Read the patch notes and didn’t see where they buffed the drop rate of the GG or removed the Staff of herding from the altar.
I did Master of Sets on SC, HC, SSFSC, SSFHC this season and that was less annoying than having to do 100+ runs trying to get that stupid GG on one mode.
I really loved the altar and am glad it is returning. I can live with all the nerfs to the power/toughness nodes, but throw us a frickin’ bone and either buff the drop rate of the GG from 5% to 50% or replace the Staff with something less tedious.
Take this for what it’s worth. Awhile back I asked if they were going to remove the SoH because so many people were complaining about the GG. Matthew gave my question a like . Did they remove it, did they adjust it, I do not know.
I hope this is a sign that either obtaining the GG will be easier or they changed the item to sacrifice to something other than SoH that isn’t hard to get.
It better not be a Spectrum or Horadric Hamburger though. That would be trolling us.
Well, it is a 2% chance to get on game creation which is far, far lower than the other pieces. I spent a few hours loading and reloading games just for this one item. A few people got it in the first few runs, most had my experience or longer.
If it was something you could get as part of normal game play like RoRG, Ramalamadingdong’s, a junk Primal, etc., I would have no problem with it. This is just mindless time gate farming. Maddening questions was removed for this reason.
I have no problem with the SOH being a requirement. I simply feel having one piece of the staff being significantly harder to get to make an otherwise useless item is wasting time to simply waste time.
Sadly that is entirely untrue. Experience on this issue varies greatly. I know some who got it easily and right away…however…
My experience on one server was spending nearly 2 months, yes months, of creating games to get the Caverns of Frost, going to level 2 to search for Chilltara, killing it if present (which is not always true) and looking if the gem dropped. Just short of 2 months before the gem finally dropped. That is 2 months of spending hours every day only working on that one specific goal.
By my definition that very much IS AS BAD as people make it out to be.
LOL, if you can’t finish GR 150 efficiently after the nerf, then it means you need to learn to play, thats all.
Altar balances the nerfs, almost all of the nerfs for all classes. (excluding those not nerfed )
I remember having to wait 15 minutes for every game reset when farming the gemstone, when there were too many people trying to get it.
That´s honestly even worse than the low drop rate.
If they improve the GG drop rate that would help a lot but it´s not enough.
So I think removing the staff requirement from the altar is the way to go - having to do that every season would get stale fast.
Tbh the challenge rift cache should be removed from the list too. Leveling without the cache is boring and waiting for the next cache on Monday/Tuesday isn´t exciting either.
I don’t see CR cache as an issue. It’s called “season”, not “weekend”. Take the time to get the ancient puzzle ring, ramaladni, whisper (sometimes these are stubborn).
And i don’t plan to dump primals into the altar again - never got a single double-drop after finishing it in S28 anyway. So I’ll leave two of the sad gutted D4ish 5% nodes open and call it good enough.
I would prefer that they don’t adjust the gemstone droprate but rather just remove the requirement. Even if they change it to one of the other pieces, the rainbow is the other one that is a bit tedious to get if I remember correctly? And that isn’t so bad.
I was somewhat lucky compared to some complaints I saw, got the whole staff in about 4 hours I believe. That isn’t bad for a big node like that, although the node is worth less now without the wings.
I think changing it to a primal would be fine as well. At least you get those during your normal play so even if it takes a long time you are progressing and the chance that the first one is not usable is pretty good.
Totally agree. I didn’t get the widespread critique of that one. The amount of people who moaned about that as if they play so much between Friday night and Monday night (Well, Tuesday if you are in EU and have normal working hours) that it is a real roadblock was kind of hilarious. It was the 15th node, you get tons of stuff by then and start saving up for the rest. I unlocked the cache node and a couple others in one go because of that.
I spent 11+ hours just re-making games to get the gibbering gemstone.
All because the dungeon is a 50% chance of being the right one on that map, there’s no guarantee the NPC will spawn in the dungeon, and even if the NPC spawns, there’s a terribly low drop rate for the item.
It’s basically three levels of RNG during which almost nothing of worth is obtained, and the opportunity cost (i.e. what else you could have been doing, such as GRs, gaining you lots of loot / paragon levels) is stupidly high.
. Did they remove it, did they adjust it, I do not know.
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