GGG nerfed the wrong things for Sanctum

Because I know the people excited for the nerfs are going to come out of the woodwork and say how glad they are that it's nerfed, let me preface something first: Sanctum needed to be nerfed. It was long overdue. How it didn't get nerfed after its debut league is anyone's guess.

I'm not a dedicated Sanctum runner. I love the league, genuinely I do. Dungeon-crawl roguelikes are a huge favorite of mine. However, I didn't run the way Sanctum runners did. I used builds that are suitable for as much content in the game as possible. I never liked the concept of having to make an entire build dedicated towards any specific league. Didn't like it with Delve and Ancestor leagues, still don't like it now. This means I never complete Sanctums even remotely close to some builds that can run them in maybe 10 minutes. Additionally, while I used meta rare relics (specifically the +2 merchant items), I never used the unique meta relics such as the Gilded Chalice or Hour of Divinity. Since I can't guarantee to get even 1 divine per run, I never felt comfortable gambling away uniques hoping for a big payout.

Alright, so with that long-winded story about my experience out of the way, let's get to why we're here. I don't think GGG targeted the right things when deciding to nerf Sanctum. A lot of why this league can pump out such a ridiculous amount of currency largely hinges on the sources of currency duping. You get 2 divines. With the boon that duplicates it, you now have 4. Complete the sanctum while you have the Gilded Chalice, you're walking out with 8 divines. And this isn't even the best possible scenario.

Compared to the cost of a tome, that is pretty insane. I think anyone would agree.

The nice thing about Sanctum is that you could've run that content with any build you want and, more often than not, walk out with something worth your time if you're skilled enough to compensate for any faults your build may have. You don't even need the unique relics.

Now with the nerfs in 3.26, if you don't run a dedicated sanctum build and risk gambling more currency than you did previously using unique relics, it's most likely not going to be worth your time anymore. I don't want Sanctum to become another Delve or Ancestor league.

My suggestion for nerfing Sanctum:
Remove all sources of currency duplication

Now we're back to baseline divines earned which is 1 at minimum to 6 if you get a really lucky tome. There's no way to minmax this loot, and players aren't incentivized to ignore every other room in order to make sure their unique relics don't duplicate the lesser currency.

Sanctum always seems to get wacked. I don't have any characters that can do it, but for something seems relatively uncommon, it sure does get hit with a wiffle-bat. I'm not even really sure why.

Does it at least drop gold now?

I've never agreed more with another post - this literally reflects my thoughts 100%.

I am also the kind of player who likes to do all content (or 90% of it anyway) because I get bored easily. I'll never be able to farm 50 maps of essences or something of the sort - I respec my atlas every day and switch to a different farming strat. Maybe not peak efficiency, but this is what's fun for me and that's all that matters.

Sanctum, TOTA, Blight, Delve - this is a new and refreshing twist on the old "kill monsters get loot" so I very much enjoy mechanics like this, but I want to do them alongside everything else, not make a special build dedicated to run a single type of content.

The Sanctum nerfs have basically ensured that Sanctum is VERY unprofitable for the normal player that doesn't do dedicated Sanctum runs, which is a shame because I enjoyed running it.

I completely agree, if the currency dupe strategies were gut, it would go back to being more or less as profitable as any other strategy. IMO in an ideal world, all farming strategies would bring about the same profit, so people who like a specific content could keep running their favorite, while people like me (who enjoy running everything) would have lots of options. Win win for everyone.

What GGG should focus on doing is cutting the ceiling on target farming a particular strategy - make them all profitable, but make it so that none of them is vastly more profitable than others if run in a specific way.

+1

Thanks for nerfing Sanctum for the fourth time.