I love the return to Shadow Clones in S33. Nice little twist, and helpful to speed thru levels I’ve seen so many times before. But…
Is it really too much to ask to have them actually last a portion of the duration of the actual Pylon? About 60% of the Pylons are placed [intentionally?] right outside the transition portal to the next level, so you get 0 usage from them. If you’d either place them at the start of levels, or allow clones to follow you thru the door, it would be nice, aye? As it currently stands, they’re just window dressing, for the most part.
Reminder that you can control where the pylon spawn in a GR, but it takes a bit of time and effort. Read up here for example: https://maxroll.gg/d3/resources/greater-rifts#decision-making-header. You can de-spawn pylons at end of the map by exploring the spawn points when you have little progression since last pylon.
But in general I don’t think you’ll be carried by clones in GRs much. You can have clones carry you to help gear up early season, but that’s much better in nephalem rifts, where pylon/shrines don’t depend on progression. By letting them carry you through T16 nephs, you will quickly gear up to speedrun up to GR80-90 or so to gear up further, and push up to where the clones aren’t helpful any longer.
Sometimes you get a pylon at the start of a big rift, like a festering or fields. Swings and roundabouts with RNG. Like with all things D3, you just have to get lucky.
If I was pushing, I’d be looking for that scenario. If I was near the end of a floor and hadn’t spawned a pylon for a while, I’d potentially expose any spawn points before getting any more progress to try and negate the end-spawning, or even skip the progression before going next floor. Then, depending how close you are to the end of the rift, consider saving the pylon so you have the clone for the RG fight.
Certainly early/mid season when you’re still farming gear and paragon, the pylons at the end of rifts will stick out more simply because of how many rifts you’re spamming.
I think they mostly stop killing stuff around GR120 or so. Once you’re pushing GR140+, I think they are basically useless.
I seem to remember some one trying a clone only build the last time they were the season theme, and even really trying to pump them up, at a certain point they just drop off.
Blizzard should have coded the Shadow Clones to scale with the Greater Rift Levels. They shouldn’t “carry” you. But, they should always be a significant boost. Especially for a Season Theme.
Torment 16 Nephalem Rifts would scale to GR75. Greater Rifts should scale all the way to GR150.
Everything else, like Bounties, would scale to Game Difficulty, up to Torment 16 (GR75).
I think they want a bit of variation as well. The weather effects scaled with rift and indeed we were clearing otherwise impossible 150s with snowballs back then, while they didn’t really help us at all early season. So I think nice with a bit of change up and have clones completely dominate any lower content, but then do nothing at higher GRs. Idk, I’ll admit that I had fun rage-flipping GR150 elites in front of snowballs, passing stacks between group members etc, but I also kindof want most of the seasons to not be gimmicks like that.
My original post wasn’t because I wanted, as another said, to have them “carry me.” It’s only because it’s kind of fun to pick up speed as they hold off lesser mobs, or help fry others. Anything, Adventure Mode or Rifts, can get a bit on the tedious side at times, especially some of the more labyrinthian ones, like the Spider Queen. It’s just nice to get a speed boost, yet they seem determined to place the pylons outside the doors to the next level, about 60% of the time. It would be nice to actually get a bit of the boost, instead of leaving them behind.
No. I don’t “need” them. I’m perfectly capable of wiping out everything on my own, and this is the only season cycle that uses them. But gosh it would be nice to actually get to USE them.
You just want them to help out a bit while you clear, I get that. Problem is that if they are strong enough to be helpful at all when you don’t particularly play around then, then there will be ways to make them carry if you do play around them. See weather season where zbarbs soloed GR150. So that’s why you can’t have nice things, because others will find a way to abuse them.
Looking at your profile you’re taking things in a nice and easy slow pace, enjoying the game trying out lots of different classes etc.
I think the majority of players concentrate on one or two characters, at least early in season, concentrating on getting up to speed and power with gear, items, augments, unlocking the Altar nodes, getting paragon points etc.
Nothing wrong with playing your way. You’ll just find some things in the game being different than the “majority” experience it.
Wow, I didn’t know this. I didn’t play much of the original season that they premiered in…
100%. It sounds like the fun police nerfed them so that we couldn’t actually enjoy the theme…when they were first introduced, they were 1 shotting RGs at high GR levels from memory. Now it seems they are useless above GR120, which makes the seasonal theme next to worthless.
Fun police, or a design oversight that they didn’t care to change. That’s what makes some season features less popular, because they’re ineffective after a really competitive point.
The 4th cube slot is the real power creep thing that lets you get to 150 easier. Certainly for necromancers…
I think of the shadow clones as a something-for-everyone gimmick. Good for levelling up, helpful for early XP farming, early bounties. Good for ENs, too. Though I suspect clones don’t spawn visions when they kill something. I ran through 3 cowsticks on T16 and got only 1 fissure which is fairly low for nearly 2k kills.
We already have a scaling environmental effect which was the snowball season (which was kinda lame, IMO) so I’m happy for the clones to fall off for the pushing aspect. Also, it’s quite possible devs didn’t appreciate a seasonal effect that let zdps toons do a 150. It’s a bit barmy, really.
I’m going to disagree here. Having COS as your 4th cube slot for roughly 10x GR makes it pretty much equivalent to an ethereal weapon. You lose 20% IAS from the ethereal though, which means 2 APS isn’t going to happen. That’s a big dps drop imho.
I am still not fully ancient, but have managed a GR136 in 12 minutes (terrible maps and died just before RG spawn, losing all of my NG stacks, so fighting RG at half dmg. RG had no adds, and no pylon). I think I can manage a GR138/9 fully ancient, with the right map/mobs. Add around 3 GRs for augments and that’s going to put me at a 142/143 for the season - certainly weaker than last season from my eyes.
Add to the shadow clones being useless above GR120 or thereabouts (worthless seasonal theme), so no help there when pushing high GRs.
Perhaps I will turn out wrong and surprise myself this season. But, I doubt it.
Myself, and others, aren’t happy. The seasonal theme should work for all builds, and scale according to be useful for all GR pushes and other in game activities. I mean, your logic is akin to saying ethereals should stop working once you push above GR140…
You’re never happy though, no matter what you get. I still remember your perfect rift when pushing 150 last season and then coming her whinging about the power pylon spawning at 75% progression instead of 95%.
It sounded like it was, see quote above…as far as I’m concerned, the seasonal theme should work for all builds, and all all GR levels.
I was pretty happy last season thank you. My response about the power pylon was, if memory serves me, in response to your comment that I should have left the pylon for later. And keeping things in context, my counter argument was that I felt it was better to get to 100% progress and spawn the RG with 7 minutes to spare, and have 7 minutes to roll him, than leave the power pylon, waste 3.5 minutes rolling a few more elites to get the RG to spawn and only have 3-4 minutes left to roll the RG, with the power pylon lasting for a small portion of that fight. And, if memory serves me, my comment was demonstrating what I would have loved to have have happened (power pylon spawn at 95% progression with 7 minutes to spare). We can all dream of a perfect GR, right? Last I looked, that’s not a crime.
