Do you realize that all this rambling is negated by your final line:
Huh? So, then, it doesn’t matter.
Three times in a row, amazing.
It is a huge misstep for them to not include the Altar immediately into the game. In fact, this entire season feels like a big misstep. The only real positive is the game is finally getting a SSF mode… 10 years too late, but still!
I guess altar dont matter, dont include it with a paragon cap on NS. No body likes their efforts to be watered down. Para cap is fine in seasons since everybody starts fresh.
Talk about a tool that was nerfed…LOL
Please add the option that Pets pick up and salvage common, magic, and rare items, Diabolical Fissure drops a large amount of common, magic, and rare items, let the pet do that that would be a great QoL addition.
Imagine altar powers with a ring of fire lol
We’re getting hopefully the good themes later again and the fun ones are super OP.
Matt thanks. cant wait for s30
Why does the Staff of Herding “need to go”? I just farmed it just earlier this week. It took me a whopping 30 minutes to get all the ingredients.
I don’t mind the grind too much, but it took me 3 days 8 hours a day. RNG is RNG. While I have no problem keeping the grind that way, I understand that most people wouldn’t like that. Grinding away day after day with nothing to show for it is not really a great design. So it may be better to at least incorporate some kind of progress you can see into the grind; a forgiveness system. Which can be done one of several ways.
Well, you were lucky then. Way too many people on the other hand spent dozens and dozens of hours to farm the Gibbering Gemstone before it dropped.
Totally this, normally have been getting in 3-5 hours, but this seasons was over 12 hours of farming over a few days for it to drop. Honestly thought it mighta been bugged…
The gibbering gemstone drop alone can take like 100h and I’m not exagerating here.
It seems to be bugged and you certainly got very lucky here.
In S28 It took me a full weekend of playtime, I really questioned what I’m doing with my time during that. Especially since you basically get nothing else while doing it, no bounty mats, no xp, and no meainingfull amount of gear either.
Yes, it was excessively tedious in S28.
However, as I recall (and my experience seems to confirm), the drop rate for that has been adjusted a while back. Chiltara is a semi-common spawn now in Caverns of Frost, Level 2, and drops the gibbering gemstone regularly. We can always ask blue ink to verify this, or to provide that all-popular friendly drop-rate adjustment, in case my information is incorrect.
While she certainly is semi common the 5% droprate that was mentioned some time back certainly isn’t even close to reality.
Maybe it’s supposed to be 5% but bugged?
Thank you this information.
S29, without the altars, will feel a bit empty into the power curve and the fun we had in s28. The current s29 theme will be a great addition to the base game, but wont really help us with the endgame gearing and progression.
I was so happy when I saw changes happening to the altars in the patch notes, I thought it was coming in s29 right away 
I played since release and the amount of work and development to D3 was without any doubt a really great come back and success.
Two wishes:
+1 for Altar in s29, missing those QoL things to much in the PTR.
Because you got lucky, does not mean everyone does. Took me several hours to get just the GG. 96 mind numbing runs is not exciting gameplay. They removed set dungeon pages in the PTR for this same reason. Boring mind numbing runs for the sake of boring mind numbing runs.
5% drop rate is not common. Couple this with the fact that Cavern of Frost is a 50% spawn, and the chance to get the GG on a random run is 2.5%. Definitely not common.
Please dont overnerf it as usual. And please remove staff or hearding. Just change it to something less RNG dependent.
With minor changes you probably intend to nerf the powercreep.(which is understandable)
Keep in mind that the altar was the best kind of powercreep, since it had similar effect on all builds. (Since it had so many generic buffs)
Please keep some of them so that also “dead” builds like Shieldbash Rolands or Corpselance Necro get something out of it.
Hopefully, those minor changes let us no sacrifice a challenge rift cache.
I really hope for Altair NS right after S28. If I want to feel weak and grind for gear, I just play WoW (classic, not retail).
In D3 I want to feel the power, which is why I don’t think I’m going to grind S29. But for the first time I would like to grind paragons in NS