Beyond Rework feedback from a long time enjoyer

A little background: I have been a true Beyond enjoyer since Legacy league, back when it was a cumbersome leaguestone and you could pair it with Breach for xp and loot. I remember those days very fondly.

The power of old Beyond cannot be understated. It is THE original JUICE. Back when racing to 100 was popular, Havoc coined the word. It was specifically because Beyond meant insane headhunter stacks and experience. There is no other mechanic that could spawn as many rares or uniques in the game's history. Since then, players have been juicing to take full advantage of this limitless spawning. And boy, was it awesome. Endless legions of rares swarming you to be replaced by terrifying teleporting bosses. Currency, divination cards, and uniques flooding your inventory.

We all knew it was too powerful. We all knew, one day, it would be limited. 3.19 is where Beyond came to die.

- I expected multiple instances of Beyond to be removed. This would effectively be a 3 times nerf to the spawn rate. Previously, you could get it as a map mod, on a sextant, and on the map device. I think it's a completely reasonable change to only allow it to appear once. It allows it to be a powerful mechanic without getting completely out of control with all the other stacking monster density.

- The 1 boss spawn limit absolutely murders this mechanic. As it stands, with a fully invested map with high density, you can spawn a boss with a SINGULAR abyss crack. I have opened a number of maps to get in 15% of the way through for the boss to spawn. I unallocated "Torn Veil" (greater chance to spawn boss) so that I could see more Beyond (Scourge) monsters. Currently, the pay off for spawning a new Beyond (Scourge) boss is to fight a monster with 6 times the health of a map boss to get maybe 3-4 untainted currency. Tainted jeweller's and fusings have been nerfed by at least 5 times their normal rate of success. The rewards are way off and feel completely lackluster.

- The enjoyment of Beyond is from being swarmed, gaining those headhunter stacks, and getting fat stacks of loot. What we have now is a castrated mechanic that gives you a pittance of the currency we used to obtain. As it stands, this is no exaggeration a 15 times nerf of old Beyond. I am having much less fun with this rework. It is counterintuitive that you DON'T want the boss to spawn because it ends the actual good part of the mechanic.

Proposed change? Allow up to 3 Beyond (Scourge) bosses to spawn before the mechanic turns off. Increase the amount of tainted currency and uniques obtained. This is a bigger pay off for spawning the dangerous boss, and we see the mechanic more throughout a juiced map.

I am very sad that old Beyond is dead. I miss being completely swarmed throughout the map with constant danger (and loot) everywhere. Now, there is a distinct feeling of the map going silent.

Same impressions. I don't even notice new mobs. Sometimes one big thing cames in and you kill it quickly and that's it. Nothing more.
I liked how you could turn easy few minute map run into half hour long slaughterfest. It was so fun when killing small pack of mobs resulted in entire screen swarmed by beyond monsters. Even loot didn't matter that much as feeling of victory when you finally exterminate that 100% delirium 40% beyond maps with 10 harbingers and 5 breches and abysses.

I've rarely used beyond for the drops (mostly before this league, to stock up on some divines). So not commenting from that perspective.

Anyway, today I fought my first scourge boss in a t10 map (I've not played scourge league). It took 5+ min, the thing had the most massive HP pool in existence. The fight was amazingly boring, mostly me running in a circle and waiting for the boss to die. Drop was 1c and 2 tainted chromatics (from reading the description, I assumed nearly worthless, checking poe.trade, yeah worthless).

The boss did look nice, I guess that is the one thing the game has left. Looking nice. Speaking of which, there have been some pretty good particle effects / animations that got added to the game since I stopped playing. Great job to whoever is making those, the game really has went up in the skill effects and animations department (first time I saw the new incursion wrap I was like "woah sick"). Unfortunately poe is not the game you play for the visuals; it looks OK but please.