Scarabs rework is bad

First of all it's now damn hard to get the map device 5th slot.

And again: 1 scarab to trigger a Master content plus another one to juice that content.

So more scarabs to use with 1 less socket.

The scarab rework is awful GGG: this "no choice to skip season mechanic" is awful. (Necropolis)

[Removed by Support]

I think the scarab rework is great. They did a good job here. With the power of the atlas tree, and how you can invest 100% (or close to) into a mechanic, gives you a lot of freedom to play around with Scarabs - and really invest into the content you want to run. Buying/selling/picking up Scarabs is SO DAMN much easier to play around with than Sextants were.

I do agree with you on gating the fifth map slot behind T17 maps; it's too late in the progression. As I see it, the fifth map slot is a step towards juicing content to progress your character. Gating it behind T17, which is already VERY late into a characters progression is stupid.

I dislike the high scarab focus as well but mostly because they made maps/mechanics feel pretty empty without them. Thus I now feel more forced to use scarabs than before replacing my play style from alch corrupt select influence/witness and go to alch corrupt, add scarabs, select atlas tree select influence/witness and go. So for the chill mapping I do more actions now than before.

For the people that normally juice their content they do less since they don't have to bother with sextants anymore. However the hassle of picking up scarabs in maps when they are properly juiced is beyond annoying. Often half the inventory is full of different types of scarabs and their value is high enough that it is unreasonable to let too many of them stay on the ground(especially since they can be scarab reciped into new ones).

On top of that they made the players able to scale the content a lot more with the map mod effect nodes which goes super hard (had a map with close to 500% quant runnign max effect nodes). Those maps however get so rippy you need a godlike build to clear them. Finding the balance is hard even for half decent poe veterans. I see so many people finding the sweet spot at just before using all 6 portals and just giving up on boss if they got unlucky ghosts/wisps etc :P
Sadly this map mod juicing takes up too many atlas points and you have to sacrifice so many other mechanics to run it. Mechanics like breach, ultimatum, blight, ritual, heist and masters are after the initial few days sacrificed in favor of scarabs, delirium and map mod effectiveness(to get more T17s). I think they actually achieved less variety in trees than before.

I like scarabs as an idea and I like that they can do a lot more than they used to. I also do not miss the stupid sextants at all. That part of the scarab changes is W to me

But the scarabs themselves are really out of whack and need some time getting a few more tweaking passes. A lot of them are practically valueless and seem to only exist to be vendor trash on the chance you get scarabs you actually want to use. At the same time the scarabs have become tied directly to providing the juice in your maps which can feel pretty bad unless you're finding enough to sustain or you can stomach spending a while trading for some so you have the supply for a mapping session.

Maybe they could implement some better, possibly less random way to vendor trade scarabs in the future, I dunno. I like to see GGG trying stuff and shaking the game up with fresh ideas as long as they do a good job taking in a lot of feedback on what's going well and what isn't.

As a newer player I ereally like the change because why tf did it need to be so complicated that there's 10 different mechanics to account for when running a map. Now its just scarabs, with (according to ggg) the same amount of variety as before. ez win imo