Hello everyone, we’re still two days from the release of Diablo 4 and I’m already tired to trying to keep up with class balance tweaks. It has been negative two (-2) days since launch, sorry, two days since early access launch for people who paid more and two days until proper launch and we’ve got our first patch and it’s… almost entirely nerfs and buffs. Class balance tweaks!

The patch rolled out just a few hours later, and a brief overview of the notes shows some nerfs for Barbarians, Rogues, and Sorcerers, while Druids got a few buffs and Necromancers got almost exclusively buffs.

Most notably, Barbarians’ Challenging Shout had its damage reduction per skill rank halved, while Rogues’ Dark Shroud damage reduction per shadow per skill rank was also halved and sorcerers lost two seconds off of Shimmering Teleport’s damage reduction. Several other Barbarian skills were nerfed, and their notable Gohr’s Devastating Grips item was absolutely piledrivered into the dirt: It…

Modern graphics cards use lots of power and all of it is turned into heat. So if you’re paying many hundreds of dollars for a powerful GPU, you’d expect no expense to be spared on the cooling system. It turns out that for many Nvidia RTX 40-series vendors, the expense is being spared and cheap, poorly applied thermal paste is leading to scorching high hotspot temperatures and performance degradation over time.

That’s the conclusion hardware tester Igor’s Lab has come to after testing multiple GeForce RTX cards, analysing temperatures and performance, and discovering that the thermal paste used by many graphics card vendors is not only sub-standard for the job but is also poorly applied.

I have four RTX 40-series cards in my office (RTX 4080 Super, 4070 Ti, and two 4070s) and all of them have quite high hotspots—the highest temperature recorded by an individual thermal sensor in the die. In the case of the 4080 Super, it’s around 11 °C higher than the a…

A major Helldivers 2 balance patch dropped earlier this week—stuffed so full of weapons tuning and adjustments that most divers (fittingly) glossed over one crucial, yet sneaky change: “Fixed issue where Stalkers became very visible in fog.”

I mean, it’s an innocuous enough tweak on the face of it. Stalkers, the Terminid’s invisible shock troopers, were pretty dangerous before—often popping up at the worst of times—but they weren’t exactly stealthy. Despite their ability to cloak like the predator, you could typically see their outlines from a good distance away.

Those days are gone. As shown off by a few unfortunate divers, Stalkers are now well and truly invisible:

Stalkers are genuinely cloaked now from r/Helldivers

They buffed Stalkers, their optical camouflage now works. from r/Helldivers

Not only does this increase your chances of getting thrashed by ever…

Things are going from bad to worse for FaZe Clan, the esports and lifestyle brand that bellyflopped onto the Nasdaq with a public listing in July last year. Dexerto reports that the company has lost one of its most famous backers: weed evangelist and hip hop artist Snoop Dogg, who resigned from its board of directors on March 29, which was revealed in an SEC filing by the company yesterday.

“On March 29, 2023, Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus, Jr. notified FaZe Holdings Inc. … that he is resigning from the Board of Directors,” read the filing, but noted that the resignation “was not the result of any disagreement with the Company or any of its subsidiaries”. So at least they’re still friends.

Snoop and FaZe only revealed that the rapper would join the company’s board in March 2022, meaning his tenure has only lasted about a year.

It’s another in a long series of blows for FaZe Clan, whose stock dumped a quarter of its value on the first day of its public listing …

It’s not quite the leviathan of TV satire it once was, but there must still be some thrill in seeing South Park reference something you’ve made. No one needed the rude cartoon boys to confirm that Baldur’s Gate 3 has been a huge success, but a joke about cross-dimensional BG3 save files in the latest South Park special does underscore how wildly mainstream the D&D RPG has gone.

But like a good, stern DM who doesn’t let the rules go out the window just because the players are joking around, Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios was quick to log an objection to the gag. Greeting the show with a wonderfully dry “Hello @SouthPark,” the studio pointed out that the joke misrepresents BG3’s cross-save capabilities. 

The special, called South Park: Joining the Panderverse, premiered on Paramount+ today, and based mostly on the trailer, has to do with an alternate South Park universe influenced by the show’s take on ‘diverse casting.’ All you need to know in this cont…

Following complaints about a price increase and widespread perception of a drop in value, the previous DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3, Shadows of Change, was significantly expanded to make it better value. Creative Assembly isn’t done placating its audience, and has announced the next DLC, Thrones of Decay, which expands three of the game’s armies, will be available in three separate parts.

“Back when we got started with production on Thrones of Decay close to a year ago,” Total War’s head of community Adam Freeman wrote, “we had envisioned shipping this as one big package just like we did with Shadows of Change, and after talking with many of you these past few months we recognise that these large sized, higher priced packs aren’t always what you’re looking for. So, we’ve decided to do something different just for Thrones, and used this extra time to help show that we were listening to what you had to say.”

Thrones of Decay expands the rosters of the Empire, Nurgl…

Lord of the Rings online is celebrating its 16th anniversary this year, releasing this past week update 35.1 (wow) and adding a cool new raid alongside a bunch of upgrades and gifts for players. While players long-ago plundered the Witch-king’s citadel at Angmar and deposed the wraiths dwelling there, it turns out that like every other evil in Middle-Earth they probably should have just gone and chucked everything there in a volcano for good measure.

“Gwathrenost, the Witch-king’s Citadel is a new Raid for Level 140 Players set in a re-imagined Carn Dûm! This raid will be available on Tiers 1 and 2 in the near future. Once the seat of the Witch-king of Angmar, the dread citadel of Gwathrenost casts a long shadow upon the city of Carn Dûm. All but abandoned after the Steward of Angmar was deposed, the remnants of the Iron Crown have crept forth from the shadows, seeking to master a lost artifact of the Witch-king and reclaim dominion over the realm,” says the announ…

Lurid swear-em-up Shadows of the Damned—a 2011 action-adventure collaboration between Suda51 and Shinji Mikami—is getting a remaster. It was announced yesterday—amid a deluge of Summer Game Fest announcements—in the form of a trailer in which main character Garcia Hotspur arrives at the developer’s offices and shoots an unarmed man in the head. I think Nintendo announced that new Zelda the same way.

If you’re unaware, Shadows of the Damned is a splashy, weird third-person shooter that’s been trapped on the PS3 and Xbox 360 since it released 12 years ago. It’s loud and brash and zany—your signature gun is called “The Boner,” which should give you some idea of the plane we’re operating on here—and while it wasn’t a smash hit in its day, it’s occupied a sacred space in the hearts of fans as a cult classic for over a decade.

Thing is, of course, that the devs at Grasshopper Manufacture haven’t said anything about what platforms the remaste…

Looking for today’s Wordle answer? There’s a clue for the daily puzzle not far down this page—feel free to use it if you’re running out of guesses and need a little push. Need something stronger? Sure thing. The answer to the September 14 (817) Wordle is only a click away.

Uncovering the solution to today’s puzzle took a bit of a leap of faith, after my results soon made it clear that the normal, “safe”, combinations I kept reaching for weren’t going to be much help. I’m glad I was brave: I wouldn’t have gone for today’s Wordle answer—and I would have lost—if I’d been more careful.

Today’s Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Thursday, September 14

Remembering the name of a specific semi-synthetic fabric is the key to winning today’s Wordle. This common textile is often used in everyday clothes, and is apparently made from regenerated cellulose. You’ll need to uncover two different vowels to win. 

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Is the…

After months of waiting, Bandai Namco finally revealed its first model kits for Armored Core 6 at the end of March. The first run is set to launch this September, and includes fan-favorite NPC buddy Rusty’s Steel Haze, enemy pilot Raven’s Nightfall, and a weapons pack with the pulse blade, laser rifle, laser drone, and vertical plasma launcher.

I don’t think I ever set a Google Alert for AC6 model kits, because the last time I tried that the search giant would just email me nonsense results instead of crucial intel on the US release of the Platypus Squishmallow Santino my partner required. Despite periodically checking back on the status of AC6’s model kits, I missed the first showcase of the models in a Japanese language stream on March 20. 

In the past, I had a little fun at the expense of AC6’s $230 limited edition, which came with a mech, as well as the game’s $450 limited-er edition with a mech and a hangar. What I failed to realize at the time was how much I w…