Ethereals make every other weapon obsolete.
They need to go. It was fun for a season, but adios ethereals.
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Think Ethereals as a test bed for what’s to come. Ethereals won’t arrive here again, at least I presume not with the same name unless they really in for bringing back D2 Ethereals in D3. They were part of Season 24, Feats of Strength and now they’re gone.
Something similar may arrive in the game for real, but those items won’t be the same thing as Ethereals as we know them. They probably have a different model and different powers. If Ethereal theme continues we might even get unrepairable items with immense power but I think that’s a story for later.
For me, I wouldn’t mind if Ethereals return after S24 but I know dev team would think of something better or completely new.
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Blue weapons made whites obsolete. Yellows took over the spot from blues. Then legendary weapons came, then ancients, then primals. Now its ethereals.
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Narrow the loot pool of weapons to 3 items (at best, in reality it’s 1 or 2) per class that’s not salvage unseen doesn’t seem like a great idea though.
You might have a leg to stand on with that argument if ethereals were just another level upgrade up from primals with every item.
However, they are not - so you don’t.
Keeping a watered down version of the current Ethereals will make certain items confusing. For instance, what do you do with an Ethereal Windforce, which rolls similarly to a Yang’s Recurve? Or, what about Ethereal Buriza, when an unused 2-pierce Buriza already lives in game? That identity crisis should be avoided.
I’d prefer not to hunt for these same 3 Ethereal items again, let this iteration of Ethereals vanish. We’ll salvage and collect the materials at the end of season.
Maybe there is another creative, more balanced solution to Ethereals that will expand the loot hunt.
Primal = Always rolls max affixes within Ancient range.
Ethereal = Free passive, includes armor and jewelry. (yes - you can walk around with all of your class passives if you can find them)
Mythic = Max affix range exceeds Ancient range by up to 20%, excludes weapon damage. (ie. 5-8% AS, 6-12% CDR, 6-12% Damage)
Epic = Extra affix per item.
The goal is to make each item effectively 3-10% stronger than an ordinarily rolled ancient. Ethereal, Mythic and Epic drops should be 1 in 800, NOT from kadala or page 2 reroll – you have to find them.
I agree with Wudijo, extract the new affixes from the s24 ethereals and sprinkle them into unused items as legendary effects.
- 7 Spirit on Hit (make this 2.5% Resource on Hit so every class can benefit, belt slot)
- 10% damage per consecutive hit up to 100%. (4% damage per hit and 60% max, ring slot)
- Consecutive hits to enemies increases by 3%, up to 30% for 3 seconds, (amulet slot)
- Reduce the damage of enemies hit by 25% for 5 seconds (leg slot, for fragile LoD/LoN builds)
- +1 to Maximum damage per Paragon Level up to 800 (belt or bracer slot)
- Hits against Frozen enemies are always Critical Hits (replaces Broken Promises legendary affix)
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@dmkt
What would that mean? Can every Item roll as Mythic? The hunt for the best mythic items. 
I guess perfect gear would look like to get everything in Mythic, except some Ethereal if you need the passives. Sometimes an Epic item could be better if you want attack range, cd, chd, area damage and a socket.
But they should really decrease the effictivness of Paragon points. After 1000 points in vit/mainstat you should only get a +2 for every point you invest further.
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Rings with CDR, CH, CHD, AD and a socket I would wager would be better than 20% increase stats in most cases. Same with gloves, but change socket for mainstat. (assuming epic has the same stat values at ancients and possible to use caldesanns on)
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I would be okay with making them basically primals with a class skill and the effect like 10-100 damage increase, 10-30 attack speed increase, 25% damage debuff. resource x on crit, extra cooldown, crap like that. The 100% damage increase should be season only. Should we keep the ones we got? Probably not. OR, you could make them non-ladder recordable meaning any clear that uses one does not register on the ladder.
Hi Gegeforce,
The goal of this is to keep the loot hunt interesting without making everything overpowered, if you average 5-6% more damage per item slot, a full suit of gear can double your power. IMHO, that is worth playing for.
Any item can roll Primal, Ethereal, Mythic, or Epic. The best combination will include 1-3 Ethereals that boost damage + a combination of Mythic/Epic. In some cases Epic Gloves/Rings might be better than Mythic provided the affix rolls are above the baseline of a Primal.
Look at it this way for amulets:
Primal Amulet
20% Element
100% CHD
10% CHC
Ethereal Amulet
15-20% Element
50-100% CHD
8-10% CHC
Passive Ability
Mythic Amulet
15-24% Element
50-120% CHD
8-12% CHC
Epic Amulet
15-20% Element
50-100% CHD
8-10% CHC
10-20% Area Damage
As described, Mythic items will disappoint the most. So, I recommend guaranteeing the min range is 50% better than Ancient:
Mythic Amulet with Better Min
18-24% Element
75-120% CHD
9-12% CHC
On a similar note, Raxx made a video talking about a cheap solution to avoid Primal disappointment. We salvage bad Primals into a dust reagent which are used to craft another primal. This Primal Disappointment concern also applies to Mythic, Epic, Ethereal.
If a greater percentage of items were actually useful, red beams would less often result in sad feelings – the same for teal, purple, pink, gold, silver or whatever other colored beams are associated with these new items types.
That said, the item revamps we’ve begged for should happen sooner than this.
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DMKT I just have to say that I love this. Really adds more juice and excitement to the loot hunt.
I guess Epic items for low paragon players like me is great. Bracers with Life per Hit without giving up on vit. Nice.
I would be down for epic EVERYTHING. Purple tier items!
An idea could be that the new ones expire after x amount of time or something like that. Another could be that don’t work when a set bonus is active but that would put non-set builds ahead.
I think there are ways to keep this items in the game doesn’t matter if it is something similar to this or something else.
I agree with Schyzo…make them “Follower-Only” weapons after the season ends. Followers could still use a boost, and they wouldn’t be to the point of being overpowering, even with 300% to all their skills. If they remove the class restrictions on eths, delete the passive skill modifiers, and allow some of the more generic orange properties for the weapon types (eths) and block the class-specific ones, they could be used to empower followers a bit more. Besides, using eths on mercenaries/followers holds true to how they were used in Diablo 2, so it would be a fair move for them and it would be a way to keep them dropping AFTER the season in non-season without making builds too OP. They should remain to be rare drops though, to make their appearances worthwhile.
Followers need about 25,000x more damage to compare to players.
Sadly, no present day Ethereal will help that cause.
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I don’t think anyone argues to have followers on par with players.
I’m in for making LoN rings but only LoN rings bonuses reflect at Followers too. When you wear those rings, Asheara’s won’t work with them as well as other Sets so utility roles and damage dealing roles would be split properly. It’d be far from creating an omni build but it’d still be a nice touch and a motive to gear them properly. Just not sure how Enforcer gem would be balanced in all this.
I like the idea. They would likely take an easier route though. My idea is to make ethereals only usable in a forth cube slot. This fourth cube slot would extract the ethereal passive and/or legendary power. We would use your primal essence idea as the cost to extract it. The amount should be a lot. Also since I liked your idea ethereals could be classified as mythic ethereal or epic ethereal which would indicate whether just the passive or both passive and trait would get extracted. I also think they should be a minimum of 1-800 for a mythic and epic being even harder to get. I think there are a lot things they could add to the game and just make them really hard to find. I love hunting for the impossible stuff. We need more stuff like cosmic wings but in the form of usable items.
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I’m sorry if that has been answered elsewhere, but what will exactly happen to ethereals when the season ends - will they simply disappear, or will they be auto-salvaged?
no one knows yet
I have another crazy idea. Why not make them 1 use and vanished after the season ends?