I agree with alot of that. 16 years later Grim Dawn did better. We’ve learned alot in the last 25 years. 
D2:R supports text only modding. I find vanilla boring. I may try the BT mod, where the game is harder with rares being very rare but also have a chance to super role like a unique.
On another note. I had some observations with melee in this mod I wanted to talk about, but never came to a complete conclusion upon. My build may be suspect, but the items I find of late in this mod are diverse and rewarding from killing super uniques that aren’t required content as side quests. I’m not at end game and stuck on Baal act 5 Hell.
I just don’t do enough DPS. I didn’t get a weapon upgrade for along time and when I did, it was the SAME item! I’ve had 3 times where I boosted my damage another 10k, up to nearly 300k damage. And each jump felt significant, but not enough for Baal.
Overall I found in Hell there is a puzzle to be solved to avoid the instaheal on many bosses, but even with low DPS compared to Baal, the other bosses are all beatable once you understand what triggers the heal mechanic, and if smart, depending on your build, you can cheese kill them. It’s rewarding as you figure it out. The bosses are just tough enough to add a new challenge and feel skill created the drops you got from understanding the battle mechanics. I LOVE this!
Seldom have I tried to grind the right runes to get further in this mod or to seriously do endgame content, but I’ve tried some with my druid/barb. After a break with Titan Quest for awhile. I burn out on the campaign as much as I do the character itself I noticed. Playing different games makes a HUGE difference when spending 100+ hours on one character. So it’s more me than the mod. It seems better designed than in the past.
Even with 99 passives, it can feel there’s not enough if you don’t pick the right skills. I noticed when I reassigned a few defensive skills to stack on more offense. I haven’t died from it, but being frozen 10 seconds is a bit annoying. 
I’ll make more comments later if I can find the proper runes to craft a good weapon upgrade. Often lately, now that I’m more familiar with the passive tree, there being so many stats I simply can’t remember it all, often the fantasy of the build I am playing is as much how I allocate passive skills, as it is main skills that are FAR more straight forward. It’s quite enjoyable and one reason I enjoy this over vanilla GD. And thematically a Diablo story is just a BIT cooler than the base GD story.
EDIT: If you try to open another cow portal in one instance, it doesn’t give you another portal and consumes your items to make the portal. I was specifically trying one at a time. I hope there’s a way to stop this in the future. I may do it again, I forget things when I go to play other games.
I will probably fire up again when the big new update for GD drops.