The weekly cross-game briefing: what actually moved, what got hotfixed, and where our own calls were wrong. One report per week, every game on the network. Rankings follow our published methodology.
Two days late and we say so at the top. Marathon's PvE experiment closed after tripling the player count to ~14,800 and sliding back to ~2,070 — PvE pulls lapsed players back and does not hold them. Diablo IV's Season 15 announcement is now overdue on Blizzard's own pattern. PoE2 has a Gamescom date worth watching, from a source worth doubting. Read report #007 →
A full week of testing and Blizzard did not walk back a single Barbarian cut — Warlock and Rogue look set to lead Season 15. The board still doesn't move, because PTR numbers are a proposal until the patch ships. Marathon's Vault Breaker closes in seven days and your unspent Vault Data dies with it. PoE2: a third week with nothing. Read report #006 →
Diablo IV's 3.2.0 PTR opens August 4 with the first Season 15 features — Soul Splinters, Challenge Dungeons, Rebirth and ten legacy Uniques — roughly six weeks earlier than we predicted, and we say so. Marathon extends Vault Breaker to August 18, postponing the population read we were waiting on. PoE2 stays quiet: 0.5.5 still has no official date. The boards do not move on PTR data. Read report #005 →
Three weeks of "when's the nerf coming?" resolve with no patch at all: Death Trap simply fell out of S-tier as gear caught up, and Whirlwind Barbarian takes over. Diablo IV's 3.1.2 lands July 28 as a minor bug-fix. Marathon's Vault Breaker tripled the player count for about a day before collapsing back to baseline. And PoE2's economy reset slips to autumn — while the July 24 reveal turned out to be Path of Exile 1's Curse of the Allflame, a different game entirely. Read report #004 →
Marathon's first PvE-only mode opens on Cryo Archive, and we ship a full Vault Breaker guide. In Diablo IV, we own the miss: no Death Trap nerf came — a surprise 3.1.1a instead lifted the crafted-Mythic equip limit and made Rogue stronger, while Druid took the week's real hit. PoE2's 0.5.5 soft reset waits on the July 24 reveal, now with two reset events reportedly planned before 1.0. (Followed up in #004: the July 24 reveal was PoE1's expansion, not a PoE2 event, and 0.5.5 slipped to autumn; Death Trap fell from S-tier on its own, no hotfix needed.) Read report #003 →
Diablo IV's first balance patch arrives with Mythic itemization fixes and a Druid nerf — while the Death Trap hotfix we predicted never came, and Rogues rode the bug to Pit 150. PoE2 readies a late-July 0.5.5 soft economy reset, and Marathon sits one week from Vault Breaker, where tier lists won't apply by design. (Followed up in #003: the Death Trap nerf still didn't land — 3.1.1a buffed Rogue instead.) Read report #002 →
Barbarian and Rogue seize the Diablo IV Season 14 ladder as the Ramaladni's fix crowns Ancient Singer — and our launch Paladin call gets publicly corrected. PoE2's Runes of Aldur settles into a builder's league with Twister Monk mapping fastest, and Marathon counts down to its July 21 mid-season test. Read report #001 →