A zoded eth griff's is marginally better than a non-eth griff's with no socket but is significantly worse than a griff's with a lightning facet in it, for example.

This is because most ethereal items are not worth a zod, and even those that would be worth a zod would invariably benefit more from something else going in the socket. Only a tiny minority of ethereal items are used in a situation where they actually might break. Diablo 2: Resurrected was released on September 23rd, 2021, and is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

They are items that don't break, either because they self-repair, are botd (runeword with zod in it, which makes items indestructible) or because they are weapons on a caster.

They are used on a mercenary and items on mercenaries don't lose durability so you get all of the benefits with none of the drawbacks by putting eth items on mercenaries or.

A good suggestion is to give them to a mercenary, because then the item cant lose durabillity points. However, they can not be repaired by any NPC. The vast majority of ethereal items that people use fall into one of two categories. We sell cheap Diablo 2 items and runes with quick delivery, LiveHelp and cheap. In Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction there are Ethereal Items, these items are more powerful than the non-ethereal version of the item. Ethereal items get either a 50% damage bonus or a 50% bonus to defense (more with ebug, although this is not super relevant to why people use ethereal items).

Diablo 2 ethereal items