Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[Sirian]

Also, one more thing to keep in mind: from Nightmare through Inferno, adding players not only increases monster health, it increases monster damage. IIRC, Nightmare adds 5% per player, Hell 10%, and Inferno 15% - at least for the first player. I don't think it's quite that linear (I think it increases slightly faster than a linear progression). Lazy design? Perhaps, but they needed something to combat the fact that more players = more skills, damage, health pools, etc. I do not want D2, where more players = easymode. I equally do not want D2, however, where mobs = cheese instead of challenge (and D3 does have a bit too much of that at the moment).

Keep in mind that on this toon I've never soloed. Since hitting NM, most games and most gaming hours have had three or four in the game.

Mobs hitting harder with more players is news to me, but not a surprise. It certainly feels harder to take a hit in a group than it does on my Monk, solo, but the monk is only starting NM, so I didn't feel I had enough to judge there.

I won't even argue that that's the wrong mechanic. It's probably for the best, for reasons you cited. But having more health does NOT change the balance of incoming damage vs healing options. So I will still be left with tedious runs to town to the healer when the red orbs get scarce.


I decided to give the AH a spin, spending about 50k to upgrade my four worst item slots and the weapon. Nothing outrageous on spending, and nothing perfect that I bought. Just using gold to complement drops. Bolty's right about the AH becoming a trap if overdone, but the game is clearly designed to give you a worse per-kill rate of decent drops than D1 was, and that's the last time I was willing to farm for drops. D2 I would play toons one pass through then reroll. Well that is getting tedious here, on the back half of Act 2 Hell, so I will do as you suggested and gear up a bit and see where that goes. The farming for items I could do and enjoy, IF the combat was fun. But this really isn't, and getting worse by the day.

I do want hard, but D1 had the right kinds of hard for me. There was a nice even pace like properly tuned strength resistance training. D3 does not feel properly tuned, is not currently as much fun at higher difficulty, and seems to have a poorly trained strength coach running the show.


RedRadical's point about ranged having it just as bad seems valid. Vortex or Teleport, Jailer or Knockback, Fast or Shielded. Most of the D3-new boss abilities they've added seem aimed at defeating the Ember-style gameplay of just maintain distance, you can burn through anything eventually if they can never corner you. That MIGHT be for the best if they gave us back D1 style health potions and let the player burn through healing (limited healing, like the D1 belt, but much less limited than D3 is now) when these crazy boss mobs use their new tricks to prevent ranged toons from maintaining distance gaps. But without the healing, you just drop dead when some of these factors overlap on you -- including the wonderful new possibilities of packs greeting you at the bottom of dungeon ladders or on fresh waypoints or checkpoints when you enter the game.


- Sirian