This is the first season where I have spent a lot of time running PTR and I have a question. After you’ve built your character, what do you do with the blood shards you earn during the game?
I started buying rings from Kadala to get puzzle rings until I realized that I was guaranteed one when I purchased the ring pack. Since you get all the crafting material you need by buying bags of fortune from the PTR Vendor, salvaging items is a waste of time.
The only thing I could think to do of was to purchase equipment packs from the Vendor, open the packs up, and then look for the red light indicating that I had got a primal.
Someone please tell me that there is a better way to use PTR blood shards.
Leave them on the ground, spend them when you need them. Their main use is to get gear when levelling/reaching 70. After that it doesn’t really matter aside from periodic purchases of bounty mats to reforge gear if you want to test how high you can push with things.
You can still gamble them at Kadala for items you may need which are not included in the D’jank bags, many items are not included there and must be gained from drops, Kadala, or upgrade rares.
You’re testing in the PTR to give feedback to Blizz and find broken things, good things and bad things. The shards aren’t like they are in game. If you’re playing PTR like it’s the actual game then you’re missing the point of PTR.
I feel they are referring to how if you are full on shards they (the shards on the ground) follow you around constantly which is very annoying to myself as well. Just dumping them all on Kadala is a simple solution.
Sure dump em on Kadala and use em. No problems with that at all… and it’s what I do too while testing.
Leaving them on the ground isn’t a problem either. Shards are like yellows, blues and whites etc in PTR, in the way after a while.
I’m sure the OP leaves yellows, blues, whites etc on the ground but they didn’t make a thread about those in the PTR feedback. “Oh noses what do I do with my excess arcane dust”
Indeed, as do I (white/blue/yellows) however those don’t follow you around everywhere you go like the shards do. Unless you use some sort of movement skill to get far enough away from the piles before they can try to get picked up again. That is what is annoying. Most specifically in towns where you can’t just leave them in your tracks.
In the actual game, every shard has value. On average, how many shards would you have to spend to get a full set from Kadala? Or how many crafting resources would you use up using the Cube to do the same?
During PTR, shards are pretty much useless after you’ve built your character up.
StarElven expressed my annoyance with them much better than I did. I’d leave them on the ground, but they follow me around like a sick puppy.
I was just hoping that I was missing a way that I could still find value in them.
Personally I think a far, far better option would be to entirely disable bloodshards on PTR. Then set the PTR Vendor to give everything for free. Since PTR is for testing those who want to take the hard way and not grab the bags right from entering at lvl 1, can just ignore them. Those who want to boost fast to lvl 70 can grab the weapons pack and legendary gems bag, socket that gem of ease in a desired weapon and get right at it.
I cannot think of any good reason why the bags need to have a cost at all in such a testing environment. If they can’t have the vendor without a purchase price then change it to gold and set them each at 1 gold.
This would make it far easier for those who want to jump right to high-end testing and eliminate the pesky nuisance of the blood shards on PTR
An update: My idea of buying packs, opening them, and looking for primals rather than using shards with Kadala is working out for me. I’ve focused on rings and have picked up a primal Focus and a primal Restraint since I last posted today!
The whole point of the PTR is to test new stuff (builds and sanctified powers in this case). That means you can easily ignore dropped items and shards. You can get a full ancient set just by reforging every item since you basically have infinite mats.
Once you get to 70 on PTR and get a build going, bloodshards are kind of irrelevant. You get what you need from Djank, and shards come easily after that. Just leave it, don’t worry about it at all. PTR throws gear and shards at you for the sole purpose of testing things.
