Nerfing the Altar for subsequent seasons is fine. However, it seems like the Altar’s buffs in the PTR have been nerfed into borderline pointlessness. It went from absolutely overpowered to basically just being an afterthought. Cutting buffs down to a quarter, a fifth, even a TENTH of what they were makes the buffs feel meaningless. Speaking of damage alone, the original incarnation’s total buffs were game-alteringly powerful. Which everyone loved, but I can understand wanting to tune it down a bit for the permanent version. However, it has been wildly overtuned to the point that all the offensive buffs put together barely make up the total difference a SINGLE buff used to - A bunch of trivial 5% buffs compared to a hefty handful of 15s, 20s, and 30s.
I was excited for the prospect of having those Altar buffs back. I didn’t know anyone who complained about it being overpowered. But as the buffs currently stand, the QoL buffs are the most interesting thing about it. The stat buffs almost don’t matter. The stat buffs are neutered AND the Power Pylon effect is removed.
As it stands, it feels like the devs only want the Altar to be for QoL buffs, and locking those buffs behind an unlock mechanic seems…dubious. Just put the QoL buffs as a standard part of the game at that point. The Altar feels best when it feels like it’s making the player more powerful, but it’s failing to do that.
No smarty, i was refering to Soul Shards. I can’t call Altar nor Emnity a theme anymore since they are base line features from now on. But back when Altar was a season theme it was the most OP theme ever, and Soul Shards was the second.
I don’t see this as “balancing”. I see it as more straight fun removal, which is a hallmark of blizz development across many games, not just diablo.
If they were adamant about “balancing”, then we wouldn’t still have (even with these patch notes) several underpowered joke sets, a truckload of ignored class skills, and an even bigger truckload of ignored legendary items + powers.
You must be new. They have been over-buffing underperforming builds/content and then nerfing overperforming builds/content into the ground for almost 12 years now. Fine tuning is definitely not a class at Blizz development school.
It did get several complaints on the forum from the elitists who believe only those who “play” 20+ hours a game and have 10,000 paragon or those who will fish 15,000 keys should be able to do a GR150.
This is the only reason it came back. Soooo many players loved the QoL and wanted the altar to stay. Rather than have a riot, they decided to bring the altar back, but just basically eliminated most the nodes that give power.
Unless they seriously buff the GG drop rate, I most likely will not unlock the full altar this season. I will just unlock the QoL nodes and then get what I get after that. Double primordial ash isn’t worth it.
Unless I’m missing something, the shrine effects can still proc from one of the potion powers, even though the power pylon chance was removed. That means that the +50% CDR (subject to diminishing returns) empowered shrine proc can still happen, which is a huge power buff for any cooldown dependent build, including all crusader builds.
Now that I mentioned that, the fun police will remove it too. NO MERCY
Ya, that is why I said most. Perma-pools indirectly adds more power slightly, shield potion power indirectly adds power to many builds, etc. Altar isn’t 100% gimped damage wise, but it did take a massive nerf hammer blow.
Saving this quote, so I know who to blame when they nerf that .
I always expected the power of the altar to be toned down. When it was a season theme, it had to provide power plus features all at once. Now that it’s a standard background element and there will always be some additional theme providing power, it doesn’t need to be a real source of power on its own. Providing QOL and small amounts of other perks is totally fine, if you’re also getting ethereals or soul shards, on top.
There’s a great case for not needing to finish the altar if you don’t care about all the perks, and that also means people who don’t want to make the Staff of Herding can get most of the QOL and skip that part. (I still wish they’d get rid of the staff entirely, though.)
I suggest you look at the records we made on PTR from what’s heavily nerfed altar + an OP theme like soul shard. Either theme can allow sub 2 min Solo 150s and you want a full altar power? Its more feasible to tune down altar than tune down all those themes. tbh i am happy altar removes all dmg components and leaves QoL or mechanic altering nodes rather the stale direct dmg powercreep nodes. While triune circle helps on non occulus ring situations, i feel this node is very boring. Potion nodes should be picked 1 out of 3 not 3/3 and allows interchange depending on build you are playing.
Interesting things are more often than not less direct and most may perceive it as unnecessarily tedious though.
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