You literally don’t have to do it. It’s an optional achievement which unlocks optional transmogs. They have no impact on game experience, they don’t improve the power of your characters, they do literally nothing except alter the cosmetic visibility of weapons. The ethereals weren’t designed around how convenient it would be to collect all 21 of them for an achievement, as they shouldn’t be. They were designed around the fun aspect of actually playing with them, with an added bonus for those who choose to collect all of them. The moment Blizzard starts balancing seasonal themes around how quickly a casual player can collect all of them, is the moment they utterly fail in the core design philosophy. You are not entitled to anything you don’t earn, whether that be in life or in video games. You wouldn’t complain about a co-worker earning a higher salary than you if they choose to spend an extra two hours per day at work because they have the free time to do so, but you can’t because you have a family, would you? You choose to spend your time in a way where you have less time for video games, and as such you deserve fewer rewards than those who decide to spend their time in a way where they have more time for video games. It’s quite simple logic really.
Under 2 hours when its clearly more than 2 hours as I explained. Being very lucky with drops cannot be relied upon. I did the achievement twice and both times required more than 20 rings. Clearly, that simple nuance evaded you. You originally spoke about…
However, you didn’t critique Meteorblade’s statement about time investment.
When you already have 1-2 transmogs that you are interested in then you have something. You can’t keep it beyond s-24 unless you unlock all 21 transmogs, thus my scenario is on point.
Thank you for stating the obvious. No one questioned whether it was optional or not. It was also, optional for you to omit stating the obvious since it does not contribute to the discussion.
You can explain how it is fun. Did you really need me to state the obvious, captain?
Two instances is not really a good basis to tell what the average is though. I did it in 23 rings, which is about 2 hours of rifting. Now sure, mileage will vary, but two hours is a hell of a lot better measuring stick than “countless hours” or “a hundred years” which the OP claimed. Especially since in theory you could do it in 11 rings. Now granted the amount of RNG needed to go your way for that to happen makes that extremely unlikely.
Because he’s not wrong?
You have no idea how the world works huh? Me explaining how I find something subjectively fun has no bearing whatsoever on your subjective opinion, if that was the case you clearly would have changed your opinion months ago when you made an identical thread.
Grats on finding your pacifier. You whining about some colossal time sink that doesnt exist is laughable. I got the achievement 3 times solo, once on all three Regions. I did it on NA shortly after the season started. Came back last month and finished the other two regions since it was so easy. I play very casually, with about the same NonSeasonal Paragons as you and less Seasonal Paragons and here was how much time it took:
NA - 28 hours, 47 minutes, 596 Paragons.
EU - 29 hours, 36 minutes, 675 Paragons.
Asia - 22 hours, 57 minutes, 662 Paragons.
I used 30-35 puzzle rings on each region.
All that sniveling for something that took much less time than a “Second Job” would take. And thats over 5 months. You really couldnt invest 22-29 hours in 5 months?
Meteor gives good advice on how to efficiently approach the achievement. However, he is offering best case scenarios in his explanation which does not fit reality where there will be losing streaks in both the shard gambling and drops from the vault. Only the very lucky on both ends will push the sub 2 hour mark. You critique the OP for his exaggerated time investment but you don’t critique Meteor’s best case scenarios. The simplest critique is to state the obvious that there are best case scenarios as part of Meteor’s explanation, captain. In this case, stating the obvious would contribute to the conversation.
3 minutes x 4 GRs = 12 minutes
(this accounts for opening/closing GRs, repairs, leaving/starting games)
A quick hop on a level 31 to spam shards for rings = 1 to 2 mins
Adding together the 12 minutes and another 1 to 2 mins = 13 to 14 minutes. If there are any delays, lag, additional inventory management, we can add about a minute. If we round up to 15 minutes it should cover it.
(assumption)
If a main character can’t do GR 90 in 3 minutes then more work is needed on the main character.
1100 to 1500 shards per trip on the level 31. An average of 2 out of every 4 trips yields puzzle rings. On successful trips expect to get 1-2 puzzle rings. Lucky would be 3 or more puzzle rings.
If every gambling trip were successful and only 1 ring was acquired then:
15 minutes x 20 trips = 300 minutes
15 minutes x 24 trips = 360 minutes
15 minutes x 30 trips (my own personal estimate) = 450 minutes
I haven’t gotten to the vault runs yet.
How about if we use Meteor’s 10 minute time value?
10 minutes x 20 rings = 200 minutes
10 minutes x 24 rings = 240 minutes
10 minutes x 30 rings = 300 minutes
2 hours = 120 minutes
sub 2 hours = less than 120 minutes
Captain, obviously 200 is greater than 120. So, one would have to be very lucky to get to the sub 2 hour mark. Very lucky would be getting 2 rings and every gambling trip was successful. This would be a 10 minutes x 10 trips for 20 rings scenario. One then has to get all the Ether weapons without duplicates, and potentially get lucky Ether drops for other classes while farming on the main character. He isn’t wrong but the best case scenarios don’t fit reality for most of player base thus he isn’t totally right either.
If people are still trying to get the transmogs, they have an opportunity still. People like Wudijo for instance is running for the transmogs for people.
The problem with your math is you’re including the time to do the GR’s as if they were exclusively for the purpose of farming shards for rings. They’re not. The shards are a natural consequence of playing the game not extra time or effort you needed to expend. It’s like claiming the time you spend wearing clean clothes as part of doing laundry.
My suggestion was that people might need 15-20 rings. Having personally obtained the achievement in 16 rings, I didn’t think suggesting 20 to be safe would be unreasonable, when running 20 Vaults, at 1-2 ethereals per run, should get you 20-40 ethereals and you’d be pretty unlucky not to get all 18 from that.
According to whom? Because I averaged 2 rings per dump. Sure, I got zero occasionally, but I also got 6 occasionally. Seems odd I and Meteor both would have an average 4 times better than you.
I would call that fact.
You’re not wrong, but even if that was the sole reason to do them the time investment is hardly insurmountable.
I think I spent around 24 rings to get the result. But it was fun all right. One person made a complaint about doing it this way in all three regions because he got totally burned out and it took him several days to get over it…
How many Ethereals do you get when the vault boss drops 2x Leoric Crowns and zero Ether weapons? If you’ve found, say 5 Ether weapons, and then get one of those 5 Ether weapon during your next 3 runs and Leoric Crowns for 4 runs after that, how many new unique Ether weapons have been added to your total across those 7 runs? Maybe you are incredibly lucky. I encountered lots of duplicates and Leoric Crowns.
Getting 18 unique Ethereals across 20 vault runs assumes only 2 opportunities for failed runs. This is above a 75% success rate. It is unrealistic to expect that the vast or overwhelming majority of players will encounter this level of success.
The people I chatted with while doing the achievement said that they never got more then 3 rings while gambling at max shards (max being 1500 to 1600 shards). 3 rings was a rarity. There were plenty of failed attempts while gambling where no rings spawned. So again you very lucky.
What is lots in terms of numbers of players? 20, 30, 50, 150?
I spoke with between 8 and 12 players, in game, while pursuing the achievement, and none had the success rate you speak of. A 2/20 failure rate and 18/20 success rate? I had bad streaks with double Leoric Crowns and duplicate items. Everyone of the players that I spoke to, in game, said to expect duplicate drops.
you’re obviously waaaay over exaggerating…I played 2 weeks and I rather enjoyed farming the Ethereals. Felt like I wanted to play the season longer than I usually did because it gave me a goal to reach. I played mostly monk/dh and got a few eths on each for different classes.
and to confirm your rng yes I did get A LOT of duplicate ethereals but that’s just rng.
I got all Ethereals in 2 rings on 2 chars, 3 rings 2 chars, 5 for one and 8 for one. The 8 ring one still had less than 15 mins played in total when I deleted him.
Farming last Ethereal took me like a week because I didn’t stock up Puzzle rings and go for 4-5 runs at once instead of waiting to farm 20-24. Each time I went back to square one and I almost gave up after 7th ring wasted on the vault with duplicate Ethereal loot.
