The Wintertide Brand was hard to build around. It had a complex set of mechanics, and it didn’t work the way you’d expect from Brand. With that, I’ll explain how it works and cover the pitfalls I ran into.

Brand is a skill that attaches to enemies and deals damage to them. When it does, it projects an Icy Sphere around the target. Do you think it would hurt monsters around it? It doesn’t, it just damages the target it’s on.

However, when Brand drops from an enemy, any monsters in the Sphere will get a Debuff called Wintertime End. This deals with the same damage as it did to the target. If the target circles overlap, it defaults to damage for one second. Therefore, only the strongest stack will cause the most damage to monsters.

If you want the skill to do anything like clear, you need to make it drop a lot. There are four possible ways this can happen:

• Overwrite one new Brand with another.
• The monster they attach it to dies.
• Pull it off with Brand Recoil.
• Use Mastery, make it jump to the new enemy.

Activates every 0.3 seconds and says the only way this ability feels good. If you use Mastery, the next thing to watch out for is the damage from WinStar Brand. It’s actually a Debuff that inflicts Cold damage over time. This means we do not classify it as hitting an enemy, so it has no damage effect. For example, Life On Here or Hexade support, it can not be more than a bonus trip as a DOT. But it can’t reflect to you, so you can run full LED Reflect Maps.

Despite AOE tag, the Debuff does not apply to area damage. So this Concentrative Effect doesn’t give you extra damage. But it will reduce Radius. Note also that flags equipped to support damage to spells only apply to hits. So the extra damage added in this way does nothing for the points. You also can’t Crit, so you further limit your Skating options.

Another advantage of this skill is that when it attaches to an enemy, it will be timed according to the skill’s Activation Frequency. Each tick adds a phase, and each phase causes Debuff to deal up to 20+ damage. By default, these phases have coverage of 20 and damage increased by 400%.

You also get a Lab Enchant, which adds 4 Max Stages and 480 more damage. This is by far the best damage Enchant. You can attach up to three Brands to an enemy, and they stack by default.

However, you only need to open the case twice with POE Currency to get the three Rubenbinder Keystones you need. But getting extra damage is a little trickier. Usually, it seems to activate every quarter of a second and expire two seconds after connecting. So by default you’ll only get Eight Stacks or 160+ damage.

So you need to increase the duration of the skill or increase Activation Frequency or a combination of both. You can increase it with Cast Speed or Brand Activation Frequency. And during the duration of our use of skill effects or Brand duration, we don’t need much time to achieve our goal.

Also note that this skill does not apply damage at Activation Frequency like other brands. So once you get past Max Stacks, you can add as many durations and gas velocities as you want. While these increases your total damage, it does absolutely nothing for your DPS. This means that the skill actually has a hard limit on what it can handle.

We should note that when the skill knocks down an enemy, Brand calculated POB’s damage. Stacks as a cruise will persist and be applied to the next target. Therefore, Brand Recoil is essential for doing high damage and worst things.

All you can do is recast them before they expire. This caused them to be overwritten with a new Brand from scratch. This does mean that you need to watch Brand Counter like a hawk.

You don’t panic too much. Because the skill upgrade is Chill, it will reduce the enemy’s action speed by 10%. If you have the right Non-damaging Ailment Effect increases. This slows your enemies to a poor crawl. You can probably still outrun them, even if they just bit off your leg.

You defend your legs against their attacks. Also, spells are much slower and Elemental Focus causes Brand not to cool down. Because the cold makes you feel super safe and is a really powerful free Defensive Lair.

While they look like they have a refrigerated section, they don’t. If you want the cold area bonus from Bone Chill, you have to apply for it with something. Plus, like Vortex, it actually complements the skill’s damage deficiencies nicely, and can also scale with spell damage. Because this also applies to skill effects.

In my opinion, the best mass effect is the normal one, which increases Chill damage over time. This skill is absolutely amazing. It can put most bosses to shame. So I’d definitely consider using it to balance the beginning of the problem. Once you hit the end game, boss, anything with cold resistance will take an age to kill. If you don’t mind slower, safer, smoother gameplay, you might really like this skill.

It’s really well designed in terms of maps and map bosses. But four minutes to kill Endless Hunger, and even five minutes to kill Elder let me down. So I wouldn’t use it again unless it gets a sizable buff. Hope these will help you on your way of exploration.

This build is described as "madness in the best way" by Mark, a senior gameplay programmer. That is Ifnjeff's Spell Echo Hydrosphere. It takes an unusual and rarely used support skill and turns it into a veritable wrecking ball. Next, we're going to explain the main set of mechanics.

How Does It Work?

Ifnjeff was inspired by the Plume of Pursuit unique helmet. This starts us off with a massive downside. Every non-critical strike will now deal 80% less damage. However, the helm also makes every final repeat of a spell, a repeat as in, when using the Spell Echo support gem, an automatic critical strike.

So, for example, if we cast Arc supported by Spell Echo with this helmet on, the first beam will deal very little damage, but the second beam will always be a crit. Ifnjeff notes that this tradeoff is usually not worth it. Unless we go all in. What we need is a skill that deals damage over a duration and can benefit from our automatic crits. A skill that doesn't rely on having multiple casts active at once.

Meet Hydrosphere. It's a watery ball that emits damaging pulses. When you cast the spell, it will first move the ball, then make it pulse. When supported by Spell Echo, the repeat simply causes the ball to "move" on the spot and pulse again. This repeat will always be a crit, thanks to the Plume of Pursuit helmet. A good start, but this only really hits once.

Hydrosphere has another property - it pulses cold or lightning damage, doing so regularly when affected by different ailments. All we have to do is hit the ball with another spell that will inflict an ailment. Thanks to our helmet, these regular pulses will also be crits, as the ball is managed by the most recent use of the Hydrosphere skill.

So, to get the most out of this skill, we have to put an ailment on it. Ifnjeff has decided to use Freeze - this ailment is unique in that its duration is scaled by the damage of the hit, so if we hit our ball hard enough with Freeze, it will continue to pulse for a nice long time.

Herein lies the tricky part. Hydrosphere only registers one hit from the player every second. Other hits in that time will be ignored. So, for most skills supported by Spell Echo, if we hit the ball with them, our boosted final repeat won't affect the ball at all, and it might not get the ailment we need.

Ifnjeff found only one reliable solution. Wave of Conviction. This spell creates a damaging wave that can only ever have one instance. So, if we cast it with Spell Echo - the final repeat cancels our useless first wave and replaces it with the automatic crit we so desire. Now, we can reliably hit our Hydrosphere with an automatic crit.

But all of this is just the beginning of the story. To get the most out of this strange combo, Ifnjeff gets even more creative. We obviously don't need critical strike chance because of our automatic crits, but we do want a huge critical strike multiplier. Marylene's Fallacy is perfect for us, granting a huge boost to crit multi. The amulet also has the added bonus of giving us Culling Strike on all our crits - which is all the time.

For our weapon, we can wield The Winds of Fate. It also gives us more crit multiplier. But even cooler, it has huge base physical damage.

To make use of this, Ifnjeff has picked up Battlemage from the Inquisitor Ascendancy, a property that adds our main hand weapon damage to our spells. This means Hydrosphere is gaining one-thousand-whatever physical damage from Winds of Fate. The weapon's downside limits our critical strike chance and makes it so non-crits don't deal damage. Since we don't have to roll for crits and our non-crits have already been rendered useless, this downside does not bother us at all.

Damage Conversion

Next, we gotta talk about damage conversion. This is where things start to get even more complex. Hydrosphere has base physical damage, and converts all of it to cold or lightning damage depending on the ailments it's affected by. Ifnjeff explains that he prefers cold damage, as freezing the ball helps with extending the pulse duration as mentioned earlier.

Plus, cold damage is a bit easier to scale, and freezing enemies is nice for defence. Now, Winds of Fate has a property where some of your physical damage is randomly converted to elemental damage, which could be a problem. Fortunately, Hydrosphere itself isn't affected because it converts 100% of physical damage. This is a skill gem calculation, meaning it has priority over the random conversion from Winds of Fate, so we're safe there.

However, Wave of Conviction, which we're using to apply ailments to Hydrosphere, converts 25% of physical damage to lightning, and 25% to fire. The remaining 50% of physical damage can be affected by the Winds of Fate conversion. So, how do we ensure a consistent damage type, and that we're not accidentally shocking the ball instead of freezing it?

The only way Ifnjeff found is to take Avatar of Fire. This completely prevents us from dealing Non-Fire Damage, so we're not accidentally going to shock the Hydrosphere ball. Avatar of Fire also converts 50% of cold damage to fire.

To improve the conversion, we'll use the Cold to Fire support gem. Winds of Fate will still sometimes mess with our damage conversion here, but now at least we have some consistency.

But unfortunately fire can't freeze. For this, we turn to Expedition's End. This unique body armour lets our fire damage freeze. As an added bonus, it makes our freezing more effective, and it chills nearby enemies.

At this point, Ifnjeff notes we've completed our little puzzle. The looming problem now becomes a clunky slow cast speed, a small Area of Effect, and high mana costs.

Ifnjeff has a very smart solution to this problem: Instruments of Zeal is an Inquisitor passive that grants us Fanaticism. This buff gives us a massive boost to all three of the stats we need - Cast Speed, AoE, and Mana Cost Reduction. The only problem is that we need to be able to use an attack skill frequently to maintain this buff.

It would make sense to use a movement skill, but we're using a staff, and something like Leap Slam would be too slow or awkward for us. Instead, Ifnjeff is using Cyclone, bound to space bar, simply tapping it as needed, slightly more than once a second. It's an unusual, rhythmic way to play, but it absolutely gets the job done.

We don't have time in the article to cover everything, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the sheer number of cool interactions at work here. Ifnjeff's Hydrosphere Inquisitor, as he puts it, tends towards meme territory. It's not going to be the wrecking ball that destroys the meta, but it showcases an extremely creative use of mechanics and unlikely items, and is completely viable at endgame.

2022 has passed, and the games released this year are still a little insufficient. Except for top masterpieces such as Elden Ring and God of War: Ragnarok, the quality of other games still has not met the expectations of fans.

As a result, more fans began to put more expectations in 2023. However, I have to say that 2023 may be able to restore the decline of the game circle in recent years. After all, there are many masterpieces this year. If the release time of these new games is not delayed due to some accidents, then there will be very fierce competition among the games that will be launched this year.

Today, let's summarize the game masterpieces worth looking forward to in 2023, and see if there is something you like?

1. Tears of the Kingdom

There is a popular saying in the game circle, "P5 is the number one game in the world, and Zelda is the toppest", which shows how high the status of The Legend of Zelda is in the game circle. And Tears of the Kingdom, as a sequel, is also in the limelight.

Originally, Tears of the Kingdom was also a strong contender for the Best Game of the Year. But unfortunately in May 2022, the producer announced that the release would be postponed to May 12, 2023.

Judging from the current trailer, the game is already very complete, and the locations that players can explore are not limited to land, and locations such as Sky Island have begun to appear. And it is unlikely to be delayed again. I hope the game will live up to the expectations of fans.

2. Final Fantasy XVI

The Final Fantasy series has always been the golden signboard of Japanese RPG, such as Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 14 are classics among the classics.

In the new work, the player will play the role of prince Clive Rosefield, and his younger brother Joshua, who is the manifester of the summoned beast Phoenix, will be involved in the vortex of war, and the reason why the kingdom is protected by Mother Crystals will also be revealed.

Judging from the announced content, it will be a style combining medieval and high-tech elements, and it will make real-time combat. What's more, the refreshment will also definitely be improved compared with the past.

Fortunately, the performance of this series is still very stable, and it will basically not disappoint the expectations of fans, so stay tuned!

3. Assassin's Creed Mirage

The game is actually another classic series. The name "Assassin's Creed" is well known, and even some people who don't play games may have heard of it.

Assassin's Creed Mirage will be the 13th game in the Assassin's Creed series. It is rumored that this game will return to the original intention of "Stealth" and "Assassination", which makes many players breathe a sigh of relief.

I hope that Ubisoft can focus on the game mechanism this time, and stop being just a landscape browser.

4. Hogwarts Legacy

Harry Potter is probably the memory of many people's childhood. The "Harry Potter" series of movies also has countless fans, and countless children and adults are immersed in the cool magical world.

The story of this game is set in Hogwarts in the 19th century, and the timeline is before Harry Potter and others. The player will play a student in Hogwarts, and can fully experience the potion class and choose his own wands, taming magical creatures, and more.

Overall, there are quite a lot of masterpieces in 2023. Let's look forward to them together!

Lost Ark community now has access to a holiday gift pack, and Amazon is assuring all that there will be some additional gifts to ensure you can get fully geared up for the content ahead.

On December 28th, Lost Ark had downtime for the weekly maintenance, with a gift pack full of items after a successful almost a year in Western release. Those who log in between 12/28-3/15/2023 will be able to claim the gifts. However, some players that claimed their gifts noticed inconsistencies in what they got.
The gift pack consists of a series of items:

• 100 Ancient Platinum Coin (each coin contains 20k silver)

• 10 Collective Battle Item Chest

• A Legendary Card Pack Selection Chest

• 100 Pheons

• 10 Magick Society Special Dye Chest

• A Mokoko Skin Selection Chest with 4 new options

Some that claimed the packs initially noticed that what came out of the random chests was kind of a dud, with various items being less useful. With a big grant of these chests, it was intended to give some real boosts for those that opened them, so when many underdelivered, the community had some feedback on the matter.

Amazon has announced that there will be a make good grant “to ensure all players are fully geared up with Battle Items of all types, we will be distributing an additional 100 "4 Battle Item Chests". Players who have already claimed their gift will also keep the initial items”

The recently-released Lost Ark roadmap for the first half of 2023 revealed some new content on the way, including this month’s The Witcher collaboration, and quality of life updates. February will bring the beans new continent of Rowen, along with new item level requirements and challenges, including the ability to opt into open world PvP.

EA Sports FC 24 will represent a huge change in the annual release of football games, and with EA’s footballing behemoth set to continue, we put forward 5 things that need to change in the game’s Ultimate Team mode moving forward.

Whether it’s called FIFA or EA Sports FC, the fact is that EA will still be producing a football simulation game that is bound to find the top bins like it always does. The strike might not always be pure, but it’s enough to tempt millions of consumers into buying it each and every season.

EA Sports FC 24 will have a different name, but the core of FIFA is still expected to be retained, which means we’re likely to see a whole host of familiar game modes returning – including the money-making Ultimate Team.

With that being said, we’ve drawn up a list of areas we think EA needs to work on when it comes to Ultimate Team, to make it a more fulfilling and engaging game mode.

1. Less promos & SBCs

I’ll just go ahead and say it, the oversaturation of weekly promos and excessive SBCs killed off FIFA 23 long before Christmas.

‘Special’ cards no longer feel special when EA are releasing several new players with amazing stats that also make top-tier Rare Gold cards redundant. In addition, TOTW is a shadow of its former self.

The knock-on effect is a completely dead market in which FIFA 23 only has two Rare Gold Players who sell for over 100K heading into 2023.

It was a bore to see everyone have Haaland spearheading their team by the end of November with a litany of SBCs surrounding him. Endgame teams shouldn’t be a regular sight in December, and it kills all the fun by having every game be an absolute sweatfest.

2. Scrap meaningless consumables

Is there a human being alive who enjoys the concept of Contracts or Healing? Like Fitness cards, they were a tricky yet strategic element of Ultimate Team in years gone by, but the abundance of packs, free packs, and rewards means you’ll simply never run out of them now.

They’ve become a nuisance for the sake of being a nuisance and add nothing to the game. I get that they’re also there to fill up packs as rares, but in that case, find new ways of going about it – as they did with Position Modifier cards.

3. Bring back the Win/Loss system for Division Rivals

The checkpoint system was an attempt to reinvigorate FUT Rivals and give it a shake-up. The only problem was that the classic Promotion/Relegation system across a set number of games wasn’t broken – so they didn’t need to ‘fix’ it.

Now, you can be permanently stuck in limbo in a division that you’re not entirely comfortable with for a whole season. This makes the grind for Weekly Rewards harder (another mistake was changing the total needed to 8 for the Reward Upgrade) and your gameplay more frustrating.

Bring back the old system, please.

4. Increase the challenge of FUT Moments for more rewards

The big concern was that FUT Moments was going to become stale very quickly, and that turned out to be the case as EA didn’t make them worth completing as the Season 1 rewards were tragically woeful.

It’s a novel concept having bitesize segments of gameplay to grind towards rewards, but therein lies the second problem – the gameplay is tedious.

Playing against a team with a guaranteed minimum of 20 in-game minutes left to play and winning by 2 goals on Semi-Pro is not appealing to anyone, let alone challenges that dumb the difficulty down even more.

Give us interesting scenarios where we can choose multiple different difficulty levels, a la Squad Battles, and offer us fun, varied objectives to complete with decent rewards on the line. Otherwise, FUT Moments risks being a great concept that ends up dying – like FUT Draft.

5. Guaranteed rewards for FUT Champions

Unless you’re finishing extremely high up in FUT Champions, then it’s a serious case of Forest Gump syndrome with FUT Champions as you literally have no idea what you’re going to get.

Now, in fairness, big respect has to go to EA as they reduced the original 40 games down to 30 and now to 20, but for lots of people, 20 is still a hefty commitment. So, if you’re going to battle your heart and soul out to try and rack up as many wins as possible, then you want to be rewarded.

Worse still, players who are getting 12-16 wins, sometimes more, are getting amazing rewards on paper, but being shafted when it comes to their actual prizes. It would make sense to implement a system similar to Rivals in that players can pick from two or three rewards, with at least one option guaranteeing you an 86+ player for example.

These are just some of the ways in which we’d go about improving EA’s football game moving forward as we head into the new era of EA Sports FC.

The long-awaited Path Of Exile 2 will be fully unveiled next year, first at Exilecon 2023 before heading to Gamescom in August for European players to check out in the flesh, devs Grinding Gear Games have confirmed. Path Of Exile 2 had been penciled in for a 2022 release, but it's now looking like the sequel could arrive in time for the series' tenth anniversary. A beta is planned, too, and dates for that will be announced when the game is shown at Exilecon.

GGG's CEO Chris Wilson declined to go into detail about what we can expect to see from Path Of Exile 2 at Gamescom during a press preview of today's Forbidden Sanctum expansion stream, but he did say that development on the sequel is going well. time since we last heard much about the game. Path Of Exile 2 was first announced at Exilecon 2019, just a little more than three years ago. It's set to introduce a second, seven-act storyline that's playable alongside the original Path Of Exile camp .

We rated the OG Path Of Exile among the best RPGs to play on PC earlier this year, and plonked it on our list of the best free PC games too. Path Of Exile was released in 2013 but still gets a fresh expansion every three months. This time around GGG are taking the game roguelike with The Forbidden Sanctum, which pits your character against multiple floors of perilous dungeons and chucks all sorts of boons, afflictions and bosses at them.

Read More: Tips For Running Path Of Exile Sanctum League

Path Of Exile 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, as you’d expect. I’ll let you know when I hear more but. For now, Path Of Exile’s The Forbidden Sanctum expansion is in full swing.

2023 marks the 10th anniversary of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and the MMORPG is bigger than it’s ever been. FFXIV is set to get another big drop of post-Endwalker content with Patch 6.3, titled Gods Revel, Lands Tremble. As you might expect there are plenty of new Main Scenario quests for players to dive into, but there’s quite a bit of other content on the way as well, including one major job rework. Here’s everything you need to know about FFXIV’s Patch 6.3

When is the FFXIV Patch 6.3 release date?

Patch 6.3 — Gods Revel, Lands Tremble — will go live on January 10, 2023. As is usual with these patches, you can expect FFXIV to go down the evening of January 9, with maintenance running into the early morning. Although Square Enix hasn’t announced the exact time for maintenance yet, the main patches usually start at roughly 10 p.m. Eastern and run until 6 a.m. Eastern.

Patch 6.3 New Alliance Raid and more additions

Per usual, Patch 6.3 will feature a handful of new Main Scenario Quests, a new dungeon, and a new trial. The dungeon this time around is called Lapis Manalis, and is described as follows “In pursuit of voidsent, you learn of an abandoned village in the mountains of Garlemald where Garleans once practiced the reaper arts. But what will you find there deep in the heart of the mountain?”

The big changes in Patch 6.3, however, is the continuation of the Myths of the Realm Alliance Raid, with Part 2: Euphrosyne. Once again players will come face-to-face with The Twelve, the guardian deities of Eorzea. This is the land of revelry for the gods, and this time around players will be facing Nophica, Althyk, Halone, and Menphina. Of course, keep in mind to access Euphrosyne, you’ll need to be level 90, have a sufficient equipment level, and be up to date with the Myths of the Realm questline.

Treasure Hunt is also getting a bit of an update and will change to a new treasure dungeon “The Shifting Gymnasion Agonon.” You can access the new dungeon through a treasure map that’s usable in Elpis.

Those are the major additions, but there are plenty of other smatterings of content as well, which we’ll cover below.

• New Unreal Trial - Containment Bay P1T6 (Unreal)

• Additional Duty Support for Heavensward - Duty Support added for The Great Gubal Library, Sohr Khai, The Aetherochemical Research Facility, Xelphatol, The Antitwoer, and Baelsar’s Wall.

• New quests for Tataru’s Grand Endeavor

• PvP Season Three Starts as well as Season Five of Crystalline Conflict. A new arena for Crtyalline Conflict “The Clockwork Castletown” will be added.

• Island Sanctuary Update - New ranks, visions, items, materials, crops, animals, and handicrafts.

• New Housing Wards - All housing wards will get 6 new regular wards as well as 6 new subdivisions. (1800 new plots per world)

• Alternate UI Theme - Clear Blue

• Umbrella fashion accessory can be automatically opened when it rains

• New Gear

• New Custom Deliveries for Anden

Additionally, a couple of pieces of content will be added in the sub-patches for the 6.3 series, which we don’t have exact dates for yet.

• (Patch 6.31) Ultimate Duty #5 - The Omega Protocol (Ultimate). This will release two weeks after Patch 6.3, and players need to have completed Abyssos: The Eighth Circle (Savage).

• (Patch 6.35) - Continuation of Somehow Further Hildabrand Adventures questline.

• (Patch 6.35) - Deep Dungeon #3 Eureka Orthos - In order to access players need to have complete MSQ of Endwalker and reached floor 50 of Palace of the Dead.

Patch 6.3 Paladin Bulwark and more changes

Outside of new content, there are some fairly major changes coming to the Paladin job, which fans have been asking for since the launch of Endwalker. Other jobs are only getting minor adjustments to usability. Below you can see an overview of the changes, straight from the latest Live Letter.

• Rotations have been shortened to accommodate high-powered actions.

• Damage over time effect for Goring Blade and Blade of Valor was removed and their potency adjusted.

• Divine Might is now applied after weaponskill combos, allowing an enhanced Holy Spirit to be executed once without casting.

• Holy Sheltron’s effect has been changed to reduce damage taken, thereby enhancing defensive capabilities against damage over time.

• The previously removed Bulwark ability has been revamped and reintroduced, offering increased defensive capability.

• Utility of several other actions and combos have also been adjusted.

Recent Genshin Impact leaks give more information about two new skins for Ayaka and Lisa which are expected to arrive in the upcoming months.

New Genshin Impact leaks reveal the potential appearance of the upcoming costumes for two popular characters, Ayaka and Lisa. Even though the game's characters are the focal point of the game as they are its main source of revenue, HoYoverse does not introduce skins that often.

The last two costumes arrive back in Genshin Impact update 2.8 which introduced the first five-star skin for Diluc named Red Dead of Night. The Electro user Fischl also received a new outfit in the same update which was obtainable for free during the Summertime Odyssey event.

A new post on the Genshin Impact Leaks subreddit reveals the design of the two new skins for Ayaka and Lisa. Both concepts were apparently created based on previous leaks revealed by Team China, a group of credible Genshin Impact leakers. While these leaks should be taken with a grain of salt, almost every previous outfit that was introduced to Genshin Impact went through the same leaking process, meaning that the new skins will probably look very similar to the concepts. There is no information about their rarity, but players expect Ayaka's skin to have a five-star rating which would equip the character with a new set of effects.

While some players in the comment section claim that they like the new skin, especially if it has new SFX effects, others claim that they would not spend over $20 on a costume that has a similar color theme to Ayaka's current outfit.

The Cryo user is one of the most popular characters in the game which is probably one of the reasons why she was chosen to receive a new skin. She even holds the record for most sales within a single Genshin Impact banner cycle, however, it should be noted that her numbers were inflated due to a three-week delay during 2.6.