I know there are still some players who are concerned about their Mage leveling and farming. So in this guide, I want to bring you my 10 tips and tricks that will help your Mage become better at AOE farming in WoW Classic Season of Discovery. So if you are ready, let's get straight to these tips without wasting any time!

1. Jumping To Increase AOE Distance

For those that don’t know, AOE that comes from player models can have their range increased by jumping when they cast the spell. We used to jump to maximize the distance so that sappers would go. This works well with all AOE that come from the player. I will use Arcane Explosion, and it does not hit the mob. Neither of us moves, but when I jump in the air, my Arcane Explosion gets a little extra distance. A lot of the time when I am Arcane Explosion spamming, I will be jumping to make sure I am hitting every mob in my range.

2. Avoiding Daze

Daze is a pretty annoying mechanic. It reduces your move speed by 50%, and if you are unlucky, you can get chain dazed and die. You have 2 options to bypass this mechanic, both of them pretty cool. When a mob strikes your back, there's a possibility of experiencing Daze. You can avoid daze easily by making sure you turn and face the mobs as they are hitting you. Another way to avoid daze is by shield effects. You are unable to be dazed when you have a shield buff applied. This includes Power Word: Shield, Mana Shield, and Ice Barrier.

Quick note: You can only be dazed by melee attacks, not ranged attacks. Using Mana Shield and Ice Barrier, as well as facing mobs, will be key to future farms in avoiding daze.

3. Leeway

Leeway is in the game for lag and melee attacking. It’s a latency system that buffers melee combat to allow people to hit targets a little further than you normally would in case there is weird lag going on. Melee swings can cover a much larger distance with leeway attacks.

When someone in combat is strafing or jumping, melee range is increased by a lot. This happens for enemy mobs too. If you are strafing or jumping, they will benefit from leeway. This is a trick we see used a lot currently in Wailing Caverns. You can avoid a lot of melee damage taken when abusing leeway correctly, such as backpedaling while kiting.

4. Ice Block Mob Stacking

Ice Block is used for more than just saving your life. It is very important for getting a lot of mobs stacked in one spot. When you Ice Block, all ranged mobs will stop using their ranged attacks. When you’re in an Ice Block, all ranged mobs will run to your position and start auto-attacking your Ice Block. There are a lot of farms where you can not line of sight and get ranged mobs closer to you.

You will see Mages constantly using Ice Block to get numerous units stacked for an easy kill. When you leave an Ice Block, never jump, as this will cause you to take a lot more damage from melee attacks. If you just hold forward out of the Ice Block and spam Nova, you’ll be able to avoid a lot of instant damage coming out of the Ice Block.

5. World Buffs & Movement Speed

The World Buff from BFD is pretty massive, and the main reason for this is 20% move speed. In WoW Classic, the only way to get this kind of buff was from The Zanza elixir. This buff was massive for basically every dungeon farm in the game. The 20% move speed allows you to easily outpace mobs with Blink and avoid huge amounts of damage. While the other buffs from Boon of Blackfathom are also incredible. But it is not a good idea if you are farming without 20% move speed.

6. Engineering

Engineers get access to a lot of cool toys and effects that can assist in farming, but the main reason you want it is for Grenades, Sappers, and Dynamite. Even for just Phase 1. Let’s talk about the the Heavy Dynamite. Heavy Dynamite does 128 to 172 damage. Arcane Explosion Rank 2 does 58 to 65 and costs 120 Mana. So, on average, one Dynamite is worth 2 to 3 explosions of damage and Mana.

Being able to kill all the mobs before they can run away very smoothly. As we get further into Season of Discovery, our pulls will become much longer and more intense on our Mana. Dynamite, having a 60-second cooldown, will allow you to get multiple casts off in the longer pulls. It’s very important. I couldn't recommend Engineering more.

7. Spell Power

This may seem like an obvious one, but I want to emphasize the scaling of spell power with Living Bomb. The kill phase is way cleaner, and I have plenty of Mana left over for Arcane Explosion. Living Bomb scaling with spell damage is amazing. I recommend prioritizing it wherever you can. Phoenix Bindings, Phoenix Gloves, Invoker's Mantle, and Invoker's Cord are all really cheap and easy spell damage options you can pick up off the auction house by your SOD Gold.

8. How To Face Tank AOE

The first playstyle I want to go over is face tanking, which I use a lot in open-world farms or versus mobs that are lower level than me, such as Deadmines. The key interaction here for face tank farming is Living Flame and Regeneration. Living Flame does spell fire damage, which counts as Arcane damage for the healing from Regeneration. The amount of healing you receive will keep you alive versus some pretty insane damage.

Before casting Living Flame, make sure you have Temporal Beacon on yourself. I like to get 4 to 5 Living Bombs out, then Living Flame. Then you just spam Arcane Explosion until all the mobs die. Add on the extra healing you receive from the Arcane Explosion spam, and it’s pretty incredible what you can live through.

9. How To Dungeon Blizzard AOE

This is the playstyle I expect to be dominant, from now on into Season of Discovery, so I recommend learning it now. Blizzard will be amazing for massive pulls where you can’t handle the incoming damage from Elites slapping you. You can play this style with or without Regeneration. If you aren't running Regeneration, I recommend Fingers of Frost.

In Phase 2, we will have 5 points in Shatter for 50% increased crit chance. It will be pretty amazing. What you want to do for this style is grab as many mobs as you can and then get to your kite spot. You will then start throwing out 6 to 8 Living Bombs, Living Flame, and then begin to Blizzard kite. By using Living Flame after the Living Bombs are out. Make sure the Blizzard keeps all the mobs tightly stacked in the Living Flame for maximum damage. Add on the Living Bomb crits from Fingers of Frost, and you speed up the kill so much. Come Phase 2 with all the extra mana and talents we will have. This style will be king for a lot of the content.

10. WeakAuras & Addons

There are a few addons I couldn’t recommend more for Mage farming, and the most important one is called WeakAuras. This addon lets you create custom code that will track certain things for you in-game. I highly recommend Plater. It makes it way easier to see what HP the mobs are at and who is missing Living Bomb. I also use Nova Instant Tracker to track my dungeon lockouts, how many mobs I’ve killed, as well as the XP and gold gained during those runs. There are a lot of WeakAuras out there that can track your uptime on buffs and other things. Make sure to customize this to your liking.

That’s my list. I hope you found these tips and tricks helpful. There’s a lot going on with Mage farming, and it can be pretty overwhelming if you dive straight into it with big massive pulls. Start small, learn small pulls first, and then work your way up to the big challenges. We Mages are kings of farming, and you can become one too.

Here, we’ll talk about the upcoming Guilds and Glory Celebration Event for the Elder Scrolls Online.

What Is The Guilds And Glory Celebration Event?

The Guilds and Glory Celebration Event is a remembrance of ESO content of the Guilds and Glory DLC pack.

During this event, you can earn unique rewards by participating in various activities in Orsinium, Imperial City, Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild DLC and as well from the Imperial City Prison dungeon, White Gold Tower dungeon and the Maelstrom Arena.

When Is The Guilds And Glory Celebration Event Active?

The Guilds and Glory Celebration event is for the first time hosted in January 2024. It will be active from January 18th until January 30th 2024.

Which ESO DLC Do You Need To Join In The Guilds And Glory Event?

To be able to particpate, you need to own the Orsinium, Imperial City, Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild DLC.

If you have an active ESO Plus subscription, you can access all event related zones.

Don’t forget that you can claim for free the Imperial City DLC via the crown store.

How To Start The Guilds And Glory Celebration Event?

To start the event, you can directly travel to Orsinium, Imperial City, Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild DLC. Or, you can start the event tutorial quest for free from the crown store.

Earn Double Rewards During Guilds And Glory Celebration Event

During the event, you can earn double rewards, Wrothgar, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane from the following activities:

For defeating World Boss, Delve Boss enemies For completing daily repeatable quests Wrothgar, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane For defeating Bosses within the Maelstrom Arena For defeating bosses within the Imperial City Prison and White Gold Tower dungeons For defeating Bosses within the Mawe of Lorkhaj Trial and Double yield from harvesting nodes in Wrothgar, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane Earn Glorious Zone Reward Coffers And More

During the Guilds and Glory Celebration, you can earn Glorious Coffers and regular reward Coffers.

Completing your first daily repeatable quest in Wrothgar, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane will award a Glorious Coffer

Earn Glorious Dungeon/Arena Reward Coffers

And you can earn a seperate bespoke glorious coffer once per day by defeating the final boss of the Imperial City Prison dungeon, White Gold Tower dungeon or the Maelstrom Arena.

Of course, you can also earn more reward coffers if you want to complete the dungeons or arena multiple times.

Note, if you defeat the final dungeon boss on veteran difficulty, you will get 2 reward coffers. If one of these would be eligible for a glourious coffer, you will get 1 glorious coffer and 1 regular coffer.

Earn Glorious Imperial City Reward Coffers

Furthermore, you can obtain a third glorious coffer once per day by completing an Imperial City daily repeatable quest or defeat bosses in the Imperial City or Imperial City Sewers.

That means we can earn three glorious coffer per day, per account.

Collect Regular Event Reward Coffers

Additionally, you can find sometimes regular coffers by completing more daily repeatable quests and participating in activities within Orsinium, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane.

Other activities are, for example, killing delve, world, public dungeon bosses, random enemies, treasure chests and safeboxes, resource nodes, thieves troves or by pickpocketing NPCs.

Please note that regular reward Coffers have a reduced chance of providing special rewards.

Guilds And Glory Event Rewards

You have a chance to find inside Glorious Coffers and reward Coffers:

Crafting Materials Set and style items from overland zones Set and style items from dungeons Treasure maps or survey reports Furnishing recipes Saleable treasures Companion gear Bristleback Hunter Style pages Style pages from the Wrothgar, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane Which Styles Can You Find In Guilds And Glory Reward Coffers?

You can find following styles in the guilds and glory reward coffers: Assassin’s League, Minotaur, Dark Brotherhood, or Order of the Hour from reward coffers obtained in the Gold Coast.

Outlaw, Thieves’ Guild, or Abah’s Watch from reward coffers obtained in Hew’s Bane.

Ancient Orc, Malacath, or Trinimac Style is found in reward coffers from Wrothgar Xivkyn, Aldmeri Dominion, Daggerfall Covenant.

Ebonheart Pact Style pages are obtained from reward coffers dropped in the Imperial City.

All reward coffers have a small chance to include a Bristleback Hunter Style page.

Orsinium DLC Daily Repeatable Quests

Now, we will talk about the Daily Repeatable Quests in the Orsinium DLC.

In Wrothgar, you can find Delve and Group Boss Daily repeatable quests.

Guruzug in Morkul Stronghold will offer you one of 6 delve daily repeatable quests.

Arzorag in Skalar’s Hostel will offer you one of 6 group boss daily repeatable quests.

You can pick up only 1 delve and 1 group boss daily per character per day. But it is possible to complete all 6 delve dailies and all 6 group boss dailies if you group up with other players and ask them to share the quest.

Dark Brotherhood Daily Repeatable Quests

Next, I will explain where you can find the Daily Repeatable Quests in the Dark Brotherhood DLC.

Speaker Terenus in the Dark Brotherhood Sancutary will offer you Dark Brotherhood Sacrement Quests, which send you to an instanced area to assassinate specific targets.

Follow the Dark Brotherhood Questline to unlock the Dark Brotherhood Sacrement Quests. Dark Brotherhood Sacrement Quests can be obtained once per day and cannot be shared with others.

You can also find delve and world boss daily repeatable quests at the Gold Coast.

At the Bounty Board in Kvatch, you can pick up world boss daily repeatable quests. At the Bounty Board in Anvil, you can pick up delve daily repeatable quests.

You can pick up only 1 delve and 1 group boss daily per character per day. But it is possible to complete all delve dailies and group boss dailies if you group up with other players and ask them to share the quest.

Thieves Guild DLC Repeatable Quests

Now, we will talk about the Daily Repeatable quests in the Thieves Guild DLC.

At the Heist Board in the Thieves Den, you can pick up the Heist Daily Repeatable Quests, which send you to an instanced area to obtain stolen goods. These quests can be obtained once per day. You may group with other players to obtain the other 4 Heist quests.

Heist Quests can be completed alone or in a group. Note that you need to complete Partners in Crime, Cleaning House, the Long Game and Master of Heists Quests of the Thieves Guild storyline to unlock the Heist Dailies.

Furthermore, you need to have rank 3 with the thieves guild.

At the Reacquisition Board in the Thieves Den, you can pick up delve daily repeatable quests. You can only pick up 1 daily quest per day, but you may group with other players to obtain the other 3 daily repeatable quests.

Note that you need to complete the Partners in Crime Thieves Guild Story Quest and speak to Spencer Rye to unlock the delve daily repeatable quests.

Maw Of Lorkhaj Trial Weekly Repeatable Quest

You can also complete 1 weekly trial repeatable quest in the Thieves Guild DLC.

Adara’hai offers you the quest into the Maw for the Maw of Lorkhaj Trial. When you enter the Trial, you will find the weekly quest giver at the entrance area.

Imperial City DLC Daily Repeatable Quests

In the Imperial City, you can complete up to 6 Imperial City Daily Repeatable District Quests.

In your Alliance Base, you can find a room with many ladders. Climb up each ladder to find a daily quest giver for that specific Imperial City district. You can complete:

The Dousing the Fires of Industry Quest in Elven Gardens District The Historical Accuracy Quest in Arboretum District The Lifeblood of an Empire Quest in Arena District The Priceless Treasures Quest in Temple District The Speaking For The Dead Quest in Memorial District The Watch Your Step Quest in Nobles District Guilds And Glory Celebration Event Tickets

During the Guilds and Glory Celebration Event, you can earn 2 Event tickets per day per account from the following activities:

Completing your first daily delve or world boss repeatable quest in Wrothgar, Imperial City, Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane. Killing and looting the final boss of the White-Gold Tower or Imperial City Prison dungeons. Killing and looting the final boss of the Maelstrom Arena. Defeating and looting Patrolling Horrors in the Imperial City or Coldharbour Elite Guards in the Imperial City sewers Completing the weekly repeatable trial quest for the Maw of Lorkhaj trial

This means this time you can choose which activity you like the most to obtain your Event Tickets each day.

Impresario Event Merchant

As always, the Impresario Event Merchant will open her shop during the Guilds and Glory Celebration event.

This year she is offering the Molag Bal Illusion Imp pet fragments, the first fragment for the Planemeld’s Master Markings, Bristleback Hunter Style pages and more.

Indrik Mount & Pet Vendor

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

She offers during the first quarter of 2024, Nascent Indrik feathers, Dawnwood Indrik berries and Spectral Indrik berries.

You can also purchase the Springtide Haunting Indrik Pet and Haunting Indrik Pet.

Philius Dormier

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

He offers during the first quarter of 2024, Unstable morpholith pet fragments and Doomchar Plateau House fragments.

In this guide, let’s talk about the Blood Magic Firestorm Inquisitor build in Path of Exile 3.23. The Infernal Mantle, is a unique body armor that’s used only in certain builds. The fire spell can greatly benefit from the Critical Strike Chance because of its immense power. However, because of the 100% increased spell damage taken while on low mana, none of the conventional builds use it. Blood Magic gets rid of your mana completely, so this downside will never apply. It also forces you to make some atypical choices.

How It Works

It encourages accumulating tons of maximum life that can be used to gain damage via the Rathpith Globe. Creating a lowlife hybrid build seems like the most sound option. Infernal Mantle is a very common unique that you can buy in bulk and corrupt for an additional increase in the socketed fire skill gems. It alone can grant you an extra 5 or even seven levels to selected fire area of effect or duration skills, one of which is Firestorm of Pelting.

Reaching a 100% Critical Strike Chance is rather easy for an Inquisitor with Righteous Providence and a lot of Strength and Intelligence. It is nearly guaranteed the inevitable judgment makes your critical strikes treat enemy Elemental resistances as they're 0%. We have used Firestorm of Pelting, which has a delayed damage delivery, making it rather clunky for clearing maps.

The ability to summon up to 10 Firestorms at a time combined with intense specificity support and concentrated effect will, however, more than make up for it in terms of damage output against bosses. The build is durable with its vast maximum life and ES. It has a high block chance, life and ES Leech Regeneration, and even life gained on hit, which is very desirable with this type of skill. It also has nearly capped block chance and Frost Shield but low physical damage mitigation.

Clear speed is not that good unless you’re willing to expand on your Righteous Fire setup. Single Target damage is extremely high after it ramps up, but it’s mostly against stationary targets. The relatively low cost is what makes this build so good. One can say the Infernal Mantle is the unique selling point of this build.

Unique Items

It’s a hybrid build with tons of maximum life and some energy Shield. Aim to maximize your overall life total, ideally reaching around 10K. This life results in a lot of damage after equipping the Rathpith Globe Shield. The remaining damage is sourced from the gem level of Firestorm, which can easily be increased with Infernal Mantle and Replica Dragon Fang's Flight.

Rathpith Globe increases your maximum life, crit chance, and spell damage by a lot. You should be able to withstand the life drain with consecrated ground Life Regeneration and Life Leech with life gained on hit. Infernal Mantle socket your Firestorm setup here. When searching, prioritize a relatively inexpensive corrupted Infernal Mantle with implicits for increased AOE duration or all socketed gems. A perfect double corruption may grant your Firestorm seven additional levels, but settling on the inherent + 3 is good for a start. It increases your crit chance, ES, and converts a small portion of fire damage to chaos.

Replica Dragonfang's Flight amulet will grant you another 3 levels to your Firestorm skill with some attributes, resistances and reservation efficiency on top of that. Hands of the High Templar could be a better option for you if you don't require any of the mods typically found on rare gloves. Try to gain extra crit chance for spells, increased maximum life, maximum ES, and cast speed as corrupted implicit mods.

The Glorious Vanity will get you the corrupted soul for more energy Shield. It is somewhat beneficial with Pious Path and a lot of both maximum life and ES, but it can be dangerous too with Rathpith Globe. Too much of your life is being drained, which may kill you. On a Watcher's Eye, most Zealotry modifiers are good enough, but the best addition to a build will be instant life gained on hit from Vitality’s mod pool.

Rare Items

A lot of DPS is provided by Righteous Fire, but to withstand the burning damage, you will need a source of Life Leach found on gloves, ES Leech from Ethereal Feast notable, or a flask modifier and basic Life Regeneration from POE Items. It’s also possible to gain life on hit mod. Firestorm of Pelting's rapid hits is fantastic. Other than that, get the regular life, crit multiplier, and cast speed. Try to get over 100 maximum life with some resistances on a helmet. When searching for Eldritch mods, prioritize mods that provide physical damage taken as fire damage and increased cast speed.

The weapon should provide you with a lot of increased damage Critical Strike modifiers, especially crit multiplier, +1 to fire skills, added fire damage to spells, and increased cast speed. If you’ve chosen a rare amulet, get as much maximum life and Critical Strike multiplier as you can. Resistances, attributes, and cast speed are valuable too.

Rings should be used for a lot of maximum life, resistances, especially Chaos Resistance, and Attributes like Strength and Intelligence to boost your crit chance with Righteous Providence. Maximum life and ES rare boots with Life, Resistances, movement speed, and Attributes are enough. Acquire the maximum number of these modifiers that you can afford.

For Eldritch implicits, seek maximum fire resistance, action speed, Life Regeneration rate, or brittle ground. If you need extra crit chance, focus on maximum life, Resistances, and Strength on the belt. You can also find large amounts of Life Regeneration here. Gloves are quite simple as well. Just get the usual maximum life and resistances. For the Eldritch mods, try to get unnerve on hit and fire damage leached as life.

On Jewels, get the increased maximum life with increased Critical Strike multiplier, resistances, or attributes. Progenesis is an expensive flask that’s great on its own but here, combined with Petrified Blood and rapid life recovery, it’s even better. You may be able to cap your spell and attack block chance with Rumi's Concoction. The consecrated ground created by Bottled Faith will increase your DPS and Critical Strike Chance. There are also some magic flasks you shall be equipped with. Silver Flask with increased cast speed is the most important. Diamond Flask with increased crit chance, Ruby Flask with Life Regeneration, or Basalt of quick silver flasks with movement speed or increased armor will be worth consideration.

Skill Gems

Firestorm of Pelting summons multiple small meteors dealing fire damage every 0.15 seconds for 2 seconds. The maximum number of firestorms you can summon is 10. This spell has a basic fire duration and AOE, making it ideal for a corrupted Infernal Mantle. Link it with Elemental Focus, Intensify, Increased Critical Damage, Concentrated Effect, and Spell Echo support gems.

Storm Brand spell is used to apply shock and with added fire damage from items, it will also ignite for more damage from fire. Link it with Overcharge, Power Charge on Critical, and Unbound Ailments support gems. Replace Unbound Ailments with Combustion support if you have no ignite chance whatsoever.

Immortal Call reduces physical and elemental damage taken for a brief moment. Frost Shield drains your energy shield to form a protective bubble, causing you to take less damage and gain extra crit chance. Link these 2 to Cast When Damage Taken to activate them automatically after taking enough damage and Increase Duration to make them last longer.

Use Zealotry for more spell damage and critical strike chance. If you have no mana reserved, you’re allowed to host one blessing Aura for free if it’s linked to the Eternal blessing support. You don’t have mana, so it’s a no-brainer. Flame Dash is a simple mobility skill that is used to ignite enemies and travel with greater haste. You can link it to Faster Casting for slightly better mobility, but that’s not necessary.

Petrified Blood redistributes a fraction of the incoming damage from direct hits into a damage-over-time effect, a feature that synergizes well with a rapid life and Energy Shield recovery rate. This effect is limited to the lower half of your life pool. Tempest Shield grants shock immunity and substantial spell block chance. Vitality regenerates your life over time, which is very important, especially with the corrupted Soul. It also has good modifiers to get on a Watcher's Eye.

These 3 auras shall reserve half or more of your total life: Assassins Mark marked enemy is more likely to be hit with Critical Strike, which deals with increased critical damage. Enduring Cry regenerates a lot of life and ES on use and grants endurance charges to mitigate physical damage. Set it up as your movement key. Righteous Fire grants more spell damage. It has also quite high damage on its own because of your maximum life. If you want to improve your clear speed, you can link it up with additional support gems, but that would require you to abandon some of the previously mentioned.

Bandits & Pantheon

In Act 2, kill all the bandits for 2 additional passive skill points. For a major God, you can pick pretty much anything. Solaris is good if you’re up against pinnacle bosses, and Brine King good for freeze immunity. For a general-purpose major God, we recommend Lunaris. It improves your clear speed and protects you from projectiles. Minor God should improve your physical damage mitigation. That’s Tukohama or Gruothkul. Both are decent.

Passive Tree

The passive skill tree should provide you with a lot of maximum life, spell and fire damage, cast speed, block chance, or Asylum for chaos resistance and reduced effect of curses should be allocated to pick up Iron Will, Blood Magic, Call to Arms, and Pain Attunement keystones. Allocate all 6 Life masteries, Shield Mastery for Critical Strike multiplier per energy shield on a shield, Fire Mastery for increased damage against ignited enemies, Reservation Mastery for Life res conservation efficiency, and Caster Mastery for one additional maximum Intensify.

We'll be discussing the various buffs and nerfs that went into effect on January 11th. These buffs and nerfs are going to be affecting 2 main classes. That’s going to be our Beast Mastery Hunter and our Priest. I’m going to share with you some tweaks that you can make to your Beast Mastery Hunter that might counter some of the craziness that Blizzard is going to nerf in this upcoming update in WoW Classic Season of Discovery. We have a lot need to be covered, so let’s get started.

Buffs & Nerfs Update

In a recent January 10th post, Blizzard stated: We intend to make the following adjustments via hotfixes for hunters:

Chimera Shot weapon damage is increased to 100%, was 85%. Explosive Shot base damage increased by 25% before any attack power modifiers. Mana cost of Chimera Shot, Explosive Shot, Carve, Kill Command, and Flanking Strike is reduced by 50%. Beast Mastery rune bonus health and damage provided to the hunter's pet is reduced to 20%, was 30%. Beast Mastery rune bonus Focus regeneration provided to the hunter pet is reduced to 50%, was 80%. (That’s a 30% nerf to the amount of focus our pets receive, and that’s definitely going to change up what pets I use post nerfs. We’ll talk more about that here shortly.)

In the developer notes, they put, 'We remain concerned that hunter pets are still too powerful and believe that the best way forward is to reign in the Beast Mastery rune while compensating via the Hunter's main spells.' I guess they’re trying to get more and more Beast Mastery Hunters to go Marksman.

Runes Change

Beast Master Hunters are going to take a hit in DPS once these nerfs go into effect. Now, here are some of the changes that I’m going to make to my Beast master Hunter that's going to help me to counter some of these nerves. Let’s first discuss the runes. So before this update, I was running hard of the line Beast Mastery rune, and I’d switch back and forth between Flanking Strikes and Sniper Training. I wasn’t using the Kill Command cause my primary pet that I was using was a Wind Serpent.

Now, post-January 11th update, I’m going to be running a hard of the line Beast Master rune and Kill Command cause I’m going to be switching out my primary pet. Additionally, if you don’t have access to a harded line, you could always use the Master Marksman. And if you’re one of those Hunters that really enjoy weaving in and out, you can always interchange between Kill Command and Flanking Strike.

New Talent Tree

So as far as the talent tree, my primary build is going to be 2 in Improved Aspect of the Hawk, 5 in Endurance Training, 3 in Thick Hide, 5 in Unleashed Fury, and 1 in Ferocity.

Yes, if you’re in a raid situation where you know that your pet’s going to be taking a lot of damage and dying a lot, then I would definitely recommend taking the 2 points out of Improved Aspect of the Hawk and getting Improved Revive Pet. Because, as we know, with a dead pet as a Beastmaster Hunter, that’s going to take out a gigantic chunk of our DPS. But when I’m out in the world soloing and whether it be experience farming or gold farming, my pet really doesn’t die that much. So it makes no sense to waste 2 points in the Improved Revive Pet.

And additionally, in the raids I’ve been in, my pet hardly ever dies. So it just felt like a waste of points to put into Improved Revive Pet when I just improved my all-out DPS so much more by putting those extra 2 points in Improved Aspect of the Hawk. So I would definitely recommend that you try both ways to see what fits your playstyle better. If you lean towards having that extra DPS and Improved Aspect of the Hawk, or if you just need that Improved Revive Pet because your pet keeps on dying.

New Hunter Pet

Now that we talked about runes and talents, let’s talk about pets. Before this update, I was using a Wind Serpent. And Wind Serpents are also awesome pets. That Lightning Strike is just catastrophic. But it came at a price of 50 focus and getting nerf 30% in our Focus regeneration for our pets and 10% for damage. Doesn’t make sense to continue using a Wind Serpent.

So what I’m going to end up doing is switching back to my Ghost Saber, which is a 2.0 attack speed cat. That’s going to do really nice damage in conjunction with that Kill Command rune. And if I ever switch out with a Flanking Strike rune, that 2.0 attack speed is going to give me more attack damage. Therefore, I’m going to be able to pull out more damage by using a 2.0 attack speed cat.

The highly anticipated item faction system is coming to the full release of Last Epoch, on February 21st. 

With this innovative new way, players can participate in the deep and rewarding item hunt that Last Epoch offers, in a way that they like to play. 

Intro

By joining the Merchants Guild, you will be able to buy, sell, and trade items through the bustling bazaar. Or, if you choose to join the Circle of Fortune, you’ll set your sights on the stars and be able to bolster your item acquisition through Prophesies and increased item drop rates. So, this faction system is the result of many years of debating what the ideal trade system should look like in a loot-based ARPG.

If you have observed carefully, you will know that players of ARPGs are split nearly down the middle when it comes to those who want their experience to heavily trade and an economy, and those who want to focus on finding items themselves or, with close friends. So, it would be great if the developers of Last Epoch could provide players from both factions with a tailor-made and exciting path to finding top-tier items through the item faction system!

Item Faction System

In Last Epoch 1.0, you will join a faction once you reach the great mercantile city of Maj’Elka. 

When you select to join the Merchants Guild or the Circle of Fortune, a new interface will become available that will let you access details about your current status with your faction (known as reputation), how much Favor you currently have and what benefits your faction is currently providing you. Let’s talk about these briefly. 

Reputation

Reputation within a faction is a core part of how a faction is going to be benefiting you on your journey. As a representative of that faction, you will continue to increase your reputation by killing enemies and completing quests. 

For the Merchants Guild, this includes participating in the bazaar and completing trades at your current level. And for the Circle of Fortune, this means completing prophesies that will divine certain items after fulfilling the foretold conditions. 

Through earning reputation, you will ascend ranks within your faction, earning your unique benefits and options. Once you have earned reputation within a faction, that reputation stays with your account, in that game mode. This means, if you rank up a cycle character, all of your other cycle characters will have that rank when they join the same faction, and contribute to that faction’s reputation gain. You may switch factions and earn and maintain reputation with them with no penalty to your earned reputation with the other. 

There are currently 10 ranks to achieve in each faction. With the later ranks requiring quite a bit of commitment in order to obtain. So, while you have the freedom to change your faction at any time, you will want to pick a faction and stick with it to reach the most powerful benefits that they have to offer.

It is important to note that you can only be a member of one faction at any given time per character. And items earned with the benefits from those factions will require that you are aligned with them in order to use them. So, most players will want to stick to a faction that rewards their preferred playstyle. 

Favor

Next, let’s talk about Favor. Favor is the currency you will earn while slaying enemies or completing quests for each of the factions. 

Favor is separate from reputation. This currency can be used to either complete trades with the Merchants Guild or acquire new prophesies from the Circle of Fortune. And if you find yourself with excess favor, you can always spin the wheel with the faction gambler. 

Item Gifting

Item gifting to party members has been in the game for a while now and it isn’t going anywhere. 

However, it’s important to note that once you have joined a faction, items will start being tagged with the faction you are a part of when they dropped. 

This means, that while questing if you are a member of the Merchants Guild, and an item drops for you that item will still be shareable with anyone who was in the party like always, and be available to be sold provided that you meet the rank requirements in the Merchants Guild bazaar. 

Just be sure that the person you are trading it to also meets the same faction requirements. 

Resonance

The last use case developers wanted to solve for, are friends who choose to play together and just want their own little trade group. 

To solve this problem, developers introduced Resonance, which is a new type of item that can be found when you are questing with your friends or party members. This item can be used to enable an item to be gifted specifically to the player you have a Resonance with, even if they weren't there when the item dropped. 

A lot of times, players will play with their friends and then later, you'll be soloing a piece of content and the perfect item drops for your buddy. Thanks to the new Resonance system, you will be able to give them that perfect item, the next time you see them. 

As those of you who love loot-based ARPGs know, trade and economy is a very complex and divisive issue to solve for when catering to a large player base and different play styles, while keeping the item acquisition hunt feeling great. 

There is so much more to explore with the item faction system. Let's wait for February 21st. All the mysteries about the item faction system will be revealed during the search!

I’m going to bring you a quick Shaman tank in-depth guide about everything we need to know in WoW Classic Season of Discovery. It includes races, runes, what you want to use on certain bosses, rotation, and just kind of further information into the builds.

Hope you like this build and have a try. Now, let's just dive into this guide.

Races

With Shaman tanking, there are only 3 races you can play as: Troll, Orc, and Tauren. Each has special racial or special things that make them better than others.

If you’re looking for more stamina and more survivability build, you’re going to go Tauren. This brings the Racial of Endurance, giving you more health pull. It also has War Stomp, which is great for AOE pulls. Stomp shock everything. It basically stuns every target for 3 seconds so you get all the aggro on them and pull them towards you.

If you’re going Orc, which has Axe Specialization, giving you a couple more points into using axes. You also get Blood Fury, which provides a damage boost but with a 50% less chance of healing for 25 seconds. So some bosses it might cost you your life.

Trolls, the last race, brings a great racial called Berserking. This increase your attack speed for some time. The other downside of it is they bring Beast Slaying, currently not very useful in BFD.

Runes

Next, we’re going to look at what type of runes you want to be running as a Shaman tank. There’s a different variety. You’re going to want to have the Way of Earth on. It’s very easy to obtain in the Barrens. This one turns your abilities, such as Earth Shock, into a taunt for you. It also gives you, on top of that, a 30% more health pull.

Other things you’d like to run for survivability include Shield Mastery, throwing on a shield, giving you 15% extra block chance without any other bonuses. So, it might be useful for you.

If you’re not getting hit much or hard in BFD, I would recommend running Dual Wield, using double Rockbiter Weapons to get an increased amount of threat. However, you would also have to run Dual Wield Specialization on your chest piece rather than Shield Mastery since you’re not using a shield.

For the hands, these are runes that I swap on each different boss in the BFD. Some bosses, I’ll throw on Molten Blast for AOE.

For single-target bosses, I’ll throw on Lava Lash.

For bosses like Ghamoo-ra, I’ll throw on Lava Burst with Overload on my chest for an increased chance of procing and doing more damage. You’ll still hold the number 1 threat, no matter what.

The runes are up to you, whichever way you like to play the game. If you want to go Shield Mastery or try new things that Shaman has offered in SOD, it’s up to you.

Stat Priority

Something thorough that we go over doesn’t have to be crazy right now is the stat priority for Shaman tanks. You do want stamina, but it’s not something you’re going to get right away since bosses aren’t hitting that hard. So, focus on agility into strength, then into stamina. These 3 boost your threat, damage, and help you DPS.

Then focus on intellect for mana, and armor and hit rating. Currently, you don’t get a lot of armor rating since we’re on the 25 brackets, and hit rating is obtained from BFD Boon and epic gear from professions. These are quick notes about stat priority and what to look for in a Shaman tank.

Rotation

I want to get into the quick rotation. When you pull a boss, pop Flame Shock right off the bat and then cast Molten Blast because, with Flame Shock up, there’s a 10% chance that this resets the cooldown of Molten Blast. So, you can keep pressing Molten Blast, generating more threat as you go in. If you don’t have another Shaman in your group, drop the right totems.

Strength of Earth Totem and Fire Nova Totem seems to be the only 2 because your mana pool isn’t crazy high. Dropping totems like Fire Nova Totem repeatedly might not be worth it because you’ll go out of mana. Strength of Earth Totem stays up for 2 minutes, so you drop it. Most bosses last 30 seconds to 45 seconds or maybe longer, which might last a minute 30.

You can also apply Frost Shock if all the targets have Flame Shock on them, and if you have enough mana, you can throw in Lightning Shields. Again, it’s situational, depending on your mana. If you have extra mana to spend, throw on Lightning Shield, Frost Shocks, or keep throwing Molten Blast.

The rotation is situational, so if your rune swapping, you might not be running Molten Blast. You might run Lava Lash, Lava Burst, or different things that are good for different bosses. But you’ll still Flame Shock, drop the same totems, and look out for those things. The rune is the biggest thing on whether you’re casting Molten Blast, Lava Lash, or Lava Burst.

Finally, I want to get into professions and maybe some consumables for the Shaman tank. Currently, there aren’t professions that increase your threat besides maybe engineering for Heavy Dynamite, but it’s for AOE damage. Most bosses in BFD are single tank bosses, so professions are up to you. I would say run Leatherworking. You get gloves that give you a hit percentage and increase your attack speed for a certain duration when you pop them.

Consumables

When it comes to consumables for tanks, Strong Troll’s Blood Potion for health regeneration throughout the raid, Elixir of Defense for armor that reduces all damage by boss melee attacks, stacking with some runes like Way of Earth for armor. Elixir of Firepower is good for abilities like Lava Burst and Molten Blast. Elixir of Lesser Agility is excellent for agility, our number 1 stat priority.

Situational consumables like Free Action Potions are invaluable against bosses and enemies with stuns. If you pop it at the beginning of Lady Saravess, you won’t get frozen arrowed and can stand in her pool without getting chains in Phase 2. Shadow Protection potions are solid against Kelris.

Talents

Finally, for the last part of this guide, we’re getting into the talent tree for Shaman tanks. You’re going to want to go right into the enhancement tree, going 5 out of 5 in Shield Specialization. It increases your chance to block attacks with the shield by 5% and increases the amount blocked by 25%. This is up to you.

If you’re running a shield, it’s worth it. If not, and you’re dual-wielding, Ancestral Knowledge might be better, increasing your maximum mana by 5%. Going down, you want Thundering Strikes, improving your chance to crit with your weapon by 5%. If you’re dual-wielding, you have a double chance to crit.

Anticipation, going 5 out of 5 increases your chance to dodge by an additional 5%. You want to dodge and parry to tank less damage for a smoother raid.

Finally, since you get 16 points, we’re going to put 1 into Flurry, increasing your attack speed by 10% for the next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike. This works well with Thundering Strikes. The more you crit, the more Flurry procs you get, making you swing faster and output more threat. It’s better for you to be tanking any boss.

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.

How It Works

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.

Unique Items

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.

Rare Items

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.

Skill Gems

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.

Bandits & Pantheon

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.

Passive Tree

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:

The Pain Attunement simply grants you 30% more spell damage as long as you use the Petrified Blood Aura. The Eldritch Battery changes your energy shield into a resource you can use to cast your spells. It will constantly recharge for 33% of its maximum value per second, which you can boost by increasing the recharge rate, adding Energy Shield leech, and simply increasing its maximum value. The Inner Conviction, comes from the Timeless Jewel. It grants you a lot of spell damage but disables the frenzy charge generation. Do not pick up the Hex master Keystone until you can convert it with this jewel. Cluster Jewel is the best source of Life Leech for Elemental spell builds.

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.

Introduction

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.

Basic Examples

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.

Non-Damaging Ailments

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.

Elemental Penetration

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.

Penetration Examples

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.

Overwhelm

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.

Synergies

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 Ailment

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.

Damage From Blocked Hits

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’m going to be showing you a method of flipping items that is actually useful in WoW Season of Discovery, and you can make some easy WoW SOD Gold by doing this. What we’re talking about is flipping vendor items, so items that you buy straight from a vendor and then you can resell them at the auction house.

For example, the Rune of Teleportation. We sold it for 49 silver. They’re extremely cheap, around 9 silver to buy. A couple of recipes that we got were like 14 silver to buy, but we can sell it for like 94 silver, which is just insane. Now, it only takes a couple of minutes or even a couple of seconds to set this up and to buy the items.

Capital Cities Basic Items

There are some basic items that are really easy to get. They’re in the capital cities, and this will only take you a few minutes to run around and buy these all up, and you can have them posted up on the auction house just whenever you’re relisting your items.

That we have items that are a lot rarer. So, they’re only up at certain times or they’re only up in limited quantity. Now these items, if you want to put in the work, will actually be a lot better than the basic items that anyone can buy in the capital cities. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up and get going.

Open World Vendor

But if you want to take this to the next step further, what you can do is you can find the vendors that are out in the open world and hidden in certain locations that have limited items on them. And these items, you’re going to do this a lot better with because the barrier to entry is a lot higher. Because you actually have to go out and you have to find the mobs, the vendors, and there’ll be fewer people that are actually selling these. So what we’re going to do is I’ll show you how to set up TSM so it can have your operations posting the items where you’re always profitable for doing this sort of thing.

Create A New Group - Vendor Buy

So what you want to do first is you want to create a new group. And now every time that you buy a vendor item that you want in this group, you simply just add it to that group. And this is the operation that I recommend using which is called Vendor Buy.

We have 120% of the vendor buy, which means it’s going to sell the items 20% higher than what you actually pay for them from a vendor. That is the minimum price. Then the normal price, if there’s no competition, it will post them at 150% of the vendor buy price, which will be a 50% profit on top of what you actually paid for them from the vendor.

This seems to work really good, and now you can set this group up. You can pretty much just post with all your other items whenever you’re posting up on the auction house, and you pretty much just buy them and you can set them for Get It and you just continuously keep on posting the items.

Find Different Vendor Items

Now once you sell out of that stock, you can just go ahead to the vendor, and you can buy more of exact the same item that you’ve sold out of just to restock up on the items that have been selling. And this seems to work really well. Like I mentioned, it only takes a couple of minutes to go around and get a bunch of different vendor items if you’re just doing the basic vendor items.

But if you want to take it to the next level, what I’d recommend doing is searching up on WoWhead. It’s very easy to find out where these sorts of items are. You can just go on WoWhead, and you can search up all the different sort of vendors. And this way, you’ll be able to go out if you find a vendor that not many people know where to buy from.

Change The Min Price Percentage

You should be able to control that market, and you should be able to make a lot of gold from simply just buying an item from a vendor using this TSM operation. The percentage you can play around and change. If you want the minimum price to be like 150%, that means you’ll have 50% profit on every single item minimum that you’re selling. But most of the time, it’s going to be a lot higher because it undercuts the competition. So if the competition hasn’t posted for a much higher price than you’re going to post undercutting those people, and you can make even more gold from doing so.

This is just a very simple way. It’s a great way to start out, especially if you don’t have too much gold. You can just go spend like literally less than a gold, and you can have a bunch of items that you can resell for a profit, and it’s a really easy way to make some gold. But like I mentioned, if you do want to take this a step further, you can find out all the vendors that are spread out around the world that are a bit harder to get to or vendors that have limited stock for certain items.