The drop rate is way too low to be worth playing this season. These weapons might end up being worse than the best in slot weapon and yet, they seem only possible to get in the end game. I did 1 minute rat runs with my speed necro, with 2500 paragon for an hour and I did not find a single ethereal. It would take a non competetive season player at least a month to farm that many items. By the time, you get your first ethereal, it could be totally useless to you. Ethereals should be in part a way to encourage build diversity, there’s no point if they only drop weeks after you have achieved the meta.
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They’ll drop, and when they drop they’ll be powerful. But the fun of them is in the legendary and passive affixes and getting one you want with the correct ethereal will be very difficult with the 1/100 drop rate experienced in the first half of the PTR.
The patch made many ethereals more interesting by making them more differentiated but that means it is now harder to get what you want vs the more generic version 1 items. Witch Doctor in particular just made the odds much, much harder because they now must match the legendary affix with the ethereal. Their passives tend to be pretty context sensitive, too.
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60 runs.
800 bloodshards per run.
PTR Bag of Fortune costs 50 bloodshards and contain 3 ethereals each.
60 * 800 = 48000 bloodshards = 960 caches = 2880 ethereals.
There’s also 12 legendaries per Guardian, so that’s 12 * 60 = 720 legendaries.
Ethereals are roughly 1 in 100 legendaries, so that’s 7 from drops.
Of course, there’s one important factor you’ve missed and that is…
Ethereals are only for seasonal heroes.
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lets not also forget a little thing called RNG 
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Fairly certain you missed the entire point here, hes not spending blood shards on a PTR-ONLY vendor, even if he is on non-seasonal where it wont drop, I still have yet to see any ethereals drop in any difficulty beyond t6 when i got plvled
No, I didn’t.
When I solo levelled 1-70 on the PTR I got 6 or 7 ethereals during that progress.
People that have been recording their drops on the PTR (drops, not vendor bags) have recorded an approximate drop rate for ethereals being 1 in 100 legendaries. In 60, one minute ratruns (I’m just going to assume GR90 or higher if they’re speeding that fast) that’s 12 legendaries per run, or 720 legendaries. Hence, on average, they’d get 7 ethereals an hour at that speed.
720 events
1% chance of success per event
Chance of at least 1 success = 99.93%
https://www.omnicalculator.com/statistics/binomial-distribution?c=GBP&v=n:720,probability:1!perc,type:1,r:1
720 events
1% chance of success per event
Chance of at least 7 successes = 58.05%
https://www.omnicalculator.com/statistics/binomial-distribution?c=GBP&v=n:720,probability:1!perc,type:1,r:7
720 events
1% chance of success per event
Chance of exactly 0 successes = 0.072%
https://www.omnicalculator.com/statistics/binomial-distribution?c=GBP&v=n:720,probability:1!perc,type:0,r:0
I’m sticking to the more likely theory being that the OP was playing a non-seasonal hero than being unlucky enough to be the 1 in 1389 people that would get zero ethereals from 720 legendaries.
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Yes, RNG was a pain for my Monk. Didn’t get first - and only Ethereal - until 42. Had to buy the others once I dinged 70.
Other classes got the 1st at 19 - 24, with 2nd in the mid-30’s to early 40’s. WD and Wiz both got all three well before 70, but then needed to be traded in because they were being out-leveled by 70 gear.
They drop like candy in Normal under level 70. They can start dropping at level 11.
Think about the loot pool. ETHs can drop under 70 on any difficulty. Ancient and Class sets are Torment only. Primals only drop on Torments after you clear a GR70 solo.
The bigger the loot pool the less chance you have to get one. You are drawing a number out of a bag of 100 items instead of 10.
Now all that said. I did not get the scythe ETH for my Necro at all leveling. Which is odd. The other three test classes got their items by level 27 or so.
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I think Meteorblade cracked the case. 2500 para speed runs on PTR suggests a copied char not a seasonal one. The drop rate is low, but it’s where it should be. 10x more likely than a primal and probably 10x more useful to boot.
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Seasonal PTR characters are well over 2500 already lol
The estimated drop rate of a primal is 1/400. The estimated drop rate of an ethereal is 1/100.
Why?
this made me laugh XD
A handful maybe, but it’s a possibility that he just imported.
Thanks, I was told 1/100 ancients (1/1000) for primals, but I think your 1/400 is more accurate. That being said, 4x more likely to roll ethereal than primal and ethereals even likely going to be more useful than whatever primal drops.
Pretty well discussed here.
I’m curious why you think it is a good drop rate. You may have noticed I was pretty active in that conversation. I’ve tried to be active in most of the drop rate conversations because I feel with so little content in this patch it’s of prime importance to the success or failure of this season.
Also keep in mind that conversation was before the recent patch. While overall the patch greatly buffed many ethereals it also made it much harder to acquire the proper one for many classes.
Honestly I’ve played about a dozen seasons and this one seems kind of exciting if only for the idea that it buffs a lot of my favorite builds. I understand it’s dependent heavily on RNG (probably more so for me since I main WD) but I guess that’s what makes it exciting. I think the reply I linked sums up my feelings about it pretty well.
At any rate, it’s only my opinion. We don’t have to agree. 
we should merge this post with the other one, they even have the same tittle…
Thanks for the reply. I, too, am very excited for this season. I think it has a lot of potential, but its kinda tricky with ethereals being an all or nothing drop.
Once you’ve got vaguely decent gear and can do GR90s in 5 minutes per run (that’s not even quick solo these days) that’s 12 runs per hour. Each Guardian drops 12 legendaries. That’s 144 legendaries per hour. If you were doing 3 minute runs instead, that’s 240 legendaries per hour. So, that’s 144-240 legendaries per hour, or an average of around 180 per hour. At a drop rate of 1 in 100, that puts you at 1-2 ethereals per hour. Based on how powerful these things are, I’d say 1-2 an hour seems fine to me.
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and there it is, most soloers will not be able to do the <5 min gr90’s untill about a month into the season and most will be done with the season by then!
So for most soloers this will be a no go season!
It’s easily possible to be doing sub 5 minute GR90s within a week of the season start.