Thoughts on Shrines

I wonder if this was a missed opportunity. It's amazing to me that, especially with leveraging the skill Teleport, how the time to enjoy the buff that a shrine provides becomes closer to zero. Am I missing something or was this always intended by the devs? Is it that shrines are really intended for the start of a play through but never meant to provide a meaningful buff through nightmare and hell? The only end-game use case I see leveraged is the experience shrine to leech in Diablo/ Baal runs.

I would argue that it really depends on which shrine you're looking at.

A fair few of them are obviously very much tailored towards making up for lacking gear (i.e. pre-endgame), such as mana regen, resistance shrines, ...

Others are more so tailored towards an actual lack of levels -> stat pts (and possibly gear on top I guess), such as stamina shrines.

And precious few retain noticeable use until you get to the point of simply outgearing all content anyways (skill shrines mainly).

On the flipside, I for one tend to completely ignore gem shrines on a new season/new char as there's precious little use for yet another random chipped gem. Once you progress through the game however and get into lower-end trading, a quick flawless -> perfect amy Conversion is actually suddenly quite useful, making those shrines not be a waste anymore.

Similarly, a monster shrine early game is generally just a minor quick xp boost for the 'bigger kill' whereas late game it is still an xp boost but now also creates an extra potentially quite noteworthy loot bag to blow up on your farming run. Significantly more useful come endgame as compared to early on I dare say.

And then of course you have some that just retain their usefulness all the way to the last kill to hit 99. Specifically looking at XP shrines there.

Plus just to round it off, some of them simply kinda suck at any stage, no matter where or how high/geared you are. Armor tends to be mweh at best at any level. Portal is beyond pointless due to the forced location 999 out of 1k times. And the blow-up potion shrines I actively avoided clicking for 20 years now, no matter the stage of progression. ^^

Like Schnorki said it depends on the shrine, some being much more (or only) useful in the early/mid game like stamina, resist, or mana recharge shrines, others confer relatively minor bonuses (defense) that are helpful throughout, others being quite useful (experience, combat in the case of physical character) at all points, and some oddball utility shrines like portal shrines or monster shrines.

At the very least they can be used as a tool to overwrite a curse, might help you in a tight spot or if you're being lazy to go to town to clear it lol. Won't help your merc or any summons since it's not a well but it's still something.

Good points yeah I wrote the thread originally because I was tired of being cursed literally milliseconds after clicking a shrine lol. Got me thinking that it would be really cool if you were immune to curses when shrine was activated on your character. I don't necessarily see a downside to that but I'm sure I miss some externalities.

ghostpos wrote: 2 years ago

Good points yeah I wrote the thread originally because I was tired of being cursed literally milliseconds after clicking a shrine lol. Got me thinking that it would be really cool if you were immune to curses when shrine was activated on your character. I don't necessarily see a downside to that but I'm sure I miss some externalities.

I always took the "anti-shrine cursing" as a challenge, rather than an annoyance.
I.e. if you have a shrine up and want to kill a cursed mob with it (or worse, clear CS with it), you get the added bonus challenge of figuring out mobs' curse range/limitations and to then apply that knowledge for the purpose of curse dodging so you can keep your shrine.

Actually makes the whole overwrite-concept a good thing as it provides a way to add an extra challenge to what is otherwise ultimately a fairly easy game.
The downside of course being that said challenge is really only valid for a fraction of all builds since you can't really outrange/ Dodge stuff when your build requires you to be in mobs' faces.

On the point of "why click on a shrine when it's going to get cursed off instantly in hell".

I find this part of the fun of D2 compared to other games. It forces me to engage the map and enemies differently. If I know I just grabbed an XP shrine, but I am about to enter the Chaos Sanctuary, I hang back and let my merc or summons engage first, baiting out the curse, then jump in. It adds a whole new element to the gameplay!

But I must say, I rarely play melee characters, and when I do, they are such overbuilt tanks that I don't care about any curse against him. It's understandable that shrines are much harder to keep on a melee character.

On my most recent zon that I made it was a highlight of her playthrough that I grabbed an xp shrine at the start of CS, ran in popped off a few shots and thanks to her Increased Speed, was able to run out and watched the Lower Resist hit the area I was just in, then ran back in and killed all the oblivion knights. So satisfying.