What if Inferno didn't exist?

[Kurosu]

If they took out the cheesy monster affixes, which would be most of them, cut back some of the dmg monsters deal out, I think this would make the game on Inferno much more fun. A lot of people would be mad I suppose, because overall, I would say opinion on the current state of Inferno is pretty equally divided - you either like it the way it is for the most part, or you really do not and it seems to be divided 50/50 among those who have played it. So who do you cater to in such an issue? You cannot please everyone, someone is bound to be disappointed by any changes. I really think Blizz can take out the cheesiness while still keeping those who like the game insanely difficulty happy, though. But if you eliminate Inferno altogether, you would probably have to make the 3 main difficulties a bit tougher than they are, cause my Barb ABSOLUTELY DEMOLISHED hell difficulty, and my Wiz, while not quite as dominant, isn't doing too bad either, and she is currently in Act 3 of Hell clvl 57.

They don't have to take the modifiers out completely, but they do need to give the player a way to counter them.
It doesn't even have to be something very complex or fancy to implement. For example; they could add item affixes that prevent certain effects such as Frozen (Raven Frost ), Vortex, or add affixes to reduce the damage of effects such as Fire Chains or Arcane Sentry.
The first two would mostly be sought after by ranged, kiting type characters, while characters that fight up close would value the latter.

This would add another layer of complexity to the game, and it gives people an incentive to farm for, while reducing the "cheesiness" factor of elites somewhat, as there now is a way to prevent getting killed by a Vortex.
If you didn't opt to farm for these items, then it is the player's fault, but not something completely out of his control.
But of course, such mods cannot be extremely rare, they must be fairly reasonably obtainable pre-inferno, to beat the trend of "you must have items from act 4 to be able to be viable in act 2".

You could allow 2 or 3 of these kind of mods to spawn as fixed properties on some Legendary tier items while magic/rare items cannot spawn with more than 1, then people would have a reason to get excited when a gold-lettered item drops, as such mods would be highly desirable.
It could give some items a popular status such as Harlequin's Crest, Buriza, etc had in D2, or in other words, a reason to keep playing, rather than farming so you can upgrade your nameless +150 Int gloves for a +175 int version.

I feel that this sticks with the focus on "having the right items to proceed" which seems to be the main trend behind the design in D3.

Blizzard could also take another way, which is by making the skills avoidable by movement or reflexes.
For example, Vortex could have some sort of visual effect underneath your character indicating it is being cast, and if you don't move away from it within say, 1.5 seconds, you will get pulled towards the caster.
This will keep the player on his toes as you will have to pay attention, but it does not make the modifier completely non-threatening.

To me, either of them seem like a good solution, which I've thought about and discussed in my own circles for some time when I saw the state of the elite packs in Inferno.
And I feel the game would improve on it if such measures or similar were implemented, as it addresses both the issues with unfairly hard elite packs and lackluster loot system.


I'm aware the "reduced x % of control-impairing effects" exists, but I feel it's rather lackluster.