So we’ve all had a chance to play S22 for awhile now. I would like to hear what most think of the shadow clones so far by keeping it to one thing you love and one thing you have about them. I have played WD, Necro and Wiz (so based of mostly their clones).
Love the clones.
They make that run of low level gem levelling from like 50 through to 110 tolerable. It’s nice when you are just going though the motions and not getting much xp at the low levels, to have one spawn and at least shave some time off the runs.
Hate the clones.
It feels like now when wearing nems there is a considerably higher chance to spawn something like a set of dervishes with the elite on a pylon. When they spin up, I know enough not to attack, but my clones don’t (2 of 3 from necro use corpse lance). The carnage can lead to to someone inadvertently getting killed by the deflected projectiles (especially in group play lol). If this season has taught me one thing, it’s do not max stack your xp pool
Hate
They disappear (2/3 Crusader clones), they don’t attack, they don’t follow to next map, they follow the player that spawned them rather than the hero they belong to, they can kill the hero, they sometimes spawn as a different class than the hero spawning them.
Essentially, most of my GR pushing progress this season has been due to the 4th Cube slot, not the clones. I’d have been happy if the entirety of the theme was just the Cube slot.
I have not had a lot of opportunity to see the Crusader clones in action. I covered the necro’s running corpse lance above.
The other that never got much work post PTR was WD running zombie bears. The reco from community was to turn off collision so they can spawn, but they did not fix so a lot of times the bears don’t even get started.
I personally think the clones are more annoyance than anything else. I do agree with you that the 4th Cube slot is the star of the season. I wish they would make it permanent.
The clones mess up big pulls and lag out groups. They could improve the skill selection with the clones. Heaven’s Fury was a bad choice IMHO, same with the Fist of the Heaven’s, Impale, etc. No skill that can be reflected should have been included. In retrospect, I’d prefer support abilities and simple attacks that hit 1-5 enemies.
That’s the whole issue. Two of the three Crusader’s clone variants will disappear a couple of seconds after they’re spawned. It was reported on the PTR, I reported it on Day 1 of the season going live…
And after a couple of weeks, I tried this…
Basically, Blizzard don’t care that the clones are broken for one of the classes.
Crusader clones disappear! Fly in the the air and never come down!
Stopped playing crusader for necro because I felt cheated by missing season clone bonus.
Clones not following to the next floor is a permanent nuisance.
Can’t imagine this was by design. It was simply implemented somehow, turned out this way, and never touched again.
Seeing the red shadow Barbarians jumping around is comical.
Seeing them use skills that would be useless to a player is nice.
Hate:
Not going to the next level in a GR is annoying. I can understand not being allowed to leave the GR to farm shrines and pylons for shadow clones, that makes sense. However, not being able to use the shadow clones in multiple levels of the same GR is stupid. Also, as others have said, having shadow clones not attack or follow or having another class’s shadow clone follow me vs. the player that spawned them.
I think it had something to do with blocking potential exploits. People farming pylons outside the rift or on different floors, and then spawning them all at the same time for the RG ? Thought I read something about that…
That design really makes no sense considering the clones will not follow us to the next level. I could be wrong but I do not remember the pylons being at the exit before.
I have played WD, Necro and Wiz (so based of mostly their clones).