Echoing Nightmares are entertaining for the first 3 you run. Afterwards they feel like less interactive GRs. The only benefit they provide is very large exp gains which is extremely helpful during season play but doesn’t seem as impactful/cool as etherals/soul shards (I know every season can’t be crazy overpowered). I think the nightmares should have better loot drops(ancient+) and maybe some variety in bosses/mob type that can spawn.
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Absolutely agree.
I was disappointed when I first read the patch notes that there were no unique items associated with the Echoing Nightmare.
I think the Whispering Atonement should be removed and instead a random gem in your bag should be auto leveled to 100 so you can control which one is affected.
I also don’t understand why the Whispering Atonement is limited to level 100. It’s unclear what the point of the Echoing Nightmare is other than to acquire these gems for augments. Which is nice, but not a full season theme’s worth of value.
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I think that’s their precise purpose, i.e. a way for people to easily get 500 stat Caldesann’s augments by using the Atonements rather than legendary gems. If you can get a level 100 Atonement in a few minutes inside a Nightmare, that’s way, way faster than running 20 GRs to get a legendary gem from 0-100.
But is that the only purpose? Because if so, it’s not that appealing, and not worth playing a whole season around. It was presented as an exciting endgame experience. In its current form, it does not meet that expectation.
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They’re an alternative to rifts, to mix up end-game gameplay a bit. I’m not sure anyone ever said they were “exciting”, but a change of scenery and pace after years and years of chain rifting is very welcome 
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Did anyone even notice you get that stones having 100/150? You can up them further the usual way - through GR.
However I also think this is not enough for a season theme. But as we know Bliz NEVER changes season theme during PTR no matter we say.
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I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. They aren’t going to change the theme (how would they have time) but they have very often made meaningful changes based on feedback. Think of Dregs of Lies, for example, which was originally worthless but then became the de-facto pet soul shard, all due to player feedback.
To your point, limiting the scale of the new legendary gem to 100 in the Echoing Nightmare is self defeating. Players will only go there a couple times and only for augments. Letting it or something else even better actually scale with your progress in the Nightmare would be a lot more interesting and engaging.
Why would I be sarcastic? I don’t 100% like this theme and they will not change it. There is no even place for a joke, srsly.
I personally think they could make season theme better if they added 3rd ring slot for example. And also we could have some fallen nephalems as bosses in the end of those new rifts.
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Totally agree with you.
Not trying to be negative here. I would be very happy with the S26 theme if they didn’t give us 2 absolutely amazing seasons with ethereals and soul shards. I remember I was super excited for the new seasons to start when I played S24 and S25 PTR.
I played S26 PTR on Thursday and today and am already bored with it.
There is just nothing special about the Echo, just a little bit more shards maybe? I did not count what I looted carefully after each run, but a wave 130ish dropped about the same amount of legendaries (maybe less) than GR90+. A little bit more blood shards but who cares about it… It’s just a quantity improvement, not quality. Also, from what I see so far, after people are able to fast run GR90s, GR still has better efficiency for item farming. All ECHO gives is just more experience. I remember that my first Echo run slingshot me from paragon 15ish to 400ish, but I was like so what…
Another “bad” thing is that there is no big shift in builds to promote meta shake-up, except maybe for the reworked barb set. Chance is all the current non-season S-tier will be the S26 S tier, and Inna monks will (again) be everywhere.
Yesterday there was a bug that allows legendary gems to be socked into armor and pants. I thought it was intentional and was kinda happy about that. It was pretty cool but nowhere near as powerful as soul shards. They fixed it lol.
These are just my personal experience and opinion. I know there are people still excited about S26. Anyways, I hope they can offer a bit more this season. If not, the D2 new ladder will be open soon and I know I’m excited about that lol.
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AGREED. Echoing nightmare is a nice simple addition, that should even stay on afterwards (like when we got better followers - was it season 23?). It will speed up Paragon point farming, thus getting us higher levels much faster… Same idea with the Whispers of Atonement.
BUT, it does not makes us stronger. We were spoiled with Ethereals, and then Soul Shards. I usually push lvl 100 maybe 105… and in the last 2 seasons I went past 115 easily. Not so this time… nothing “special” once you have all your ancients leveled up… Just echoing nightmares that I feel will get very repetitive very fast.
I don’t have a solution, except maybe try this: upping the drop rate of PRIMALS in echoing nightmares. From its current 1/1000 to maybe 1/100 or something like that. This might make them more attractive… or little bit more special. Just a thought.
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[To PsyStrike] I love the idea of having legendary gems slotted everywhere!!! Yeah, I know, way too late to make such a change… but boy THAT would push the game in a new direction!
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Perhaps not but they could change the cap at which the Atonements are granted at the end of the Nightmare. Currently, they will give you Atonements at rank 100/150. They could easily amend this cap to be 125/150 to be ostensibly the same as what we’re getting from soul shards this season.
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Maybe a nose ring?..
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26 is gonna be quck and boring season. easy conquests, fast leveling and paragon thanks for the theme and fast augmenting. we’ll be through with it in a week tops.
if THAT is all they prepared for anniversary i am not impressed.
the only things to challenge in new rifts is hunting that unique mob and killing it.
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Your right i don’t see this seasons theme lasting long. ill be bored of it in a week or so and move on, my suggestion would be to overlap season 25 over top this seasons theme. Please D3 change it up your going to have the 150 hardcore guys loving it and the rest of us looking for something better to do.
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Just add the 4th cube slot with S26 theme & it will be more fun overall.
Grift system changes are needed and I’m glad they did it after so long time, great.
And in may, D3 will be 10 years old, so pls make S26 a god like season 
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Screams should be added to the game all the time, because they are such a small feature that they wouldnt really impact the game. Seasonal things tend to change the fundamental game and how it’s played. Screams do not have that same impact.
It’d be better to implement screams, AND bring back one of the old seasonal themes.
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I agree. I pretty much did 3 of them and I’m already over it completely.
A weak season is really disappointing considering there’s a 4-month wait between them. I don’t see why they couldn’t at least do some numbers adjustments here and there on sets to balance them and give us more stuff to try out.
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I agree it is not enough for a season theme. But you know there is this content called non season. This might be a good time to give it a try. And you know what blizzard will let you
use all your paragon from past season as a head start. Sounds like a good season theme to
me!!!
1 Like