Make Shrines Optional, Can be Enabled By Player/Group Options

I am speaking from the experience of dealing with Shrines from the perspective of having 7 characters, 1 of each class, having played and still playing a variety of endgame builds (they are all above Lv 90 so obviously they are all doing extensive endgame mapping).

So, Shrines.
https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Shrine

There is a list of all different types of Shrines that can appear on a map (and they cannot be seen on the map overlay until you go near them, even then you cannot tell what type of Shrine it is) -
and while it appears that most types of Shrines that can and should appear are not harmful (I am talking about being not harmful to the player before you pick up the buff), the fact remains that it is tuned for what seems like Meteoric, Tempest. Freezing Shrines appear more than 50% of the time.

So let's talk about these 3 Shrines.

Meteoric Shrine. It has "warning" fire rings on the ground where the meteors will hit before they slam down - but even then I am not 100% sure the meteors only hit the areas indicated vy the fire rings.

Tempest Shrine. The ground crackles faintly with some blue energy, I think? But mostly you just see lightning bolts, and you just get struck randomly while in the vicinity.

And then, the most annoying and potentially most dangerous Freezing Shrine. You'd think the little Eye of Winter going round and round the shrine is visual and idication enough.
And it is, but most of the time when we are mapping, we are
(1) moving fast,
(2) the maps are not all open areas like Cenotes, Steaming Springs, Blooming Field etc. (you get the idea) where there is space and time to move away from the damage radius of the Shrine -
you can often encounter damage shrines in tight maps like Augury, Trenches, Seepage, Decay (I would also add Vaal Factory, Sun Temple, but the layouts of those 2 maps are so, so terrible that most players just skip over those nodes, the chances of random dying from getting stuck in terrain or opening a door and walking into a pack of projectile shots and dying is too high that the 10% EXP penalty is not worth risking) -
even corridor shaped but still only slightly more forgiving in manuevering space maps like Crypt, Ravine, Necropolis etc. -
it is actually often that a map Rare stands with his pack right next to one of the 3 damage shrines, espexially a Freezing Shrine, and in even taking out the rare before the Eye of Winter hits and freezes you, you could be subject to the (again) very often seen corpse explosion or elemental explosion ring on-death effect while frozen - and that's while you are still under threat of being ganked by the rest of the mobs in the vicinity while frozen.

Yes, you can (and by GGG's current game design, should) have 75% all resists, you can wear a Freezing Charm to negate the above - I am aware GGG has promised to look at weening off the over-reliance of having to work on resists in the endgame later - but still, instead of wearing useful charms like Rite of Passage, I am forced to either use up another of the precious slots to +1 Charm Slot / have to use a Freezing Charm to counter "possibly" seeing a Freezing Shrine on a map, which there is no way to know before running a map?

That doesn't make sense.

As far as ARPGs go, and coming from (as I am sure alot of us did) Diablo, the way buff Shrines usually work are that they are simply fixtures with icons on them - which so far, so good - but even when the shrine buff grants you damage, they do not damage players before you pick up the buff, theya re simply inert and do not affect your gameplay.

Sure, maybe you want to say that PoE is a different game, it is not Diablo and it is not any other ARPG - and I agree, I think the expansive Skill Tree and balance of any class can play any build is awesome - but just as to how buff shrines work, it is not just causing an incovenience, it's causing death and triggering the much debated 10% death penalty (which is a whole nother discussion altogether on this forum).

So I thought, my suggestion would be
(1) As title states, at least let players choose whether they want to have Shrines in their game, if not, just no Shrines at all (since each map instance is generated when launch, I am very sure Shrines are not baked into maps, they are part of what is generated when creating a new map, just like the monsters, terrain, breakables, chests, strongboxes etc. within), or
(2) do like Diablo and other ARPGs, just have the Shrines be inert (and all of the rest of the current shrines are inert as far as I can tell).


P.S. If you're replying, don't give me all the funny nonsense about how you take a step back, throw a few attacks in the area to clear mobs, then go in tactically to pick up those damage shrines -
I know all that, I have done that, and given my characters are 90 - 96 I have lived with and dealt with Shrines more than I care to -
even having to do all that extra manuevering is tripping up the endgame mapping experience, where it is about efficiently tackling and avoiding what mobs throw at you, my point is that shrines that give you buffs (and help you) should not be part of your movement/attack consideration.

The really dangerous Shrines are the ones that overlap and contain multiple effects. The latter is only possible with specific Atlas Nodes or a rare corruption affix. The overlap realistically only happens with huge Shrine bonuses from Atlas+Waystone+Tablets. The most I've seen on one screen is 3 and I was lucky that none of 'em rolled Divine else I would have had to just portal out.

I don't think it's unreasonable to request tuning of their area damage when hostile, especially if there are multiple effects/overlap occuring.