Ultimatum and other league mechanics

Ultimatum mobs no longer drop loot, but the mobs can be empowered by other league mechanics, such as eldritch altars and wisps from Affliction, etc. These make the encounters much harder, while giving 0 extra reward in return...???

I get that GGG wanted to give players back this beloved league mechanic (which, let's be honest, was mostly "beloved" due to having amazing rewards but anyway) but interaction with other league mechanics should've been one of the first things you test/balance. Especially in a league where the main mechanic is a global buff to mobs.

I'm not going to talk about Ultimatum rewards (I personally thing they're dogshit so far but I didn't play it that much and haven't invested any atlas points in it so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt), but I strongly believe Ultimatum should either give out mob loot, or be excluded from the global buff pool (its mobs should NOT be empowered by any league mechanic, since that only raises the difficulty but gives absolutely no reward).

I still hate AN and its implementation, if it were my choice I'd completely remove it from the game. It's unbalanced, unrewarding and a total coinflip. And it wouldn't be so bad if all it did was give you the occasional Soul Eater annoyance on a map that you'd just rather skip than waste time on. But the worst thing about it is that it introduces a possibility of a very rippy or tanky mob in a timed or loss-on-death league mechanic that it can break. Blight. Incursion. Delirium. Ritual. Just a few examples of encounters that can be "failed" if you have the bad luck of encountering an overbuffed AN mob. Ultimatum is victim to the exact same problem, even more so because of it being an all or nothing mechanic. But on top of that and the problem that inherently is AN, you chose to make it so that Ultimatum mobs can be further buffed by other league mechanics when NO EXTRA REWARD CAN BE GAINED FOR THE ADDITIONAL RISK.

Posts like these will be so hilarious to look back on once some big content creator like Grimro puts out a video saying "this is insane"

Banter aside, I have been running Ultimatum and have had a very good experience with it so far. Not only does my build handle it exceptionally well (totems will do that), but the rewards are aplenty. The real value lies in the Inscribed Ultumatums you can receive in later rounds, and for that you have to invest some atlas passives into the mechanic.

Without investment its primary function will be some catalysts here and there

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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Not only does my build handle it exceptionally well (totems will do that)...

Totems will do everything. You can also say uber bosses are splendidly balanced because you, specifically, can farm them while half asleep :)

On topic, given how strong ulti debuffs are, they could have given more than 3 debuff choices per round, like 5-6. This would help non-top-1% players to adapt better without taking much dev effort.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Posts like these will be so hilarious to look back on once some big content creator like Grimro puts out a video saying "this is insane"

Banter aside, I have been running Ultimatum and have had a very good experience with it so far. Not only does my build handle it exceptionally well (totems will do that), but the rewards are aplenty. The real value lies in the Inscribed Ultumatums you can receive in later rounds, and for that you have to invest some atlas passives into the mechanic.

Without investment its primary function will be some catalysts here and there

Unfortunately Grimro has taken a break from this league (boy do I miss his vids) so we likely won't be seeing any of that (for now).

Banter aside, you missed the point of my post which was that Ultimatum difficulty can be buffed by other league mechanics, but this buff results in NO additional rewards (since Ulti mobs don't drop loot).

The base reward is the same regardless of whether or not you did the Affliction mech or got some eldritch altars prior, however the difficulty is substantially increased. This is not good design.

I am personally not interested in running Ultimatum specifically, I wasn't a fan of the original Ultimatum (unpopular, I know) as it came right after ritual and didn't feel like anything new (still doesn't). I am not complaining about the rewards (as mentioned, I didn't test it enough to have a relevant opinion). The point of this post is about an implementation flaw that in my opinion is bad and should be changed.

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Echothesis wrote:

Totems will do everything. You can also say uber bosses are splendidly balanced because you, specifically, can farm them while half asleep :)

On topic, given how strong ulti debuffs are, they could have given more than 3 debuff choices per round, like 5-6. This would help non-top-1% players to adapt better without taking much dev effort.

Crazy how some builds are better at some things while being worse at others, right?

Despite being heavily invested in cast speed my Storm Burst Totems are terrible at Legion for example, and it's not comparable to other builds in clearspeed either.

My point was that some builds are just not that well adjusted to Ultimatum, and I mentioned my own build as an example of a build that does it well. No need to give me crap for that.

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Felix44 wrote:

Unfortunately Grimro has taken a break from this league (boy do I miss his vids) so we likely won't be seeing any of that (for now).

Banter aside, you missed the point of my post which was that Ultimatum difficulty can be buffed by other league mechanics, but this buff results in NO additional rewards (since Ulti mobs don't drop loot).

The base reward is the same regardless of whether or not you did the Affliction mech or got some eldritch altars prior, however the difficulty is substantially increased. This is not good design.

I am personally not interested in running Ultimatum specifically, I wasn't a fan of the original Ultimatum (unpopular, I know) as it came right after ritual and didn't feel like anything new (still doesn't). I am not complaining about the rewards (as mentioned, I didn't test it enough to have a relevant opinion). The point of this post is about an implementation flaw that in my opinion is bad and should be changed.

Yeah, I wished he was around.

I agree that Affliciton shouldn't affect Ultimatum. Delirium I would disagree with, because Ultimatum mobs increase the reward bar and thus are a contributing factor. You can choose to engage with it during the encounter or circle back to do it later if you want, so I see no issue with it

Ultimatum absolutely should be affected by Affliction, but the monsters need to actually drop currency instead of not having any drop pool.

I really don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to force me between picking one of the two major mechanics featured this league, instead of allowing me to do both at once.

sadly its one of those mechanics like essence you do only in unjuiced maps. catalyst being so costly proves almost nobody is doing it - you do lose so much farm by not being able to do other mechanics.

essence being the same as long as im playing gives little hope ggg fixing ultimatum anytime soon. idk why i can get highest tier of essence in t1 map and lowest essence tier in t16 map...