Season 24 Ethereal opinion

General Discussion
#1

Thank you devs and staff for making yet another season. I completed season journey on US and EU and completed the Ethereal achievement. Although I did the above I did not enjoy it. It was tolerable thankfully, but not fun for me. If anyone is enjoying the season theme please continue to do so.

I only wanted 2 transmogs and the pet from season journey. What I did not enjoy is being forced to play the classes that I don’t want to play. This can be further generalized into not enjoying being forced to participate in activities that I don’t want to or like just get a valuable pay off. I’m sure someone thought it would be a great idea but in general don’t I would advise against designing systems like this. In D4 there is suppose to be rewards tied to PvP. Please don’t make those rewards critical to progression. I lost my taste for diablo PvP along time ago.

After getting the season journey and Ethereal achievement completed on both US and EU, I stopped playing all video games. No betas, no RPGs, no FPS, no RTS, no MOBAs, no crossword puzzles, no Sudoku, no chess, no checkers… not even witty banter. I barely touch the forums. I’ve avoided the news/newspapers as much as possible outside the weather and some financial news. Its like my body is rejecting all that I find fun. It is like having a poisoned spirit. I burned 2 vacation days and slept for the majority of those 48 hours. I have not felt like this in more than a decade and its definitely not healthy.

For the hungry troll types, no this is not a weepy, self pity experience. It more like being angry, cranky, moody, grumpy, and disinterested all the time.

3 Likes
OK I'm ready. Bring on Season 25. Let's see how this goes
#2

Having to play all the classes reminded me why I never play them.

8 Likes
#3

There are a couple of classes I don’t enjoy, sure, but 15 mins or less playing them to get the ethereals for the ach was hardly a gargantuan sacrifice. (Especially since majority of that time was spent just running, zero game play)

#4

Kargon,
As I said it was tolerable but not enjoyable. I just do not like playing some classes. No its not 15 mins. Its more like a few hours farming shards and feed them to kadala to acquire a mass of puzzle rings. You have to account for all of the effort including playing the classes one does not like. If I only wanted the 2 transmogs don’t force me to farm up all 21. I’m also not a video game achievement chaser. I usually play 85 to 95 percent of a season and in most cases participate in the PTR. If I had to seriously grind all of the classes at max level I would have quit most likely or just not bother at all.

@Brewskie:
Absolutely. Its like trying to force me to watch some garbage reality TV show. I’ll put on a sleep mask, some ear buds, a blanket and listen to a 10 hour rain video on youtube while I sleep through that crap… but to be an alert, awake, active participant?.. nah.

#5

I specifically said 15 mins playing chars I don’t enjoy. If you where farming blood shards on a class you don’t like, that’s on you.

As for the blood shards, those you get by default by playing, so at most I would give you 2 mins (counting high) of playtime specifically for the ach for the time you spend logging a 31 to dump the shards.

1 Like
#6

It’s pretty crazy but I didn’t farm rifts or bounties for shards and I still managed to gather them

#7

I farmed shards on Wiz… GR90+ and bounties. I got 1 to 2 puzzle rings ever 2 out of 4 trips. Each trip was 1100 to 1500 shards. Of course there were losing streaks where multiple trips yield zero puzzle rings. The point here is that I had to farm shards to put toward getting rings just for the sake of chasing Ether weapons on classes that I don’t want to play. Its more than 15 minutes per char when you count the shard farming. It took me 23 or 24 rings on US and 20 to 22 rings on EU. It only took less rings on EU because I got lucky Ether drops for other classes while doing GRs on Wiz.

  • 3 mins x 4 GRs = at least 12 mins.
  • quick hop to a 31 to burn shards in search of puzzle rings (1-2 mins)

The above is 1 trip for puzzling ring farming. In most cases 2 out every 4 trips would yield rings. In most cases when a trip ended successfully I got at most 1-2 puzzling rings. I never hit a 3+ ring streak. Do you need more math to estimate the time needed to acquire 24-30 rings? 30 rings was my hopeful target for getting the achievement done.

Next, running low level chars through vault could yield 2x Leorics Crowns, or 1-2 Ether weapons. There was plenty of those vault runs where I got duplicates.

Even 15 mins playing characters that I don’t enjoy is 15 mins too long. Getting blood shards by default means nothing if the process of acquiring the transmog permanently is not something that I want to do. I would have preferred to keep just the 2 transmogs that I wanted without chasing all of the others. Again the process was tolerable but not enjoyable for me.

How is this fun, Blizzard?
#8

Yeah, pressing that one skill one time every other minute sure was excruciating.

1 Like
#9

What! Is he really complaining about playing a class of own choice, able to farm 90s, having to level up a gem of ease to 25 to put in a level 70 weapon, use that weapon to level a WD to 31, gamble blood shards on the wd, use the said weapon to level up a hero to 5 and do some vault runs on normal difficulty???

#10

I dont like WD or Wiz or heck even Sader. The answer was just cheese those classes with the puzzle ring level 5 toons.

No reason to be forced to properly play those classes for more than 10 to 15 minutes each. After 1 hour I had my Ethereals for classes I dont enjoy.

No depression, no frustration, just job done and back to classes I enjoy with my new tmogs.

#11

I don’t even get why folks farm shards for Puzzle Rings through spending shards on a low level tune.

Puzzle Rings come naturally. Over a couple of days you WILL wind up with over 20 in your stash just playing normally. That’s enough for 4 or 5 classes and their Vault runs.

Farming shards is ridiculous. Just play the game normally, the rings will come on their own without you forcing the issue.

I got most of the eths for the classes using the Vault method and only leveled a character above 5 before I found out about the Vault method when I was farming the eths specifically on the Crusader and Witchdoctor with level 70 tunes through LoD builds running Grifts in the 80 to 90 range.

I even wasted a ton of rings on those characters and still within a few days had a stockpile of rings when I found out about the Vault Method.

In other words, quit doing things you don’t like doing because you don’t need to do them to get the things you want.

Sheesh!!!

2 Likes
#12

You make an assumption about puzzle ring drops at level cap. I got a total of 2 on US and none on EU at level cap.

#13

That’s a bold claim and far from true for most players (or at least a lot of players).

#14

I can’t make you folks believe me. But I know what I did. About every 20 Grifts, I’d get a Puzzle Ring. Is that typical? I don’t know but I do know that it happens every season, season after season.

I play a lot, several hours a day. But running 20 Grifts, even playing inefficiently, might take two hours.

So even someone who plays super casually. 2 hours a day, you’ll come away with a ring a day just playing normally. You can’t argue that “I’m a casual, so I have to farm shards and spend on low level characters to be efficient.” When in the same amount of time you could have been playing normally and probably come away with the same amount of rings.

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#15

Pretty sure that’s way more than super casual though. I average 3 hours a day, and going by the paragon level of the people I get in public games, most people play far less than that. (or they play extremely inefficient.)

#16

So let’s break it down further…

Say you play 2 hours a week. Or 2 hours a month. Or even 2 hours a year. In whatever time frame you play 2 hours in, you should be getting at least one puzzle ring.

What I’m saying is, in my clan, there are folks that spend an entire play session running vaults from the rings they collect over the previous 3 to 4 day or week.

So, Puzzle Rings are very common in my experience and that of my clan.

#17

I don’t argue with that, got 7 playing grifts today, got another 2 while using up the first 7.

#18

That’s extreme. I’ve been doing some statistics to see my ethereal drop rate. So every time I empty my inventory for indentied drops, most of the time by salvaging, I make a note of the number. When I get an ethereal I add that and the rest of the drops to the count, and then put a mark on the paper and start a new count.
After two GR runs I will then have up to 24 items counted that are added to the count and so on. Sometimes I get an ethereal after maybe 48 drops, sometimes it’s over hundred and even up to about 200.
I haven’t made a count of the puzzle ring drops while doing this but I can say with absolute certainty that there is not a puzzle ring drop every 24 drops, neither every 48 drops or even every 100 drops.

#19

20 grifts is upwards of 240 legendaries though.

#20

Running GR 90’s as an example gives 10 legendaries. 10 legendaries times 20 GR’ 90’s equal 200 drops. It is perfectly reasonable to expect at least 20 (probably many more) to be rings and at least 1 of them to be a Puzzle Ring.

It’s not a stretch to get a Puzzle Ring every 2 hours at least.