I'm only about halfway through the altar on either platform, but so far I'd say the most immediate and obvious benefit any of them give, in gameplay, is the ones that make you immune to CC and give you passability. Yeah, those aren't new things, but for most classes it's always been either/or, or required constant uptime of some buff to get it.
Just having it always on, and never getting stuck to a massive mob pack or walls, without needing to drop other gear for the respective boots, just makes the game move a lot more smoothly. Particularly for classes that don't have a teleporting movement ability (i.e. not wizard/necro/monk).
But also, in fishing for RRoG's, the double bounties is nice, but also almost hammers home how idiotically stupid and unreliable its drop rate is. 10 bags with no ring and then one with two.
I genuinely hope that D4 doesn't have single items that are so universally necessary to pretty much every (set based) build on every class, every season; with such an irritating means of obtaining them. Having to do content that is otherwise pointless, an indeterminate amount of times, when you could be doing something that gives progress is a massive drag.
I genuinely hope that D4 doesn't have single items that are so universally necessary to pretty much every (set based) build on every class, every season; with such an irritating means of obtaining them. Having to do content that is otherwise pointless, an indeterminate amount of times, when you could be doing something that gives progress is a massive drag.
I would be perfectly fine if Convention of Elements never showed up in a Diablo game again.
I genuinely hope that D4 doesn't have single items that are so universally necessary to pretty much every (set based) build on every class, every season; with such an irritating means of obtaining them. Having to do content that is otherwise pointless, an indeterminate amount of times, when you could be doing something that gives progress is a massive drag.
I would be perfectly fine if Convention of Elements never showed up in a Diablo game again.
Any idea if there's a cutoff date for buying the preorder to be able to play the early access weekend? Like if I put it off and preordered on that weekend, would I be able to play the early access right away?
According to Rhykker’s video on the topic, you can apparently even gain access during the pre-order weekend, but don’t expect it to be literally instant. Might take an hour or something, probably depends on how hammered their systems are.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
According to Rhykker’s video on the topic, you can apparently even gain access during the pre-order weekend, but don’t expect it to be literally instant. Might take an hour or something, probably depends on how hammered their systems are.
That I assume is based on several assumptions I wouldn't want to put to the test if playing in that weekend was anything you wanted.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Does anything done in beta carry over to release or is it all wiped?
Nothing carries over.
Edit: of note, anyone in the pre-order weekend‘s progress will continue to exist during the open beta weekend.
And there’s the titles and cosmetics they’ve mentioned in the livestream, like the wolf pup in a carrier, but you won’t keep character levels or gear, etc.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Well depending on your class you probably want a class specific weapon for like a specific trait to help you or get you started. Or a weapon that that class has a class specific unique for.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Even without being one of the diehard 'omg D1/D2 were a BAJILLION PERCENT BETTER THAN D3' types that shit up a bunch of the Reddit threads on the game, there's a part of me that kind of appreciates a hint of symmetry in that the Barbarian, Rogue, and Sorcerer are available for the early launch... which is basically (if you squint a little) the original lineup for D1.
With the Druid and Necromancer as 'dlc' the following weekend, I dunno, this is stretching pretty hard but I'm just happy we're only 2 weeks and change from getting to try it out.
Which reminds me that I still need to get my girlfriend to set up a Battle.net account so we can link her PS profile to it.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
The Altar of Rites has been an absolute blast. I burned out on D3 a few seasons ago, and skipped the last 2 or 3, but I was curious to see how this Altar played out in practice. I'm so glad I did. The acceleration it provides is unbelievable. I cleared grift 70 today, which usually takes me weeks and weeks of play to reach. Leveling to 70 super-quickly thanks to the level requirement removal; the up-front movement speed increase; the double bounty caches - all of it removes so much friction from playing. I'm pretty excited to get the "pet picks up and breaks down non-legendary items" and "pet picks up death's breaths" nodes.
Although, I just reached the tier where I need Ramaladni's Gift to unlock it, and I'm expecting that to take a long-ass time. It's always irritated me how required Ramaladni's is, and how non-deterministic its acquisition is. At least with regular legendaries, you have multiple paths to getting them (drops, Kadala, upgrading yellows), so at least it feels like you are being more proactive and productive; with Ramaladni's, it's just... run rifts, potentially forever, there's no way to know when you'll get one.
I'm for some reason playing the latest season and decided to play it as a monk because that is the only class I hadn't taken to 70.
The default wind / rush set is hilariously overpowered and I'm running 75 GRs like I've got constant channeling pylons up. With a rare one hit (or poison/ burning floor) death every few GRs.
On Torment 16 everything just dies.
And I'm super optimized and only like a dozen or so deep in the new rites of ashes stuff. This is good skinner box fun.
This game hates me and refuses to drop a Halo of Karlini. It's the only thing holding me back right now. Frustrating to say the least
Can I say that the requirement of using specific unique items to cut incoming damage in half is my absolute least favorite part of modern D3 design?
I get how they ended up here. The original game was designed to not have seasons, because they wanted you to be personally attached to your character and want to spend money on it. To make that work and keep people playing, everything needed to scale infinitely.
When that showed to be a terrible idea because a drip feed of gear isn't fun, they switched to loot 2.0 where you got gear a lot faster. But fast gear isn't fun if there's no content to challenge you, so they moved the infinite scaling to the rift system.
Additionally, the skill system was designed for maximum flexibility. Radical freedom to choose any 6 skills and a rune for each of them to customize. When that turned out to be a terrible idea because you need mutually exclusive choices for build diversity, they plonked in sets to give players any reason to use skills other than the 6 best ones in every class, by boosting the numbers very high so you don't care that the base skill design isn't balanced.
But that leaves you with infinite scaling boosted very high, which means all the base defensive attributes of your skills and gear very soon get overwhelmed and you die in one hit.
So the solution they came up with is to have each set and a handful of unique items offer parallel damage reduction systems that you eventually have to stack to progress. Armor and resistances and dodge chance or whatever are all well and good, but you still need a Halo of Karini or Band of Might or playing the game is going to suck.
I'm hoping they have a better system than that for D4.
D4 mostly diminishes the idea of needing an exact legendary item, in favor of needing that power on whatever item you want.
Like, rather than needing one of those rings, you can find/unlock the damage reduction power on almost anything, and the occultist NPC can extract/craft it on something else. Like, “Halo of Karini” boots.
I say mostly because some of the more iconic / build-defining powers will come from uniques, which have fairly fixed stats and a specific item type.
I'm mostly hoping for a better damage mitigation system or systems.
I'm okay with being slower while I wait for something to drop, more than I am having to choose between playing content that one shots me or much less rewarding content where I one shot everything.
At least when I do the staff of herding part of the altar on PC and PS5 it won't be quite as bad getting the staff because load times on the Switch are awful and make remaking games a massive pain in the ass.
Also, olol at the blood shard parts of the Altar on consoles where you don't pick up whatever blood shards you can fit, you can only pick all of them up or nothing.
So the one that requires 1600 blood shards and normally would be doable after doing GR110? Not on consoles! Since blood shards don't drop an exact amount any given run, it's basically impossible to get exactly 1600 if you have a cap of 1600, so consoles functionally have to do ~GR115 to complete the altar.
So with D3 at launch, I got burned out after going for the trophy of “get each class to level 70”.
I guess it was because in those days Adventure mode did not exist, and I had to run the story several times.
Then when the Necro DLC came along, I llayed again a little; can it be that it was around then that the first season came along? Anyway, I remember not being that interested in it anymore (I noticed that on my existing characters I had exactly 1 legendary gem.
Then recently I heard about this season 28 where they talked about a new unlock tree, the Altar of Rites, and decided to try it out, and I have been playing D3 way too much, thanks to that Altar.
I guess I’m in the endgame loop now of bounty - rift - greater rift?
And I was pleasantly surprised that I don’t have to play the story ever again
So now I’m chugging away at the greater rifts, in order to up the blood shard limit, because I’m currently stuck at the “get 1100 blood shards” step.
I do have a Ramaldani, a Petrified Scream and a Ring of Royal Grandeur stashed away in my stash for the future steps.
But I’m at a moment now where my necro is becoming a bit of a glass cannon; I can deal the damage out alright, but instead of slightly damaging me, I am getting far closer to getting one-shot. I have to admit, I am still running around with my silly build of Siphon Blood + Corpse Explosion + Skeletons + Golem, and I should be doing more with curses I guess. But I’ve gotten to GR32 so far, which is pretty nice I think.
I think that I need to look up builds and farm sets, although I really like my Siphon Blood that does more damage the longer you use it, and melts the big bosses away.
The most amazing thing (for me) is the “emanates” thing; I don’t think that was around during the season 1 days? Because stuffing your follower full with this stuff is pretty nice
So with D3 at launch, I got burned out after going for the trophy of “get each class to level 70”.
I guess it was because in those days Adventure mode did not exist, and I had to run the story several times.
Then when the Necro DLC came along, I llayed again a little; can it be that it was around then that the first season came along? Anyway, I remember not being that interested in it anymore (I noticed that on my existing characters I had exactly 1 legendary gem.
Then recently I heard about this season 28 where they talked about a new unlock tree, the Altar of Rites, and decided to try it out, and I have been playing D3 way too much, thanks to that Altar.
I guess I’m in the endgame loop now of bounty - rift - greater rift?
And I was pleasantly surprised that I don’t have to play the story ever again
So now I’m chugging away at the greater rifts, in order to up the blood shard limit, because I’m currently stuck at the “get 1100 blood shards” step.
I do have a Ramaldani, a Petrified Scream and a Ring of Royal Grandeur stashed away in my stash for the future steps.
But I’m at a moment now where my necro is becoming a bit of a glass cannon; I can deal the damage out alright, but instead of slightly damaging me, I am getting far closer to getting one-shot. I have to admit, I am still running around with my silly build of Siphon Blood + Corpse Explosion + Skeletons + Golem, and I should be doing more with curses I guess. But I’ve gotten to GR32 so far, which is pretty nice I think.
I think that I need to look up builds and farm sets, although I really like my Siphon Blood that does more damage the longer you use it, and melts the big bosses away.
The most amazing thing (for me) is the “emanates” thing; I don’t think that was around during the season 1 days? Because stuffing your follower full with this stuff is pretty nice
The followers were revamped a few seasons ago, that's when the emanates stuff started. It is nice, makes a lot of farming stuff less tedious since you don't need to try to fit in cains or sages into functional builds, or do way more runs without them.
And Necro never really stops being a glass cannon. There are a handful of builds that are tanky, but by and large they're extremely fragile all of the time. Get your cheat death passive and your followers cheat death for extra caution (particularly if you're doing necro on HC) for a buffer, and learn to love Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.
I'm mostly hoping for a better damage mitigation system or systems.
I'm okay with being slower while I wait for something to drop, more than I am having to choose between playing content that one shots me or much less rewarding content where I one shot everything.
Ah, in that case I have not yet seen any damage reduction of that magnitude from any one source. More like 10-30% reductions from item powers, maybe 5-15% from skills, and even smaller amounts on the paragon board. That’s not an exhaustive list either, I think chests can roll a damage reduction stat, certain gems reduce damage taken or raise hp, etc.
In other words, there’s a bunch of options with smaller impacts. Same goes for damage multipliers, which are MUCH smaller.
That’s a common sticking point early in D3 seasons because it feels bad to multiply your damage by like 200 while waiting for your mitigation to catch up
Wait, are you running the set you got from Haedrig’s gifts? It’s Masquerade this Season which has a 50% damage reduction on the 4 pc when you have a simulacrum out.
I made the switch on my wizard from a fully complete Typhon set, which was working quite well for me, to the Tal Rasha meteor build, which is supposed to be better. I've got a complete build with every item in the correct place etc, per the meteor build on maxroll.gg. My damage and killing potential is through the roof. But I am way squishier too. Which I find to be odd because this build takes quite a few defensives and so forth. And yet I feel like I'm dying way more often on this build than I was on Typhon.
A good offense is not the best defense when a stray normal arrow from a random off-screen skeleton can one-shot you.
Sometimes, probably more often than not really, the best pushing builds are going to feel squishier because there is a lot of toughness to be had from 3k+ paragon.
Assuming you are mostly running shorter content like bounties, 2-3 minutes rifts etc, you could easily drop squirt’s + CoE for the endless walk combo, or unity+whatever amulet. Can also swap stricken for bane of the powerful. Edit: or wildebeest’s.
So I poked around at the pricing for the different Diablo 4 editions and it seems like the $20 difference between standard and deluxe is a horse skin, horse armor, 4 days of early access and the first $10 battle pass. That seems like a pretty crappy deal to me.
You think that until you see that collectors edition horse riding by with your little weak pony and you're like "oh my god that person must have so many satisfied sexual partners."
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I mean... $20 for a $10 item and 4 days early access alone isn't the worst deal in the world. Whether or not you care about the cosmetics (and note, for several of them they're actually skins found in other Blizzard games).
The extra cash for the ultimate edition being an emote and 20 bonus boosts to the battle pass (which I still don't know whether it means you just start at 21, or if you can save them for down the road) I find less compelling, but again, people like limited/rare things, they provided one that doesn't have any game play mechanical advantages, so whatever.
Blizzard's monetization has been spotty at times (thankfully I never got into Overwatch), but it seems fairly inoffensive so far.
If it's anything like Apex Legends I expect the cash shop skins to cost a ridiculous amount apiece and will be something I avoid almost entirely, and hopefully the battlepasses and other in game earnable items/transmogrifications/etc hold up well enough.
But that'll be a thing to judge in hindsight for the most part.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
It's basically $10 to play a highly anticipated game a few days early. I think a fair number of people are going to consider that worth the price and buy in.
I'm a cheap ass so I'll wait.
Edit: Plus every hardcore "world first" racer type is going to have to buy it.
Mundunugu started hitting a wall hard ~GR110, even with a good amount of augments and stuff.
Which is fine because I don't really need to go any higher, I finished almost all of the altar.
All I have left is the last potion unlock, and boy howdy does the game not want to drop me any more primals.
I got my first 4 relatively quick, though one of those is too useful to scrap. But after that I haven't seen a single one in the time it took to finish the entire season and do the rest of the altar after the first potion.
I've just resorted to farming GR90's because I don't care about pushing higher and it's the lowest/fastest for the loot.
Mainly I just want to be done with the season on Switch because it just isn't as conducive to tons of grinding because of how long the loading times are, and after doing an ungodly amount of things already, every new loading screen is just nails on the chalkboard.
Anyway, just bitching.
Overall I think it's been a fine season, but if I'm being totally honest, outside the few QOL things like passability and pets picking up things (which, why can't they also pick up materials? I don't understand that.), I don't really feel like it's the big power leap that some folks made it out to be prior to the season starting. It definitely smooths the curve somewhat, and I suppose if you're pushing GR's early and high, it is probably noticeable for those who do it regularly.
But for random duder who may play a shit ton, but almost never pushes past GR100 because I don't like herding enemies like cattle and that's roughly the point where it usually starts to get grindy for me, it didn't really have a ton of effect on the outcome of the season.
I still finished the season at about Paragon 800, still finished with gems at 70, same rough gear level etc.
Still, the QOL things were definitely welcome and will for sure make doing the season on multiple platforms more enjoyable, and I'll take the Altar over the stupid Ethereal season where on at least one platform I was like Paragon 700 and almost done with the season before I even got a single drop, which functionally made the season completely featureless.
Gimme them primals though so I can get my Diablo wings on Switch and be done with it. Maybe I should start pushing just so it's less mindless grinding, but that would also slow down the grinding. Hrm.
Posts
i remember playing with all the dials on our old set to get different weird effects for Gunslinger on the Atari.
Very little has changed except the dials are sliders now
Just having it always on, and never getting stuck to a massive mob pack or walls, without needing to drop other gear for the respective boots, just makes the game move a lot more smoothly. Particularly for classes that don't have a teleporting movement ability (i.e. not wizard/necro/monk).
But also, in fishing for RRoG's, the double bounties is nice, but also almost hammers home how idiotically stupid and unreliable its drop rate is. 10 bags with no ring and then one with two.
I genuinely hope that D4 doesn't have single items that are so universally necessary to pretty much every (set based) build on every class, every season; with such an irritating means of obtaining them. Having to do content that is otherwise pointless, an indeterminate amount of times, when you could be doing something that gives progress is a massive drag.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
You open your curtains?
I would be perfectly fine if Convention of Elements never showed up in a Diablo game again.
And Squirts necklace.
That I assume is based on several assumptions I wouldn't want to put to the test if playing in that weekend was anything you wanted.
pleasepaypreacher.net
pleasepaypreacher.net
Nothing carries over.
Edit: of note, anyone in the pre-order weekend‘s progress will continue to exist during the open beta weekend.
And there’s the titles and cosmetics they’ve mentioned in the livestream, like the wolf pup in a carrier, but you won’t keep character levels or gear, etc.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23916442/your-guide-to-the-diablo-iv-open-beta
Only in very specific cases like certain Barbarian passives, but even then not in a way significant enough to care about.
Much appreciated!
pleasepaypreacher.net
With the Druid and Necromancer as 'dlc' the following weekend, I dunno, this is stretching pretty hard but I'm just happy we're only 2 weeks and change from getting to try it out.
Which reminds me that I still need to get my girlfriend to set up a Battle.net account so we can link her PS profile to it.
Although, I just reached the tier where I need Ramaladni's Gift to unlock it, and I'm expecting that to take a long-ass time. It's always irritated me how required Ramaladni's is, and how non-deterministic its acquisition is. At least with regular legendaries, you have multiple paths to getting them (drops, Kadala, upgrading yellows), so at least it feels like you are being more proactive and productive; with Ramaladni's, it's just... run rifts, potentially forever, there's no way to know when you'll get one.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The default wind / rush set is hilariously overpowered and I'm running 75 GRs like I've got constant channeling pylons up. With a rare one hit (or poison/ burning floor) death every few GRs.
On Torment 16 everything just dies.
And I'm super optimized and only like a dozen or so deep in the new rites of ashes stuff. This is good skinner box fun.
Can I say that the requirement of using specific unique items to cut incoming damage in half is my absolute least favorite part of modern D3 design?
I get how they ended up here. The original game was designed to not have seasons, because they wanted you to be personally attached to your character and want to spend money on it. To make that work and keep people playing, everything needed to scale infinitely.
When that showed to be a terrible idea because a drip feed of gear isn't fun, they switched to loot 2.0 where you got gear a lot faster. But fast gear isn't fun if there's no content to challenge you, so they moved the infinite scaling to the rift system.
Additionally, the skill system was designed for maximum flexibility. Radical freedom to choose any 6 skills and a rune for each of them to customize. When that turned out to be a terrible idea because you need mutually exclusive choices for build diversity, they plonked in sets to give players any reason to use skills other than the 6 best ones in every class, by boosting the numbers very high so you don't care that the base skill design isn't balanced.
But that leaves you with infinite scaling boosted very high, which means all the base defensive attributes of your skills and gear very soon get overwhelmed and you die in one hit.
So the solution they came up with is to have each set and a handful of unique items offer parallel damage reduction systems that you eventually have to stack to progress. Armor and resistances and dodge chance or whatever are all well and good, but you still need a Halo of Karini or Band of Might or playing the game is going to suck.
I'm hoping they have a better system than that for D4.
Like, rather than needing one of those rings, you can find/unlock the damage reduction power on almost anything, and the occultist NPC can extract/craft it on something else. Like, “Halo of Karini” boots.
I say mostly because some of the more iconic / build-defining powers will come from uniques, which have fairly fixed stats and a specific item type.
I'm okay with being slower while I wait for something to drop, more than I am having to choose between playing content that one shots me or much less rewarding content where I one shot everything.
At least when I do the staff of herding part of the altar on PC and PS5 it won't be quite as bad getting the staff because load times on the Switch are awful and make remaking games a massive pain in the ass.
Also, olol at the blood shard parts of the Altar on consoles where you don't pick up whatever blood shards you can fit, you can only pick all of them up or nothing.
So the one that requires 1600 blood shards and normally would be doable after doing GR110? Not on consoles! Since blood shards don't drop an exact amount any given run, it's basically impossible to get exactly 1600 if you have a cap of 1600, so consoles functionally have to do ~GR115 to complete the altar.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
I guess it was because in those days Adventure mode did not exist, and I had to run the story several times.
Then when the Necro DLC came along, I llayed again a little; can it be that it was around then that the first season came along? Anyway, I remember not being that interested in it anymore (I noticed that on my existing characters I had exactly 1 legendary gem.
Then recently I heard about this season 28 where they talked about a new unlock tree, the Altar of Rites, and decided to try it out, and I have been playing D3 way too much, thanks to that Altar.
I guess I’m in the endgame loop now of bounty - rift - greater rift?
And I was pleasantly surprised that I don’t have to play the story ever again
So now I’m chugging away at the greater rifts, in order to up the blood shard limit, because I’m currently stuck at the “get 1100 blood shards” step.
I do have a Ramaldani, a Petrified Scream and a Ring of Royal Grandeur stashed away in my stash for the future steps.
But I’m at a moment now where my necro is becoming a bit of a glass cannon; I can deal the damage out alright, but instead of slightly damaging me, I am getting far closer to getting one-shot. I have to admit, I am still running around with my silly build of Siphon Blood + Corpse Explosion + Skeletons + Golem, and I should be doing more with curses I guess. But I’ve gotten to GR32 so far, which is pretty nice I think.
I think that I need to look up builds and farm sets, although I really like my Siphon Blood that does more damage the longer you use it, and melts the big bosses away.
The most amazing thing (for me) is the “emanates” thing; I don’t think that was around during the season 1 days? Because stuffing your follower full with this stuff is pretty nice
The followers were revamped a few seasons ago, that's when the emanates stuff started. It is nice, makes a lot of farming stuff less tedious since you don't need to try to fit in cains or sages into functional builds, or do way more runs without them.
And Necro never really stops being a glass cannon. There are a handful of builds that are tanky, but by and large they're extremely fragile all of the time. Get your cheat death passive and your followers cheat death for extra caution (particularly if you're doing necro on HC) for a buffer, and learn to love Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Ah, in that case I have not yet seen any damage reduction of that magnitude from any one source. More like 10-30% reductions from item powers, maybe 5-15% from skills, and even smaller amounts on the paragon board. That’s not an exhaustive list either, I think chests can roll a damage reduction stat, certain gems reduce damage taken or raise hp, etc.
In other words, there’s a bunch of options with smaller impacts. Same goes for damage multipliers, which are MUCH smaller.
That’s a common sticking point early in D3 seasons because it feels bad to multiply your damage by like 200 while waiting for your mitigation to catch up
A good offense is not the best defense when a stray normal arrow from a random off-screen skeleton can one-shot you.
Assuming you are mostly running shorter content like bounties, 2-3 minutes rifts etc, you could easily drop squirt’s + CoE for the endless walk combo, or unity+whatever amulet. Can also swap stricken for bane of the powerful. Edit: or wildebeest’s.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The extra cash for the ultimate edition being an emote and 20 bonus boosts to the battle pass (which I still don't know whether it means you just start at 21, or if you can save them for down the road) I find less compelling, but again, people like limited/rare things, they provided one that doesn't have any game play mechanical advantages, so whatever.
Blizzard's monetization has been spotty at times (thankfully I never got into Overwatch), but it seems fairly inoffensive so far.
If it's anything like Apex Legends I expect the cash shop skins to cost a ridiculous amount apiece and will be something I avoid almost entirely, and hopefully the battlepasses and other in game earnable items/transmogrifications/etc hold up well enough.
But that'll be a thing to judge in hindsight for the most part.
I'm a cheap ass so I'll wait.
Edit: Plus every hardcore "world first" racer type is going to have to buy it.
Which is fine because I don't really need to go any higher, I finished almost all of the altar.
All I have left is the last potion unlock, and boy howdy does the game not want to drop me any more primals.
I got my first 4 relatively quick, though one of those is too useful to scrap. But after that I haven't seen a single one in the time it took to finish the entire season and do the rest of the altar after the first potion.
I've just resorted to farming GR90's because I don't care about pushing higher and it's the lowest/fastest for the loot.
Mainly I just want to be done with the season on Switch because it just isn't as conducive to tons of grinding because of how long the loading times are, and after doing an ungodly amount of things already, every new loading screen is just nails on the chalkboard.
Anyway, just bitching.
Overall I think it's been a fine season, but if I'm being totally honest, outside the few QOL things like passability and pets picking up things (which, why can't they also pick up materials? I don't understand that.), I don't really feel like it's the big power leap that some folks made it out to be prior to the season starting. It definitely smooths the curve somewhat, and I suppose if you're pushing GR's early and high, it is probably noticeable for those who do it regularly.
But for random duder who may play a shit ton, but almost never pushes past GR100 because I don't like herding enemies like cattle and that's roughly the point where it usually starts to get grindy for me, it didn't really have a ton of effect on the outcome of the season.
I still finished the season at about Paragon 800, still finished with gems at 70, same rough gear level etc.
Still, the QOL things were definitely welcome and will for sure make doing the season on multiple platforms more enjoyable, and I'll take the Altar over the stupid Ethereal season where on at least one platform I was like Paragon 700 and almost done with the season before I even got a single drop, which functionally made the season completely featureless.
Gimme them primals though so I can get my Diablo wings on Switch and be done with it. Maybe I should start pushing just so it's less mindless grinding, but that would also slow down the grinding. Hrm.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand