Your character dies permanently on SR in HC, like everywhere else in the game.
HC, you die and that’s it. In SC, there’s no punishment whatsoever, you don’t even lose your shard progress. If you have enough damage, can die multiple times on every map and still finish on time. Of course people will say SR is well balanced. After I tried it in SC, it felt way too easy. Just run 75-76 for a few hours on a loop and get every item under the sun.
I find SR too random for my tastes and understand the randomness is a selling point for others. Though my biggest disappointment is the structuring of the Shattered Souls buff and the mosh pit that chunk 4 presents. The real build check happens on chunk 4, you’re spoon fed the first three chunks with a massive damage buff.
Doesn’t stop people from complaining about Arcane mobs and some other types of enemies and these all show up in the normal chunks.
It’s hard to be on the same page when most people play one mode. From a perspective of a SC player, I’d argue that arcane mobs are like a mild spice to a good lunch. They can’t do anything to your toon really. Worst case - lose a few seconds and waste a potion or two. Big deal. But it sure adds some excitement.
From a HC perspective, if your build has auras that close resistance overcap gaps and thus ensure survivability, arcane mobs are a real threat. You may lose hundreds of hours due to this one unlucky debuff.
But I guess, one has to first start playing HC, spend 400-500 hours building their top toon with polished gear, climb through lower SR all the way up. Then face one of these situations to be able to form an opinion.
“Hey, you don’t have to play HC. Nobody said it would be fair!”
True. But SC is boring, too easy and no real challenge. HC is perfect for adrenaline rush, but some mechanics are clearly made with SC in mind. I’m not complaining about Grava as you can see. I consider him my pet these days. Used to hate but now I love him. Heck, last night I was doing SR76 and went right past him without aggroing lol. Now that’s a real glitch. Devs, that’s on you.
…then your build has glaring design flaws and the Arcane mob punishes you accordingly.
While most of my time is spent in SC, I do have ~300 hours in HC with a fully-geared/MI’d setup that has fought its way to SR 65. Arcane mobs are not a concern for a player that understands where they fall in the target priority list. (High, but not at the top, and if you have an encounter in which they are not the most dangerous thing, they are still dangerous enough that you need to play around them and watch for the projectile debuff before getting too aggressive)
You also gravely underestimate the penalty for dying many SC players impose. When one of my SC characters dies, that’s the end of its usage for that day and possibly forever more. No one I know with any serious time investment in the game plays SC by throwing bodies at a problem.
Arcane mobs are literally some of the most overblown enemies in the entire game. And this comes from someone that has played over 60 characters with total death of around 10. 98% of my characters haven’t died once and they have done later SR shards and not died a single time against Arcane heroes.
Actually pay attention to what you are fighting and don’t bum rush everywhere. The only situation where you can’t see an Arcane hero in group of enemies is when you purposely lure a bunch of mobs. Don’t blame the game if the cause of you dying is playing poorly.
And what Ceno said. No one likes throwing their bodies until they win (color me surprised if anyone does), that’s boring and dull. People like (gonna make an assumption here) blasting through the content never dying or very rarely dying. Dying a ton of times can also mean your build is weak and that can be demotivating as hell. I have unironically retired characters that just died once and haven’t played with them since then.
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You stop playing if your toon dies a couple times in SR 75? Hey, if that’s the case, play HC strictly from now on and let’s reconvene in a few hundred hours to check if you still stick to your opinion.
As for playing more carefully, we are long past that excuse. I’ve beaten this game with almost every glassy build imaginable, all in HC. All of my surviving [25 as of today] toons are the result of careful piloting, strategic planning and refined gear and skills. I could address every single situation on its own and claim it’s all about gear and piloting skill. I also find it funny when I get comments like these from people who have never reached high SR in SC, let alone HC (not talking about you specifically, Ceno).
I’m not talking about farming here. I can already speed farm SR75-82 HC right now with a very high probability of not dying. Going above 82 is time consuming without a checkpoint. 75-76 is still the best in terms of legs/hr.
All my points and suggestions are made based on real experience, a lot of it. I get it from Zantai that there’s no intention to change anything and the only thing we can expect is another couple checkpoints in 1.1.5. I’ll take that and thank you.
Got no more questions for devs. Please mark this thread closed.
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While I respect your desire to see the thread closed, given that the thread title has hardcore vs softcore in the title I want to weigh in a little more and address this point.
I essentially did play HC only for a few hundred hours. That’s when I made the push up past SR 60.
If a finished SC char dies pre-60, yeah, probably done with it. If it dies post-60, I’ll remake the session a few times to reroll SR/try new mutators/spawns. Furthermore, many boss encounters worsen mechanically should you happen to die once, usually due to adds spawning or enrage timers. (See: Lokarr w/ Clones) If it still dies following those rerolls, yeah, it’s not looking good for that character. If a character dies outside SR and just in the campaign, it’s quite likely it’ll be shelved until the next patch, where it may see some buffs.
HC is exactly the same as SC except it’s tailored to those without self-control or discipline who otherwise would see no reason to improve their gameplay or character crafting if the game did not impose such finality on failure. To those that do wish to learn and grow from their mistakes, SC is a far better environment, hence why the vast majority of my time is spent there.
Frankly, I didn’t find HC terribly fun because I found the mentality it creates to be far more limiting. In HC, you are rarely inclined to take risks and do things earlier on in a character’s life cycle than you reasonably should. It creates a blander, more careful leveling process that also extends a good deal into the endgame with little opportunity for exhilaration. In SC there’s greater opportunity to get things wrong and make mistakes, and only in so-doing can you really begin to feel out the limits of a particular piece of gear, or a particular devotion proc, or a particular mastery skill, etc. You are trained to see the forest AND the trees in SC. But in HC, you’re really only trained to look at the forest without considering the finer details of its constituent parts.
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I agree. Heck, you can find my 6 year old posts on D3 forums identical to this, where I claimed that being a self-disciplined SC player trying not to die is better for skill and overall enjoyment of the game. I was and still am against the red HC elitism in general. And I do play GD HC on the bleeding edge, same way I did D3. You can find my 3 year old build - Cold WoP infiltrator, facetanking mad queen with 6k hp lol. Good old days…
Thats how I had to beat papa kymon.
You should be very grateful that HC can even do crucible properly nevertheless shard 50+, loot is nearly maxed out at this point.
You are very welcome to try 75+ or more, but as with Hardcore madqueen lokarr or superboss runs, that risk is on you.
The main point of this topic was comparing SR in HC vs SC and how in SC you get no punishment, not even a drop to the last checkpoint. Looking at the game from the SC perspective, I see no problem with anything. In fact, I’d argue to buff mutator and boss damage and spawn Grava + Madqueen in every boss room to spice things up. But the same logic doesn’t work for HC.
I’m grateful my group can speed farm SR 80+ now and approach 90. But we have lost a lot more toons to get there than I consider reasonable. Which would have been avoided if devs had given it more optimization.
But We are ok now. Our group is in good shape.
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I hate not much in the game… but that is one thing i never understood. A mob that can debuff you completely in 1s… most of the time you die and rage… Sometimes you don’t even realize that that happend and you die and you wonder why… that is such a stupid mechanic…
This is a thing that should completely changed or ereased. It could be 1 debuff in 10s - ok for me - and i want to get a eyecatching visual effect because it is such a very important thing to have the buffs. I don’t even have a build that isn’t fully dependend on buffs…
I never ever would play SR in HC… “insert Guess i’ll die meme”
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