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!
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That would be fine if the game’s top level was still about Torment 6.