Blizzard gain a flash of insight?

[Athenau]

At no point will player skill ever trump gearing - period. That is the point I was making - the point you missed.

I could have had items with +100 or 200 more resists, or 20 or 30% dps, and I still wouldn't have won that fight if I'd attempted to do it straight up. The fact is, player input makes a significant difference.

I'm not going to get into a retarded debate about whether that constitutes skill "trumping" gear. If you want to waste your time pursuing that argument, feel free to do it with someone else.

That's because D2 barely had an endgame, or a gear dependency. D3 forces gear dependency in order to advance through the endgame.

If D2 "barely had" an endgame, then why are you even making the comparison? Even a bad endgame is better than no endgame at all. And if D2 did have an end game (the item hunt) and that endgame wasn't tied to progression, then it stands to reason that people kept playing because they found the items themselves compelling. And that gets back to my point about the items in D3 sucking.

I've never seen an Enrage timer in all my playing. However, the basic answer is yes. A player with, say 10k DPS and 150k Effective Health will never be able to progress as far as someone with 20k DPS and 300k Effective Health, regardless of whether the first player is 10x as skilled as the second.

The level of gear independence you're talking about never existed for melee in D2. Of course ranged characters with their flat skill-based damage could probably waltz through Hell naked with sufficient patience. Now that everyone's on the same footing with skills using weapon damage % that's no longer true.

You completely miss the mark.

Nope. I understand your point just fine. I just think you're wrong.

I have to ask wtf you were expecting? This isn't God of War or Ninja Gaiden. Of course gear is going to matter a lot. The difference between D2 and D3 is the degree of dependence and the absence of mechanics that allow you to bypass much of the gear hunt (potions and ranged classes with flat damage on skills).