Invitations, crescent splinter drop quant

Hey,

I hope someone on the inside actually gets to see this, because this is rather important.

Background: The atlas passive tree was nerfed in 3.21, with the small nodes in the Maven's crucible cluster getting removed (and replaced by invitation drop quant). It was stated in the patch notes that this would be compensated for with an increase in the number of splinters dropped.

Bug (hopefully): This doesnt happen in practice. Example: a 70% + juiced formed will drop 5 splinters. Previously, with an atlas set up for the purpose (small nodes + wandering path) you'd occasionally get 6, usually 7 at this quantity.

Why is this so important? The net effect is around a 0.75 multiplier to players access to the Maven fight. Other channels of accessing this fight (the 10 random maps atlas invitation) were effectively removed by the nerf in 3.20.

One could argue that this is a 1% thing, and the 1% that got hit were already making a lot. Had it not been specifically the Maven fight, I could see some merit to that. The maven fight is however the gate to most powerful gems in the game. Sure, they can drop from uber Sirus (also heavily stealth nerfed last patch), or invitations. In reality they don't, in the bulk stem from the Maven fight. (Source: I farmed over 100, probably 200, uber Mavens/Sirus last patch.)

In other words, what is hopefully a bug is currently limiting the supply of awakened gems to the market a lot, which hits everyone.

Why do I file this as a bug? The patch notes specifically stated we would not see this scenario, but we do. Hence, it must either be a bug in the implementation (I believe 5 splinters @ 70%+ quant is exaclty what we would see if no compensation was implemented at all), or the patch notes were flat out wrong on this topic.

Please, if this wasn't in fact intended as a stealth nerf, bring this to the attention of the devs. This really affects the economy, and hurt player porgression (many of which are already struggling this league). I'll get my gems quickly anyways - average players won't. Surely that wasn't intended?

Thanks for taking your time reading! =)