PoE 3.18 and hard mode, the patch that made me play Diablo 2 again

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itsLiak wrote:

How was diablo 2 a hard game?

The devs can only do so much when PoE has been stacking mechanics on top of mechanics for years, getting the balance just right is almost impossible. AN mods are not nearly as bad as people make them out to be.

All these "feedback" posts seem much more like a childish fit of people trying the exact same strategy on a new content and then get frustrated beyond what any reasonable person should ever be when it fails. You CAN change what you play to adapt for new content. If only builds with grace + determination + defiance are "viable" now, you can play it for a league.

I had a HUGE struggle with steel-infused mobs. As I'm Playing the worst "legit" archetype in the game, which is fast hitting impale melee. But you can work around those weaknesses eventually, you can also just walk away from the mob or the game.

Diablo 2 is a hard game, but unlike path of exile it is a fair game in every aspect. You don't have uncapped mobs, you don't have BS mods that disable build mechanics.

Diablo 2's power is gated by grinding gear, not by how many currency you can make to BUY your gear.

AN mods are bad when you combine all of them on differents mobs that spawn next to each other. When that happens, either you have a build that nukes them offscreen or you have to avoid them or you will die.

IF GGG limited AN rares to 1 surrounded by 2-3 old rares, that would be manageable, not when you have 5+ AN rares in a ritual circle.

This feedback is far from being childish (thanks for avoiding judging others in the future). I played enough hack and slash in the last 25 years to see that some of PoE's designs are offcharts.

GGG has a notorious problem with players finishing the game too fast and fear lack of retention, but they don't see that punishing players and gating player power while increasing monster power has the opposite effect aka burn out.

I hope for them that PoE 2 will streamlines and overhaul a lot of elements because the game really needs it.

Diablo 2 had plenty of immune mobs requiring heavy investment to work around, Just like current AN mods.

Buying gear is how YOU play the game. You can chose to not engage on it. You could also engage in heavy trade on d2, not to the same extent as you can in poe since we have to many tools(that do go against what poe devs intended, but that's beside the point).

I don't wanna bring up player skill or build strength but It's really hard to understand how AN rares are so impossible to deal with. I'm intentionally playing a bad build and I don't die or even have any issues. This is not meant as an insult its just genuine confusion. The only rares that live long enough for me to see their mods have 4-5 mods and those are not common at all.

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1869Flame wrote:

In all honesty, PoE reminded me of the hard overhaul mod for Diablo 2 called median XL.
No idea if its even playable as per date today, but heck that mod was a lot of fun. Insane mobs, insane items... An absolute gem for old school Diablo 2 mods. Maybe they have been mistaking this mod for vanilla Diablo 2 ;-)

Nah poe wishes it was as frustrating as the latest iteration of median. Scosglen is such a slog on a bow dudu that i quit the mod after 2 runs. Because i realized there was no gear upgrade remaining that would make it easier.

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teodar1987 wrote:

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1869Flame wrote:

In all honesty, PoE reminded me of the hard overhaul mod for Diablo 2 called median XL.
No idea if its even playable as per date today, but heck that mod was a lot of fun. Insane mobs, insane items... An absolute gem for old school Diablo 2 mods. Maybe they have been mistaking this mod for vanilla Diablo 2 ;-)

Nah poe wishes it was as frustrating as the latest iteration of median. Scosglen is such a slog on a bow dudu that i quit the mod after 2 runs. Because i realized there was no gear upgrade remaining that would make it easier.

Hahaha, Scosglen is fine. It's more of a skill check. I took plenty of subpar builds through Scosglen, just fine. Usually, in MXL, it's user error/adaptability, just like any game.

Two runs and you quit? So you just got to Scosglen and gave up? Again, sounds like 110% user error.

MXL is a great mod if you want more D2 content. Yes, it has its ups and downs, like any mod that has been so empowered, its hard to find a good balance but its def a bunch of fun.

Don't let people who tried to run an instance twice fool you.

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itsLiak wrote:

Diablo 2 had plenty of immune mobs requiring heavy investment to work around, Just like current AN mods.

Buying gear is how YOU play the game. You can chose to not engage on it. You could also engage in heavy trade on d2, not to the same extent as you can in poe since we have to many tools(that do go against what poe devs intended, but that's beside the point).

I don't wanna bring up player skill or build strength but It's really hard to understand how AN rares are so impossible to deal with. I'm intentionally playing a bad build and I don't die or even have any issues. This is not meant as an insult its just genuine confusion. The only rares that live long enough for me to see their mods have 4-5 mods and those are not common at all.

1/ Diablo 2 immunities are immunities. Pre 1.10 patch, rares could be totally immune to damage, this was fixed.

2/ None of mods in Diablo 2 cancel your build

3/ D2 did not need any trading to get the best gear, only time to drop it. In PoE you can't really drop your upgrade gear. You either buy it or farm the currency to craft it. Both ways need you to interact with other players (and for me is not an option) and crafting does not get you an upgrade unless you are extremly lucky.

4/ Droping the best in slot in D2 was far more manageable with itemization being relatively simple and powerfull. Itemization in PoE is at the limit of being ultra garbage. When GGG will have decided to make well rolled items a thing all over the game with weighted mods (aka no T10+ on ilvl 83 gear) then i'll consider playing the game again.

5/ JFYI, i played a frost blade in 3.17 that was able to go to t16 maps playing cautiously. I litteraly being one shotting mobs in T11 / T12. 3.18 hits, i barrely survived the first encounter in a T10 with 3 rares with 5+ AN mods. Yes, since then, they tuned down AN mods, but the problem will persist to a degree until they tune down how many AN mobs can spawn together.

How do you need to trade for your gear? SSF is a thing and people are doing all the content in the game in various builds there. What mods cancel a build? (Something you cannot ever adapt to beat)

Saying you only need time for to drop all your gear in d2 is true to same extent its true in poe, you cant just expect to farm your own tyrael's might. It's just not gonna drop.

Why do you need best in slot? chasing gear is fun. Keep making your dude stronger until its no longer fun.

Frost blades is pretty shit i'll agree with that. But the game being harder is not bad or good, if you need to do t10s for a bit so be it. Doing t16s does not have to be the default. Could also have just been an unlucky combination? Maybe empowered elements? who knows I was not there.

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ChewableTrash wrote:

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teodar1987 wrote:

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1869Flame wrote:

In all honesty, PoE reminded me of the hard overhaul mod for Diablo 2 called median XL.
No idea if its even playable as per date today, but heck that mod was a lot of fun. Insane mobs, insane items... An absolute gem for old school Diablo 2 mods. Maybe they have been mistaking this mod for vanilla Diablo 2 ;-)

Nah poe wishes it was as frustrating as the latest iteration of median. Scosglen is such a slog on a bow dudu that i quit the mod after 2 runs. Because i realized there was no gear upgrade remaining that would make it easier.

Hahaha, Scosglen is fine. It's more of a skill check. I took plenty of subpar builds through Scosglen, just fine. Usually, in MXL, it's user error/adaptability, just like any game.

Two runs and you quit? So you just got to Scosglen and gave up? Again, sounds like 110% user error.

MXL is a great mod if you want more D2 content. Yes, it has its ups and downs, like any mod that has been so empowered, its hard to find a good balance but its def a bunch of fun.

Don't let people who tried to run an instance twice fool you.

Scosglen is huge. It has obnoxious mobs - trees that either have huge damage resistance to physical or way too much life and spawn infinite minions as long as they live and semi invisible tanky dryads that keep running away and kiting you. THe worst are casters which are not only obnoxiously durable but keep teleporting behind their own lines and casting lightning and blizzard on top of you. It had a beholder miniboss that just blinked on top of my characted and one shot me. Over and over. It has the environment auto cast blizzard on top of you infinitely which keeps you constantly moving and not dps-ing the swarms of mobs that respawn throughout the area. Thats right, the buggers dont stay dead. For your trouble you are rewarded with boxes full of treasure...except to open them you have to spend great runes, which by themselves are much more valuable and rare. A couple of patches ago they went and removed most of the runes and runewords which nuked the bow druids damage by 2/3s on both its fire and phys variants.

But enough about Scosglen, its a tiny part of the extreme lategame of a great mod which possibly has more content than poe. Also it is not balanced to be played solo so a big part of my experience is on my own head.

By all means try median , just my personal recommendation is dont play a bow druid, not as much because the build is weak but because they forced you to constantly spam both mouse buttons which make playing for long actually physically painful. Again the mod is by far among the best d2 mods ever made, it has huge varied content with a wide spectrum of difficulty and a lot of graphical and qol improvements. The downsides are frustrating content appropriately dubbed as extremely difficult and a patch history reminiscent of path of nerfs.

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itsLiak wrote:

How do you need to trade for your gear? SSF is a thing and people are doing all the content in the game in various builds there. What mods cancel a build? (Something you cannot ever adapt to beat)

Saying you only need time for to drop all your gear in d2 is true to same extent its true in poe, you cant just expect to farm your own tyrael's might. It's just not gonna drop.

Why do you need best in slot? chasing gear is fun. Keep making your dude stronger until its no longer fun.

Frost blades is pretty shit i'll agree with that. But the game being harder is not bad or good, if you need to do t10s for a bit so be it. Doing t16s does not have to be the default. Could also have just been an unlucky combination? Maybe empowered elements? who knows I was not there.

Yeah like you will ever have a full T1 gear piece in SSF...

What mods cancel buids ? those whom forbid life leech when you have no life regen, those who drain your mana so you can't even attack, those who drain your flask charges just to name a few...

Chasing gear need a good build to be fun, thus needing good gear. Gear looted is at best 4/10 when you need a 7/10 to comfortably farm T16 maps. That gear, you will only find it by trading or by crafting, and crafting will be more expensive, needing you to put hundreds of hours in the game over a short period of time because if by the 3 month gap you don't have all your gear, the next patch will probably destroy all what you've done.

This is a design made to try to keep player retention, but in reality is just only make most of players burn out and don't want to play the game.

I don't think there's any point arguing since you and I clearly play different games. I hope you enjoy whatever you choose to play next.