The Diablo Formula and how Diablo 3 falls short

[Archon_Wing]

I do appreciate that elites do stand out in this game. But the mod combos are too hard to balance.

There is almost no error in some of these. Crap like vortex, arcane, desecrator will crap on you regardless of how good you are, and they spam their cc effects. Well, some would say spam invincibility/or stay away if you are ranged. But that's the problem. You can't expect perfect play in an imperfect environment. Latency's an inevitable part of the game, and well... shit happens.

Also, traps seem to do ridiclous amounts of damage disproportional to the damage of the act they're in, especially fire grates. There is no reason why I should get 2 shotted by these things if I have good gear. Sure, I should be punished for not being careful, but D3 makes mistakes excessively punitive, and in laggy enviorment. Pretty much every thing that does tick damage is excessive, and once again shows it wasn't planned out properly.

Champions IMO should just be enhanced versions of trash mobs like they were in D2 and should not have the same amount of affixes as the elite ones. They can get stronger stats as compensation, but it's pretty ridiculous to see like 5 of them with some stupid combinations of mods. Elite monsters are different, and unique monsters should be stronger too.

The good classic platformers would teach you about its mechanics through its stage and enemy design. It tended to be gradual and very drawing to the eye. Diablo 3 teaches you, by killing you with it. And the teacher is incompetent because they don't know anything, and once again it shows.

Ultimately, Blizzard's fatal flaw was thinking that we'd play like good children and stick to hell and have patience for inferno. Sadly, that kind of reasoning was only a dream. The masses will always want to get to the endgame and hell didn't qualify. The plot, while serviceable, wore thin the third time around, there's a level cap, and any gear worth caring about isn't in hell. If so many years of Diablo 2 didn't teach us that, well...

And of course, it also falls short in the community sense, with that POS known as Battle.net 2.0. Just like Sc2, it gives off a very strong ghost town feel. Well, I guess they kept the bot spammers in channel for nostalgia.