I feel guilty advertising my mod here

[Brother Laz]

Lovely pair of self-contradicting statements, there.  One-hit kills belong in a Mario-style game, not an RPG or adventure offering.

Remember that when Talic explodes. ;) And I never said I liked Blizzard's idea of instant kills. An extra strong might enchanted cursed frozen creeper boss that moves at a speed of about one square per second and kills you in one hit is not hard, unless you are playing a melee character, and even then it's just stupid, not hard in a meaningful way.

For those of us who lack access to teh ubar gear for whatever reason, and lack godlike skills at whipping a mouse around, it's extremely tough to survive in Hell, let alone beat it.

Prior to LoD, you could beat the game using only the items you found along the way. This is now pretty much impossible, and you have to farm certain bosses endlessly to get decent items. There just aren't any 'good' items anymore; it's either overpowered (0.01%) or useless (99.99%). Sadly. :(

In the mod, I try to make monsters more dangerous while also lowering their damage. There is nothing that can kill you in one hit (or even five hits), not counting corpse explosion (which is easy to avoid: just kill the goat priest first) and explosive vomit from corpse spitters (which you shouldn't let happen anyway). It gives you at least a fighting chance.

Don't you find it bloody ironic for Blizzard to build a customizeable skill setup into a game where only a handful of strategies will actually work?

I do. For example, a holy freeze merc with Kelpie Snare makes a mockery out of Baal, but if you are using an Act 3 merc, you've just nerfed yourself. That's not a real choice. Likewise, anyone who abuses the hell out of CoS and mindblast will find that most monsters just stand there looking stupid and only a select few monsters will even move anymore. Good luck making a melee assassin without mindblast, though.

Annoyingly, the best items combined with certain very specific skills turn the game into a joke, and anything else just doesn't work. :(

......

That's why I attempted to give every skill its advantages and disadvantages in the mod. Even something as gawdly as Phantom Shot carries the major drawback that you can't really use it outdoors. This of course causes certain people to whine and sputter about there being 'only useless skills'. :wacko:

By the way, this is also more or less Blizzard's original approach with the paladin and especially the necromancer. The necromancer had the need for skill variety built in, and even the oobar iron maiden didn't work on casters. Then came immunities, it all went down the crapper and everyone just maxed bone spirit.