06-19-2012, 04:23 PM
The difference is that Inferno starts to present you with problems that you can't reasonably solve with gear. The gear exists, but takes too long to farm yourself and is too expensive. In theory it's not that different from being an under geared character going through Hell, but you can't fix your problems by leveling up some more, or realizing that maybe resist gear is good after all. The only way to progress is to change your play style and play better.
So you advance to the next act, and die a lot as you find different ways abilities combine and kill you. When I play Act 2 now I probably die only 1/2 to 1/3 as often as when I first seriously tried it, and it's not because I have that much better gear. It feels kind of like learning a hard boss fight in WoW. Part of the reason that I'm playing softcore is that I specifically wanted to try out the endgame before it gets retuned and also before experts emerge and understand the best gearing and build choices. I mostly enjoyed it and when I got frustrated I did something else.
So you advance to the next act, and die a lot as you find different ways abilities combine and kill you. When I play Act 2 now I probably die only 1/2 to 1/3 as often as when I first seriously tried it, and it's not because I have that much better gear. It feels kind of like learning a hard boss fight in WoW. Part of the reason that I'm playing softcore is that I specifically wanted to try out the endgame before it gets retuned and also before experts emerge and understand the best gearing and build choices. I mostly enjoyed it and when I got frustrated I did something else.