u/biggoatbr

This weapon kind of fixes all of Druids challenges in one go, crazy. Incredibly high spirit regen (almost 2x Tibault's), attack speed, damage, all stats and it gets easily 60% crit chance (more with item quality)... all in a SINGLE item. Only starting to play with it, but basically any non-Dire WW build that can fit a 2h should be using this and dropping Tibault's will, wolves (speed passive), while being able to use Locran's Talisman basically for free.

I am still trying to get a good transfiguration, but you can see the massive stats on my 3 attempts above. Those are the BAD rolls, imagine a good Insight. Was not able to reroll the crit chance (Enchant), I guess it will not show as an enchant option, but you can for example change weapon damage to willpower (to get 1000+ willpower from it alone, for example).

(*) Credits go to this moon Druid on the leaderboards, who has a 140 tower run that is probably legit (after the grief bug patch), most likely the best druid non-bugged tower run in the boards. He plays a boulder build with an INSANE insight that has +30 item quality and 400% (x) crit damage multipler with 85% crit chance.

This is indeed a game changer weapon, do check it out.

About runewords: https://d4guides.gg/en/news/diablo-4-runewords-all-19-runewords-from-season-15

GG

Started in August, 100% Squad Battles (no player matches or transfers this year). Goal was top 200 in SB — 40K should do it for most of the year, and I'm finally there. All games on Ultimate, no Legendary/World Class cheesing, no corner exploits. Had 13 wins and 3 losses, so there's room for 45K if I keep pushing. Two of the losses were to ~60-rated teams by the way, ironically the toughest fights now since the handicap turns them into full 99-rated squads in-game.

Squad selection is covered in my last post (My Absolute Best Players in FC 26) . Short version: I prioritize cards with good off-ball movement, clean positioning, and strong role response (False 9, Box Crasher, Box-to-Box). That rules out some fun picks like Ronaldinho or Ronaldo (now my supersub). I moved Zidane to LM — most of the defending and tackling happens out wide — and Dembélé's body type and balance make him solid for interceptions and pressure too.

The 4-2-3-1 (2)

I wanted to run the meta 4-4-1-1, but it's brutal to defend without CDMs against the Ultimate AI (specially if they run 4-4-2). Key points:

• Stop the easy goals first. The AI will occasionally "cheat" and score no matter what — ignore those. Your job is closing off the easy buildup. Keep a double line of 4 or you'll bleed goals. Fullbacks stay on defend; don't ever break the shape.
• You can still press and tackle, sometimes easily — but the AI flips a switch and becomes unostopable from time to time. Play it conservative: keep the back line and CDMs centered and disciplined rather than chasing the ball. Also, never manually control your CBs, if you get beaten, you concede. Getting beaten with your fullbacks will also cause your CBs to cover, and you will also concede.
• Positioning your LM/RM well is the single biggest defensive lever. If they're out of position, your CDMs (or CMs in 4-4-1-1) drift wide on their own and leave the middle wide open. Get the wingers protecting the flanks first, then worry about pressure — position, then tackle. This alone fixed most of my CDMs' tackle success.
• Box Crasher on the CDMs is excellent here — they also drop back further on counters, which slows the AI down. CMs and box-to-box is also fine, but will give the AI more space and easier counters.
• To slow AI buildup, fake pressure with a defender: select them and step toward the attacker, and ~75% of the time they'll pass backward rather than risk it. Don't overcommit — just buy time, then switch to your winger, let the CDMs drop and screen centrally, then double up and block passing lanes before going for the tackle. Anticipate, don't blind-press with R2.

Attack

Del Piero and Cruyff (from the post linked above) do best — good off-ball movement matters more than raw attacking stats. Overly aggressive forwards run offside or try to bully 55-rated AI defenders and lose the ball; the handicap makes even weak AI defenders bully your Ronaldo's and Henry's.

Speed doesn't win races against the AI — if you both sprint at the same time, they win 95% of it. Set up proper runs instead; positioning beats pace even for non-Quick Step+ players. Skip the 1-2s (L1+X) — they seem to trigger extra AI aggression. Better: ping a pass to your ST, then trigger an L1 run from the winger, and avoid getting tackled by sprinting towards the sideline. This lead to some easy through balls to the wingers.

Triangulate through the midfield as much as you can: the AI reads straight passes too well.

Biggest issue is losing the ball early in buildup, which is an almost guaranteed AI goal. Finesse shots with precision on work fine (barring the occasional bugged 55-rated keeper), but it's about getting into position, not the shot itself — don't force shots through a crowd.

Standouts

Bruno Fernandes is still my most important player — loves Box Crasher. KDB too, but Bruno edges him on control and positioning. Cruyff has been the best False 9 I've tested, by far — even more productive here than in 4-4-1-1 or 4-2-2-2. Skip Advanced Forward; it gets you stuck offside waiting for balls that never come.

Defensively, Vidić is the new star — latest addition. He is far superior to other fullbacks I tested, such as Thuram or Pedro Porro. Just play him, RB, CB, CDM, goalkeeper... just make sure he is there.

Formation, playstyles, and a few highlights from this week attached. Hope you get as much out of this as I did — see you around!

I got a little obsessed with the idea of actually knowing who my best players are for this final push of EA FC 26, instead of just going with gut feeling. So I built a proper testing plan: 18 frontline players rotated through multiple formations and positions, on top of a fixed back five, and logged every match's rating, goals and assists.

Goal: lock in the strongest possible squad before this week's Squad Battles run against Ultimate AI, chasing 40K points.

The setup

• 18 rotated players (mostly 99s), each given at least 5 appearances across different formations and, where relevant, different positions
• 4 formations tested: 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2, 4-4-1-1, 4-2-2-2
• All games co-op vs 99-rated, full-chem community teams on Legendary — about as close to a real Squad Battles Ultimate opponent as it gets
• 19 total logged matches: 16 wins, 3 losses (others got tossed out due to red cards, injuries or bugs and weren't counted)

All the results are in the attached images: top 10 by average rating, a full formation comparison, the complete 23-player list, top 5 player cards, and three finished lineups.

The big surprise: Bruno Fernandes #1

He came into the pool purely because someone recommended him in a thread here — I genuinely wasn't planning to test him. He ended the run as my #1 rated player by a mile: 11 goals, 4 assists, 8.39 average across 8 games. An absolute beast.

The crazy part is I didn't even play him as CAM, he still owned all games. Even as CDM, Deep-Lying Playmaker or Box Crasher, he was still the standout. I am 100% convinced now that this is the best card in this game. He is always where he needs to be and always performs. Awesome player.

#2 no surprise at all: Del Piero

He was already my favorite player before the "99 flood," and I'd been struggling to justify replacing him with Ronaldinho or Henry. He doesn't put up the flashiest goal/assist numbers of the bunch, but he's constantly involved — sharp passing, very few possession losses, always a threat. That consistency is what pushed him to #2 overall.

#3 an icon, but not the one I expected

Went in thinking Ronaldo or Maradona would run away with this. They've got that unique movement and can conjure something out of nothing, but across a real sample size, neither matched the consistency of the top cards. Cruyff was the one who delivered instead — excellent as a striker (mostly False 9 - Attack), 1.33 goal contributions per match, and rock solid rating-wise.

My selected squads:

• Main team: 4-4-1-1, built around the top 6 overall performers: Cruyff, Del Piero, Olise, Yamal, KDB and Bruno. Fixed back five stays with Cucurella, Laporte, Van Dijk, Thuram and Petr Cech.
• Alternative for tougher games: 4-2-2-2.
• Most attacking option: 4-4-2 built purely off goal contributions per match.

Really happy with how this turned out, feels good to have actual data behind the squad. Full breakdown in the images. Also have the spreadsheet, screenshots of performance per game and even AI prompts if you want to try something similar.

Next I may try some of the meta cards (Pina, Putellas, Leao...) or some nice evo's (89 Bale, 95 or 97 Ronaldo) to see if they can compete at this level.

Have fun out there!

Should've shared this before, but the trip back home was pretty crazy. Anyway, hopefully this helps people planning the next tournaments or looking for knockout-stage tickets.

The games:

1. France x Senegal - Cat 3 - USD 460 (FIFA Marketplace, 15% fee included, bought 1 hour before kickoff)
2. Brazil x Haiti - Cat 1 - USD 765 (FIFA Last Minute Sales, 3 weeks before the game)
3. Uruguay x Cape Verde - Front Cat 3 - USD 310 (FIFA Marketplace, 15% fee included, 2 months before the game)

(*) By "reasonable" I mean compared to what many people ended up paying. I don't actually think these prices are good. In the 2018 Russia WC we paid around USD 150 per ticket on average. This time it was 500.

What I learned and some tips:

1. I didn't see any reason to use secondary resellers. In 2018 we used Viagogo and others, nothing against them, but having equivalent tickets on the FIFA Marketplace with no transfer risk is a no-brainer. This was by far the best (possibly only) improvement over previous WCs ticketing.
2. FIFA has both the Marketplace and LMS (Last Minute Sales). You need to check both constantly. There are apps that track ticket availability—I won't advertise them here, but they're easy to find. Checking several times a day for weeks is why we got so many tickets at those prices. Our group bought 14 in total.
3. The biggest factor is simply how much time you (or your group) spend looking. People saying they should've bought earlier, waited longer, etc., usually just weren't checking when the good tickets became available. Keep in mind that, like anything else, ticket prices have cycles: near the matches prices may drop, when games go viral prices go up, etc. It is important to think about events and how they can affect prices and reserve proper time to look for tickets.
4. Your main goal is getting tickets into your cart. Once they're there, they're reserved. Most people use the seat map, but I found automatic assignment much better. That's how I got the USD 400 (+15% fee) France ticket, about half the average price. My strategy was to keep adding random categories until something good appeared. Add 1 Cat 3, clear cart, repeat. Then 1 Cat 1 + 1 Cat 2. Repeat. Then Cat 4, etc. You can mix categories—if you get an error, you know one category isn't available. If you like one ticket but not the others, just remove them. Since you can hold up to 4 tickets, keep replacing them with better ones until you end up with your best combination. If you want seats together, search for the minimum quantity you need (2 and 4 together are pretty common). If price is your priority, try different quantities and accept seating alone. But don't give up when you see the first "USD 5,000" ticket in your cart; just clear it. Tickets are being listed (and bought) every second. If you are locked into the same tickets over and over, then go for the seat map (it does take some time to get good navigating it).
5. The tickets I'm most proud of were for France x Senegal in NJ. We went to American Dream mall despite the organization not wanting anyone to go without tickets (quite an odyssey), then I kept refreshing the Marketplace until an hour before kickoff. I found one for myself and one for a friend at roughly half the going price, but it took hundreds of attempts. Next WC I'll definitely do this more often: get close to the stadium and try my luck. Worst case, you enjoy the atmosphere and supporters' parties. When I did find that 400 USD ticket after nearly 8 hours in the mission (from going from Manhattan to the mall to getting the ticket), it was the moment of the trip. Then seeing that full stadium and vibe beat everything else (until Brazil's game, of course).
6. The best seats I got were Front Cat 3 (Uruguay x Cape Verde). They were better than my Cat 1 seats for Brazil and much cheaper. The visibility is incredible. Nothing else compares. Next tournament I'll definitely target Front tickets.
7. FIFA draws are a joke. Our group entered multiple draws for 60+ tickets in total and got nothing. Same thing happened in Russia 2018.

Hope this helps. Happy to answer any questions here. Quite a few people DM'd me after my comments during the tournament, but I'd recommend keeping questions in the thread and avoiding DMs (I saw a few scam attempts).

Hope you all have a great World Cup!

This is one of my capable Pit pushers this season, the only one that I can actually run without Old Mountain and not feel crippled.

Gear is quite average and self-farmed (pretty casual 40y old player here), but some interesting things are incorporated such as 1) Avatar of Nature (I have other posts here with findings and even bugs/tricks on this mode) and 2) PoC rune + Storm Charm Set, which leads to incredible rune offerings. In this run I use it to cast max size Freeze Novas, but one cool thing you can do is to cast 5sec+ Petrifies if you run Old Mountain + 2 piece storm with unique seal (a shout-out to https://www.reddit.com/user/Infamous_Sell5346/ for sharing this).

Since most skill related uniques are bad we can actually apply all the damage in this build to both LS and Tornado, keeping All Dmg multipliers across. LS is arguebly the biggest damage dealer, but once I am keeping rooms full of Nados they do hurt a lot. Plus, they add to each other: LS has the lucky hit for Calm before the Storm and Freeze procs (I don't have free on my charms yet; this will greatly improve boss fighting) while Nados give me infinite resource generation with Lust for Carnage. In fact, I could drop Tibaults without affecting the Storm charm set 40% damage. I keep it mostly for additional damage and to play around with the Poc rune.

By the way, simply running Spirit Wolves is probably better for freeze still, but the major loss here is freeze on charms (they do apply to the boss).

Storm Sheperd charm set has some crazy interactions with Lightning Storm making its damage sustain without the Old Mountain set. Pretty much only skill I find really usable without Old Mountains.

Build planner: https://d4builds.gg/builds/d3d7cbc1-75f6-460c-a63a-627d59fc39cd/

Not a real build or showoff, as I am mostly testing the Avatar of Nature Grizzly mode and having fun with it. In this version I am trying it with Dire Wolf (Grizzly Rage with the Dire Totem) and currently it has a bug when you use a Werebear skill, basically letting you shapeshift into bear while in grizzly mode. I have confirmed Might of the Ursine and Bear form work accordingly, and that the grizzly boosts are kept active (+ crit damage, spirit cost reduction, 35%(x) damage from Avatar, etc). Even shapeshifting aspects and runes work.

After the legit Bear Omni Storm version (https://www.reddit.com/r/D4Druid/comments/1toea9f/bear_omni_storm_grizzly_rage_might_of_the_ursine/), which introduced Omni Lightning Storm to Bear Grizzly, I am playing around with versions that benefit from the attack and move speed of the wolf, trading off some multiplicative damage (Cornered Beast) into 125% Crit Damage(x), spirit reduction and health on kill. But more importantly, allows you to shapeshift into werewolf, bear and human, all depending on your skill setup, keeping the form bonuses through shapeshifter.

Basically turns any Bear Druid (companion, landslide, stormstrike, etc) into a faster attacking, faster moving, spirit boosted version at the trade of some damage (does keep Might of the Ursine). Another fun version is Boulders with Shred, and old classic that gets quite dynamic in this version.

Turns out to be a really good farmer. Here is an initial build planner in case you want to try it out, but do adapt gear, skills and paragon as I am just playing around with things. Only important thing is to activate Avatar of Nature on Grizzly. I am right now playing around with Shapeshifter rune which adds crit damage and gives me 5% crit chance and damage (not that much though), just for fun.

https://d4builds.gg/builds/8ace7fcd-248c-4126-8038-4621186fc6b5/

This build focuses on the vastly underused nodes Avatar of Nature (Grizzly) and Omnibolt (Lightning Storm). It is a Lightning Bear Caster using the best Druid has to offer this season: Might of the Ursine and Old Mountain.

Avatar of Nature loses 165%(x) damage compared to Cornered Beast, but allows us to use Storm skills as a Bear. That includes Lightning Storm and Tornado. We are not there for the 35%(x) multiplier though, what we really want is to apply Might of the Ursine's 700%(x)+ multiplicative bonus into Omnibolt, which by itself is another 600%(x)+ multiplier.

I am not fond of the version of Hero Lightning Storm that requires you to precast it, but above all I really wanted to see how far Omnibolt could get. On paper, the only other setup that would be capable of surpassing this damage potential is Companions/Shepherds, as we get 50%(x) multiplicative damage per lightning strike.

The build is quite fun to play and truly feels powerful, especially once the Old Mountain explosions begin. I much prefer the all-around version in the planner with Claw and Boulders, but for Pit pushing I had to use Stoneburst and Stormstrike for the added defenses.

My gear is very basic, all self-farmed, with many wrong stats, missing affixes and even aspect multipliers. Flickerstep is the worst, no movement speed or additional charges so I have to use a rune lol. But I never stay too long on a single build, and this is the first one to reach Pit 120 for me (started the season late). In any case, I will come back to it after testing the half-dozen other builds I want to update now that I got some mythic uniques. Will try to push higher pits later.

Initial planner:
https://d4builds.gg/builds/f66514b2-1326-4c99-9923-a2e7485c226a/

I haven't actually optimized my Paragon yet, but I am using Headhunter, Keeper, Fang and Claw, Spirit, and Earth and Sky, with the boards Survival Instincts, Thunderstruck, Ancestral Guidance and Lust for Carnage. I do prefer Dominate over Fang and Claw, but adding Overpower would be hard right now with my gear (or lack of it). Build is quite ready for the Signet of Pelghain and the whole freezing meta though.

Hope you enjoy it!

I had been theory crafting something that plays with Tectonic Spikes / Earth Cataclysm, basically turning Cat into Earth + Storm skill to receive multiple bonuses from both.

Ended up finding this build here, rank 21 right now on Druid, ModalSoul, at tier 130. It is the highest ranked build that is not Wolf-based. It is quite an interesting build as it uses boards from both natures (thunderstruck + earthearn devastation), it uses Mjonic + Might of the Ursine + Fractured Stone, and also uses Natural balance on the 2H weapon, so basically checks everything I used to like on the old Nature's Fury builds, getting both Earth and Storm to function together.

Plus it uses the OP charm (Old Mountain). While the charm itself can be used by any builds, making cat earth just makes everything easier.

Really interested in such a full build, anyone has one or understands better the concepts behind it, such as how to get overpower (it does use Dominate), why is the boulder there, if ferocity plays a big part in the build or only resolute, and if Cataclysm is the main damage dealer in this build indeed (probably from the gear and setup it is, but I might be missing something).

I haven't played since season 10 so still trying to catchup to all the changes. Thanks!