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.
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.
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.
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.
And here is the argument I make against the argument that their power justifies rarity.
The ethereal is really just a legendary power affix with the special ethereal affixes and an added passive. Passives themselves don’t really increase your power level, and by the time you get to the 5th best passive for a build its pretty much utility.
That means the added power that’s being justified by rarity isn’t actually that rare. By the time you’ve gotten to GR90 you’ve likely gotten 1 or more ethereals already. What’s rare is the convenience of being able to play whatever build you wanted.
Ethereal drop rates that are too low don’t make the power creep rare, it just makes it inconvenient. I may have wanted to play Frozen Orb but I got a Twister ethereal instead. I could wait for a Frozen Orb ethereal to drop or I could farm Twister gear and make use of this powerful ethereal weapon that dropped.
This is different than other games where a whole class of powerful weapons would be on the same rare tier. Here, 1/100 isn’t that rare given how fast legendaries fall. But 1/100 plus 1/3 ethereals, plus ~2/15 legendary affixes…plus a passive…that’s what makes these things rare.
Real easy. A slow leveler solo should hit 70 in 4-5 hours and a fast leveler in about half of that. Post 70 is a snowball once resources start being collected with how easy Haedrig’s gifts and LOD gems are to get. Even that portion of the game will be massively accelerated by an ethereal weapon because the lower torments don’t really need the giant multipliers that the later ones do so any ethereal is a massive power spike.
Getting to the point of grinding these out isn’t the problem, it’s the lottery afterwards that has to be tuned.
The Season Journey already requires steps such as Level 3 Gems to 70. Do you think that players will be achieving this before they have found multiple Ethereals?
It’s not necessary to do speed GR90s to get a ton of drops, or a ton of Ethereals; it’s just a commonly achievable “peak” for maximizing the rate. If you considered GR90s to be 3/hr, then farming GR80 would likely still be 2.75/hr.
Ethereals will be plentiful, as is, while still retaining some level of rarity and a reason to keep longing for a slightly better roll. Everyone who wants an Ethereal will have several. And so will almost all of the people who don’t want them…
we will see!!
or not!! who know.
No, ETH will not be as plentiful as you think!
Their drop rate is where all legendarys should be in the first place. Let the flameing begin!
That would be fine if the game’s top level was still about Torment 6.