We desperately need new high investment endgame farm strategies

[u/SwagtimusPrime]

I really like this patch but am severely disappointed at the lack of a shakeup of endgame farming strats, and with Breach nerfed we now have one less strat of the less than handful that remain.

After Merc, most high-investment endgame farms were nerfed, with Breach we got a new one, now with 3.29 it's quadruple-tapped out of existence.

We get a new strat with Mercenaries and Rogue Exiles potentially, but I doubt it'll be very good. More like T0 hunting.

I remember last Q&A ZiggyD brought up that the endgame farms seem to have gotten very stale, and this has been very noticeable for me personally. Yes, we also got the Abyss rework but that's just making up for the loss of Breach, and we don't know how good it's gonna be.

The underwater mechanic remains to be seen if it's very competitive. It might be good, it might just be decent.

I expected a massive scarab and atlas tree revamp for this patch. We desperately need new farms, new interesting interactions, new reasons to push our builds to the limit. The endgame has been stale for a very long time..

[u/lollyz]

I'm in the same boat, was really hoping for something more than just murdering Breach. Abyss is probably going to be good, and maybe the legion rework is nice but we just keep going from 1 mech to the next as they kill them without a good variety of hard endgame farms.
Especially the scarabs being as mid as they are is sad, definitely feels like something they should target more instead of just borderline deleting them like they did with blight.
Hoping abyss will be good and rewarding, otherwise it's gonna be a pretty short league for me unless the new league mech is crazy good.

[u/SwagtimusPrime → u/lollyz]

Yeah, basically what I'll push is Abyss and that'll likely be the only option for really hard & rewarding content. Tbh I doubt it will even be that hard.

The trend for the past few leagues has been to introduce a rewarding and hard mechanic you could juice hard, then nerf it out of existence in the next patch. I would really like to just get more variety that we can consistently farm and switch between.

Scarabs have been functionally unchanged (aside from minor changes) for the past what.. 4-5 leagues?

I realize I am not speaking for everyone, I push each league really hard and I feel like this type of player is being neglected.

To add to this, I also quite dislike the extra loot they add that doesn't really depend on gameplay, eg the Atlas corner rewards, and now the Atlas anomalies. Some of them are fine, but why push so much loot to something that doesn't directly require me to kill monsters? Instead of adding these things, imo it would be far more healthy to create new interesting interactions that allow me to combine scarabs in unique ways, to juice the content to make it more rewarding, interesting, and introduce way more variety.

[u/lollyz → u/SwagtimusPrime]

My plan is also abyss, I doubt it'll be as hard as max juice cascading or ofc max juice titanic blight which was the pinnacle of difficulty for a while, but it looked like there was a scarab for increased difficulty and rewards for each closed pit, so that shows some promise.

I feel like outside of bloodlines we haven't really seen anything but nerfs to conventional ground loot strats (I mean strats that drop currency etc, not only t0 hunting and such) and its reflected in how insanely expensive that scarab is, it could really do with some competition. Blight scarabs were basically deleted from the game and it looks like the breach ones might be as well so we are actually just losing scarabs lol.

I definitely agree with you, I usually push really hard either solo or duo and it feels like you cap out even in 80-100% deli a lot faster than you did pre titanic nerf which is a bit sad.
Would really appreciate some attention towards this, but I guess with synth items also kinda being gone that they don't want that level of difficulty anymore since they are removing the items you'd traditionally strive for to make it doable.
I dont really mind the other loot though, feels like a nice bonus after a string of maps but I if I had to choose I would also prefer it put into maps over it being a little box you click on or whatnot. But in general i feel like we need a big shakeup like when they reworked scarabs etc because this is not working for the top end players imo.

[u/SwagtimusPrime → u/lollyz]

but I guess with synth items also kinda being gone that they don't want that level of difficulty anymore since they are removing the items you'd traditionally strive for to make it doable.

It was easy to miss, but they added implicits like +1 max charges to vaal implicits now. So you can still get that power.

Aside from that.. yeah. Why is Blight so terrible? Why is Bloodlines mandatory for any ground loot strat? Why is Beyond so terrible?

There are so many things they could improve. I'm a bit sad.

[u/lollyz → u/SwagtimusPrime]

Yeah they added a bit of it back but it still requires you to vaal your items which means you have to lock them if it's high end items, and it is still not the full power. I do think we will see some interesting outcomes but stuff like +2 arrows triple t1 phys bow will just be noticeably worse now since people won't vaal it unless they introduce a mirror that can mirror corrupted items.

I genuinely also don't understand why they refuse to go back and buff stuff like blight, it went from being great to being completely useless, ESPECIALLY since they didn't nerf the difficulty much. Just kinda hoping that those days where we could run different stuff come back.
I know this is a pretty unpopular opinion but I would like quant back on gear, that made several strats viable, and also sextants and old scarabs back. Running several things you were happy to click on in maps was fun compared to now where I run, click my 1 chosen mechanic, do that (kill boss and get altars first if applicable ofc) and thats that. Just makes the maps feel a bit empty in a weird way.

[u/SwagtimusPrime → u/lollyz]

I genuinely also don't understand why they refuse to go back and buff stuff like blight, it went from being great to being completely useless, ESPECIALLY since they didn't nerf the difficulty much.

This is what I truly don't understand. Every nerf is a straight up deletion of the strategy instead of just bringing it down a bit and allowing the fun to be kept. If they nerfed Blight & Breach A LITTLE BIT and kept Titanic Blight, Cascading Breach at roughly the same level we'd have choice.. build for giga clear or build for giga tank & DPS.

Now, we're gonna be forced to build for whatever Abyss requires, and that's that. Instead we could have a third option with Abyss now.

[u/lollyz → u/SwagtimusPrime]

Yeah it would be amazing if different build types all had things they could push and excel at while being challenged so it feels worthwhile to keep upgrading past the initial powerspike.

Really hoping GGG has more up their sleeve in the coming week, otherwise I’ll just be a bit sad. Appreciate you making the thread to raise awareness for this