you to gain your companion’s trust and get things spicy in the bedroom for those sweet buffs.
So, as cool as you may think you are for uncovering the mysteries of the galaxy alone, the best lesson Starfield teaches is that everything’s more fun with friends, even if they aren’t real.
Now, I know that playing Starfield as a lone wolf is a no-go, but let me explain to you why spending Starfield Credits on a crew is not the best idea.
When you reach New Atlantis, you may be tempted to recruit all the potential crew members you can find. However, if you give the game some time, then you’ll be able to recruit crew members completely for free during the main story.
And best of all, these crew members have a personality, a trait that’s highly lacking with these random space scoundrels you can find in bars, who don’t even have a name.
What’s worse is that despite them taking up a slot in your ship, these crew members typically only have 1 or 2 skills maximum, which pales in comparison to Constellation crew members that have 4 skills with at least one maxed out.
Worse yet, is that you can’t even sleep with any of these companions. And that’s where I draw the line and choose to leave these second-rate crew members drowning their sorrows in the bars I found them in.
Starfield has more side content than any other Bethesda game to date.
Knowing this, it may be enticing to beeline your way through the main story and play through the other side missions and faction quests after you finish the main story. And although this is a perfectly apt way of going about it, it’s not something I’d recommend.
Without going into spoilers, New Game Plus will completely reset your progress except for your skills. But that’s not all that makes your second playthrough different. Many of the quests and events are changed, so you’ll be getting an altered version of the story, and even the side missions will play out differently.
Traits are a new addition to Bethesda’s game design, and they’re simple enough to get the hang of.
Unlike perks and skills, traits are a one-off effect that gives the player a buff and a debuff. But with a total of 17 traits currently in the game, you’d be correct in thinking that it’s balanced.
While all of the traits offer something to add, most offer a standard boost to health, stamina, or oxygen, with little added in terms of gameplay or story elements. And then, there are traits like Spaced or Introvert, which feel like they’re working against you rather than with you. I mean, what kind of a trait would punish you for having friends?
Thankfully, for every bad trait, there are 2 good ones. Wanted is basically a must for anyone doing a Glass Cannon build as it gives a massive 20% damage bonus while on low health. Taskmaster, as part of your ship, instantly repairs at a fee. And Empath is a trait that virtually has no faults, as it’s really hard to make your companions upset unless you blow up a colony ship or something.
Finally, those of you are more worried about the role-playing side of things, then you really can’t go wrong with Kid Stuff and Dream Home. As the former adds hours of extra content revolving around your parents while the latter gives you a sweet pad that puts anyone’s outpost to shame.
And if you’re looking to have a human punching bag that can make every waking moment of their lives miserable, then Hero Worshipped is the trait for you.
Your skills in Starfield are one of your character's most defining features.
Not only will they play a role in dialogue and choices. But more importantly, they'll determine what you're best at and the style of playthrough you're likely to pursue.
Although all skills have their purpose, it's not an equal playing field. Some skills are simply not that great, while others are just plain terrible, specifically skills like Botany, Gastronomy, and Nutrition. These skills sound and play like afterthoughts that were made for no better reason than to fill up the screen.
Meanwhile, skills like Rejuvenation turn Starfield into Call of Duty with regenerating health. And Persuasion lets you avoid conflict altogether to ensure the best possible outcome.
It’s time to start absolutely pumping in the Blackfathom Deeps in WOW Classic Season of Discovery. Here are some tips to make every single boss easier and to increase your DPS or make it easier if you are struggling at all.
For Baron Aquanis, grab a bubble before engaging the boss. This will increase your movement speed as you jump across the platforms, allowing you to engage with the boss even quicker. If anyone gets the Baron bomb, make sure they jump into the water to avoid knocking everyone else off. Interrupt their cast and make them move.
If you’re a ranged DPS, don’t worry. Just sit in the water the entire time and continue pumping the boss. You’ll have no issues, and there’ll be no downtime.
For Ghamoo’ra, a secret is that Shaman tanks can literally tank this boss the entire time. You don’t even have to worry about their Armor. Just one tank it and keep pumping while the boss has its shield. It only takes magic damage, so use any magic damage abilities you have for extra damage. Casters can pop the little bubbles to get some extra Mana back, but be aware that it damages them and everyone around them. When the boss breaks its main shield, it will do an AOE hitting for 700 damage and knocking back any melee. Take a step back or ensure you have full health to absorb this. Watch out for the threat drop. From there, make sure you start burning the boss.
Lady Sarevess is the easiest boss. She has an add, so have an off-tank this and literally ignores it the entire time. The most important thing is to make sure you’re kicking her freezing arrow. If you do this, no one will ever get frozen, and you won’t need to move. Just pump the boss down and enjoy.
Gelihast has a very low HP bar, but you need to hit him three times. As he’s healing back up, he takes almost no damage. The only thing that can wipe your group here is not dodging the little Murlocs that move around the room. It’s easier to be in the middle of the room or behind one of the little eggs, which spawns the Murlocs. If you’re there, you only have to watch for Murlocs coming from one side. The boss heals up to full and starts taking damage again before the Murlocs are gone. Pay attention if you want to increase your DPS and start pumping the boss again as soon as he’s at 100% HP.
In phase three, I suggest completely ignoring the ads that spawn and burning the boss because his HP is so low after killing Gelihast. Turn into the opening and kill the ads to unlock the Teleportation Stone. An invisible night elf next to it will help you repair if you ever have any wipes.
Lorgus Jett is a Gauntlet boss, so conserve your Mana accordingly. There are three rooms in this fight. In the first one, focus on interrupting the Healer. In the second one, again, make sure you’re interrupting the Healer. Ignore the Murlocs until you’re on the boss and passively cleave them down. The boss will spawn three totems in the exact same order every time. You can completely ignore the molten totem and the Windfury Totem.
However, as soon as he spawns the lightning Shield totem, everyone needs to stop DPS and burn that down. Otherwise, you will kill yourself because all hits to the boss will hit yourself for extra damage. Nuke this down and then burn the boss. Passive Cleave can deal with all the adds, and you can move away from any other totems.
Lord Kelris is the hardest boss in phase one. But once you understand it, it’s extremely easy. The boss will sleep with the two closest players to him and send them to the Shadow Realm. In the shadow realm, you have to nuke down the night elf mobs until they randomly spawn a portal, allowing you to exit. These night elf mobs have incredible spell resistance.
If you don’t have a lot of melees, ensure you always send one Caster with one melee into the shadow realm at a time. Assign one Caster to stand within the boss whenever it’s their turn to be sent down. This makes things easier, and all you have to do as range is ensure you’re dodging the Shadow Crashes. The boss also has a chain of lightning that gets harder for everyone at chains too. Make sure you’re always kicking that cast at 35%.
The boss phases into phase two, and you can no longer kick to interrupt any of his casts. Ensure it spread out enough of the range to avoid getting hit by the chain lightning. The boss does a Mind Blast on the tank, which is actually an AOE. If you’re a melee DPS, you can step far enough away to max melee range to avoid getting hit. Ensure yourself to max melee range, and you’ll never take any damage. Just burn the boss before he takes over the entire room. Ensure your magic dispels the debuff that goes out in Phase 2 because it will kill people.
Aku’mai, the last boss, is relatively easy. Have all your DPS stack up right behind the boss and ensure you dodge the frontal whenever it goes out. Tanks can swap around five stacks, and when the new tank taunts, the old tank needs to drop all their stacks by running to one of the Cleansing Elementals and standing there until their stacks are gone. Soon after the stacks go away, the Elemental will blow up, doing AOE damage, a Knockback, and spawning some little ads, one ad for every single stack that the tank dropped.
Have the off-tank pick these up and stack them on top of the boss. Passive Cleave should be able to take them down. At 50%, the boss phases and takes almost no damage during the phase. This is when you want to be focusing on DPS. If you can, have the second tank drop their stacks right before the phasing happens. If you don’t want to do this, drop stacks during the phase and then pick up the ads with the boss as soon as he becomes active again. The ideal way is to drop stacks right before the phase.
Move the boss on top of one of the Cleansing Elementals. It’ll explode right as he starts taking no damage in phase two. It’s easier not to drop stacks at all. Just have one tank take the boss until they die, then have the second tank pick them up and burn the boss down. If you have any issues with this, have the first tank drop stacks once, maybe around 3 to five stacks, spawning one Elemental that gets stronger for each stack that was put on the cleansing Elemental. Ignore the Void Walker and let the second tank die. Have the main tank pick up the boss again, and you should be able to down the boss. This should make every single boss extremely easy and ensure that you absolutely pump and do the most damage possible.
Diablo 4’s next major addition to the endgame, Abattoir of Zir was finally officially added to the game on December 5th! To help you better experience this newly introduced endgame content, I will introduce everything about it!
The Abattoir of Zir is a new level 100 piece of endgame content that, at the start, is going to be more difficult than level 100 Nightmare Dungeons. This new system is going to be very similar to Rifts from Diablo III.
You need to enter one of these dungeons and you’ll have 10 minutes to defeat enough enemies to summon a boss and then defeat that boss to actually complete that run of the Abattoir of Zir.
If you die once, the run’s over. And if you don’t defeat the boss within that 10 minutes, the run’s over. Even if you’re in a group of 4 people, if any person in the group dies, the run’s over. Even looking past that, just the difficulty of the enemies is going to be higher than nightmare 100 dungeons. It’s also only going to be one light. So, this is going to be very difficult.
To even start this new system, you will have had to complete the entirety of the Season Journey. So you’ll basically have to be level 100 and pretty progressed into the endgame to even get into the first level of this new system. And it’s going to work in a similar way to Nightmare Dungeons.
Once you complete that Season Journey, you’ll get a new recipe to craft Tier 1 of the Abattoir of Zir. And it’ll take sigil dust like your normal Nightmare Dungeon Keys.
Once you go in and complete the first tier of the Abattoir of Zir, you’ll then get a recipe to craft Tier 2. And you can go all the way up to Tier 25. But this is going to be much more difficult than going from level 66 to 67 in Nightmare Dungeons.
The difficulty increase from Tier 1 to Tier 2 is going to be a substantial jump. So, getting up all the way to Tier 25 is something that the vast majority of players will not accomplish.
One of the biggest saving graces of the system is how they’re going to be scaling that difficulty. Because they’re not actually going to be scaling the damage that enemies do to you very much.
In fact, we’re not actually certain if they’re going to be increasing the damage enemies deal at any point during the Abattoir of Zir. It did sound like they’re going to be slightly increasing it. But the primary way they’re increasing the difficulty is increasing the health of these enemies.
The reason this is actually really good is that these enemies are already going to be dealing ridiculous amounts of damage. In fact, Tier 1 of the Abattoir of Zir is going to be equivalent to level 104 of Nightmare Dungeons. That’s already going to be doing a lot of damage to you. But primarily scaling the health is going to allow a lot more builds to be able to do this.
And remember, you’re on a timer. Even if you have a super tanky build that can survive everything, you need to be doing enough damage to be able to kill enough things and then kill the boss to be able to beat that 10-minute timer or you fail. So, I think they’re actually scaling this difficulty in a much better way that’s going to actually allow a lot of builds to at least attempt some of these higher tiers.
The rewards from Abattoir of Zir are also going to be pretty substantial.
Now, we don’t actually know how gear drops are going to work in the system. Presumably, you’re going to be getting a lot of really high item level gear. Presumably, you’ll have really good chances to get 925 item level. But there are going to be some more specific rewards.
First off, you’re going to be getting a lot of glyph XP. Completing a Tier 1 of Abattoir of Zir is going to reward you with 1,000 glyph experience that you can either use on all of our normal glyphs right now or you can use on the other new reward of this system, which is going to be the first unique glyph ever added to Diablo 4 called Tears of Blood. This glyph is going to work in a completely different way than all of the other glyphs.
It’s going to start at level 1, but you’re going to be able to level it to level 200 or maybe even more. So, instead of being capped at 21, you’re capped at 200 or more, which is pretty crazy. This is also another reason why you need that massive amount of glyph experience. This glyph is also going to start at radius 4 and we know you’re at least going to be able to increase the size of this glyph at level 50 up to 5, which is bigger than any other glyph. We don’t know if you’ll be able to increase the size past that as well.
Now, the actual effects of this glyph are for every 5 core stats purchased within range. You gain 2% increased multiplicative damage. And again, this is at level 1, so that increase is also going to be increasing every time you level it up.
And then, it grants a 50% bonus to all rare nodes within range. This bonus is increased by 10% every 10 levels. Every 10 levels you put in, it’ll go up by another 10%. So, 1% per level, but it probably won’t actually increase until you get the full 10 levels. All in all, massively increased bonuses to rare nodes and just absurdly high damage increases.
What’s really interesting is this is just for every 5 core stats within range. This doesn’t mention the main stat for your class. This just says any core stat. This could potentially still mean that it’s just your main stat for your class (Willpower for a Druid). But it’s seeming like it’s meaning just any of the primary stats in the game, which would be pretty ridiculous.
And either way you look at it, either way this is going to play out, this thing is going to be giving you pretty much the biggest damage increase you can possibly get. This is probably going to give you close to infinite progression for the rest of the season, because getting like 200 levels on this one glyph is still going to take a lot of time and it’s just going to give you absurdly high damage increases.
Because of how the Abattoir of Zir is going to be scaled, where they’re scaling enemy health more than anything else, and because this glyph is tied into this, you’re probably going to actually need to continue to heavily progress this glyph to even have a chance to do higher tiers of the Abattoir of Zir. Because you’re getting such absurd damage increases with this glyph, that they would need to balance the higher tiers in a way to where you legitimately could not get enough damage without this glyph.
I do think this is actually a pretty good way to give more content and more progression halfway into a season, to continue to give you new and more difficult things to do. Because when this comes out, we’re going to be relatively halfway into the season and getting this is basically going to give you another tier of progression in the endgame.
Greetings, adventurers!
A knight of the Round Table has discovered forbidden knowledge from the Ancients. Their goal is to use this knowledge to bring about an eternal winter and subjugate humanity. It is up to you and your team of Silver Crows to gather and persuade Daichi, a fire mage with a grumpy demeanor, to aid you in tracking down and defeating the knight before they can cause destruction in the realm of Aeternum. Take the opportunity to get acquainted with the new characters introduced in Eternal Frost, and then continue their thrilling journey in-game starting from December 12th.
He grew up admiring King Artorius and later served as a loyal Knight of the Round Table, driven by youthful courage and passion. He embarked on the journey to Aeternum's shores alongside the rest of the court. However, a falling out with Artorius during the Wars of Crimson Madness led to his banishment. This devastating blow stripped him of his entire identity, leaving him adrift and searching for meaning in life.
For decades, he lived in seclusion, consumed by vengeance and lost in the depths of his own madness. He has now formed an alliance with Ser Loth, a Knight who has tapped into ancient forces beneath the mountains of Great Cleave. As the new commander, he leads an army of mutated Varangians called the Frostbound, seeking powerful artifacts to unleash a terrifying force upon Aeternum and the world at large.
Daichi was a skilled warrior in feudal Japan, quickly rising through the ranks. However, his rebellious nature and disdain for authority grew as he honed his samurai skills. Eventually, he became disillusioned with his feudal lord and decided to become a ronin, frustrated by what he perceived as incompetence.
Being pursued for his betrayal, Daichi sought refuge in Aeternum, hoping to find new opportunities. There, he found guidance from Jubei Mori, the master of a Fire Temple. Although Daichi proved to be quite stubborn, Mori helped him find clarity. However, witnessing his master's defeat at the hands of his own students only deepened Daichi's mistrust of others. He developed a chip on his shoulder and became quick to anger and judge.
Even after joining the Crows, Daichi's rebellious tendencies persist. His aversion to authority immediately clashes with Grace. Despite his challenging personality, Daichi can still be a formidable and loyal ally.
Please share with us what you are anticipating the most from the Eternal Frost narrative. Thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you in Aeternum.