After I ditched my retal pet attempt, since it isn’t even slightly viable in the current state, I decided to continue with my EoR build. I went with 2 GD classes for this, Oathkeeper and Occultist, since I was curious how a build without a D2 class would perform.
To my surprise, it was able to hold its own up to and including endgame. I haven’t beaten the TotA yet, but I should be able to.
This build and probably most other 2xGD builds would be impossible to pull off without heavy use of the MI gear that was added. Like I can’t even fathom how you would otherwise get nearly enough stats to make any of it work at endgame. Since GD skills don’t appear on D2 gear, you have to stick to the few +all skills items and otherwise rely entirely on MIs. Using GD items is pretty much out of the question, since most of those, even set items, provide laughable boni in comparison.
Take a look at these two, I literally could not find better GD items than those on the right. I know those are just some random rares, but I wasn’t able to drop any set with EoR on it. Not one.
The second screenshot shows a lvl 92 item, that gives 2 low %damage modifiers, 1 AR modifier and 1 medium resist. I mean, how is this even meant to compare when you need this specific skill. Eye of Reckoning is hardly found on anything to begin with, so MIs are really your only viable option.
Luckily I had a good selection of those in the stash already, but if you think about starting from scratch it will most likely be a pretty miserable experience. This is my char at 91 with basic buffs up (no procs), but I don’t think getting more levels will really change much at this point:
Damage to dummy (fully buffed and procced):
A couple more observations. Is it possible that you skipped the Tomb of the Horadrim boss when you did your attack/defense readjustment a good while back? Cause he still seems to have crazy high defense, he really is an outlier. On Hell mode I went from hitting Baal with around 140% chance down to 92% on the Horadrim boss, only to jump up again to roughly 135% against D1 diablo. Even against hidden ubers I don’t drop below 125-130%, so putting the Hoadrim boss at 92% seems like a mistake. Now that I think about it, that particular fight always seemed unreasonably tedious on pretty much any char I played. No wonder if you are having almost no chance to crit.
The Gul rune seems to be overpowered when you wield a 2H. The +10% AR when wielding a 2H is not applied once, but to every single equipped rune. So you will get +75% AR when using 3, that is too much in my opinion. Especially since using a 1H+shield/offhand will only give you +60% and you will use up one more rune. Look at these screenshots, it’s not possible to get from 4k to 4.5k AR with just one +10% bonus. This was done without any buffs.
My last complaint for today 
are the Trial mechancis. The arena is so small, that all the boss spawns will immediatley charge at you, even if you stand back as far as you can in one of the spawn points. That removes any sort of strategy from the whole thing and devolves it into a mere gear check. “Can you facetank 3 supercharged ubers?” is really the only question this whole thing asks you. If you can do that for about 15 seconds, you will win. If you can’t, you will die.
Zero strategy is involved as far as I can tell, especially with chars that need to get close to deal damage. I feel bad for being so dismissive about it, but instead of the whole encounter the game could just as well calculate all your stats and give you a printout of whether you made it in the end or not. Most of the ubers move way too fast so splitting them up is next to impossible, kiting as melee will completely destroy your dps so the only realistic way to go about this is tanking. 3 bosses, every single round…and there are a lot of rounds.
The Shattered Realm broke this monotony up by making you traverse a level as fast as you could. TotA has nothing of that sort. You explained the reasoning behind that decision, running out of memory/asset storage and all that. But it just feels so dull and with none of my chars, even those that can semi afk it, have I ever felt the desire to repeatedly run this for the faction grind. Is there any way you could spice this up or make the rounds something else than just “3 big scary monsters charge at you from 10 feet away”?
Edit: So I tried to complete TotA with extra spawn enabled and I forgot how much of a shitshow it becomes towards the end. Certain combinations will just constantly stun/slow/mana drain you, even if you have 80-85% resists, like I do. That means if you use a channeled skill, you will get constantly interrupted and in this onslaught of visual effects it’s very hard to even see if your attack is still going.
I’m not sure what this is supposed to achieve really, just 5 ubers ganging up on you without rhyme or reason. Is the ultimate goal to be decked out in censored (+all res) gear? I get no sense of achievement from beating a round, since it’s only about stats at this point. Beating Brutalus or any of the ubers that have environmental damage/traps in their lairs is infinitely more fun than this. Really disappointing, goes to show how long I haven’t done a full run.
So it may be short lived. We’ll see. I just thought it’d be really cool to try out. 
It’s more visceral and feels more real, I feel more connected to the environments! It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve experienced anything noteworthy with sound. Maul is cool, LOL. 
. We just have to wait updates of that awesome mod 
