2 Ethereal weapon: which is better?

https://prnt.sc/1ioqpmq

First off, neither of those are very good. Of the two, you should use the Oculus. But you’ll want a better one eventually.

In the bigger picture, if you have Mang Song’s vs. The Oculus with good powers on them, the difference between the setups ends up being pretty small. But you need good options for both for it to be a close comparison.

In this case, it’s not really a close comparison. With bad powers on both ethereals, you should basically always pick the Oculus (or Wizardspike) over Mang Song’s.

If you use a Mang Song’s that doesn’t have either the Deathwish or Orb of Infinite Depth power, it means you lose one of those powers since you can only pick one of them to go in the cube.

You don’t have the same problem with Oculus/Wizardspike: if you use the Oculus or Wizardspike without a good power, you could still wear the Orb of Infinite Depth (and drop either Aughild’s shoulders or Crimson’s pants/boots to make up for losing Firebird’s source) and then cube the Deathwish power. So you don’t have to lose one of the powers.

So in a situation where you don’t have an ethereal with the Deathwish or Orb of Infinite Depth power, you should basically always go the 1-hander + source route, wearing the Orb of Infinite Depth (and losing one of Aughild’s or Captain Crimson’s) and cube the Deathwish.

The Oculus + OoID + Deathwish + one of Aughild’s/Crimson’s >> Mang Song’s + Deathwish + Aughild’s + Crimson’s but no OoID

Now as for that specific Mang Song’s: that’s actually probably the worst possible power for a Mang Song’s, and it will make it close to unusable for the channeling Mirror Images build. Mang Song’s already struggles a bit with Arcane Power management since you don’t have APoC with the 2-hander setup. That Mang Song’s has the Echoing Fury power, which will make Arcane Power management way worse. Unless you take Magic Weapon: Conduit in the last skill slot I suppose.

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Exactly… and it isn’t even the damage portion that’s the biggest problem. You will likely miss the 80% DR.

btw. regarding Ethereals…

[rant]
I seriously have come to hate them and think there must be some bug. I’m trying to get the Barb ones right now, but to no avail. I even got 4 primals with the barb, but not a single barb Eth. Only thing was Grandfather during leveling, nothing since then. They just don’t drop. But haha, I got a Eth Oculus while playing with the barb, unsmart loot at it’s peak. This is easily the most solo-only unfriendly season theme they ever created, seeing that I have to play all classes and am stuck with my abysmal luck. I don’t have a single useful Eth. The arguably best I found is that Twister knife I use right now, as annoying as it is.

Well, I just started, so there’s still plenty time and hope. The only thing I really want is the transmogs unlocked. Once I have them, this season is over for me. I’m enjoying it as I would contracting cholera or something. Seriously…
[/rant]

:slight_smile:

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For what it’s worth, I completed the collection playing mostly solo. I did group up a bit on opening night, but after that the only group play I really did was powerlevelling some clanmates or doing pub bounties. I mostly just did T16 and speed 90s on each class.

It was a bit of a pain, especially on the classes I don’t really enjoy. I was like “can I go back to playing wizard yet?”.

It took me about 3-4 hours for most classes, except necro (2 hours) and Witch Doctor (10 hours).

I’d have two extra classes rolling at the same time to speed up gearing. One that was fully geared and farming ethereals and the next one that I was gearing with the shards from the class I was farming on. So I started on wizard (obviously!), then geared a DH. Once I had the DH geared, I started farming GR90s on DH, and spending the shards to gear the next class (monk). And kept rotating like that until I was done.

The downside is that strategy meant I didn’t play wizard for a good while. And I definitely was missing wizard pretty bad by the end of it. Started on wizard and once I got my second class up, I basically didn’t play wizard again until I was done the ethereal collection.

Sped things up a bit though, because typically by the time I farmed the 3 ethereals on a class I’d also basically finished gearing the next class up with the shards.

I also planned out what builds I wanted for GR90s leading up to the season. so I knew exactly what items to go for so I could maximize the value of my shards and DBs.

It’s definitely a pain, but it won’t take that long if you keep at it.

I was finished with it almost a week ago…

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Hm, that’s something I will try at once. I do have some puzzle rings stashed. Seem like I suffer from Alzheimer for not coming up with this idea myself :crazy_face:

Here, have a :cupcake:, some :beer: and :fireworks:

…and obviously: + :heart:

This should save my time. Still hating ethereals, though…

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Oh, one other thing I didn’t include in that post, if you’re going to gamble bloodshards for rings, do it on a level 31 hero as they have the fewest possible legendary rings in a loot pool that includes the puzzle ring. I seem to recall WD being used as it only has 3 possibilities (some classes have 4). It doesn’t matter that the puzzle rings will be level 31, they can still be used to open The Vault in the Cube.

any of DH, WD, monk, or sader is fine for level 31 puzzle ring gambling as they each only have 3 rings in the pool.

not barb (Band of Might), wizard (Manald Heal), or necro (Circle of Skeleton Mages) as they all have a 4th ring.

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Hm, yes this works just fine. I’ll have to farm some more Puzzle Rings, now then… I only have five in stash atm. plus 1 ancient, but using that one would be quite the waste. But getting rings is trivial, only some GRs to farm shards, shouldn’t pose an issue. The Illusiory boots, though… haven’t dropped so far for me in the season. Again, just my luck. So it’s A2 bounties with my twister chic, then. Just what I like… pointless bounties, lol.

Mang Song SUCK!. the bonus pathetic…

these ethereal weapons seems like a “Hell fire” ring or amulet which grants a random passives. but its a weapon version

Well, wizards got the stick anyways, for their own eth transmogs. I means, among them is a 2H staff and a dagger. Yup, excellent, who will equip those? Maybe on the follower. Leaves us with Oculus which is nice but only works for wands. But there’s still swords and maces from other classes. Wohoho… regarding Mang Song, I would probably have designed it way different. Like, maybe with 3 sockets, + Min-Max damage of all four elements and some insane stuff like “doubles maximum arcane power and AP regeneration but removes all cost reduction effects. The damage of all spenders is increased by xx% per point of Arcane Power spent.”… maybe double attack speed on top, increased crit chance and the like… and if we talk about lessons, add “vitality bonus also increases your main stat”. Or they could have flat out allowed to equip a source together with the staff.

Hey, you could wear a regular Wizardspike for a Frozen Orb build. I’d argue weaing Unstable Scepter is the better option, but you technically could wear the dagger and cube the wand.

So you could transmog your regular Wizardspike into a … slightly different Wizardspike!

On a somewhat related topic, I have the Wizardspike power on my Wizardspike. A Wizardspike’d Wizardspike! Makes me chuckle.

Too bad the Oculus power isn’t in the ethereal pool too. Then you could have the Oculus power on your Oculus too!

Wow, that is… unimpressive. Well, at least you can use spear transmogs for daggers (which is a joke in itself), so Arioc works just fine. For the odd one out who actually wears Wizzy.

On an unrelated side note, I wish they’d introduce some source transmogs sometime since most wiz offhands are outright ugly.