GGG nerfed the wrong things for Sanctum

Because I know the people excited for the nerfs are going to come out of the woodwork and say how glad they are that it's nerfed, let me preface something first: Sanctum needed to be nerfed. It was long overdue. How it didn't get nerfed after its debut league is anyone's guess.

I'm not a dedicated Sanctum runner. I love the league, genuinely I do. Dungeon-crawl roguelikes are a huge favorite of mine. However, I didn't run the way Sanctum runners did. I used builds that are suitable for as much content in the game as possible. I never liked the concept of having to make an entire build dedicated towards any specific league. Didn't like it with Delve and Ancestor leagues, still don't like it now. This means I never complete Sanctums even remotely close to some builds that can run them in maybe 10 minutes. Additionally, while I used meta rare relics (specifically the +2 merchant items), I never used the unique meta relics such as the Gilded Chalice or Hour of Divinity. Since I can't guarantee to get even 1 divine per run, I never felt comfortable gambling away uniques hoping for a big payout.

Alright, so with that long-winded story about my experience out of the way, let's get to why we're here. I don't think GGG targeted the right things when deciding to nerf Sanctum. A lot of why this league can pump out such a ridiculous amount of currency largely hinges on the sources of currency duping. You get 2 divines. With the boon that duplicates it, you now have 4. Complete the sanctum while you have the Gilded Chalice, you're walking out with 8 divines. And this isn't even the best possible scenario.

Compared to the cost of a tome, that is pretty insane. I think anyone would agree.

The nice thing about Sanctum is that you could've run that content with any build you want and, more often than not, walk out with something worth your time if you're skilled enough to compensate for any faults your build may have. You don't even need the unique relics.

Now with the nerfs in 3.26, if you don't run a dedicated sanctum build and risk gambling more currency than you did previously using unique relics, it's most likely not going to be worth your time anymore. I don't want Sanctum to become another Delve or Ancestor league.

My suggestion for nerfing Sanctum:
Remove all sources of currency duplication

Now we're back to baseline divines earned which is 1 at minimum to 6 if you get a really lucky tome. There's no way to minmax this loot, and players aren't incentivized to ignore every other room in order to make sure their unique relics don't duplicate the lesser currency.

Sanctum always seems to get wacked. I don't have any characters that can do it, but for something seems relatively uncommon, it sure does get hit with a wiffle-bat. I'm not even really sure why.

Does it at least drop gold now?

I've never agreed more with another post - this literally reflects my thoughts 100%.

I am also the kind of player who likes to do all content (or 90% of it anyway) because I get bored easily. I'll never be able to farm 50 maps of essences or something of the sort - I respec my atlas every day and switch to a different farming strat. Maybe not peak efficiency, but this is what's fun for me and that's all that matters.

Sanctum, TOTA, Blight, Delve - this is a new and refreshing twist on the old "kill monsters get loot" so I very much enjoy mechanics like this, but I want to do them alongside everything else, not make a special build dedicated to run a single type of content.

The Sanctum nerfs have basically ensured that Sanctum is VERY unprofitable for the normal player that doesn't do dedicated Sanctum runs, which is a shame because I enjoyed running it.

I completely agree, if the currency dupe strategies were gut, it would go back to being more or less as profitable as any other strategy. IMO in an ideal world, all farming strategies would bring about the same profit, so people who like a specific content could keep running their favorite, while people like me (who enjoy running everything) would have lots of options. Win win for everyone.

What GGG should focus on doing is cutting the ceiling on target farming a particular strategy - make them all profitable, but make it so that none of them is vastly more profitable than others if run in a specific way.

+1

Thanks for nerfing Sanctum for the fourth time.

My experience with sanctum

In 3.24 i was an ordinary player (around 500h in POE). I look at sanctum concept - need to evade enemy attacks - i thought it is cool mechanic and i want to try it. I decided to build a dedicated sanctum runner - melee assasin with high evasion and spell dodge. I thought that even if i get hit, there is a high chance to dodge it. But when i actually try to run it, it turns out that it doesn't work, in many rooms my resolve goes down too fast and i am unable to complete even second floor.

I was disappointed and start looking how other people do it. And was very surprised that correct way to do it is not dodge enemy attacks, instead people used ranged chars with very high dps and just annihilate everything before it even try to hit you. I was disappointed even more, interesting mechanic turned into another dps check.

After that i have no interest in sanctum, because i often play melee chars with high survivability, and it's pointless to me to run it. Amount of efforts is high, but the profit tends to zero.

And they nerf it again in 3.26? lol

while i agree with your suggestion i had at least one eyebrow raised reading it

"

The nice thing about Sanctum is that you could've run that content with any build you want

i do not think we have played the same sanctum or you lucked out on a build that just happened to be good. because no, you couldnt

builds with low movement speed, with melee damage (range, not type), with delayed damage, builds with manual aiming, builds with ramp-up damage, retaliation builds (lol).. the list is very long

these builds had it A LOT harder. you could alleviate bits of that with relics but to get relics you had to farm relics (or splurge on the market)

the main issue with sanctum is that there are 3 builds that farm it and the numerous rest that struggles. some struggled less (srs-like builds, minions in general), some more (melee-ignite lol). these non-optimal builds could get blocked by bad room rng and had pretty much no chance to recover.

imo this was something different to what Heist is, or delve is - these you can optimise but you can actually complete them (in case of delve - lvl 300 for me completes it) at reasonable pace on any build and not feel like a fool wasting your time

doing sanctum on the other hand is revolting if you have a 'normal build' and it takes ages.