First you wrote in seasonal preview blog from 8th September that altar will be available across ALL game modes.
Then in PTR patch notes from 5th December you also stated that altar and visions of enmity “are being permanently added to the game for ALL modes”.
Then when PTR started and there were no altar nor visions in non season, people started asking questons for clarification. Community manager Adam Fletcher confirmed on Twitter that altar WILL carry over to non season.
But looking on PTR patch notes now the text with altar and visions was changed to “are being added to the game for SEASONAL mode”.
Why have you changed your decision after promising us that altar will be available also in non season? It doesn’t make any sense making it only seasonal, for example previous seasonal themes like follower revamp and legacy of dreams gem were made also permanent in non season. It would enrich the game as a whole, but now there will be even less point to play non season.
My guess is that it was a miscommunication, an ambiguous statement that has since been corrected.
There may never have been a decision to bring Altar and Visions to Non Season, but the way it was worded confused many, including Adam.
I suspect that ‘All Modes’ only referred to Seasonal Modes.
It is also possible that the Devs had second thoughts and backed away.
OP is probably complaining because Empowered Shrine from Altar gives a huge boost to his favored reverse archon setups.
But perhaps he is not considering that Empowered fishing wastes tremendous time for the majority of players, regardless of whether they are running reverse archon or not.
If they simply moved automatic pickup and conversion and other qol attributes over, I could care less about the nerfed Altar. I’ve got Primals for days.
They didn’t put in this season either. If it does come to non season it will be in the week they start the new season. When they do the PTR they never put anything in non season or the season. Till they do the Patch a few days before the new season.
It has been like this for all 29 seasons. Plus it still might not come to non season till after the season 30 too. The PTR’s are done to test stuff for the new season coming up. They have really nothing to do with non season mode. I don’t see it coming to after season 30 too.
Actually you are wrong here, I would like they removed empowerd shrine from altar just like power pylon effect, because it makes fishing unbearable. I like reverse archon builds, but cooldown reduction from items is enough to play them effectively and makes cdr on items matter. With empowered shrine effect you don’t even need any cdr on items, you can slap whatever items you have and play it.
I was really looking forward to having altar on non season because of these three main effects:
Crowd Control Immunity
Passability
Auto vacuum of elite progress orbs in greater rifts
Playing Wizard without Crowd Control Immunity is real pain and it is only class that has no usable skills to mitigate it (I don’t count Archon because no single Wizard build uses Archon to deal damage where CC Immunity actually matters, it is used just for damage buff and mobility).
Passability would also be nice because with meteor builds we can’t use illusory boots.
Auto vacuum of elite progress orbs would be godsend for all shimizu haori builds, where we need to get no pick up on items and try to avoid taking any health orbs while collecting progress orbs. It is very frustrating.
Understood, thanks for clarifying. Glad to see that we both find empowered fishing unbearable.
I’m still ambivalent about points 1 and 2. While these ease the Wizard (esp. archon) gameplay significantly, they invalidate mechanics that have been a vital part of the game since its inception. CC affixes no longer matter, and certain mobility skills on other classes like DH Vault become almost obsolete.
In the context of all classes (not just Wiz), it seems that these “improvements” are oversimplifying the game, rather than being a QoL enhancement as the altar should be. I suggest the following:
Grant XX% CC reduction (as some have suggested)
Passability is triggered below XX% Health (Mutilation Guard effect)
Agreed about point 3 though. Sifting between orbs and globes on Shimizu builds is a real pain no matter what .
I would agree with you if this was actually the case. But in case of almost all classes (except Wizard, to lesser degree Necromancers and Witch Doctors) CC effects already no longer matter and this mechanic is already invalidated.
All Demon Hunter’s builds have perma Vengeance which makes them immune to CC effects, Barabarians have perma Wrath Of Berserker, Monks perma Epiphany, Crusaders Akarat Champion. In addition they have also other skills giving CC immunity! People playing these classes don’t even notice that CC effects exists in the game.
For reference check this maxroll guide listing sources of crowd control immunity for each class: maxroll.gg/d3/resources/crowd-control-explained
% CC reduction gives nothing against vortex and knockback, which are probably most annoying CC effects. % CC reduction unfortunately is multiplicative, so you never can reach 100% and there are already enough sources of it on gear (4 items - 2 rings, amulet and helm - with 40% each which effectively gives 87% max CC reduction). Granting additional source of % CC reduction would change nothing.
If Blizzard makes it additive instead multiplicative it would be great! That way it would be possible to reach 100%, giving full immunity.
It would also be a good idea to add CC immunity to some skill or passive on Wizard, for example to Illusionist passive: “after teleport you gain x seconds of CC immunity”.
But when did Blizzard change any skill or passive? Years ago, so it is probably very unlikely.
I would take it or better make Illusory Boots emanate on followers.
Yep CC is an issue unique to the three Int classes. But the solution shouldn’t be to apply a blanket CC immunity to every class and call it a day. That is both sloppy and inelegant. Especially if it’s intended to be a permanent feature for all game modes (looking at you, NS altar).
I’d much rather they consider the issue on a class-by-class basis. For instance, WD has a good breaker in Spirit Walk, so it’s really Wiz and Necro that need a helping hand here. I’ve always wanted them to add CC immunity to Diamond Skin to make it Wiz’s version of Ignore Pain. But I know that they are beyond changing skills at this point, like you alluded to:
so the Altar is just their way of taking the lazy way out.
Would certainly be a better way to implement passability. But it still makes Vault near obsolete. I like Vault on my DH!
I agree, but it is the last chance for Wizards and Necromancers to have any means of CC immunity, because if they now make altar only seasonal there is no chance they will make any changes to skills, items etc. in the future. There will be no point, because in seasons already everyone will be CC immune from altar.
That’s why it is so important to have altar also in non season.
Why obsolete? Vault main purpose is fast reposition and movement, similar to Wizard teleport, but with fixed distance. Passability is just must have effect of vault, without it vault would be almost useless.
Sorry for me the lack of CC immunity is an inconvenience I can put up with. Removing this inconvenience is not worth the casualty of removing whole game mechanics and deprecating certain skills.
Because any DH build that runs Vault can instead run Smoke Screen for survivability and Squirts uptime, or Wolf Companion for 15% multiplicative damage. Vault is only chosen over the other two skills because it provides passability in addition to mobility. Take away the first perk and it’s no longer worth it. And no build exists that can fit in all 3 skills.
With Illusory boots emanating, Vault’s passability means nothing.
I also would like to see the Altar in Non Season, not for its power or toughness boost but for some of its QoL perks like pet grab stuff and salvage (the most important one in my opinion) / double kadala loot / double primals / double bounties.
Now, Auto vacuum of elite progress orbs in greater rifts its a nice QoL to have on GRs, but Passability, Crowd Control Immunity and all the potion powers, they are too OP to have in non season.
As Ronin010 told before
I believe these powers would make some high tech builds be much more easier to handle. I prefer to see a hand full of players to be able to pull off a very demand push build (as example any reverse archon builds) than 1000 guys with the same setup because its more powerful and they no longer have to worry about CC or get stuck on mobs.
And also, Stone Gauntlets. No need to talk about these because it would just remove the Stone from the Gauntlets
So it will be a shame, the only reason I wanted Season 30 was because of the altar in NS, after having had it during S28, it is honestly very annoying to play without its QoL nodes, but I guess Blizzard is the anti-fun captain and not He wants to see us happy in NS
You know what else is annoying? The fact that the devs had to introduce such an OP season theme and dramatically raise people’s expectations of power level, to the point that they can’t adjust at all when said power level is deservedly taken away from them.
The nerf to the damage nodes was obvious that they would do it, I don’t agree with the decision (if it were my decision I would have altar 1.0 + ethereals + soul shards + 4th cube slot together) but I am satisfied with at least having the QoL nodes , Playing without the recycling pet is horrible and felt even worse in this S29 with the visions of enmity. Why not have that in NS? In fact, I think that NS should have the altar 1.0 as it does not have seasonal themes, but that would be asking a lot of Blizzard.
Someone who would pass such a patch to the live servers would have to be insane or ignorant… or likely both.
The Altar had to be nerfed damage-wise. Some nodes, like boss damage, are highly unappealing and overnerfed now (12.5% damage to bosses would be more like it. Or maybe 10% to elites in general). But there is still hope that they recosider some things.
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