2.7.1 Patch Notes Ethereal Loot Chase

General Discussion
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One has to find 21 Ethereal items in order to get the transmogs for future seasons and beyond. This is straight up BONKERS. There are a very limited group of players who even like all of the classes enough to play them and an even smaller group who has the time to grind all of the classes at max level to get all 21 items. This is NOT an honoring of Diablo 2, it is a return to the D3 vaniila release where one had to buy a collector’s edition to get special dyes to apply to one’s gear in game. I found it to be a real petty move back at D3 launch and this follows in the same vein. If one excludes the Ethereal idea the next season is mostly a repeat of season 23. More boredom and frustration. Even if the power of the Ethereal items allows every single non-viable build to magically clear GR 125 like its GR 85, the boredom will be set upon the player base with lightning speed.

It looks like Blizzard is trying to enhance demand for D2R. Here’s the problem. Making me more dissatisfied with D3 does NOT increase my desire for D2R. It isn’t making Immortal more attractive either.

My first priority right now before any season theme, buffs, nerfs, new features, season journey rewards, or set/item reworks is a fix to the lag and disconnect issues tied to FireBirds.

Before anyone tosses out suggestions and workarounds:

  1. no change to the sound settings has removed the issues
  2. reinstalling Diablo 3 has not removed the issues
  3. no I have not replaced the D3 sound library file and I have no intention to play with the sound removed from the game (let them fix the damn game that we paid for)
  4. reinstalling a clean fresh Windows 10 does not remove the issues
  5. no changes to the video/graphics settings remove the issues
  6. equipping or unequipping CoE does not remove the issues
  7. My internet is good and I got a speed upgrade between Feb and March of this year
  8. Time of day has no effect on lag and disconnects
  9. No I have not monkeyed around with the processor affinity settings for the game’s executable (again let them fix the damn game that we paid for)
  10. I have not seen any communication coming from the devs/forum mods that indicates that they have nailed down the problem and are working on a fix to it

The above list is based on my experience. The lag and disconnect issues occur on 2 systems:

  • Ryzen 7 1700x system with 16GB RAM and a GTX 1060 6GB video card
  • Ryzen 7 3700x system with 32GB RAM and a RTX 2060 video card

If anyone has a definitive fix for the lag/disconnect issues associated with Firebirds please post a reply to this thread.

I like many others have become bored to death and frustrated with the current season. My boredom stems from me not being able to enjoy the Firebird changes. It is not worth the effort to torture myself through rifts/GRs only to suffer the ill effects of lags and disconnects when the issue are not my equipment or internet connection. I’ve already tried playing other classes but the boredom set in almost immediately. I am not excited about playing the other classes right now considering the current sets/items/builds. There are some builds in the Wizard class that would be fun to play but they are not viable much further than T-16 rifts. Who in their right mind wants to put in 14+ days worth of hours into a build that works until around GR 94-99 and then falls apart or requires extreme GR fishing to clear a GR 110? At one point I was going to roll a barb strictly to become good at the zBarb role. However, why would I spend the time to do that when the lag and disconnects will be waiting for me in group play with organized and pub groups.

The idea of a lets get a new season going with a good theme and some rebalancing changes sounds great until one realizes that the big FireBird change after like 7+ years is no change at all if the game is damn near unplayable. If this next season goes forward with no communication and no fix to the issues listed above, then at some point future set and item revisions will be rendered mute because the game is damn near unplayable.

For the would be bored and trollish types. I have no cookies or food for you. There is plenty of other threads for which you can forage. Please do not post here if you have nothing sane, valid, on-topic, and non-trollish to contribute. If you are starving for cheap laughs please find another post. If you are just looking to increase your post count this is not the thread to leech from. Feed elsewhere.

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Necro has been released for almost 4 years and we still can’t use Necro armor transmogs on other classes, yet they have the balls to ask players to grind on all seven classes in a single season for new transmogs or miss them forever.

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The lag and disconnect/crash issues are not tied to firebirds, trust me. It happens with all classes.

Back to topic:

I can only reincarnate 3 characters per season, how can i play all classes without deleting characters? And i DONT want to delete characters…really no.

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I haven’t played all the other characters. However, when I played DH and Monk solo on EU (I’m on the US North/East Coast), I did not have the lag and D/C issue like with FireBird Wiz. With FireBird Wiz solo or group I would randomly get stutter lag, rubberbanding, 7 to 12 second freezes, and random disconnects. The latency meter would be green the entire time in most cases, and my latency hover between about 80ms to 120ms. On the US realm my latency meter would be green and I would have latency between 20ms and 70ms. Usually it would remain between 20ms to 40ms but occasionally it would jump to about 70ms. With above latency ranges there should not be 7 to 12 second freezes, stuttering/rubberbanding, etc. With what I experienced in game, I do NOT doubt that the lag is NOT limited to FireBird Wiz. The other class that I had FireBird like lag was AoV Crusader (solo and group).

I also do not want to a bunch of characters to play classes that I’m not interested in playing. This requirement is meant for streamers, and organized group play types that do not care about deleting characters. They might find a few who will chase this transmog requirement but I won’t be doing it.

I had not thought about the above.

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just read the blog again…

What is the point in this season when you can’t keep the items? Why not make these items a new core feature for the whole game?

I was really exited to farm for good items, a point in this game that barely exist, sadly it will go on.

?!?!?!?!

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While I agree with you that we should be able to keep the items, I could not begin to open up on that part of the issue. Again, they have yet to communicate anything on the lag, freezing, d/c issues, but can throw together this new not fully disclosed feature that comes with questionable conditions. I did not have the lag, freezing, and d/c issues in season 22 and since the PTR is always laggy there is very little way to determine that there would be game performance issues once the new patch is released.

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I fully agree with you.

Besides that the implementation has many other flaws. Even if we would get 7 additional character slots, I simply would not be able to obtain all 21 ethereals. Some people like need to spent time on other things, like work.

I simply do not have the time so this thing is out of reach for me.

The ethereals have rng on rng on rng on rng etc. Rolling one that would fit in my build is an EXTREMY small chance. Waaayyy too small, especially since it is a one season only thing.

Even if I would find a decent one that fits decently (not even perfectly), I am expecting little gain gr level wise. Looking at 120s you might get half a level gain. At most.

It is not like you can suddenly do a 135 while 122 is your normal max.

The idea of introducing some D2 things, like ethereals is absolutely great.

I will get me D2:R at some point. Using D3 in an attempt to boost D2:R sales has no effect on that for me.

However, seeing how they treat D3 (and have treated it in recent past), does prevent me from getting excited for D4. I will most likely not buy D4. At all.
They refuse to fix various bugs that prevent playing the game, lag spikes, disconnects, firebird issues. So why expect long livety for D4?
Or proper bug fixing after a few years?

And yes, I would pay for nice content updates for D3 and even D2.

It is the implementation (as explained in the patch notes) that is abysmal. Horrible, yuk.

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I totally agree. If they aren’t going to take good care of D3 then they aren’t incentivizing my next purchase. I have not pre-ordered anything yet and I’m not committing to the purchase of any new Blizz products. As I said in another thread, I uninstalled all Blizz games except D3. I have not logged into the US or EU servers since May 27th. Come the 17th of this month it will be 21 days. We will see how Blizz behaves in the coming weeks and months. These patch notes are not showing Blizz on the right path.

For the ignorant types, please don’t mistake my uninstalls and announcements of them as me stomping my feet, holding my breath, and having a temper tantrum. It is to show that I’m laser focused on a single product. Blizz slipped up at BlizzCon with Diablo Immortal (trying to promote a mobile game to a hard core PC fan base), and then allowed their employees to show arrogance when the BlizzCon attendees rejected Immortal. Those count as 2 separate strikes against them. Blizz slipped a 3rd time with the War3:Reforged fiasco. Season 23 released yet no communication on the game performance issues, is yet another strike. Attempting to ignore the players asking for help with the game performance issues, while attempting to promote upcoming products. Really?? How many strikes are we at? Blizz is likely to disregard D3 and its players since we have some players that will pre-order stuff and not care.

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Ethereals will have unique icons, names, item types, and sounds originally found in Diablo II.

Just imagine all the trouble this is going to cause. =)

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Could you provide an example?

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Provide an example of what?

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All of this right here. I could give on wiff about Diablo 4 at this point. I’m only slightly interested in the PTR as it is and I used to play them religiously.

I’m just so sick of blizzards absolute laziness and/or lack of interest in actually supporting this title. Every few months we got some half bake measure that is intended to pretend that they care or string people a long, but it’s pretty fake and usually devoid of anything substantial.

After playing games like POE, where the support/marketing/dev team is interacting almost daily with the community, coming back to D3 and seeing this stuff is laughable. Even when POE rolls out some lower effort seasons (like the current one) it’s leaps and bounds way more time effort and resources put into the task. New areas get created, new assets, voice acting, characters, permanent additions to the game (usually), and a slew of non league oriented game fixes and QOL updates (which happen weekly).

Diablo is literally crickets between seasons and shows that they don’t listen/or understand the player base during the PTR, and pretty much have no clue and is out of touch when it comes to seasonal themes or game updates. The most recent things that they did to this game we praised them for, the ladder update and the followers, but honestly these are only praise worthy because it’s the ONLY thing that’s changed in years. In most games those thing would have been expected and not been a major highlight.

The ONLY content updates we get for the most part are temporary gimmicks and either nerfed to the ground or totally overpowered set changes. All things that require very little effort such as just messing with a few bits of code and shuffling some number to make these changes.

It almost feels like this is coming from higher up too because I know that there are passionate people left in this company who’s hands are probably completely tied and aren’t able to do many things they would like when it comes to community out reach. How much is the Diablo 3 operating budget? Is it nothing at all? Because that’s what it feels like. I could mod a season faster and more engaging on my free time, by myself (if I had the tools) then the kind of effort we see from the Blizzard team.

Literally we get a few blue posts every few months if we are lucky, and some goofy out of touch tweets. Once in a blue moon a CM will pop in on a stream or something, most likely on his own time/dime. Most players are far more active and in touch with Diablo 3 and the community, than the entirety of Activision/Blizzard combined.

I’d love for Blizzard to prove me wrong here. Just once.

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I disagree with you on the ethereal point, but everything else is spot on. I am looking forward to the ethereals as a season theme but it’s fine to disagree.

It is extraordinarily frustrating how many technical issues still plague d3 and have not even seen official acknowledgment from blizzard (that I’m aware of, please correct me if I’m wrong).

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Highly likely. It seems that Diablo haven’t a dedicated devs team. And deals with some ppl which worked on Diablo periodically, not all the time. Just like as HotS

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The trouble Mersinary believes the ethereals having D2 sounds will cause.

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Worse. You don’t get to keep even the transmogs UNLESS every single Ethereal item drops for you, across 7 classes.

All 21 of them have to drop before you get unlockable transmogs that transfer to NS and future seasons.

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It’s just cosmetic. No big deal. This isn’t WoW. More action, less dress up barbie.

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When the content is shallow to the point of a small puddle, transmogs become more valuable in pursuit of fun. The existing models of items become quite drab very quickly and the number available dyes is just as drab and shallow. The dyes are shallow by design since they wanted to use that to sell more collector’s editions. Almost no one wants their character to look like Wizard #2931374556308041.

Even if you remove the transmog part of the patch notes there is basically not much there. Worse than the shallow-ness of the patch notes the game performance issues are unaddressed so why even bother with grinding all the classes in the first place. If they fix the game performance issues people are going to want the transmogs.

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Someone said it before, and I think it’s a good idea worth changing before this goes live:

Make Ethereals not subject to smart loot, and let any class receive any of the drops. This would help those that wanted to chase the permanent 'mogs.

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Bad idea. If they do this, drops will be totally random so you might end up with many ethereals for some classes and zero for other classes. Smart loot is much better as you will be able to farm easily for 3 of each class. Yes, you will need to create and level up 7 characters successively, but it is still the most relevant way to proceed.

1 Like