DIABLO III PTR 2.7.1 | Preview Blog

DIABLO III PTR 2.7.1 | Preview Blog

Our two-week PTR testing period for the 2.7.1 update begins June 17, and we're asking for your help to quell the tides of surging demons.

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  • Ethereals are account bound and can only be dropped by monsters, chests, and destructibles, but do not require your character to be level 70 to drop. Ethereals cannot be acquired through Kanai’s Cube or from Kadala.

  • Collecting all 21 Ethereals during Season 24 will reward players with the Feat of Strength, Ethereal Recollection. Players who accomplish this will have all Ethereal transmogrify options available for future seasonal and non-seasonal play.

Oh, boy! If these obey Smart Loot, i.e. they’re more likely to drop for the class you’re on, this sounds like a season where I’ll be playing one main class, and then creating an alt purely to get the ethereals, deleting it and creating the next class, until I’ve unlocked all this, if they’re really pretty transmogs.

Could be interesting. And an update to the Firebird… and please don’t nerf the build :smiley_cat:

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It’ll be even more fun for those who haven’t bought the necro. The only way they can get all ethereals is to rely on the smart loot being generous.

what a joke. so in the middle of summer you give us a theme that actually forces me to play all seven chars just so i can enjoy 3 transmogs for my barb wich have a very low drop rate. i dont know what you guys at blizzard do in the summer but im not playing 400 hours in a season im not a no lifer. you really suck at inventing themes.

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This topic should be a sticky by the way… Maybe they tried twice since there are two identical posts.

So, am I the only one who is underwhelmed? I cannot critique this idea cause I haven’t seen it yet, but I also don’t see me playing 7 classes in just one season and grinding them to death to get 21 ethereals. Even though I am up for cosmetics, that seems tedious.

I was hoping more to expand on the followers and address the vast difference between some classes. Like seriously, witch doctor averages 20+ GRs below some classes right now. No one looked at the leaderboards ? Or if they looked they said, “you know what? that seems perfectly fine as it is.”? Or maybe they should look at S20 leaderboards again to nerf it down more, lol.

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I agree that all classes should have a set or two performing about equally well as other classes’ top tier sets.
What Ethereals are like remains to bee seen (what if you play Impale DH and get an Ethereal suited for Uhallowed Essence or Marauder?).
I don’t care that much about transmogs that I’ll hunt all of them but just play season to get the stash tab. If Inna monk will be really powerful I’ll play that in non season.

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They said ethereals will have a random weapon leg affix. Last time I checked, DH has a ton of weapons (bows and crossbows) and more than half of them are completely useless. Not talking about “it doesn’t fit my build, but maybe it will be good for another set”. I am talking about actual useless affixes. So yeah, pair that with the need of a decent passive too. The only good thing is if you find the Dawn affix which is kind of “global” for DH, it fits so many builds.

Barb on the other hand has a very nice pool of passives, so we probably gonna get something usefull or semi-decent out of the 5th passive, but still has a lot of unusable class weapons, and let’s not forget that this won’t benefit some builds where set weapons are BiS. WD has also an abundance of worthless ceremonial knives, and so on. Similar to DH, the Harvester affix is ubiquituous and can be valuable to pretty much every WD.

True about the monk, I am really curious. Perhaps, he could be the star of the show.

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One build I can immediately think of that might benefit from this on the Barb is H90/Frenzy. It currently relies on Oathkeeper being equipped, a choice of off-hand and Bastion’s Revered in the Cube. If you could find a one-handed Ethereal with the legendary power of Bastion’s on it, you could equip Oathkeeper and the Ethereal, leaving you with a free choice for the Cube slot, most likely The Furnace for an extra 50% elite damage.

Having said that, the chances of getting the right weapon, with the right power, with a useful passive, from mob drops, within three months? You might as well buy a lottery ticket.

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New item?, or fake? https://i.ibb.co/v3V85bR/Primal-Ancient-Legendary-Rama-Gift.jpg
Really? or not?

Oh yes, definitely. But I think you meant the Oathkeeper, right? Remorseless buffs HotA, if I remember correctly. Oathkeeper is the one that increases dmg of primary skills, Frenzy being one of them. The other weapon slot is basically open, you can play with Azurewrath for that 20% cold, or In - Geom, or Burning Axe for Ignore Pain procs. Most used for pushing is Azurewrath, and I am guessing that an ethereal will be a lot better than the 20% cold. Barb has several passives with an average 20-25% dmg buff so that alone will balance out the 20% element loss, assuming of course you find a good fifth passive.

Another interesting thing to see is if ethereals are going to be so good that they can even justify swapping Slanderer/Rogue for example. Or maybe two-hander ethereals will have super stats on them so you could equip one instead of dual wielding. If that is the case, this will benefit a lot of dual wielding builds, where the third weapon is not that mandatory but provides some slight ulitility and dmg.

Edit:

That is more likely fake, no way they were going to give us 3 emeralds in weapons.

Yes, my mistake. I’ll correct the post.

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The PTR for 2.7.1 is now up and available for players…

Heh, you pretty much won’t have time to get them all (this is job for botters), as it’s chance is between ancient and primal drop rate, this is a joke again. And what the point to get them at all? For a transmog only for Barb? I already wasted a huge amount of time in season 22 to get those wings from all those set dungeons (mastery and basic). I’m not going to do that again. Also those ethereal won’t be available in no season play - that just a waste of time, I certainly won’t farm them…

Presumably the Feat of Strength for collecting all 21 Ethereals should be to unlock the appearance of all 21 Ethereals, but the Feat of Strength isn’t available on the PTR, and the patch notes haven’t made clear exactly what transmogs are associated with the Feat.

Two days in and a little experience.

Ethereals are dropping fast. My first was at L7. The next was before L70.
They are FULL of buffs including one and in another case two passives skills like Hellfire Amulets for the planned character.
They have a medium blue border to them.
As with all gear, though, if I can’t use it, it’s pretty until I grind it up for Lost Souls.

This is my third time doing PTR. I’m amazed at how fast progression is and how often my pack if full of legendaries with no magic or rare items. It seems much morel than the previous times.

Hmmm, played now a few days, but what the hell. No ethereal dropped at all very strange.
loads of legendary but ethereal not at all also walked a character to lvl 70 no ethereal. did loads of rift and grift runs asweel but nothing.

Maybe you’re supposed to play a season character on PTR to get ethereals? They don’t drop in non season.
I even believe Djank sells bags with ethereals in them?

The PTR has buffs which grant…

  1. 2000% legendary drop rate
  2. 300% XP bonus
  3. Double blood shards

When salvaged, Ethereal weapons don’t just result in Forgotten Souls. They can also give DBs and GR keys. This way, even if the weapons aren’t useful whilst levelling they can provide you stuff for as soon as you hit level 70.

Ethereal weapons are only available on PTR seasonal heroes. If you copied your heroes from live to PTR all of your heroes, including the Season 23 ones, will be non-seasonal on the PTR, as S23 has ended and it’s S24 there. So, if you want to see / test Ethereal weapons, you need to make a new seasonal hero on the PTR.

I’d say teal / turquoise but a picture should help…

Here’s what the beams / mini-map icons look like…

Whilst solo-levelling on the PTR, I dropped 6 or 7 on my way to 70. However, that’s affected by the PTR’s 2000% legendary drop rate (as ethereals are classified as legendaries for the sake of LoN / LoD) so will be less likely on live. However, if you get lucky with the right legendary power on them, they can make a massive difference. I got a Doombringer with a Seismic Slam power on it, and a Fjordcutter which also has a Seismic Slam power on it. I went from playing on Expert and mobs taking 2-3 hits each, to playing at T1 and clearing a screen with each Slam. Oh, and as for how powerful they are in themselves, my Doombringer was 9 levels lower than my Fjordcutter but it had almost double the damage. Add in the guaranteed 100% damage to Barbarian skills on it, and that’s a 2x damage multiplier just from one affix. When I got this weapon combo, I went into a T1 rift and got 17 levels from clearing it.

From my time on the PTR, I’ve now had dozens of Ethereal weapons as drops. (I’ve had hundreds from buying PTR Fortune caches, I’m not counting those). I’ve not had a single off-class Ethereal drop. This suggests they’re following Smart Loot rules, which means obtaining all 21 for the Feat of Strength / transmog unlock is pretty much going to require playing all seven classes in the season.

I suspect there will be communities set up for this to make this quicker. Each member of a four man team levels up a hero to 70 and gets it capable of speed-farming GRs. They also power level heroes of other classes to 70. They then take turns where one player is the GR speed-runner / carrier, and the other three players have ungeared 70s who are carried through the GRs to collect the loot from the Guardians, and they do this until they’ve got all three Ethereals for that class. They rotate who’s the speed-runner, and so on, deleting heroes if necessary (if they don’t have enough slots), and making new 70s, until they’ve all four got 21.

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