Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[smegged]

But... but... but...

Smegged said all of this, and he's in nightmare. Guys, there might be a problem in Inferno that needs to be fixed, but Smegged is in nightmare. I'm sorry, Smegged, but there are guys in hardcore playing DH's who have made it to Inferno without buying AH gear. The game is still new. Try some skills out that you haven't tried before, read up on what skills people who have successfully taken their DH's into Inferno have used, and farm some areas and craft some better gear for yourself. 18.5k hp for act 3 nightmare sounds OK to me, but maybe make a forum post in the DH area explaining your current stats and skill selections and let people make some suggestions to you.

There is a long way to go before you get to the "Inferno's too hard; the AH is bad" part. If you get to Act II Inferno and you've been farming Act I Inferno for two or more weeks, then go ahead and complain. But right now, you need to experiment more with the game, because DH's can and do go much further than you have gone without dying.

Everyone else, when you jump on another round of "Inferno's too hard; the AH is bad" in a thread like this, you're acting as enablers. Help a guy out who clearly needs help, and let's not get yet another thread going on this topic. I think everyone knows where everyone stands on this topic by now but in case you don't know mine, it's this: "Duh, trading has been an integral part of the Diablo series since its inception. The AH merely makes the already existing trading process less painful. If you don't want to use the AH, that's fine. It'll just take you longer to grind up and craft the gear you need to beat the game. If you want to do that (and I'm doing that myself right now), then that's a choice that you personally have made. I'm glad Inferno is difficult, and I hope they don't nerf it too much. I applaud Blizzard for making the game challenging. It'll make it so much sweeter when I beat it on hardcore eventually -- probably months from now."

I am not sure I mentioned inferno once in my post, although I did imply it. My main points were summarised by these two sentences:

"There's no personalisation, no specialisation and the levelling game, which is not as fun as it used to be, ends too early.

The only thing that can kill you is not being on the right side of the statistics game. If a pack of mobs can lay out X damage in 30 seconds you're dead. If they can't, you're completely safe."

The main problem with Diablo 3 is that Blizzard have designed the game with the focus on the "end game" by allowing you to get to level 60 very quickly and easily. Most characters hit 60 before they finish hell difficulty, and finishing hell difficulty doesn't really take that much time.

There may be some fun to be had with hardcore, but the thought of dying to a lagspike (which has happened playing softcore) keeps me well and truly away from it.

Well, as one who has reached Act 2 Inferno, and has been farming Act 1 for over 2 weeks, I can confirm Smegged's complaint as being legitimate, though he should reserve such judgement until he is there himself.

That being said, 18.5K hp should be enough for Act 3 and even Act 4 nightmare, and DPS should be around 1500 ish to be able to play comfortably. Although on DH things can get hairy since the class design itself has several flaws - primarily it is too fragile, as it lacks any real substantial defensive skills compared to other classes. For anyone who really wants to try seriously to beat Inferno, I would recommend starting with a Barb or Wiz first. Sure, there are DH's in Inferno, and even a few who are doing ok in it, but a few is the exception, and not the rule. All it really means is that those players can tolerate more abuse than the average person can, hehe.

Yeah there was nothing wrong with the stats on my character when I got to this point. The teleporting, vortexing "screw you and your desire to reposition" mobs just made me realise how many elements of the game are designed to cut down on player skill, given that positioning is a very large part of player skill.

It may very well be that Act II will be much easier when smegged gets to it.

If I bother getting to it. Which was much of the point of my post. There are no real rewards (I'm not a huge item hunter) once you hit 60. There are no quests which permanently change your character and there's no customisation to be had, outside of gear.