meh, still lacked of NaCl from tears of other ppl.
My take on the problems:
1. There are always 2 side, we have "pros" and "casual".
2. Pros who devote 8 hours everyday think the feel grinding for decent gear is good
3. While casual who played only couple hour per week feel like few hours in play session without good upgrade is tedious (im atm at this area)
4. Economy where rich player become richer and casual player left with less option
Basically it boiled to old Median development where
1. Laz create couple of ubers which doable by all build
2. Then he create couple of ubers which is only for SPECIFIC CLASS! (have fun playing druid doing ureh in the past)
3. Then he added couple of heroic boss with varied difficulty. Usually either need specific build or to grind gear
4. Then marco added TONS of ubers which is much tougher than classic laz uber and BUFFED couple of old uber to be not cheesed.
5. Couple of realm only godly item which have awesome stats to be this marco's uber.
And.... i always stuck at no2...thankfully most of laz uber is cheese-able for just basic charm (not perfect charm)
So the mindset in realm is, if that build cant do both laz and marco uber, those build are trash.
You can still play them, but have fun dying endless grind for decent gear, while other already reach end game progression toward marco's uber
So far, I think the easiest marco's uber is unformed land which some build able to farm them, but since drop are terrible there so your goal pretty much just for skull and elemental stones.
Since Im just casual SP player, i will endless rage if I stepped on realm... or when there no good drop after 1 hour farming.
As for item progression, here my understanding
1. Early game (1-50, for LC1). TU, Low level RW, Rare, honorific with resist
2. Mid game (51- 100, for LC2). Tier 6 everything, lvl 100 RW (usually no sacred because of high attribute requirement)
3. Early-endgame (basic uber). Overcharged (my term for pre-MO)RW, some SU, basic craft. Goal just to farm signets and get basic charms
4. Mid-endgame (laz's hard uber). full set, almost perfect craft, great rune RW and elemental RW (and all nonsense lucky upgrade). Optimize killing / farming speed
5. End-endgame - SSSU, all marco's ubers charm, cycles etc. Basically your ultimate end goals
Personally I stucked at 3 where I already feel tedious just play the game (to a point i just want to dupe to save time)
I can see people stuck between 3 and 4 where to get gear, you want to farm no 4, but you cant since you dont have no 4 stuff.
*If you want to ask me for suggestion, give a reason for people to play easy uber at least. maybe switch some terror griswold cube recipe into drop from boss from easy uber drop (blessed oil of luck?). Yes rich / pro can easily farm them, but they already passed the no3 and 4 and doesnt need much from the oil