Thorough scarab changes and additional general endgame changes

As somebody who has thoroughly enjoyed the last 5 or so leagues along with the events in-between, I can't help but feel as though a lot of the changes that have come from this leagues patches have been a step back.

I have some general scarab and atlas tree change ideas that would ideally shake up the meta while still allowing solid endgame progression and giving you a good reason to invest into your characters.

Scarab changes:

Scarab of risk:

Previous: Limit of 2. Adds 2 random modifiers to your map.
New: Limit of 1. Adds 3 random modifiers to your map.

Abyss scarab of edifice:

Previous: Abysses in Area that do not lead to an Abyssal Depths lead to a Stygian Spire Abyss pits in Area that do not lead to an Abyssal Depths or spawn an Abyssal Trove will spawn Minor Stygian Spires
New: Abysses in area that do not lead to an abyssal depths lead to a pit of mass invasion (pits of mass invasion immediately spawn a horde of at least magic abyssal monsters before closing up). Abyss pits in area that do not lead to an abyssal depths, pit of mass invasion or abyssal trove spawn additional pits.

Abyss scarab of multitudes:

Previous: Limit of 2. Abysses in area spawn 50% increased monsters.
New: Limit of 1. Abysses in area spawn 100% increased monsters.

Abyss scarab of profound depth:

Previous: Limit of 1. Monsters from Abysses in Areas have increased Difficulty and Reward for each prior Pit in that Abyss.
New: Limit of 1. Monsters from abysses in areas have a 25% chance to gain an additional modifier (maximum of 100% for magic monsters and 200% for rare monsters) for each pit opened in this map.


Scarab of wisps:

Previous: Limit of 2. Monsters in area have a chance to be empowered by 2000 wildwood wisps.
New: Limit of 1. Area contains a wildwood encounter.
(Rarity of scarab increased)

Scarab of resplendent storms:

Previous: Limit of 1. Area contains a resplendent tempest.
New: Limit of 1. Area is ravaged by a resplendent storm causing rare monsters to have a 25% chance to be struck by resplendent lightning causing them and surrounding monsters to have increased item quantity and rarity. (Monsters affected cannot be affected more than once)


Scarab of divinity:

Previous: Limit of 3. Up to 3 additional Rare Monsters in Area will be Pantheon-Touched. Apparitions spawned by Pantheon-Touched Monsters deal 100% increased damage.
New: Limit of 1. Rare monsters in area have a 33% chance to be pantheon-touched. Apparitions spawned by pantheon-touched monsters deal 100% increased damage.

Harbinger scarab of obelisks:

Previous: Limit of 1. Harbingers in Area spawn Empowered Obelisks.
Empowered Obelisks drop Currency Shards when defeated.
New: Limit of 1. Harbingers in area spawn 1-3 additional empowered obelisks. Empowered obelisks empower their harbinger masters to spawn 1 additional portal each when summoning monsters.


New scarabs:

Ambush scarab of rage:

Limit of 1. Strongboxes in area spawn 100% increased monsters 75% reduced effect of suffixes on strongboxes in area.

Anarchy scarab of companionship:

Limit of 1. Rogue exiles in area have a beast companion. Beast companions copy all toughness, modifiers and additional rewards of their masters at 50% effectiveness.

Bestiary scarab of exoticism:

Limit of 1. Beasts in area are no longer capturable. Beasts in area have 15% toughness and quantity of items dropped per beast modifier affecting them.

Kalguuran scarab of preparedness:

Limit of 1. Ore deposits in area no longer need to be interacted with (with bismuth as the exception) ore deposits are guarded by 3 to 5 additional packs.

Expedition scarab of danger:

Limit of 1. Runic chests are replaced with runic monster markers.


Thats all I currently have for scarab change ideas.


As for the atlas tree I was hoping we could get an amount of small and large idol slots built directly onto our tree. Obviously they would need to have less power than in phrecia and maybe something like 2-4 of each?

These would be unlocked by something like requiring an atlas point and are in the corners of the atlas tree or they would replace certain points of the tree. Another idea is that we simply have a 4x4 or 4x2 or 4x3 etc.. square that we can put the idols in.

With the addition of asynchronous trade the biggest problem with idols is eliminated already and adding them would introduce a lot of flavor to the endgame.

On top of adding idols I do believe that the changes to map effect on the tree was a little much and we should get some power back there. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same amount of power as before but I do think the nerf was a bit much.

I understand most of these can't be added this league and with that said I do still think we need more scarab changes this league as well as breach monsters need to be a bit more rewarding. However, the genesis tree and the foulborn uniques are a great addition even despite the fact that the genesis tree kind of eliminated that early end game progression.

I do hope that GGG comes across this and maybe draws some inspiration from some of the ideas I've laid out here and thanks to anybody who took the time to read I wish you all well! :D

Idols would be cool to have again, it always felt so nice to just have a passive bonus on all your maps regardless of what modifiers or scarabs they had applied to them. Idols gave you a seperate permanent progression system of bonus stats to your maps seperate from the atlas tree, and enabled some really fun farming strats during Phrecia like 20+ harbinger bosses in a single map, all dropping a ton of shard stacks with a chance to drop whole orbs. I farmed that a lot during the event.


And more new scarabs that do interesting things with league mechanics would always be cool. Though I have no idea what they could come up with for ancient leagues like anarchy or torment. And stuff like Talisman has been completely buried and forgotten, the game is in need of some clean-up of old content bloat imo, or merge several league mechanics into a single thing and that way they have an easier time designing scarabs and atlas nodes, since there's less mechanics. They already did a small trim by deleting Metamorph and moving its catalysts over to Ultimatum a while back, we just need a big patch doing that on a large scale.

Yeah, I do think the bloat is a little out of hand; that's a good point as well.