Rich replied on the top of General Forum. He should have spoken in the PTR Feedback forum because that’s we’re all checking.
This game would be better off if the devs placed most of their time into balance, new items and QoL instead of wasting time producing half-baked season themes that fizzle out in 3 months.
Investing 50%+ of patch development hours into the creation of Shadow Clones, when 70% of the items in this game are not impactful is foolish. Just like the last, this season theme is already buggy and precious dev time is being wasted by not addressing ‘the exciting stuff – the builds’. The 4th cube slot is fine, but Shadow Clones are gimmicky.
They must feel pressure to keep this grandiose season nonsense on their itinerary because of competing games. I truly believe if they revamped 100 items, it would bring a larger crowd than Shadow Clones.
They surveyed me in the past after Season 19, Eternal Conflict, and I told them I wanted new builds to play. I guess my feedback did not match the other submissions, or perhaps they disregarded it and did whatever they please.
I will reserve my judgements when the final patch notes arrive. Hopefully they don’t blow it and they nail the balance of the items THEY opted to edit. In the meantime, look at these notes and take inspiration from the past:
Most enjoyable D3 patches:
Patch 2.6.1 PTR Patch Notes - Diablo III (89 items changed)
Patch 2.6.4 PTR Preview - Diablo III (24 items changed)