Shrines!

Excalibur

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Jul 3, 2012
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Hey guys,

What's your opinion about the Shrines? Are you happy when you see one?
Do you think they are overpowered or underpowered?

Personally, I think shrines should have been a lot better, mostly because they give a temporary effect so a massive boost to something wouldn't break the balance but would mostly justify their existance.
I would like to hear your opinion before posting some changes I would like to see in them!
 
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Well...in my opinion they are globally quite balanced, they won't provide a massive effect, but Diablo is much about slight advantages - on a normal run, I'd say.

Also, it avoids the game breaking situations, where you can keep a huge boost shrine for a tough fight, tp there and get back to duty.

I put it in relation with D3, in which when you get the electrical pylon you basically destroy everything during that time. Well, alright that's fun sometimes, but at least when I get my D2 run I'm not fked up because my usual shrine rolled gem when this time (obviously) I would have needed a big help.

So well, for me I'm fine with little help here or there, therefore I don't see the need of farming them (who told xp shrines clvl 95+?), it makes me more happy because they are not that useful, whereas big boosts would ruin my perception of the game. At least for something similar to D3 ones!
 
Wanted to write 'indifferent' at first but gave it another thought and 'happy/glad' will describe it better.
Overall they are a bit underpowered because of short duration and easily overridable but can be used to great effect under the right circumstances, even the fire shrine which cuts hp for everyone.

^1st post by merlin

I wouldn't change them too much, maybe make then permanent for their duration but that's all.
 
Having a gem/exp/monster shrine on my ancient tunnels map was very valueable. While the immediate effect is minor, it adds up over the course of many runs.
I've upgraded hundreds of flawless amethysts and leveled all the way to 98 doing mostly p1 AT runs.
Even the refilling shrine helps to save a potion now and then, any status shrine will remove curses.

It's a shame that poison and exploding shrines do not scale into the late game. The portal shrine also has little utility becuase it's both rare and situational, but the rest are fine in my opinion.
 
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I like the shrines in Diablo 2 better than the shrines in Diablo 1. In D2, what you see is what you get. In D1, shrines usually had both positive and negative effects, such as permanently increasing a certain stat at the cost of permanently decreasing some other stat. You had to learn from the name of the shrine what its effects would be, and then if you knew what to expect, you could decide whether or not it would be worth activating. (In turn, I confess I liked D1's shrines better than the completely unpredictable random shrines and fountains that were in the old text-console-based game Nethack.)

In D2, I'm usually pleased to find shrines. I'm pretty sure the shrines are randomly generated and placed. However, sometimes I find a lighting resistance shrine in the same area as a unique LE monster, or cold resist shrine in the same area as a unique CE monster, and I wonder if the developers actually coordinated them in the area generator game code, so that I would have help to fight that monster if I also found the shrine.

I would have preferred that shrine effect durations not be shortened by my assassin's or Treachery-wearer's active Fade skill.

I think "aura" or "curse" shrines would be a neat idea: when activated, it temporarily invokes an aura (such as fanaticism or heart-of-wolverine) or a curse (such as dim vision or battle cry) affecting players or monsters (or both!) within some radius of the shrine.
 
Exp and skills are about the only ones that get me excited. I like the way shrines are in this game though. Like others have said, everything in the game is pretty subtle which I prefer. Comparing to shrines in PoE for example, which have fairly huge effects and overall make them feel more arcadey. In d2 the shrines feel as though they belong and are apart of the world and sort of add to its dark and mystical ambience.
 
Interesting topic! Come to think of it, I somehow most of the time skip most of the shrines, even when I am playing single player pass. The ones I always use are (mind you: I strictly speak about single pass untwinked tournaments)
1. Gem Shrine (in early stages to upgrade Topazes for more MF in single pass untwinked play, later to upgrade a flawless game I need most of, e.g.for certain crafts)
2. XP Shrine. I usually try to find at least one boss pack before activating it or I activate it shortly before entering an area with lots of boss packs expected.

Then there are the shrines that depend on circumstance:
3. Resist Shrines. I sometimes save them for dangerous boss packs or act bosses, esp. If they are near a WP. Getting to 85% poison resist before facing Andariel is useful from time to time
4. Stamina shrines: Esp. in early game I hit them regularly ro avoid rests. Saves a few seconds.
5. Weapon shrines: very seldomly used for dangerous fights or tedious boss fights if I rely on weapon damage (e.g. I would have loved such a shrine for various boss fights with my random amazon - 30% cth with ~200 damage in hell makes some fights against fast regenerating bosses very long)

Skill shrines and Armor shrines I somehow always never activate, although it for sure is worse to not click them than to click them... After thinking about it, it is probably because I fear I might need the shrine later but then never use it 😂🙈

Explosive and Poison shrines I usually always click on early stages and even pick up the potions one by one (one for each slot) to sell and rebjy them individually if necessary. They are quite strong in the early game, esp. for tournaments with rough restrictions. And even if I don't need them, they are worth dearly needed gold.

Fire Shrines I sometimes use against bosses with lots of hit points, but in HC that may be a two-edged sword...

I don't know if I forgot any (Wells and health/mana shrines I use as needed, but I always try not to rely on them in HC).
 
Reading your posts I guess I am completely on the opposite side. I would like to see shrines giving a strong boost.
Right now, most of the shrines are useless and the rest are situational and as I said above since they are temporary it won't break the balance.
I would like to see players being actually happy whenever they see any shrine and perhaps develop strategies around them if they were reworked!
In that case Shrines could be a bit rarer to appear.

I am happy when I see the Exp shrine but in the next boss pack it's gone due to them being cursed. And that happens nearly all the time in Hell.
Also, with Oblivion Knights in Chaos Santuary, WSK 3 and Throne room along with Baal himself there is barely any chance to take advantage of any shrine
in those areas which are also quite popular for farming.

For example, my idea would be something like that.
White text mentions it's current effect plus the addition or change in gold.
It's only meant for discussion and fun so don't overreact! :p


Armor - +100% Defense +50% damage reduced
Combat
- +200% to Attack Rating and +200% to Damage, + 20% Attack Speed, + 20% FHR, +20% Deadly Strike
Skill -
Unchanged
Stamina - Unlimited Stamina, +40% Faster Run Walk
Experience -
Unchanged
Mana recharge - +400% mana recharge rate, -50% mana cost

Resist Cold -
Maximizes the resistance up to 95%, reduces enemy Cold resistance 30%
Resist Fire -
Maximizes the resistance up to 95%, reduces enemy Fire resistance 30%
Resist Lightning -
Maximizes the resistance up to 95%, reduces enemy Lightning resistance 30%
Resist Poison -
Maximizes the resistance up to 95%, reduces enemy Poison resistance 30%

Wells -
Unchanged
Refilling - Removed
Health - Removed
Mana - Removed

Monster - Converts all monsters on screen to Unique
Gem -
Unchanged
Portal - Removed
Exploding - Removed
Poison - Removed
Fire - Removed

New Shrines

Greed - Increases your MF and GL +200%
Rune - 30% percent to upgrade a rune in your inventory, 70% to downgrade (Rare Shrine)
Intelligence - Removes the Cooldown from all the skills
Cleave - Adds splash damage to melee attacks
Aura - Adds a level 10/20/30* random Paladin aura (*depending on difficulty)
 
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@Excalibur I like some of your ideas, others seem ridiculously strong. Like so strong it'd be worth doing more shrine hunting before target running in certain cases, and I'm not sure I'd like that to be a larger part of the game. I like where your head is at though, your post was a fun read thinking through how some of those might be useful. I think some of the shrines could use some tweaking, though. I like your mana and armor shrine ideas. I like the resist shrine idea minus the reduces resist part. And I like the greed shrine too. I think like you say the issue is that they're only good early game and are so limited time-wise and then get cursed off. There are times that they are mildly useful though, like an xp shrine in the CS for Diablo.

I think aside from a few small changes to specific shrines, the only major change I'd be completely comfortable with in d2 is that they not be removed by curses. I get actually nervous about the game going down a slippery slope of power creep, like PoE, until I remember that it's not under development anymore. Like just look at PoE, it's neon color diarrhea now. I mean I play it a lot every 3rd league or so, it's not a bad game. The problem is there's no toned down ARPGs that are hard no matter what. That's the thing I like about how shrines are - they are toned down. They're like a little boost, maybe, or death, or a monster. It adds a little flavor to the world and I think it's just perfect.
 
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I understand that such changes could probably change a bit the game-play but some patches used to do that back in the time.
I will never forget the shock I got when I upgraded to 1.10 from 1.07.
Plus, everyones complains how strong some runewords are but I guess everyone enjoys using them! :D
 
I understand that such changes could probably change a bit the game-play but some patches used to do that back in the time.
I will never forget the shock I got when I upgraded to 1.10 from 1.07.
Plus, everyones complains how strong some runewords are but I guess everyone enjoys using them! :D

Very true - I think small changes like you've listed out to shrines wouldn't be very worrisome if somehow tomorrow blizz announced a patch. I usually would like some changes to keep content fresh, it's just this one specific game that I feel like I want no changes because of how much I've enjoyed it over the decades and change is scary and it's very difficult to determine long term impact to the game.
 
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Indeed, I do not want this remasterd version that is rumoured because it will be very different and I wouldn't like to lose all the progress I have done these years. Instead, a patch with few changes each time could attract attention and of course keep our motivation even higher with the first addition being the ubers. xD
 
I know this is an old thread, but this seems to be the right place for my subject: The AR boost of combat shrines.

In all sources I've found it's stated that combat shries offer 200% AR. However, according to the character screen, the AR of my bowazon is changing from 13,200 to 176,000 which is way too much. I've never bothered about it so far, but now it has somehow settled in my smartass head and I want to know the answer.

Her percentual bonuses are 566% (Faith, Atma's Scarab, strafe), so a 200% bonus would turn that into 766% and turn 13,200 into 13,200*8.66/6.66 = 17,160. Incidentally, that's about 1/10 of what's shown on the character screen, so is this another Lying Character Screen issue? Perhaps the shrine together with AR bonuses from certain items and skills?
 
@krischan The next time you tag a combat shrine with your bowazon, would you also please note the "chance to hit <enemy>" percentage on the LCS? (In D2 LoD up to 1.14 it's a tool-tip that pops up when you hover over the AR reading. I'm not sure where this is displayed in the new D2R interface.)

I'm curious to learn whether the shrine also pegs your chance-to-hit from wherever it is all the way to 95%, or shows a more reasonable increase. Every time I check it with my characters, a combat shrine adjusts my LCS chance-to-hit readout by only a few percentage points.

Then again, with an AR of 13,200, maybe you experience 95% chance to hit with or without a shrine?
 
According to the AB, the 200% bonus is added after your own bonuses:

"Combat Shrine applies +200% Attack Rating after +% Attack Rating applied by other sources: this means a player character with +200% AR before activating a Combat Shrine will multiply AR by nine ( ( (100+200)/100) * ( (100+200)/100) ), not five ( (100+200+200) /100) after activating it."
 
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@Swamigoon The chance to hit went up from 87% to 95% (which was about a skeleton in the L96 terrorized the Lut Golein sewers, for my L97 amazon). I think I read somewhere (just in one place) that a combat shrine will increase the chance to hit by a minimum amount, so perhaps that led to this high AR. I don't know the DR of those terrorized skeletons, so I couldn't check what the chance-to-hit formula would lead to with the high AR value or how much AR is needed for 95%. I tried combat shrines in non-terrorized zones in order to see by how much it goes up then, but I didn't find one after 20 tries in several Act 1 areas for some weird reason or perhaps out of bad luck (perhaps the RNG is kind of fixed regarding shrines, similar to chests), so I gave up for now.

@maxicek That effectively means that the +200% from a shrine goes into a separate multiplier which should then triple the AR originally shown in the character screen. But thanks for the link. I tried finding it in the Amazon Basin, but failed.
 
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