First: this one is late
This report was due Tuesday 18 August. It is going out on Thursday 20th. We missed it, and rather than backdate the file and pretend otherwise we are saying so at the top — a site that corrects its own tier lists in public does not get to quietly fix its own publishing record.
The one upside is timing. Marathon's Vault Breaker closed on the 18th, the day this should have run. Being two days late means we can report what actually happened instead of what was about to.
Marathon — Vault Breaker is over, and it answered the question
The event closed on 18 August after four weeks, and the population data is unambiguous. Steam Charts figures put the peak near 14,800 concurrent players when Vault Breaker launched — roughly triple Marathon's baseline — with the count sliding back to about 2,070 as the mode headed for its close.
That is the measurement we said we were waiting for, back in Report #005 when Bungie extended the event and postponed the read. The conclusion is uncomfortable but clean: PvE pulls lapsed players back, and it does not hold them. A tripling is real interest. Sliding to baseline over four weeks, with a solo queue added and difficulty tuned down in response to feedback, says the interest did not convert into a reason to stay.
We should be fair to the counter-argument, because we made it ourselves in #005. Bungie extended the mode by a fortnight and shipped 1.1.5.2 in response to what players said — a studio does not do that for an experiment nobody engages with. Both readings survive the data. The spike was shallow and the feedback was worth collecting. What Bungie now has is four weeks of research going into the permanent PvE mode rather than two.
If you spent the last week grinding: anything left unspent is gone. Vault Data, Sponsored Kit progress and the four Codex cosmetics did not carry into Season 2 or Season 3. Gear bought from the Vault Breaker Armory does persist into standard Marathon, so that part of the grind was not wasted. Season 3 arrives September 22 with the Perimeter revamp, a new Runner Shell, and the permanent PvE mode this was all testing for. The board is unchanged — Assassin leads solo, Recon and Triage own squad play. Current shell and weapon rankings →
Diablo IV — the Season 15 announcement is now overdue
Nine days since the PTR closed and Blizzard still has not posted a Season 15 date. That is worth flagging rather than repeating, because the silence is now itself the story: Blizzard's established pattern is a blog post three to four weeks before a season launches. If the widely-cited September 15 changeover is right, that announcement window has already opened. If it slips to the alternative September 28 figure, there is a fortnight of room left.
Both dates remain arithmetic rather than announcements. September 15 comes from the in-client Reliquary timer, which makes it the more grounded of the two; September 28 comes from a separate community countdown. Neither is a Blizzard statement and we are still not printing one as fact. What we can now say with more confidence is when to expect the real one — imminently, and almost certainly before BlizzCon on 12–13 September.
On the balance side, Maxroll's post-PTR write-up has firmed up what the test week suggested. Their verdict on Warlock is that the class is ready for its time in the spotlight, with builds showing strong boss kill speed, speedfarming mobility and top-tier Tower pushing — Blazing Scream, Apocalypse and full archfiend setups leading. They also single out Leoric's Crown as the most interesting item on the PTR: it takes up to two Soul Splinters and doubles their positive effects while leaving the downsides untouched, and the Mythic version runs at 130% effect.
None of which moves our board. Season 14 rankings stay on live 3.1.2 balance until 3.2.0 ships. Whirlwind Barbarian is still the strongest pick in the live game and will be until the patch lands, whatever the test realm suggested. We re-rank on live data. The Season 14 board, unchanged →
Path of Exile 2 — a date to watch, with a caveat about where it came from
Still no official 0.5.5 date from GGG. What has emerged is a specific thing to watch: a Gamescom stream on 25 August, at which 0.5.5 teaser footage is expected. GGG is confirmed on the Gamescom exhibitor list with a live Path of Exile 2 demo, and Gamescom runs in Cologne in late August.
The caveat matters. The specific 25 August stream date comes from a currency-selling site rather than from GGG, and that category of source is frequently first with real information and equally frequently wrong. Treat the date as a thing to check rather than a thing to plan around. What is solid is that GGG will be at Gamescom with the game, and that is historically where announcements of this kind land.
The spend logic is unchanged and we corrected it last week: GGG confirmed in a May Q&A that at least two event leagues run before 1.0, so 0.5.5 is the first reset and not the only one. Large stockpiles have a shelf life, and there is a second reset behind this one. ExileCon remains November 7–8 and sold out. Price your build against the live economy with Mirrorcheck →
The week ahead — what we're watching
Diablo IV: the Season 15 date, which is now overdue on Blizzard's own pattern and should land within days rather than weeks. Marathon: the gap between now and Season 3 on 22 September, and whether the concurrency floor holds at baseline or drifts lower with the event gone. PoE2: the Gamescom stream around 25 August, and whether a 0.5.5 date comes with it. Every board updates within 24 hours of any of these breaking. And the next report goes out on Tuesday, on time.