Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[Elric of Grans]

Elite Fallen Lunatics are just bad design. Even with my Demon Hunter, I have not been able to kill them all before the last explodes on timer. With a melee character, I find using your companion, terrain, or even other enemies will let them just blow themselves up without you having to worry about the cross-fire.

I cannot comment on Inferno, but I actually found Azmodan easier with a melee character than ranged. Less time wasted moving; more time spent hitting. Ghom, however, is pitifully easy with ranged, and painfully ugly with melee. You also forgot how Act III has Soul Lashers, the bane of ranged characters everywhere, and Blood Clan spearmen (who become quite nasty at higher difficulties). Many of the Act III elites are awful for ranged too (eg Elite Demonic Tremors are able to chase-down ranged characters, negating their advantage).

[ViralSpiral]

See, I simply never had issues with Soul Lashers (seem to have low damage in 1.0.3), Blood Clan Spearman (totally forgettable) and DTs (walls of HP, but slower than sin - which is saying something, as Azmodan is pretty slow) but then that may be because I'm doing Wiz instead of DH, and a pretty tanky build on top of that.

[FireIceTalon]

Act 3 is a complete nightmare for ranged classes. The Demonic Hell Flyers were a huge barrier to overcome at Sky Crown Battlements - 3 of their fireballs usually meant death (even with 800+ resists). I'm at the breached keep quest, and though I haven't tried it yet, I am dreading having to face elite Soul Lasher packs and Demonic Tremors which seem to be very fast even if they dont have the "fast" trait attached to them. And with the insane repair costs, I just simply have no incentive to even try, since I know even if I complete the quest I will be back at Act 1 afterward farming gold for repairs. And when I am done with that quest, I get to look forward to Heralds of Pestilence, Goat Spearman, more Soul Lashers, Succibus, and the worst of all, Phasing Hulkbeasts. No thank you. Maybe when I have 80K DPS.

[ViralSpiral]

Okay, are you two talking Inferno? Because I specified pre-Inferno and all my ranged toons sleptwalk through it. Conversely, Ghom was a terror for my Monk even in Normal. No deaths, but I had to break off and rejoin the fight several times due to his mega-damage gas.

[Elric of Grans]

I was talking Hell; I have not played past Act II/Inferno. Red is clearly talking Inferno, with those resists.

Soul Lashers took a MASSIVE damage decrease in 1.0.3, but I have not faced them with a ranged character since then (only my Monk). Heralds of Pestilence also took a massive damage nerf, though they still hit pretty darn hard. The huge hitboxes really hurt against those guys, as they are designed to punish players who do not dodge, but even if you DO dodge they hit hard :\

Demonic Hell Fliers are far worse for melee than ranged. For melee, they shoot, kite and scatter, putting in a lot of damage before you can take them out. They were a nightmare for my Monk. With a ranged character, you can simply dodge their fireballs and retaliate. They hit hard, indeed, but melee has far more trouble.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, that sounds a lot more like it. But then Red seems to have a completely different game experience than most folks in general.

[FireIceTalon]

I was talking Hell; I have not played past Act II/Inferno. Red is clearly talking Inferno, with those resists.

Soul Lashers took a MASSIVE damage decrease in 1.0.3, but I have not faced them with a ranged character since then (only my Monk). Heralds of Pestilence also took a massive damage nerf, though they still hit pretty darn hard. The huge hitboxes really hurt against those guys, as they are designed to punish players who do not dodge, but even if you DO dodge they hit hard :\

Demonic Hell Fliers are far worse for melee than ranged. For melee, they shoot, kite and scatter, putting in a lot of damage before you can take them out. They were a nightmare for my Monk. With a ranged character, you can simply dodge their fireballs and retaliate. They hit hard, indeed, but melee has far more trouble.

On Hell mode, perhaps - though my Barb had no trouble with them (or much else for that matter) on that difficulty. Wait till you face them on Inferno. Melee or ranged, it wont matter. You will hate your life regardless, especially when you face 3+ at a time. And an elite pack of them? Mhmmm, have fun with that.

[Kurosu]

Elite Fallen Lunatics are just bad design. Even with my Demon Hunter, I have not been able to kill them all before the last explodes on timer. With a melee character, I find using your companion, terrain, or even other enemies will let them just blow themselves up without you having to worry about the cross-fire.

I noticed they kill my monk in 1 explosion from full life now, he doesn't have particularly good defensive stats (30k hp, 500 res all, 7000 armor), but pretty surprising nonetheless.
Most likely another part of the bugged damage I mentioned in the other thread, as I am certain I was able to take 1 hit from these and survive with around 1/3 of my HP pool before the hotfix.

Nowadays I just use Serenity and let them blow up into me, or try to let my follower to take the explosions.

[ViralSpiral]

let my follower to take the explosions.

Facetanking is always a more attractive option when it's someone else's face.

[Elric of Grans]

Hence why the Necromancer used to be popular. Let the guy who hit you earlier facetank. Sweet karma revenge Honestly, I feel sorry for the Witch Doctor's dogs. They are his pets, he cares for them!

[ViralSpiral]

Not enough to make sure they have enough HP to be worth anything. :op

[smegged]

I've been thinking about Inferno difficulty and I wonder if the biggest mistake that Blizzard made with it was giving it all the best drops/new loot.

Inferno was supposed to be the "ultimate challenge" mode. It was supposed to be the thing that you did when you "completed" the game. But players seem to be taking it as the logical progression for their characters. After all, your character can get more powerful by progressing through Inferno through the items that drop there.

By doing this Blizzard have basically said "Inferno difficulty is not optional, if you want the most powerful characters".

To me, it sounds like it would have been much easier to balance, and much more fitting with the concept of Inferno being optional, if the item drops throughout Inferno were identical to those in Hell act 4 (with the chances of good items being higher perhaps). This way Blizzard could have balanced this "optional" difficulty properly and more easily, while ensuring that the MF run kiddies could still have their fun in hell difficulty.

Alas, I fear this was an opportunity wasted.

[MongoJerry]

I stepped away from reading this thread for a couple of weeks in an effort to make sure any response I made was calmly written. Here we go.

You haven't seen Act 2 Inferno. You don't know, and will never know (thanks to the nerfs), what you're talking about. And what you don't realize, and will never realize, is that your repeated posts about Inferno difficulty are tantamount to trolling.

Bolty, disagreeing with you or others on the board who agree with you is not trolling. Being the owner and moderator of a site while accusing someone of trolling is a serious accusation. Suffice it to say that after more than a decade of administering this site, you know what trolling is and isn't. The fact that you haven't suspended or banned me, yet, shows that even you do not think that the posts I made along the way were trolling.

Pray tell me what is this great mystery about Inferno that I as a layman have not been able to fathom?

...you routinely ignore the damage numbers that have been presented...

Let's look through my posts and see where I have ignored the damage numbers in Inferno that have been presented. Less than a week after the game's release, I stated that I may need to create a softcore character to practice tactics before stepping into Inferno. When the news that Force Armor was being nerfed came out, I stated that "Force Armor's seeming requirement seems related to the incredible damage dealt in Inferno relative to the equipment that people have," and later in the same thread I acknowledged that "perhaps Blizzard has just unbalanced things too much with the encounter dangers far outpacing the gear" and "if that [gear] doesn't exist, that's a problem with the game design." Continuing the discussion a couple days later, I wondered at what health and mitigation stats Force Armor would no longer be needed and "whether such gear that is capable of doing so has been implemented in the game."

On May 24th, I first aired my mostly wrong idea that Blizzard held back on some gear at release and noted that the person I was responding to seemed to have very little health for playing in Inferno. I later reiterated that the problems with Inferno were gear issues and acknowledged that "either it doesn't exist, yet, or it exists but takes a long time to farm... before you get the good stuff." I repeated the mantra about how I expected Blizzard to release better gear that would allow players to be Inferno capable several times.

On May 27th, I described Inferno as insanely challenging. I later discussed how people are choosing to skip ahead to acts that their gear can't support and were using the auction house to circumvent a farming process that was supposed to take months. In the same thread, I lamented that players are buying the wrong gear -- items that are glass cannon +mf% gear -- instead of vitality and mitigation gear that would help them survive. In a similar vein, I lamented that the most common Wizard Skill/Rune was the offensively oriented Diamond Skin / Mirror Skin instead of the defensively oriented Diamond Skin / Crystal Shell.

In several posts, I acknowledged the difficulty that melee characters were having in Inferno Act 2. I even provided some modest suggestions for improvements to the barbarian class in the hope that it would spark some positive discussions of solutions. However, the first hardcore kill of Inferno Belial, which was done by a barbarian, demonstrated that it wasn't really the melee class skills that were broken, it was the gear -- just as I had previously been saying all along. Further reading only reinforced this idea.

The rest of my comments are all in a similar vein asking people to stop talking about irrelevancies like mob mechanics and supposedly broken skills -- all of which were acknowledged to have been fine in hell difficulty and below -- and instead focus on the key problem with Inferno: the ratio of the power of a player's gear to the health of and damage dealt by mobs. In a discussion of the supposed evils of the auction house, I made my first comments on the impending 1.0.3 patch, "And we already know that things are going to get easier when 1.0.3 comes along, so all of this is really a moot point. Higher level gear will start dropping in Act 1 and the mobs are going to be easier." Later, I said, "There aren't any issues with Inferno that won't be solved with better gear" while reiterating my speculation that Blizzard didn't release all of the gear they planned to release (I didn't know at the time that they were going to nerf Inferno mob damage and health so much). In a discussion about the lack of build variants in the game, I said, "as Inferno is tuned down and as more powerful gear is released, I think a greater variety of builds will become viable." In a discussion of monster mechanics, I wrote, "there's nothing wrong with monster mechanics (well, maybe except invulnerable minions). The problems are simply a matter of gear and perhaps a tweak on the health and damage of mobs." In response a player complaining that he has to park nearly every elite pack, I said, "if you have to park nearly every Elite you come across, then go back an act or two and farm there. Clearly, you are not geared for the level you are trying to play at." Later, I acknowledged that Blizzard didn't QA Inferno properly while disagreeing with the statement that Blizzard's QA was better in the past. On 6/13, I stated my mantras clearly by saying, "There aren't any game mechanics that can't be solved with appropriate use of player skills and better gear, ... [but] it is entirely possible that the appropriate gear for Acts 2 and 3 Inferno doesn't yet exist or drops so rarely that it might as well not exist."

In response to Lissa where he laments supposedly broken skills, I said on 6/14, "All they have to do is make it easier for people to get better gear and tune down the health and damage on the mobs in Inferno a bit. That's it. The skills that you claim to be 'broken' in Inferno are not in fact broken.... The reason why some skills seem suddenly 'broken' in Inferno is because of the massive health and spike damage that gets dealt in Inferno. Allow better gear to drop and tune down the mob health and damage in Inferno, and poof all those skills suddenly come back into play again just like they were in hell difficulty. Guess what Blizzard is going to do in 1.0.3? Allow better gear to drop and tone down Inferno mob health and damage."

Finally, on 6/15 while acknowledging that certain skills need to be alterred or improved, I said, "I think the game was very well QA'd and balanced up through the end of Hell difficulty, ... [but] the problems arise in Inferno where Blizzard admitted they didn't QA or balance very carefully.... The only differences between Inferno and Hell difficulty are that boss packs have one more affix and all the mobs have more health and deal more damage. Allow better items to drop more frequently and tune down the extra health and damage, and the game will return to the well balanced realm that we all experienced in hell difficulty. I think that would be a good thing."

So, there you go, Bolty. 31 posts of mine related to end game balance in some manner, all consistently talking about how difficult Inferno is, how there is a need for better defensive gear, use of defensive skills, and how it's possible that appropriate gear for Acts 2 and 3 Inferno might not have been in the game yet. Now, please link to me a single post where I "ignore the damage numbers that have been presented."

Pray tell me what is this great mystery about Inferno that I as a layman have not been able to fathom?

It's been explained to you dozens of times. You don't seem to realize what the extra modifier does on certain boss combinations (yay Arcane Enchanted Invulnerable Minions Desecrator Frozen as melee!),

That sounds difficult, Bolty. Neglecting the Invulnerable Minions modifier that I have repeatedly acknowledged is ridiculous, let me ask you this: Are you able to handle such a pack or for that matter any pack you come across in Act 1 Inferno now that you are well geared? I'm going to guess that you can. Why? Because there's a big difference in difficulty between whether you get 3-shot or 10-shot by mobs, and there's a big difference if you are able to kill or severely damage one or more mobs before your cc breaking skills run out. Again, it's not the elite pack modifiers that are broken. It's the ratio of the power of the player's gear (health, migitation, dps, and resource generators) versus the power of the mobs (health, damage, and ai).

Pray tell me what is this great mystery about Inferno that I as a layman have not been able to fathom?

...You respond to Demon Hunters complaining about getting 3 shot and suggest they need better gear or more defensive skills, and anyone who has played past Act II Inferno will simply shake their head and laugh at that. I don't really know where to begin.

You continuously post as an authority on the subject without ever having experienced it. I do not post as an authority on hardcore mode, because I do not play it. You are the subject of continuous derision by a number of Lurker players who play in "easy mode" Inferno difficulty, but you just don't stop.

It's fascinating that you say that, because looking back on every single post that I have made, I don't see this. I do see a couple of posts I made regarding DH's. For example, in this very thread, I told Smegged that his DH in nightmare seems to have enough health. I also made two posts saying that I don't know enough about DH's to know what kind of defensive skills they have and if they really don't have good defensive skills, then it's the class skills that should change and not the mob ai. There is also my response to Lissa saying that Rakanoth's attack is not insta-kill in hell and below, but unless you're saying that I can't talk about encounters with which I have had personal experience, I don't think this would count. The closest post I can find to your statement is the one I made to RedRadical on 5/27, where he complained about being 2-shot in act 1 Inferno while sporting 25k life. I responded that that amount of life seemed pretty low, considering my hell act 1 Wizard had 30k, and Chesspiece, whose character was in Inferno Act 1 at the time, took the subject further.

Your comments about being the "subject of continuous derision by a number of Lurker players" does make me wonder if perhaps ideas that I have never expressed and posts I have never written have been conflated with my actual posts during the process of gossip. However, please do link and prove me wrong.

So, basically, all of your "sky is falling" pronouncements that Diablo III is a big scam to get people to use the RMAH and that if you don't use it, you won't be able to finish the game were complete farces.

I NEVER SAID THIS, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, EVER.

[It's possible] that Diablo III is actually a gigantic gambling mechanism, Activision/Blizzard is the "house," and the game is an overlay for what basically amounts to pulling a slot machine. That Blizzard's sole reason to create Diablo III is to implement (and make money from) this RMT auction house. Your goal as a player is to be talked into using this auction house, and eventually get addicted to it, in a game that's all about the items you wear and a system that prevents you from getting all the best items without purchasing them from the AH.

Time will prove or disprove [this] theory; there's no way to tell this for sure one way or the other until the game's been out for a while and we can see what direction it takes.

--Bolty, September 13 2011

It looks to me like Daeity was right. And I've only been level 60 for 2 days... (Snip discussion of the fun aspects of Diablo III)... The REAL game begins with Inferno difficulty and the gear you gain there. Ask anyone who has been there a while.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take long to realize something: Diablo III's end-game isn't Inferno difficulty.

It's the Auction House. And that's exactly the way Blizzard wants it. Inferno difficulty is not there to challenge you as a player; it's there to push you into using the Auction House, and by extension, the Real Money Auction House - where Blizzard makes their money.

When I sat down to write this post, I fully expected to apologize and eat crow on this one. I was angry when I wrote my post, and I thought it was likely that I had conflated your post on the RMAH with others who were more scathing about the concept. But, no, Bolty, you did say it. I realize that you had a bigger more nuanced point that you were trying to make, and I stand by my response to your initial post. However, while you might not have used the specific words "Diablo III is a big scam to get people to use the RMAH," you agreed with the characterization of Diablo III being a "gigantic gambling mechanism" and went on to say that "Inferno difficulty... is there to push you into using the Auction House, and by extension, the Real Money Auction House - where Blizzard makes their money." Sorry, Bolty, you did say it.

You haven't seen Act 2 Inferno. You don't know, and will never know (thanks to the nerfs), what you're talking about. And what you don't realize, and will never realize, is that your repeated posts about Inferno difficulty are tantamount to trolling.

Back to the original topic. What is it that you and Lissa didn't think I knew about Inferno? It's a couple of weeks later, and I have had a taste of Inferno. So far, I haven't seen anything that I wasn't expecting -- mobs with higher health, speed, and damage and elite mobs with one extra modifier. I haven't seen Deathwing or any Pac-man levels, yet. I don't think that what I supposedly didn't know was an intellectual thing. Instead, I think it was an emotional thing. "If you'd been beating your head against the wall of Act 2 Inferno, you wouldn't be saying such nice things about Blizzard." Or, "If you'd been beating your head against the wall, you'd also be making irrational statements about Blizzard's QA being better in the past."

And you're right that we'll never know for certain what my emotional responses would have been, if I had been playing softcore and had been banging my head consistently against the Act 2 Inferno barrier. I know what my response has been when I've banged my head against the hardcore game crash/server instability barrier, though -- take a few days off from the game to regroup. Knowing myself, I probably would have farmed Act 1 for about a week and made a few attempts at the Act 2 barrier. When that didn't work, I probably would have broken down and bought a few items on the AH, tried the barrier again, got frustrated and kept farming Act 1. Then, when the announcement came out about the then upcoming changes in 1.0.3, I would have probably set my character aside, figuring the gear for the late acts of Inferno was about to be released, and played some other character classes while waiting for the changes. What I am pretty confident that I wouldn't have done was make multi-page and multi-thread diatribes asking to change everything in the game except the key things that needed to be fixed -- the massive health and damage of the mobs in Inferno and the availability of gear to handle those mobs.

The entire time you have been playing Diablo III, you've been in easy mode, where the game is balanced with a steady progression of difficulty and gear rewards to match it. That progression ends in Inferno difficulty. But you'll never see it now.

This comment of yours was made in the light of the 1.0.3 patch, which didn't bring about significant mechanics changes or player skill changes. But, it did significantly change the health and damage of mobs in Inferno and the availability of gear to handle them. So, by saying that the 1.0.3 patch fixed the most significant problems with Inferno, what you are saying is, "Mongo, you were right."

[Lissa]

Back to the original topic. What is it that you and Lissa didn't think I knew about Inferno? It's a couple of weeks later, and I have had a taste of Inferno. So far, I haven't seen anything that I wasn't expecting -- mobs with higher health, speed, and damage and elite mobs with one extra modifier. I haven't seen Deathwing or any Pac-man levels, yet. I don't think that what I supposedly didn't know was an intellectual thing. Instead, I think it was an emotional thing. "If you'd been beating your head against the wall of Act 2 Inferno, you wouldn't be saying such nice things about Blizzard." Or, "If you'd been beating your head against the wall, you'd also be making irrational statements about Blizzard's QA being better in the past."

I'll answer this one, you didn't see Inferno before it was nerfed. It's that simple. If you had, you wouldn't be making these inane comments about what you "think" inferno was/is like, you'd know. What Inferno is like now is nothing like it was. Imagine walking into Act 1 after getting through Act 4 Hell without much difficulty and the first white mob comes up and hands you your ass. Now lets throw in that you have to be in better gear to handle said white mob, this means either a) running Act 3 and Act 4 Hell over and over again to have a chance of making progression, b) going to the AH, be it GAH or RMAH and buying gear to handle the situation, or c) both. Now, lets say you play through Act 1 Inferno a bit more, get some money, get some good drops, finally kill the Butcher and say, "hey, let's try Act 2," and the first white mob you run into, again, hands your ass to you even though you can handle the Butcher fairly easily. Now, let's say you do what you did before running through options a, b, and c, but this time replacing running Act 3 and 4 of Hell over and over with instead now running Act 1 Inferno over and over. Then you get through Act 2 and walk into Act 3 and boom, same thing you saw before, first white mob you run into hands you your ass. You never saw this because you never reached there before the nerfs. On top of it, without ever seeing it or experiencing it, you proceed to arm chair general the situation and tell people that know what it is like and have dealt with it that they have no idea about the situation and you, being a master of the game, think you know better of what you speak when you haven't seen it nor experienced it. And you wonder why Bolty leveled the troll charge at you (which he was very right to do). I don't sit here and tell you people playing HC how HC is run and I don't pretend to know that much about it cause I don't feel the need to try it, but if you're going to tell people what you think something is like without knowing what it is like, be prepared to be called a troll.

The entire time you have been playing Diablo III, you've been in easy mode, where the game is balanced with a steady progression of difficulty and gear rewards to match it. That progression ends in Inferno difficulty. But you'll never see it now.

This comment of yours was made in the light of the 1.0.3 patch, which didn't bring about significant mechanics changes or player skill changes. But, it did significantly change the health and damage of mobs in Inferno and the availability of gear to handle them. So, by saying that the 1.0.3 patch fixed the most significant problems with Inferno, what you are saying is, "Mongo, you were right."

Here we go again, you again don't get it. While they lowered the damage numbers and health, there are still problems. "You just can't walk into Mordor," you'll still get your ass handed to you, just more slowly than before. Instead of being one shot or two shot, you now take two to four shots to die. That's not that significant a difference. In essence, just because a mob goes from doing 130% of your life in one hit down to 75% of you life in one hit doesn't mean that the situation is "better". So no, Mongo, you're still wrong.

[MongoJerry]

I'll answer this one, you didn't see Inferno before it was nerfed. It's that simple. If you had, you wouldn't be making these inane comments about what you "think" inferno was/is like, you'd know. What Inferno is like now is nothing like it was. Imagine walking into Act 1 after getting through Act 4 Hell without much difficulty and the first white mob comes up and hands you your ass. Now lets throw in that you have to be in better gear to handle said white mob, this means either a) running Act 3 and Act 4 Hell over and over again to have a chance of making progression, b) going to the AH, be it GAH or RMAH and buying gear to handle the situation, or c) both. Now, lets say you play through Act 1 Inferno a bit more, get some money, get some good drops, finally kill the Butcher and say, "hey, let's try Act 2," and the first white mob you run into, again, hands your ass to you even though you can handle the Butcher fairly easily. Now, let's say you do what you did before running through options a, b, and c, but this time replacing running Act 3 and 4 of Hell over and over with instead now running Act 1 Inferno over and over. Then you get through Act 2 and walk into Act 3 and boom, same thing you saw before, first white mob you run into hands you your ass.

In other words, what you are saying is that the problem with Inferno was (is?) that mobs had too much health and dealt too much damage compared to the gear that players should have been expected to have had at that point in the game. This sounds familiar.

[Lissa]

I'll answer this one, you didn't see Inferno before it was nerfed. It's that simple. If you had, you wouldn't be making these inane comments about what you "think" inferno was/is like, you'd know. What Inferno is like now is nothing like it was. Imagine walking into Act 1 after getting through Act 4 Hell without much difficulty and the first white mob comes up and hands you your ass. Now lets throw in that you have to be in better gear to handle said white mob, this means either a) running Act 3 and Act 4 Hell over and over again to have a chance of making progression, b) going to the AH, be it GAH or RMAH and buying gear to handle the situation, or c) both. Now, lets say you play through Act 1 Inferno a bit more, get some money, get some good drops, finally kill the Butcher and say, "hey, let's try Act 2," and the first white mob you run into, again, hands your ass to you even though you can handle the Butcher fairly easily. Now, let's say you do what you did before running through options a, b, and c, but this time replacing running Act 3 and 4 of Hell over and over with instead now running Act 1 Inferno over and over. Then you get through Act 2 and walk into Act 3 and boom, same thing you saw before, first white mob you run into hands you your ass.

In other words, what you are saying is that the problem with Inferno was (is?) that mobs had too much health and dealt too much damage compared to the gear that players should have been expected to have had at that point in the game. This sounds familiar.

Mongo, I'm going to put this simply, you're wrong. You have no clue. You haven't seen what Act 2 nor Act 3 are like, even with the nerfs. You think you know, but you don't. And now you are being a troll, so stop.

[FireIceTalon]

As someone who is in Act 3, I can say even with the nerfs, it still sucks, and my gear is at a point where it is extremely difficult to get upgrades (improvements to my current gear have astronomically low drop rates, and even slight improvements through either the RMAH or GAH would cost a bloody fortune). Putting the repair costs back to normal and taking away enrage timers would probably make it "tolerable", but I still don't see the game lasting as long as D1 or D2 did unless Blizz does some very serious tuning.

[LavCat]

Wonder if DeeBye has any popcorn left?

[MongoJerry]

Mongo, I'm going to put this simply, you're wrong. You have no clue. You haven't seen what Act 2 nor Act 3 are like, even with the nerfs. You think you know, but you don't. And now you are being a troll, so stop.

So, tell me what changes in Act 2 and Act 3. I have experienced the mob ai in hell Acts 2 and 3. From everything I've read, it sounds like the health the mobs have and the damage they deal increases greatly and that the gear isn't (or least wasn't in the past) enough to compensate for the increased mob health and damage. Also, elite packs get one more modifier. Is there anything else I need to be aware of before I go into Act 2 Inferno?

If you're going to tell people what you think something is like without knowing what it is like, be prepared to be called a troll.

I can predict what certain things are like without experiencing them by making inferences and extrapolations from past experiences. For example, it's dark right now at 9pm but from past experience and knowledge of physics, I understand that the angular momentum of the earth will likely cause it to rotate such that the Sun will shine down on my location sometime tomorrow -- even though I have not yet experienced tomorrow.

As far as the "armchair generaling," etc. that you mentioned in your previous post, I can't comment on any of that without you commenting directly on one of my posts. I have reread every post I have made since Diablo III came out and I can't find a case where I have told a person in Inferno to "l2p" or any such measure -- other than perhaps a note when someone in Inferno states that their health is lower than my Wizard in hell. I have told a few people to "l2p" who made long diatribes about game balance when describing their experiences in nightmare and hell. Perhaps you are conflating those posts with others referring to Inferno. But perhaps not. The next time you see me armchair generaling someone farther along than I am, call me out on it, and we can address it then. Otherwise, I just have to chalk it up to your memory being confounded by emotional responses.

[MongoJerry]

As someone who is in Act 3, I can say even with the nerfs, it still sucks, and my gear is at a point where it is extremely difficult to get upgrades (improvements to my current gear have astronomically low drop rates, and even slight improvements through either the RMAH or GAH would cost a bloody fortune). Putting the repair costs back to normal and taking away enrage timers would probably make it "tolerable", but I still don't see the game lasting as long as D1 or D2 did unless Blizz does some very serious tuning.

That's fair enough, Red. I'll have to take your word on that until I experience it myself. I don't think the solution is to do anything to the repair costs, though. The goal should be to reach a point where if you play well and have reasonable gear for the area you are playing at, you shouldn't die at all. If the gear level or mob power is still off, then one or the other should be adjusted accordingly. One potential problem I can see with adjusting things again now, though, is that it doesn't leave much room for expansion -- i.e. those "legendary" legendaries that Blizzard is supposed to release Soon™.

I agree that the current Enrage timers are kind of sucky, though. I ran into a waller/shielding pack in the cathedral and even though my wizard wasn't ever in any danger, I couldn't do enough damage to the pack before the enrage timer kicked in. It's not like I was trying to exploit anything nor that my dps wasn't appropriate for the area. It's just that between the spamming walls and shields, I could barely hit them. I think the waller mechanic is fun, but maybe the casting cooldowns for champion packs could be increased. As far as the Enrage timers themselves, I don't like the dot debuff mechanism, especially as a hardcore player. Maybe the mobs could freeze, throw up an invulnerable shield to let you know that you hit the enrage timer, and then after 10 seconds, they could heal up to full and respawn at their original spawn location. Also, if you kill a member of the pack, the timer should reset. Just a thought.