I don’t know how many echoes I’ve run in this patch, but it’s got to be over 1,000 by now, 99% of them being woven echoes, but only these 5:
- Omen’s Veil
- Fractured Tower
- Farsight Turtle
- Fractured Prison
- The Grand Brewery (to get belts to craft)
Many of the other woven echoes only need to be run once, then there’s no reason to run them again. Yes we could swap them using that one mechanic, but it’s not worth it due to the combination of it (a) being non-deterministic, (b) there being no reason to run most of the ones we’d get, and (c) the number of ones we do need each season being so small. At the moment I’d rather keep them, in case I decide to build a character later that needs to use some of them.
This, combined with the echo impression web nodes having been nerfed into the dirt, results in limited endgame options. The only way for me to upgrade my gear at this point is to buy Fractured Tower by the dozens - which I don’t mind doing - but if the only way I can generate the amber is to buy bones with timeglass shards then that means I have to run dozens of Omen’s Veils.
I don’t need anything from that Draal Queen, or the Antipode Rift, or even the Rift Beast that gives Champion’s affix items, but I wouldn’t mind throwing a few into my web now and then for variety if I’d at least get amber out of them. Same with the Aura echoes. There’s no point for me to put them into my web because they only affect non-woven echoes, and if I’m completely building out my web then the auras don’t affect anything. (Frankly, it would be great to be able to use the Woven Vessel of Memory on Fractured Towers.)
At the moment my only other choices are to go do some Aberroth runs or run random echoes in some timeline that doesn’t give any of the rewards I need. I prefer these over spending arena keys because I really, really dislike the random roadblocks in arenas.
Unless something changes there’s going to need to be some other reason for me to want to use the stockpile of echoes I’m accumulating, and having them also give amber (multiplied by faction level) would give us a reason to.
(For what it’s worth, I’d love for you guys to un-nerf the imprint nodes and make the 3-for-1 mechanic’s results be heavily weighted by the imprint nodes. That would be nice, but wouldn’t do anything to help endgame variety.)