Let's Talk Sanctum

Let me start this off by saying, sanctum was not overly rewarding. Outside of the first 16 hours of league start sanctum is under-rewarding. That being said, it still needed a "nerf".

If you disagree with this, then I hope to change your mind with my below post.

I have league started Sanctum a few times now, simply because I love the mechanic and I loved the build that I played (hexblast of contradiction tri-stack inquis). Now that sanctum has received a 40% ish nerf and hexblast was deleted from the game I am sad cause I don't like penance brand of dissipation so my options for sanctum are limited.

I have also league started "normally" and pushed to t16/t17 maps within the first 2 days. This has never felt less profitable than sanctum but I haven't ever really kept score for it.

I have league started heist in the past and found it to be significantly more rewarding than sanctum at a MUCH smaller investment cost. For sanctum you're looking at 100div in relics alone to start to compete with the most basic of mapping strategies that are achievable day 1/2 (essence farming is a great example). Heist also requires a character worth 3-5d to run the best blueprints, and upwards of 15-50d to be basically immortal and print hundreds of divines a day.

That 100d relic setup for sanctum? yeah that's just the relics, lets not forget the absurd build costs. Fortunately I enjoyed a cheap build for sanctum at only 150d investment cost on average. The most popular sanctum builds required a 50d pair of boots alone.

Nor let us forget the cost of tomes. Prior to this substantial nerf (which more than likely caused the # of sanctum runners to drop to 10% or less than what it used to be) tomes cost as much as 50c the first few days of a league. Heist blueprints? 15c at the absolute MAX the first few days. Essence scarabs definitely get up there in price early on, and remnants of corruption aren't free either, yet essence farming still blows sanctum farming out of the water.

So, why is sanctum so "rewarding" then? It must've been rewarding, right? Cause it caught a nerf, so even GGG thinks it's over-rewarding.

Well, I don't actually think that's why GGG nerfed sanctum. I think GGG saw that a large portion of the community FELT sanctum was over-rewarding. And if the feel that it's over rewarding is large enough then it warrants a nerf, because regardless of how it actually performs, how it feels can leave a bad enough taste in the mouth that players are unhappy.

In my opinion people who think sanctum is overly rewarding fall into one of a few categories:
1- They simply have never done sanctum before and have no clue what they are talking about.
2- They play a build that is not good at sanctum so they are jealous of players that can actually make profit running sanctum.
3- They have not taken the time to learn to run sanctums well, so they are once again jealous of those that can.
4- They don't like sanctum so they are, surprise surprise, jealous of players that can make currency running sanctum.
5- Their favorite content creator says sanctum is overly rewarding so they hop on the bandwagon of hating sanctum runners.

I personally don't think that any of these reasons are good enough to permanently nerf sanctum.

So how do we fix Sanctum's rewards/structure without making players FOMO about it?

My solution is 2 fold.

Firstly, Sanctum tomes should drop only at ilvl 83 and there needs to be an Uber-Sanctum tome (can be a drop from Lycia in t17 Sanctuary perhaps?). This uber sanctum tome can include some upsides, like increases to average rewards, more relic drops (including unique relics), perhaps even a multiplier to non-unique relic effect, and some downsides, like increased HP and Dmg from Lycia fight at the end, and increases to HP and resolve dmg of enemies throughout the sanctum.

Secondly, ilvl 83 sanctums need to have some things added to it's drop pools, namely Hinekora Locks and Mirror Shards. I'm not sure if fracturing orbs should be added or not, but those are a contender as well. Perhaps even a relic system that lets you target certain currencies? Harbinger unique relic that converts all rewards into currency shards? Similarly, Essence Unique relic, scarab unique relic, bestiary orb unique relic, so on and so fourth. This would allow GGG to nerf the average drop rate of currencies in sanctum and reward players for actually killing lycia at the end with unique relics that are interesting (and ideally valuable).

If you raised the ilvl of sanctums to only 83 then players would not be able to "abuse" the first 16 hours of league start with low level tomes that print chaos. This change would also allow tomes to go on faustus. While I think this would help prevent the FOMO of sanctum running, all it will do is shift sanctum runners into doing Heist until sanctum tomes start dropping. Sooooo, it's a change that I think is overall not needed in the scope of "balancing" sanctum but would help stop the sanctum FOMO of players.


Is this a perfect solution? No. Do I think it would fix the FOMO around sanctum? Yes.

Let me know your thoughts below. Try and keep replies civil. I know this is the internet and everyone is tough while anonymous. I won't engage with trolls/rude people in the comments. If you have anything constructive to add or converse about I'm happy to respond/talk.

I just like to enjoy Sanctum. I am not playing the league.

I see people dropin tones of divanes first day mapping, OP merc.

They say it breaks the economy i think they never watch those streamers playing full party doing multi mierrors in the first week but yeah sanctum break the economy...

What i think is that if u dont map u dont use MERC they tried to force people to MAP and leave isolate mechanics, anyway for me the game rn sucks.

And also the destroy the only build i play hexblast. Then u see rangers icicle mines or shockwave totem builds dealing even more damage, they just wanted to break sanctum nothing else.

I dont know the numbers but i am sure is not the most played league and if they dont get back sanctum they lose a player for ever.