Here’s how to do it right. 
Echoing Nightmare 1-70 Levelling Diablo 3 Season 26 PTR Hardcore - YouTube
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Not necessarily, you can get overwhelmed by timeout. (i.e. no mobs killed in around 1min:10s.)
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It’s a “dream” mode. What happens in the Nightmare should stay in the Nightmare.
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Or maybe hardcore players will find something else to play. Most hardcore players cannot envision “dropping down to softcore” for a season.
I’m hoping that the devs actually intended Echoing Nightmare to be a separate death event from the main game, but put it up first as a normal death just to gauge player feedback (to be sure they make the right decision) or possibly there’s a technical glitch preventing the separate death event on PTR at the moment.
But whetever the devs’ reason, I can’t imagine they’d go live with hardcore deaths in the Echoing Nightmare feature counting against the player in the main game!
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They just need to set it so that when you TP in the EN, it just ends the event at the end of the TP cycle and you can collect your rewards. This keeps it HC as death is permanent, but if you are afraid of dieing, it would be the same as trying to tp to town in a bad GR or open world scenario.
There still needs to be some sort of risk/reward or else it isn’t HC.
Really, the key to this is to know when to stop killing mobs and start using the pylons. Once you see that the mobs are not dying fast enough and the overwhelm bar is filling up you should start your exit strategy by letting the bar fill up to about 3/4 without hitting the shield pylon. Then hit the pylon and sit still until the bar fills up. If you time everything right and are good a avoiding the trash mobs you will be golden.
But what if one plays with a EN noob in their team who just keeps killing?
Unless one can TP out, I say just make this like CR’s and set dungeons where death does not matter in HC.
Yeah… not going to lie, I do not play HC with others. Not worth the risk. Split bounties but I never go into a boss fight with others. Pretty much solo HC for me. But to answer your question, it would not make a difference anyways. At a certain point they will not be able to kill the mobs and then you just need to avoid the mobs and wait for the bar to fill. If the noob keeps attacking then he will make it that much easier for you… just remember you don’t have to run faster than the bear… just faster than your companions.
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Ive also made a post about this myself. i dont think its intended that we are dying permanently in these nightmare echos, hoping for a blue response on this because its probably gonna make or break if i play hardcore this season.
im not saying im gonna be mad, ima just be disappointed lol.
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When I use play HC, I would mostly play in groups. To me, D3 is a social game so yeah, the way EN currently works is just bad how I play the game.
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I edited my post… you would be fine in my estimation. As long as no one purposely kills you.
OK I tried again, and indeed it is possible to run Echoing Nightmare in HC with a Flavor of Time. Once you proc your second life passive, you take the shield and stop hitting mobs, and 2mn is enough for the bar to fill up so you get overwhelmed without dying. But you need to do this either solo or with a group of friends who also know what to do. I would not do this with random people, because if one continues to kill mobs, you die…
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If I remember it correctly, there was a spot (far edges) in the Greater Rift Trial that mobs can not reach. I tried to looked for it in the Echoing Nightmare but every spot the mobs can get to you. 
Anyway, this is the only feature worth seeing in this season so maybe i’ll pass. “Pass” means until I finish the season journey.
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sorry, but like with the original trials years ago, this theme is CRAP.
it’s a NO from me. Season journey in s26 and then I’m outta here.
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Nice testing.
I still don’t think it’s very player friendly to HC. Seems like a lot of know how obtained from external guides is required before one should step into the game mode.
Maybe they need a ‘yield’ button next to the overwhelmed progress bar for HC players to hit.
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I looked over a few videos I recorded yesterday in which I had a Flavor of Time, and was standing still with the shield pylon, and the shield wore off before the bar had exceeded. I was not able to reproduce that today. I’m just wondering if there was just a timing issue with the servers being wonky.
If you can handle GR140+, the Pylon is not needed. It’s tougher the lower your stats are, because you can currently rank up far beyond a realistic level. Example:
No paragon used. No Gems used. All yellow gear with the exception of Grasps of Essence, which is used for leveling anyway. Ended up at Tier 62. While I’m sure it could be pushed higher, this is mainly to demonstrate how unrealistic the level you can push currently is.
All it will take to successfully PK someone is an early pop of the shield pylon, kill a few monsters, and quit the game while they have their shield saving them from the logoff time. If you can’t survive Tier 140+ with your gear, it’s practically a guaranteed death.
Sure, if you know what you’re doing, you could exit the game too if someone does this to you, but there are probably going to be many players who don’t bother with the forums to know anything but the difficulty goes up, and that they need to use the shield pylon as a quitting tool.
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So pretty much eff HC then
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The good news is the new patch adds elites, so I dropped a ton of levels, which helps things. Rather than going 60+ in all yellows, I’m now in the 40s, so I’m not in one shot territory anymore before I know what’s going on. That is, by the time I pop the shield pylon, I can survive a hit or two. And with just a 6 piece, I’m no longer going over Tier 100. It’s more dangerous in the sense that everything starts exploding, but far less dangerous in the sense that you’re not 20+ levels underleveled.
And this will be the case, I know I wont do it.
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Similar to how you could get Ethereals to drop in a low level vault by limiting the loot pool at level 5, you can make it so that the monsters in echoing nightmare never deal more damage than a level 1 monster on normal. The molten explosions do no damage either. The only thing you have to concern yourself with is the meteors that fall from the sky.
Steps:
- Have a friend create a level 1 game on normal.
- Join that game
- Friend leaves game and switches to a level 70 character or leaves completely
- Game will be locked at level 1 (until another level 1 joins and starts gaining levels).
Farm XP and level 125 Whispering Atonements to your hearts content. While the hit points of the enemies scale with the current tier, the damage they do, does not.