Javalad wrote:Mr_Bill wrote:Javalad wrote:Ignore Mr Bill. he seems to be bitter about the fact he didn't sail through HC.
Just check out the HC ladder to see why his comments are nonsense.
Should I say, "Just ignore 'Javalad', because his comments are nonsense"? (I can repeat ad hominem put-downs just as well as you can.)
You could indeed say to ignore my comment, but I at least am speaking from experience. Almost all the small group of players regularly playing HC could take any char class and more or less guarantee they would get them to at least level 100. Most are far better players than I am, and I would happily put money on reaching that level fairly easily. So it all comes down to one thing.......
Here's a little story for you.
"A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox’s mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.
The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
“What a fool I am,” he said. “Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for.”
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
Moral
There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
Aesop
Of course, other than for the patronizing put-downs (did you think I've never encountered Aesop?), you have no valid response to what I was actually
saying (as opposed to the weak "Straw Man" parody of it, that you and some others are promoting).
For example, I currently have a level 105 Unholy Caster Paladin on the HC ladder (I am trying to get him set up to have even a chance of surviving the fight against Nightmare Baal), and I have frequently gotten other Hardcore characters to this point and into Hell.
I never claimed that doing this was impossible (it clearly isn't, since I have done it, multiple times, myself). I play both SC and HC characters, incidentally (although more of the latter).
What I
DID claim -- and what is plainly true and what I will re-state -- is that for a player of AVERAGE skill, AVERAGE gear, AVERAGE luck and (particularly) a somewhat reasonable amount of time devoted to playing Median (as opposed to "playing the game obsessively, every spare waking moment"), you are going to find Hardcore Median a very unsatisfying experience, especially past the middle of Nightmare mode (that is unless you like the "thrill" of always being worried about your character being one- or two-shotted by some random thing... could be Thunderbolts and their delightful little lightening bolts, or could be Cruciators, or could be Grizzly Giants and that fun clobber they can lay on you... there are many, many such things, and we haven't even started with the Uberquests). (Latest example noted : "How Normal Diablo drops a Flamestrike on your character, the second that he appears after triggering the seals in the Chaos Sanctuary". Of course, you just move out of the way, the instant that you see him. What if you weren't anticipating this? Whoops! There goes your Hardcore character, in Act 4 Normal mode. He never gets me that way anymore, but for Pete's sake... what if it's the first time you're playing Median? I don't understand how people can't see how this could lead to an "unsatisfying" game experience.)
Particularly in the later difficulty levels, and in some areas (the Frozen Tundra and the Kurasts come to mind), some types of monsters move
so fast that
no computer or network connection can properly even display their position on your screen; you blink and that mob that was on the other edge of the map, 1 second ago, is now dropping a Shower of Rocks on your head. It is just a matter of time before one or more of these situations is going to result in your demise, as sure as night follows day. I build all my Median characters on the assumption that this is going to happen, but it is no fun when you have prepared as best as anyone reasonably can (e.g. HP, FHR, minions, resists, etc.) and you still get 1- or 2-shotted.
The bottom line is, the game -- and the way it is set up to "challenge" characters -- is based on the assumption that sooner or later (probably sooner), you
will get insta-killed, by something that you couldn't reasonably have prepared to defend yourself against. That is,
the game is meant to be played in Softcore (only). No amount of contrived protestations to the contrary, is going to change that essential set of facts.
