Ah, now I get you mate. I’m surprised at this. I’m not on the forums a lot, so I just kind of expected others would have said this too. This is my favourite theme. I mean, s27, sanctified was utterly useless, since it only covered 3 DH skills. If I want to play s6 impale, why should I get nerfed by bad seasonal theme design that discriminates against this, and other, DH builds? Ethereals of s24 were just as bad, and for the same reasons. Both of these seasons were incredibly popular, but that’s cos Blizzard was smart and applied the themes to the most popular/played builds and said FU to anyone else playing a different build. This is how Blizzard treats its customers.
I stand by my comment that the shards theme is the best. I would also like to see it introduced on a permanent basis, and at its original design. I mean, I did a GR137 (I stated 138 in another thread by error due to a typo and forgot to fix it) in s25. I’m not gonna match that, even with both the altar and the s25 shards theme in s30. This is utterly ridiculous. Meanwhile, the most OP builds are all hitting GR150 cos hey, they ARE OP. Instead of balancing things properly, Blizzard does a half rear ended job. Oh, and shadows set got a buff too. And I still won’t match s25 result, with 3 buffs (shards, alter and shadows set buff). You know the game is badly balanced when stuff like this happens.
I barely played s29. I’ve played s30 more cos I really like the shards theme. Future seasons will see me do the seasonal journey and then quit/ignore the game until the following season and rinse and repeat. I have lost interest in the game. I have lost faith in Blizzard. Neither will be restored anytime soon.
The cheating on consoles, in particular, PS4/5 is out of control. I’m seeing s6 impale players on SSF doing GR 150 and there is NO way that they can do that. I’ve done a GR128 in 5 minutes, and still need to get BIS gear and augments on 7 items, but I suspect I’ll top out around GR136-137 at best. That’s 13 GRs lower or roughly 6x more DPS than I am doing. I put money on it that these players have 10k paragon from save wizard (since the consoles don’t show other players paragon points on the LBs, it’s easily hideable). I’ve also heard talk of modded gear with hidden stats that don’t show when other players inspect the gear from said player on the LBs. Blizzard needs to pull the finger out and do online saves. It’s DEAD easy. For years, they said no to SSF and Blizzard fanboys defended them, mimicking Blizzard’s official statement of NO SSF LBs. And yet, they did it. Funny that. I am once again proven right and the fanboys disproved. If they can do SSF LBs they can do online saves.
Blizzard needs to work with Sony to ban PSN accounts caught cheating too. Permanent bans. It’s a violation of the Sony PSN TOS for starters. But Sony isn’t interested cos it doesn’t want to lose the $$$ from the PSN sub. I keep forgetting to cancel my PSN sub, but games like D4 require it to even play now, even if playing solo…thankfully I quite D4 in disgust with those changes back 6 months ago. Screw that crap.
I rarely play games on my PS4 now, it’s mostly YouTube or Disney +. I spend most of my free time in the field with my birding photography, and then processing the images on my laptop in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I was hoping to get into studio portraiture too, but money ran out, and no funds for studio lighting etc. My birding setup is like 15k AUD 
