What if Inferno didn't exist?

[Elric of Grans]

Normal's for complete newbies to the series. My 15 year old, who is a pretty decent raider (normal mode, at least) in WoW, knows how to stay out of fire and do decent DPS, etc, took some time to adjust to the camera/movement, as she hadn't played D2 or D1. The 18 year old jumped right in and blew through Normal, though, as did I. There are people out there who Normal is perfect to start with, and Nightmare would simply be too hard to jump straight into.

An interesting perspective. Thank you!

In D3, no matter how high your armor rating is, it seems like monsters always have auto hit on you. A higher armor rating reduces incoming damage, yes, but this is very different thing from being hit period.

There is no to-hit mechanic in Diablo III. Players and enemies all auto-hit. That is why armour is now damage reduction while dodge is damage avoidance. This seems to be a pretty standard move in Action RPGs over the past decade or so, increasing the pace of combat.

They don't have to take the modifiers out completely, but they do need to give the player a way to counter them.

I do not think that is the issue either. In isolation, I cannot think of any attributes that absolutely have no counter (yes, even Invulnerable Minions). The issue occurs when you get certain combinations (eg Jailer/Waller/Arcane; I bet Barbarians hate Plague/Vampiric/Electric) and is further compounded when certain enemy classes have them (eg my Wizard died three times last night to a pack of Jailer/Vortex Phase Beasts). Think about it like this. A pack of Fallen Champions with Fire Chains (and nothing else) is not too scary. A group of Wraiths (who teleport on top of you naturally) with the same Affix are painful. Molten/Fast Zombies are nasty; Molten/Fast Scavengers are just not fun. In isolation, there is always a way for every class to counter every class of enemy and every Elite attribute, but their randomness has a high probability of creating awful combinations. Think about it: has anyone ever complained about a Unique enemy being too hard? I have never once heard it. Champions and Rares, all the time, but not Uniques because they have static attributes that were balanced in their combination and to the base enemy class (ie the way it was done in the original Diablo).