Explosive arrows (question)

[Crystalion]

I find limited options to be limiting, not fun.

Yes indeed. I trust I never said limited options were, of themselves, fun. I meant only that limits, in general (not particular), are absolutely necessary.

Knowing that with one small change, I could play many other builds, as long as I had the patience, irritates me.

Believe, I am entirely in sympathy! A game being frustrating in this way is too "realistic"... we want our entertainments sweet, not bitter. This is the crux of the reason why I personally do not play Hardcore. ("with just a few small changes to eliminate *unfair* deaths...")

You know, all the posts responding to me so far in this thread seem to suggest that I am either "bored with challenge" or that I want all my characters to be ridiculously powerful.  Where do you get this idea?

Perhaps the posts suggest this, if so I apologize. I certainly didn't mean to imply either.

All I am saying is that I think monster regen should be removed because it does nothing to affect the ubar l33t players, it only hurts variants.

My only "argument" with you is that I think point is incorrect by being incomplete in a major way...

All imo, ymmv, caveat emptor, etc.:

Previous to v1.10 hell global physical resist was the bandage applied by Blizzard to make hell "work". If you had removed just it, you would have returned to the days of hell being a total non-event. In removing it for v1.10 they therefore instead applied a bandage of massive monster HPs which elevates regen in importance. Therefore stopping regen is vital (haha), unless you prefer to attack the new problem with massive damage concentrated in a short time.

If we remove this new bandage, then all of hell will be broken, again. As it is, hell is too easy for some builds, with bugs like the Gloams actually being "features" to keep a little fear in the players (sorry, I mean softcore here, as such a "feature" is a terrible foobar for hardcore, of course).

In short I'm arguing that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one". Your builds are all fine in normal and nightmare. (The use of the word "your builds" in the preceding sentence is the impersonal pronoun, and not at all meant to refer to you, the person, but rather to the type of builds, which anyone might choose to play, that are under discussion here as suffering greatly due to hell HPs/regen). The hell playground is, currently, essentially reserved for builds solving the damage/time problem (of which regen is a large part, since it transforms this difficulty along the tedious ==> impossible scale).

I have no interest in petitioning Blizzard, I just felt like expressing my opinion on monster regeneration, and then was suddenly accused of not enjoying challenge.

By way of example, with tongue firmly in cheek: I just felt like expressing my opinion on game design and implementation, and was then accused of accusing someone else of something. ;p

In other words, when you see someone as *verbose* as I am, you're probably better off assuming that I sit in a room all day muttering insanely to myself, than to assume that anything I say is meant to reflect upon you, personally. To avoid this misunderstanding, flame wars, and hurt feelings, is why so many of my posts with opinions have "YMMV" tacked on somewhere. Of course, ymmv. ;)

I explained that I enjoyed challenge, but that monster regen simply created a brick wall

Yes, you're entirely correct. I have not disagreed with this at all, I hope (at least to my way of thinking/writing, but ymmv).

and now my opinion is compared to asking for 10 times the money for passing Go

No, I was not assuming anything about your opinion. I was merely trying to illustrate why Blizzard had to be so mean spirited in *general*, that incidentally harms you and your desired builds in *particular*. I thought Go$2k illustrated the point nicely, but obviously I was singing off-key. :(

Why do you find my opinion so unreasonable, Crystalion?

I don't, and I haven't. I have, indeed, suggested that this state of affairs is potentially fixable, either by modding the game, or by petitioning Blizzard to expend more effort "modding" the game (as the official version is always the one easiest to get others to play with you).

My only position (which you are free to disagree with, naturally) is that some other major limitation would be needed in the game. For example, DC, er, I mean Diablo XP Professional, is a pussycat (my personal experience, in the last 3 of 4 encounters) if you do three things...

1. negate his attacks ("don't be there"™ or absorb or...)
2. lower his resist
3. stop his regen

And I put those in (my opinion) general order of importance universally (i.e. quite a few M.O.s can adopt just #1 and be fine ignoring #2 & 3). But #3 is the one that opens up DC kills to more builds/techniques than the first two, because it allows for (slow) kill methods that would otherwise be literally impossible.

In other words, his regen is the feature "most" responsible for making him "hard" (which clearly is desirable, ya?).

I found it challenging to change my equipment to make him "easy", but no longer find (killing) him challenging at all (whereas the first time I fought him, it was epic and challenging, then finally "solved" but barely... i.e. very fun).

I'm a great lover of variant builds and the players that love them. I am truly sorry that v1.10 HPs/regen hurts a lot of those builds. I am very sorry that v1.10 has more than enough bugs to cry out for v1.11 (which may never come, given the Blizzard employee exodus). But on the whole I'm very happy with Isolde's effort, considering. Especially since modders now have a much easier time of making all sorts of fun changes.

I'm sorry if my general enthusiasm, overall, for v1.10, made it seem like I was attacking you by way of disagreeing with what I perceive to be a consequence of one of your positions. (Hey, doesn't Baal say "position" in a delightfully eeeeevvvviiilllll way, just before he vilely splats that poor emissary?)