Necromancer not dropping primals

I’ve cleared up to 111 now solo. I was thinking about this last night though. I play with a friend most days and it is possible that I never soloed GR 70 specifically. I went back this morning and did just that. I didn’t see an achievement pop up or anything, nor did a primal. I cleared a few more rifts just to see, but nothing yet.

If you did indeed solo a GR70 (in season) you did get a free primal as a drop. That is one of the seasonal perks - free primal on first solo GR70 clear. Maybe you overlooked it and didn’t realize? Possibly salvaged by accident?

Again, bad luck is not a bug.

Edit: It doesn’t have to be specifically a GR70, just 70 +

This is my fourth or fifth character. I’m familiar with seasonal play and have seen my share of primal gear in other builds. It is possible I got a primal early and missed it as I am very colorblind. I discussed this with the friend I team with as his character has had some 50 or so primals now. We have played side by side now this entire season. I’ve now been through thousands of legendaries and for the longest time we just figured that for some reason this season necromancers are blocked from primals. This became literally a standing joke with us. The other day however, while watching a video on a bone spear build I realized that the character in the video was wearing all primal gear, a season 22 build no less. I have fulfilled everything to unlock primal drops, I’ve lost count of the GR runs both solo and teamed and can’t see why I never see them. I pulled a ticket with Blizzard almost out of curiosity and they emailed and said to make a bug report. It’s not bad luck, but it could be something I have done wrong. I’m sitting here wondering what that could be?

The bloodshard cap is calculated as follows…
500 + (10 * your highest successful solo GR clearance)

Thus, if you complete a GR70 solo, your bloodshard cap would become…
500 + (10 * 70) = 500 + (700) = 1200

If your bloodshard cap is 1200 or higher, then you have unlocked access to primals. Everything after that point is just a function of basic statistics as they’re approximately 1 in 400 legendaries. But that’s an overall average. You could go for thousands of legendaries and get none, then get three in a row. That’s just how Poisson distribution curves work.

Yes, it is.

It could be something that is a rare occurrence hasn’t happened.

My current blood shard cap is 1400, maybe more now as I don’t let them build up all that much. I just logged in and looked through achievements but I don’t see anything missing that would impede primals from dropping. I finished a couple of achievements that I wasn’t aware of like recruiting all three followers and such. Seasonal achievements are at 70% completed. I keep thinking there must be something obvious that I’m missing, some achievement or something. There is an achievement for doing a nephalem rift in under 3 minutes, could that be what’s holding this up?

No. Has nothing to do with Nephalem rifts. We’re telling you the reason - it’s bad luck, NOT a bug. Up to you whether you want to accept that or not.

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hmmm, I’m perfectly willing to accept bad luck. That said, there is luck, and there is random number generation, not the same thing. Assuming primal drops were unlocked by me back when I completed a solo GR 70, probably a couple of months ago, I should have seen at least a few primals now. Certainly I should have seen one when I first soloed GR 70. I don’t think that happened, though it was a long time ago I think and I wasn’t looking for one. I know what primals look like despite my color vision problems as I’ve used them on other characters, in other seasons. Barring just insanely bad luck (4000+ legendaries now) what else could cause this?

Mercury is in retrograde.

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I mean that’s just like, your opinion man.

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Your bloodshard cap being 1400 means you unlocked them.
On your seasonal hero, open up the Achievements window (default key = Y)
Click the Season tab, click on the Greater Rifts section, look for The Primal Soul-O.
That’s the achievement granted when you first successfully complete a solo GR70 (or higher) during a season. This also triggers the 100% guaranteed primal for your first GR70+ on a seasonal hero.

Chance of a legendary being primal = 1 in 400
Chance of a legendary not being primal = 399 in 400
Chance that none of X legendaries will be primal = (399/400)^X
Chance that none of 4000 legendaries will be primal = (399/400)^4000 = 0.0000448

Roughly 45 people in 100,000 would get this result.
Unlucky? Sure.
Broken / bugged? Nope.

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The Primal Soul-O is dated 1/5/2021. Given your math I guess it’s just crazy bad luck?

I dont even know why you care so much for primals considering they are trash 99% of the time anyways. red border doesn’t equate to great item in most instances regardless.

Then you’ve unlocked Primal item drops for Normal Season 22 Characters. When you received that Achievement you should have also received your first guaranteed Primal item. (Season only — Normal and Hardcore must be unlocked separately).

When a Primal item drops it will have a red beam with a swirling red mist around it, as seen below.

You will also see the red pentagram icon in the mini-Map, as seen below.

Other indications that you’ve unlocked Primal item drops have been mentioned by others above.

This is more likely the case. But, it is not a bug.

I wish you luck on your future drops!

Missing one primal I can believe. Missing all the primals for two months of game play after collecting thousands of legendaries is a bit of a stretch. I can understand bad luck and random rolls but a 45 out of 100,000 chance? Nah, just doesn’t seem likely. There is probably some other explanation other than bad luck. For weeks now my friend and I have wondered why I haven’t seen a primal drop, a feature that was unlocked first week of this year as it turns out. I do appreciate everyone’s time on this, really I do but this isn’t luck, or colorblindness. I won’t be at all surprised to find out this is my fault somehow but so far I haven’t read a possible solution to the problem. I’m finished with my CAD work for the day, gonna log in, squash some monsters and de-stress for awhile. If anyone has any other suggestions by all means post. cheers,

I only have one other suggestion, then I don’t know what else to tell you.

This is the Bug Report Forum, not a help forum. So, my suggestion is that you read the sticky at the top of this Forum:

Primal items are extremely rare. This is not a bug. It is intended. Some players believe they drop 1 out of every 400 Legendary items. However, this is not always the case.

The point I was trying to make in my previous post was that your color-blindness isn’t helping you see the ones that do drop. I’m sorry for that. The rest of the “two months” you keep referring to, you’re just not getting any Primal items to drop. And this is not a bug.

Thank you Perusoe, I do appreciate your attention to this. I understand the difference between a help forum and a bug report forum. I posted here after pulling a ticket with Blizzard. Here is part of what they emailed me:

That said, we have no way to see if a character is eligible for them or a good way to confirm they are or aren’t dropping as a bug. If you think there is something wrong with it, the next step is to bug report it.
Bug Report - Diablo 3 Forums

So, I wound up here, thinking, game bug. Color vision deficiency is something I am used to working with in Diablo 3, I’ve been playing for more than a year and I know what a primal looks like, though I have no idea what color they are other than to my eye the color value of the drop is darker than other legendaries. I also recognize their rarity, I have other characters where primals did drop.

If you can possibly believe this, I was running GR 109 just now and a primal dropped. It looks like other primals I have seen, the border is different, the color value stood out before I picked it up etc. I could be wrong, but I believe this is the first primal I have seen on this character. Out of curiosity I checked crafting materials just now, I have 3685 forgotten souls in inventory so safe to say I’ve seen a few legendaries on my necro this year. I do find the timing of this drop really interesting. Perhaps i am just amazingly unlucky, that’s what I’m going to call it for now. Thanks to everyone who took the time to post here, I really do appreciate it.

To my eye the primal has a dark border compared to the rest. I don’t usually see it in the pileup but I see it in inventory.

I’m glad to hear that you’re getting Primal items to drop.

And it’s not that didn’t or don’t believe you. I checked your Armory Profile before I posted the first time and I took notice that:

  • You’re playing a Seasonal Necromancer.
  • He is Level 70 (1,082) currently.
  • He has Flawless Royal Gems equipped.
  • His Legendary Gems are Rank 83/91/104.

So obviously, it’s believable that you’ve unlocked Primal drops.

But, you’ve done all you can do here. You’ve reported what you believe is a game bug. Blizzard’s QA Team will read this and if they can reproduce it, they will pass the information on to the developers.
Good luck and good hunting in your future adventures!  

I think there are several types of color vision deficiencies. I’ve always seen color as value (light/dark) really well but the actual color I usually have no idea. I spent part of my career in academia, teaching art. Being colorblind was always my secret joke, I never told anyone.

I also play Necromancer and even though I have got some primals they have been much more rare for me than usual and the ones that I have got are for the most part bad primals. The ones that I do need that have dropped have been very bad rolls for the most part. Then I see others who just start a new class get everything at once. I guess its just bad luck/bad rng? No idea if there is a timer of sorts that takes pity and eventually drops something good? Considering the amount of hours invested it hasn’t been too great for me either. But at least some are dropping :stuck_out_tongue: