Daweii

All In has currently sold 77,470 tickets without a single match announced. Matches will likely start getting unveiled, or feuds will start ramping up in intensity for All In starting this Wednesday at Dynamite 200. I know AEW fans in the UK want All In to be some kind of dream event, but I don't think Tony Khan is going to throw continuity out of the window just to set up 8 dream matches. I think the goal will be for All In to create matches for All Out, so many of them will have to make storyline sense. Of course, I could be wrong as Forbidden Door every year pretty much throws the script out the window to appease NJPW, but it depends if AEW see All In as a one off. If it's a one off then it'll probably be more dream match heavy, but if the plan is for All In and All Out to happen at this time of year every year then All In will likely be a regular PPV for better or worse.

It's the 1.1.0 patch from July 18th that brought on many of the issues that people are currently having with the game. Those issues are as follows; Sorcerer not feeling great to play. It was already made of glass due to resistances being completely broken (fix for that coming in Season 2), but the other nerfs to defensive aspects and nerfs to crit damage, cooldown, and vulnerable definitely didn't help. The nerf to overall XP gain from pretty much all content. Running strongholds, not completing them, leaving game, and re-logging was a great levelling strategy, but the nerf to XP for mobs higher level than the player impacted that massively. It went from a 20-25% boost to XP, to a 1.5-4.5% boost. Running Helltide was also impacted by this. 1.1.0 made all mobs in Helltide +3 levels above the player which pre-patch would have been a 25% boost to XP, but it's now a 4.5% boost to XP. Nightmare Dungeons again are impacted by this. The 1.1.0 update made it so that the XP boost scales up to mobs +10 levels higher, so the only way to get close to pre-patch XP is to fight mobs +10 levels higher for a 15% boost to XP. The nerf to Helltide with mysterious chests requiring 250 cinders. Many nodes on the skill twig were also bugged. The 1.1.0c patch yesterday fixed many of them, but some like Imperfectly Balanced for Necro is still bugged. As @Designer1 stated there is a 1.1.1 patch coming in the coming days (likely next week) that will be setting out to address some of the concerns from the 1.1.0 patch. Some of those concerns are; Sorcerer and Barbarian balance. They didn't say if they would be balancing the classes at their core, but they did say they would be re-working some of their legendary aspects to make them more competitive with other classes. 1.1.1 will also be buffing mob density in Nightmare Dungeons and Helltide. This should alleviate the XP nerfs somewhat in endgame as if you're killing thousands more mobs per dungeon then you're earning hundreds of thousands more XP as well. One side effect of this buff might be a harder game though. Crowd control effects are already insane, so making elite mob packs larger might just mean way more crowd control spam, and way more death, but we'll have to wait and see. An additional stash tab is said to be coming in the 1.1.1 update. The respec cost is said to be 40% cheaper. The required XP needed in the 50-100 levelling process will apparently be lowered. The elixir stack size will be raised to 99. There are likely more changes planned for the 1.1.1 update and they'll be talking about it all on a livestream tomorrow at 7pm BST.

I'm pretty much done with Season 1. I finished the seasonal story, I'm almost at the end of chapter 4 on the seasonal journey (not that it's the end of that), and I had the fortune and misfortune of finding the 3 hearts I needed, so my build is pretty much complete at Level 33. Now, there is more to do of course, but I am struggling to find the motivation to grind out the levels just to get to WT3/WT4, to get upgrades of the hearts I already have just so I can see what they're like at Level 70+. I don't know if I have it in me to put 80+ hours into this seasonal character. I'm an ARPG veteran. I have played almost every season in Path of Exile, I have played every season in Diablo 3, and yet something about this season in Diablo 4 just isn't really grabbing me.

Sorcerer had some decent builds and decent enough survivability until the 1.1.0 patch on July 18th for Season 1, which affected Sorcerer the most. So, for the most part you were unaffected by this as Sorcerer was fine for pretty much all of the last 6 weeks. Sorcerer has only been a huge mess for the last 4-days or so. I also need to state that endgame is pretty broad. Sorcerer as it stands today can likely do a good amount of the endgame, but it depends what you consider to be the games true endgame. For some, that's just getting to World Tier 4 and levelling to 70-80. To others it's getting to Level 100 and fighting the pinnacle boss. To another set of people it's pushing Tier 100 (Level 154) Nightmare Dungeons. Sorcerer in its current state can probably get to Level 80-90 just fine, but beyond that will likely require a decent amount of skill as most things will one shot the Sorcerer beyond Level 90. That said, I still think you did well to get to endgame content with pre-patch Sorcerer, as outside of the Ice Shards build it wasn't the easiest ride compared to other classes. Unfortunately it's now 10x harder to take a Sorcerer deep into endgame since the patch on July 18th.

Sorcerer is in such a bad state that they will be rolling out patch 1.1.1 in two weeks to help the class out a bit. Every Sorc build has gone from A-tier at best to B-tier, with many of them languishing down in C and D-tier. The class has almost no damage, and almost zero survivability at end game. On the plus side, Blizzard have stated they will never do a patch like the most recent 1.1.0 patch. In the future if they are to nerf things, they will also buff things in return. They are well aware that the most recent 1.1.0 patch was a kick in the dick for their player base. PS. The current best classes in the game right now are Rogue, Necro and Druid. Those classes make up 95% of the best builds in the game right now.

It goes live in 1 hour and 40 minutes (6pm BST).

I'll probably be going Necromancer. I'll either go for a Bone Spear build, or a Blood Lance build if the new Blood Lance legendary aspect for Necro is as good as it sounds.

Ahaha yeah. I also skimmed through it all at first and came away with a more positive reaction, but then I grabbed a coffee and sat down to read it thoroughly and I'm not impressed by these patch notes at all. There are some good things in there. Most of the new Uniques/Legendaries seem very interesting. The buff to silent chests so they give better loot is nice. The buff to Nightmare Dungeon loot is fantastic with 10% increased drop chance from elites, and a 50% chance to get an extra legendary on completion is great. The rest of it though? It's a ton of nerfs across the board. I feel so bad for anyone that only plays Mage/Sorceress in games like this, as Sorceress is dead. The seasonal mechanic (malignant hearts) takes up the sockets in jewellery, so that's an instant 750 armor lost. The Disobedience Aspect was nerfed, so another 1000 armor is gone. Critical Damage was nerfed by 17% across the board for all classes. Vulnerable was nerfed by 40% across the board for all classes. Many of the defensive aspects were all nerfed by 25%, so we'll now take 25% more damage. Sorceress already did the least amount of damage, and already had the least amount of survivability... I don't see how that class is viable in Season 1. I am very curious to see how it goes. I don't mind if Diablo 4 gets harder, but I feel like I might be a minority when it comes to that. PS. The nerf to Helltide by making it harder, while also now requiring 250 cinders for a mysterious chest, and lowering the drop rate of cinders is definitely a choice that I don't agree with at all.

XP has been mostly nerfed. They buffed the XP gain for completing Whispers in WT3/WT4 which is great, although they didn't say by how much. That said, they nerfed the XP earned from killing monsters higher level than the player quite dramatically. It has gone from a +25% boost to XP when a mob is +3 levels higher, to a +15% boost to XP when a mob is +10 levels higher than the player. Given the boost is now +1.5% XP per level up to +10, it means that we have gone from +25% more XP at +3 mob level to +4.5% more XP at +3 mob level. XP has been absolutely gutted there. This also means less XP from Helltide, as that has seen mobs buffed to always be +3 levels higher, but pre-patch that would have given all players a +25% boost to XP, but now it's +4.5%. They have also changed how mob level works in WT3/WT4 by allowing mobs to trail the players level in the overworld/dungeons by up to 5 levels. So if you're level 61 in WT3 the mobs level will be level 56. This is great for the power fantasy, but it's not great for XP as the player gets a -10% XP debuff for every level they are above the mobs. So, with mobs being up to 5 levels below the player, that'll mean 50% less XP from every mob you kill. Now, in fixed events like Helltide, and Nightmare Dungeons this won't be an issue as the mob level is set by the activity, but any non-endgame activities in the overworld/dungeons will actively punish the player for pursuing them in WT3/WT4. Quite a huge nerf to XP overall unfortunately.

That's effectively how it works out. Diablo 3 had its first season in 2014 and since that point I have never played my eternal realm characters, I just roll a new seasonal one and have a blast with whatever overpowered/fun mechanics they have come up with for that season. Same for Path of Exile. I don't think I have ever played a standard league character, it has always been a character in whatever the current seasonal league is. Seasons do make eternal realm pretty redundant, which is why the focus in Diablo 4 right now is on getting the main story, altars and 100% map discovery done as those are the only things that carry over to seasons.

As @Designer1 stated your seasonal character is completely separate. The reason for starting fresh with a new character is because the seasonal content isn't permanent. There are aspects that are permanent like the 6 uniques and 7 legendaries being added to the loot pool, and the battle pass cosmetics, but everything else isn't permanent. So, what this means is Blizzard can have fun in seasons. For instance Season 1 (Season of the Malignant) allows us to get Malignant Hearts that can be slotted into our jewellery, and Blizzard have stated that some of these hearts are game breaking in how powerful they are, but the reason they are game breaking is because in 3 months those hearts are getting deleted so game balance is less important. This is also why they don't allow eternal realm characters to do seasonal realm content. Firstly, those that are Level 100 wouldn't have much fun in seasons as without XP and a real loot grind there is no game. Secondly, because the seasonal items are temporary, it would suck to log in at the end of a season and find your eternal realm character 10x less powerful because the seasonal stuff was deleted. Creating a new character knowing it has 3 months to live with incredibly powerful items/mechanics has been found to be the best way to do this. Diablo 4 isn't the first ARPG to do the seasonal structure. This is a decade of trial and error from multiple games in the genre to find what works best overall. Of course, starting from scratch every 3 months isn't for everyone, but for the most part the seasonal model is the reason Diablo 3 is still relevant, it's also the reason why people love Path of Exile, are starting love Last Epoch, and are likely going to love Diablo 4 for a long time to come. PS. When I say a character has "3 months to live" I don't mean seasonal characters get deleted. Seasonal characters join your eternal characters on the eternal realm when a season ends, but given most seasonal players never play eternal realm once seasons are activated the character is effectively dead. That's what I meant.

Firstly, a virus can do whatever it is programmed to do and new viruses are created every day. The malware industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and it's growing by the day. So, this virus taking over admin rights is pretty straight forward if that is what it was programmed to do. As for why Microsoft haven't fixed it yet is because they ultimately can't fix it. This is a cat and mouse issue. For every door that Microsoft close, the malware programmers create a new door, or new keys to open formally closed doors. Now, Microsoft combat this to some extent by constantly updating their anti-virus with new definitions of new malware, but even updating those definitions daily isn't enough to keep up with an industry that is constantly one step ahead. So, what this means is the end user has to remain vigilant, they have to double check the links they click on, the sites they visit, and the applications they download. Secondly, I don't think there is much your friend can do at this point. Even if they got their admin rights back, there is no telling what else the virus has altered. Even using a virus scanner to get rid of the virus may not get rid of all components of the virus. My mentality if my operating system is compromised is to reinstall Windows from scratch, and I think ultimately that is your friends only real solution. Reinstall Windows and don't download software to unlock tablets.

Fun fact: There are mystery chests on the Helltide map that are hidden until you get very close to them. These chests cost 175 cinders to open and they drop the best loot in all of Helltide. There is a website; Diablo 4 Helltide Event Tracker and Chest Locations (helltides.com) that will show you not only where all the Helltide events are, but where the current active mystery chests are (marked with a green dot). These chests also change location on the hour, so if a Helltide starts at 3:30pm you have the chance to get up to 4 mystery chests per Helltide. When Helltide isn't active that website will show a countdown for when it'll be returning. It also has countdowns for the next World Boss spawn, and the next Legion event spawn.

The games director, Todd Howard, has stated that he has played the game on his Series S more than on his Series X because in his words, "the kids keep kicking me off the Series X at home". So, unless he's lying, the game seems to run just as well as it does on Series X, just at a lower resolution. I think he's telling the truth as well because Starfield is primarily taxing on the CPU, and both Series X and S have the same CPU.

Season 1 will be starting in mid/late-July. We'll likely be finding out more about what the seasonal mechanics are and when the season will launch at the start of July, as I think Blizzard have a livestream planned to talk all about the season. As for what you want to have completed is as follows; Main story. All Lilith Altars. 100% Map Discovery. If you do all of those things then the seasonal character you create will start with the ability to skip the story, will start with the mount, and will start with the renown + stats from the altars, plus the renown and the fog of war removed from the map via the map discovery. Aside from that, there isn't much more you need to do to be ready for seasons.

Druid has one of the weakest starts of any of the classes and only really starts to come alive at Level 60+, but once it comes alive it has some of the best builds and build variety in the game. Pulverise Druid is insanely satisfying, Storm Druid is super fun, and while it requires a specific unique to drop, Werewolf Tornado is arguably one of the most powerful builds in the game. Blizzard just need to work on Druid being more fun in the 0-50 because Druid runs slow, doesn't do much damage, and can be relatively squishy until they have done their class quest at level 15 and unlocked all their boons by level 30. Very fun class though in the 60-100 levelling grind.

That's your class quest. When you complete it you'll unlock the enchantment slots. Those slots can be a decent source of power depending which spells you put in the slots, but it's good to have them unlocked either way.

This is where the games attempt to make it easier backfires to some extent. When you see +87 on a weapon that's usually because its damage per second is higher than what you have. Same for the armour value on armour. Now, you can get pretty far just equipping things that have + numbers on the primary stat, but something that does more damage per second, could still be worse if the stats on it are worse. For instance lets say you're playing as an Arc Lash Sorcerer using Chain Lightning as your core skill. You have done the class quest at Level 15 to unlock an enchantment slot and have Fireball in it so everyone explodes when they die (it's a fun one). So, you might have a rare weapon equipped that has Lightning Critical Hit Damage 18%, Critical Hit Chance 9%, Vulnerable Damage 12% that arguably does less damage per second than the one you just picked up, but that one might have +2 to Hydra (but you're not using Hydra), Damage to slowed enemies 18% (but you have no slow ability) and so on. The new weapon might hit harder and faster, but the one you're currently using is synergising better with your lightning skills thanks to the Lightning Crit Damage and Crit Chance. So, in some instances it can be the case that bigger number is better, but the game doesn't know what build you're creating, so it doesn't know how good or bad any of the stats under damage per second or armor are for your build. For instance if you were going for a Chain Lightning build then stat priorities on items are likely as follows; Weapon (Wand): Core Damage, Critical Strike Damage Focus (Off-Hand): Cooldown Reduction, Critical Strike Chance, Intelligence Helm: Cooldown Reduction, Intelligence, Life Armor: Damage Reduction, Armor Gloves: +Stat to Chain Lightning, Critical Strike Chance Pants: Armor, Intelligence Boots: Movement Speed Amulet: Cooldown Reduction, Movement Speed Rings: Critical Strike Damage, Critical Strike Chance, Vulnerable Damage Of course that's likely going to create a pretty decent Chain Lightning build, especially once you get some Legendary Aspects on that gear, and of course if you're running something else like Firewall, or Ice Shards instead of Chain Lightning then some of the stats you're looking for on gear might be different, but there is more to look at than just the + number because the game doesn't know your build. All the game can say with certainty is this weapons base damage is higher than the one you have, so it's better in that regard, but the rest might be worse.

I am now awaiting Season 1 to start. I was going to level a character to 100 in pre-season, but when I realised it was going to take 150+ hours, I decided to save that for Season 1. I have levelled three characters to Level 60 to learn how they play, and figure out some builds, but I am done with the game until Season 1 starts. Outside of not wanting to level to 100 in pre-season, I was also offput by Blizzard constantly nerfing everything, while not buffing the root cause of certain issues. For instance players were resorting to running the same few dungeons 900 times because the XP and loot was better than Nightmare Dungeons. So instead of buffing Nightmare Dungeons to be more rewarding, they instead nerfed the standard dungeons by reducing mob density/elite density, which means XP gain and loot gain is even lower than before. I'm hoping these nerfs make sense once the seasonal theme and seasonal gameplay mechanics are added, but right now it feels really bad to see any build that is fun and powerful get nerfed, while players attempts to shorten the 0-100 grind by a few hours is also being eliminated. Nerfs without buffs elsewhere feels really bad. The game is very good when everything is synergising and you have a build that can overcome the overbearing level scaling, but the Diablo team are making it very hard to enjoy the game at endgame currently.

I went with Sorcerer in the end which has been pretty fun so far.

I think ultimately it'll depend on what you want from Diablo. Diablo 3 is a power fantasy in every sense of the word. The gameplay is very fast, the action is very fast, and levelling is very fast. You go from weak to very powerful within 20 hours. The main downsides of Diablo 3 are that its end game is non-existent which forces players to run greater rifts endlessly until they get bored. Diablo 4 isn't a power fantasy, I mean, you'll be killing swarms of mobs, but depending on the world tier you'll also be taking plenty of damage in return. Diablo 4 is also a lot slower, and getting to level 100 is said to take the average player well over 100 hours. As someone now at end game (level 53 currently), I can say the games main strength is in its endgame as even at launch the game has 2-3x more content than Diablo 3 had as of last week. So, while the grind is slower and progress is slower in Diablo 4, I feel like players will likely have more fun over a longer amount of time in Diablo 4. So, it ultimately comes down to what you want from a Diablo game. Diablo 4 itself is fun, but it's a similar speed to Diablo 2 which might be jarring to those that are used to how Diablo 3 operated.

It's releasing on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.

I imagine our plans will be the same, we'll just have an easier time landing some of the more ambitious names now that those players won't be giving up European football to join us.

Fairgame$, Concord, and Marathon are all first party live service games that are launching on PS5 & PC simultaneously, and in the case of Marathon it's also launching on Series X|S at the same time as PS5 & PC. Live service is Sony's focus going forward. Their recent earnings call outlined that single player spending would be decreasing (by 5%) to 40% between now and 2025, while live service spending will be increasing to 60% in the same span of time. It'll be curious to see how this plan works out for them, but I imagine many people didn't buy a PS5 to play live service multiplayer games. Also as a reminder, Sony wanted to have 10 live service games out by 2025. Now, that number may have dropped recently as Sony did recently cancel two games that were in the works, but we don't know if those cancellations were live service games, so best case scenario it's now 8 live service games by 2025 which isn't much of an improvement.

Overall it was not a great show if you were looking for the future of PlayStation as an exclusives driven entity. There was Spider-Man 2 which is great for those that liked the first game, but overall I was surprised at how many multiplatform games they showed at this event. There were big games, but many of them are games that people can buy elsewhere. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is on PS5, Series X|S and PC. Dragon's Dogma 2 is likely on PS5, Series X|S and PC. Alan Wake 2 is on PS5, Series X|S and PC. A lot of the indie games are likely coming to other platforms and many of them are likely also tied to a Game Pass deal because Xbox are good at that. It wasn't a bad show, the games shown were good games aside from some of the weird as shit live service games that were shown... Foamstars? Go home Square Enix you're drunk. I just think I was expecting more because this was the first PlayStation Showcase in 2-years, but I guess many of Sony's first party studios just aren't ready to show their stuff yet unfortunately.