when one "strategy" results in kiting mobs @40 mins each for hours on end to get the REQUIRED level of gear to proceed, and every other "strategy" results in dying in one hit, i don't see how there is anything to consider.
I have only run into 1 situation where we had to kite tons of mobs around, and that was 4 people in Hell Act II. We got a Yellow Spawn that was Invulnerable Minion, Molten, Knockback. It was the giant Sand Golems that can shield themselves, and he had 6-8 minions that were the little Imps that ran cirles around you at the speed of light dropping Molten everywhere in a 30 foot radius of your character. We all died 5-6 times before we had one person kite the boss mob North and the other kite the Minions South just so we could kill it. I've played something like 60 hours total and have only seen 1 situation where it required a massive kite strategy.
Those situations are very, very, few and far between, and it's mostly due to just bad luck. If those little mobs had anything except Molten we probably wouldn't have had to seperate them at all.
requiring me to have a certain level of gear to proceed is arbitrary, as is limiting the amount of time i can fight an enemy. though i can understand that more than a gear check.
As for Gear Checks, Diablo historically has always had Gear Checks throughout the game, and was almost entirely built around the idea of farming Gear. Baal \ Mephisto Runs anyone? Things like Enrage Timers exist because they don't want people who are undergeared using exploits or stupid tactics to get past bosses. I haven't seen any tight Enrage Timers through Hell mode either. My friend and I were fighting The Butcher for example, and my buddy went down about 1/3 into the Bosses HP, I then proceeded to finish him off over several minutes. I've heard the bosses timers get a LOT shorter in Inferno, but Inferno exists to be--wait for it--REALLY GOD DAMN HARD.
DPS isn't the biggest problem once you pass Nightmare, it's more survivability oriented. People complaining about getting 1 Shot by bosses and Elites are probably both not playing their characters well, and just going for straight damage. At level 58 with my Monk, I've had to ignore items that were DPS upgrades in favour of things like Armor, Block Chance, HP, and most importantly Resistance. Resistance plays a huge role in the higher difficulties, and people who are getting destroyed fail to realize this a lot of the time. If I didn't need 200+ resist to stay alive, I bet I could do a ton more damage, but what good is doing 2x as much damage for 1/100th of the time and not being able to kill anything?
instead of making the gameplay difficult, they add zeroes to the health/damage and call it a day. you say d2 did this but imo d2's combat was more strategic to begin with. d3's combat is more fluid and fun but missing depth - again, imo.
They did not just add 0's to the mob's HP. They raised their HP, raised their Attack, tweaked the AI so they are more vicious, and in the case of Elites, every level of difficulty adds at least 1 new ability. That means what would have been an Elite with Jailor in Normal, becomes an Elite with Jailor and Desecrate in Nightmare, and an Elite with Jailor, Desecrate, Arcane Enchanted by Hell. If you think that doesn't change the strategy required to do the fights, then I hate to say it, but you haven't seen enough of the game to make that kind of judgement.
That being said, when you start adding more players, the mobs basically just get a bit beefier. A lot more hp, and they hit a bit harder, but if they handled it any other way everyone would be too discouraged to play with friends, which goes against their basic intent to have a Multiplayer Action RPG.
i don't want to turn into that guy though, so i will stop bitching on this thread. it's not that i don't like the game at all - it's just that i love the series and wanted to LOVE the game, i just can't.
Then that's your opinion, but there's a reason the game sold 6.5m copies the first week, and a lot of people aroiund here have been playing it non-stop. It definitely is a very well made game, and although Normal was tedious, Nightmare was a lot of challenging fun, and Hell so far has been bloody difficult, but very rewarding.