I would love to see you try!

Agreed. Unfortunately you're still whomping on a mountain of hp, but you need to have some actual tactics going into the fight if you want to stand a chance.

Plus if you are a stalker you can insta-kill every foe that isn't Reichsman in the room. And that's awesome.

In a way, yeah. That's kind of what I like in a final fight. About the only thing wrong with it is the timing of the ambushes. They seem to be timed off a global counter, rather than off each other, so they're spaced far enough apart that they don't overlap. The result is a lot of sitting on our hands waiting for them. If they could be keyed off each other, so that the next wave came 30-60 seconds after the last one was beaten down, I'd have the idea final fight.

Interestingly, I did something like this in a Mayhem mission today. We were playing a full 8-man team when we ducked into a Smash n' Grab side mission. As the team went further into the store, I decided to play goalie on the entrance and intercept Longow ambushes as they came in, trying to keep them busy so they don't bother the rest of the team. LORDY that was a huge never-ending fight! I have no idea what the rest of the team were doing during this time ("triggering all the alarms for XP" was the last thing I heard), but it was just... Endless. Ambush after ambush after ambush of Longbow and PPD, replete with bosses. I missed a few stragglers here and there, largely when I overflowed my own aggro cap, but this is probably one of the most exciting battles I've ever fought.

This was on my Axe/Willpower Brute, by the way, at level 41. Battle Axe has a lot of very solid AoE and Willpower kept me alive well enough. I handled I think something on the order of a dozen ambushes, which must have been easily on the order of 70-80 people in a seamless stream of more reinforcements. It didn't just make me feel AWESOME (turns out that Brute was stronger than I thought), but it also made me feel like the big bad, holding off probably all the cops in Brickstown while the rest of my team lifted everything the shop that wasn't nailed down. That's certainly a lot more interesting than just being one more body diving into the dogpile and just pushing buttons. This was MY fight, and I came out of it victorious.

-Halt in the name of Longbow!
-Oh? Come and get me!

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Torchlight is only 300 and something MB in size, with a moderate story in complexity. Doesnt take too long untill your character becomes very powerful and owns the dungeons. To me it seemed at firs as unbalanced but i think they didnt actually mean to balance it. It looks like its supposed to have a certain dose of unbalance. What i did was put only a few points in strength and defense and dexterity but have almost everything in magic. Started playing with the alchemist for the pets. so basically at level 15,i think, i got a spell that literally owns everything .and it has sooooo many features that are so fun but also ncould be considered game breaking like the shared vault and the pet that goes and sells your equipments, abundance of pets you can get, and enhancind weapons infinetally? But you know what ? I love it. as much as i let myself captivated by the storyline and the games universe, and as much as a certain dose of logic related to the game's mechanics and the game itself, those tiny feature that help so much that sometimes you feel like cheateng are just so damn fun

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Completely agreed See, the reason I liked the original Diablo was for its simplicity (you have ONE attack that loops, and that's it) which can lead to a certain state of flow in a game, as well as for it allowing me to be overpowered. With Griswold's Edge and a decent shield, I was having fights with Blood Lords that I've not seen matched in a game since.

Torchlight is a lot of the same, only it allows for even more of an overpowered mess. As you mentioned, infinite enchanting of items (there IS a chance you can strip ALL enchantments off an item, leaving it essentially white, but it seems pretty small) mean that you can super-charge even a crappy weapon or item piece, though trying to fiddle with unique pieces is... Expensive. Still, I managed to produce a rifle which is SO DAMN POWERFUL that I don't think any item in the game will ever match it. I got a bit bored after Ordrok and the drop in narrative quality of the lower-level crypts, but I have to agree with you on all counts:

Sometimes it's just fun to be overpowered. Certainly there are still fights that push your limits, but being a tough guy for the majority of the time is actually very satisfying. I don't know how an Alchemist would play, but between Bouncing Shot and Exploding shot, along with a spell that made me shoot faster, there was precious little my ranger couldn't kill without much trouble. Ordrok himself was problematic, due to a classic mountain of hit points, but otherwise I could knock stuff about at will. I'll need to look for a better rifle now, though. The lower crypts are nasty. Do they even end?

Here's one MAJOR disappointment I had with Torchlight - firing two handguns is NOT twice as fast as firing just one. The second doesn't fire in-between the first's firing speed, it fires INSTEAD of it, essentially limiting you to the performance of the WORST pistol. Why even use two, then?

On that note, I just discovered something interesting - lowering my difficulty from +0x2 to -1x3 has made things RIDICULOUS for my Brutes. I don't know how people manage to build Fury from their own attacks. I can't. Ever. And since +0x2 tends to produce a lot of spawns of anything from 1 to 3 enemies, there just aren't enough for them to build my Fury, either. Well, -1x3 tends to produce a LOT of enemies. I routinely see spawns of 8-9 enemies, and it takes them no more than a couple of slavos to shoot my Fury all the way up to 70-80. Afterwards, hideous smackdown ensues. And you know what? I LOVE IT! For the first time in a long while, my Brutes feel at least a little bit more like Scrappers. I could have done that before, sure, at the cost of massive stress and pressure. Now I get to have Fury handed to me on a silver platter. How could I but revel at the chance?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think part of your fury building troubles comes from having Battle Axe as your primary. It's a bit slow. But then, pre-new-difficulty system fury was always a bit slow solo. Hmm... I wonder what claws is like...

I have always found it easier to play brutes solo on higher difficulty levels than lower ones because of Fury. The moment I got Stamina slotted, it'd be Ruthless/Relentless for me from there on in. Whenever I started having a rough time with my brute, it'd be because I forgot to boost up my difficulty.

NOW of course, in our new awesome button world, building fury is easy! Just bump up team size and insta-fury within moments of starting a fight... and all that fury means the fight won't last long either! I like x6-x8 team size at +0 for brutes now. Not too challenging (but keeps you on your toes), and you get positively HUGE battles with literal piles of bodies at your feet.

Ah, to be a Brute in a post I-16 world is what is best in life (in the Conan meaning of the term)

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

I have two arcs, but I haven't exactly strived to make them easy, specifically. I did my best to keep AVs out of them, though, and only resort to EBs for special occasions, like once per arc. Beyond that, there isn't much I can do to make an arc easy that isn't in the hands of the player and his difficulty settings.

My hero-side arc, "The Greater Evil" ended up harder for the simple fact that I used Malta, but my villain-side arc, "The PDA That Knew" is relatively easy and has as close to a truly self-serving storyline as I've seen in the game.

However, given that both arcs have had less than 30 playthroughs between them, I've had no motivation to make new ones or even update the old ones. If you decide to play through them, feel free to PM me any bugs or changes that need to be done.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I've played all Brute Primaries other than Dark Melee. All of them have the same problem - if it's just me and an enemy that won't fight back, building Fury from attacking is a bum job. It doesn't happen, at least not in any timeframe I care to wait around for. Again, attacking is about good enough to roughly maintain a level of Fury, but I've never seen it be good enough to BUILD it. Building Fury for me has always been a result of diving into a huge spawn and very much never anything else.

But, as was mentioned, now that we can make our missions have huge spawns of weak enemies, I'm in hog heaven. I think my Brutes became a LOT more fun now, and having about half a dozen of 'em, that means a lot

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.