Is torchlight 2 still better?

Sorry, I just realized the title is inflamatory. There is nothing wrong with Diablo 3 if you like it. The question I asked was just from my own perspective.

I just finished another playthrough of TL2 and I was wondering if Diablo 3 was worth playing with the expansion.

I played through normal right after launch, and it just didn't feel like Diablo. Very little character specialization, Stupid plot narration - Look, more footprints, or being taunted by Azmodan for the entirety of act 3.

I actually quit playing and reinstalled dated, extremely ugly on LCD diablo 2. Then I discovered torchlight 2 and played it for over 200 hours.

I know there have been a lot of patches to the game, and a lot of promises to make loot fun and stuff.

I guess the question is: Is Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls a *real* Diablo game yet?

Yeah. You should've gone back to it once they added Paragon and fixed the loot.

Since you already own it, I'd say it's definitely worth another shot. Most of the fixes don't require the expansion, either. I think Adventure Mode might be locked behind the xpac, but mostly everything else is available if you just have the base game.

Torchlight 2 didn't grab me nearly as much as the first game did. No idea why. Reaper of Souls made D3 far, far better.

Diablo 2 > Diablo 3 w/ Reaper of Souls and Loot 2.0 > Torchlight > Torchight 2 > OG Diablo 3

What about just plain old Diablo?

Bliz must have lost a lot of players from Vanilla. Haven't seen anyone talk about the expansion.

Couldnt play TL2. I played a couple hours and was bored out of my mind. I hate the world. Its so bland I dont feel like they tried, just expected that the Diablo loot whoring would carry it. I was bothered A LOT less then most by D3. i quit a bit after the paragon BS. That wasnt enough to keep me playing. RoS has got me playing again. Its good, not great. Prob a 7.

Blizzard caved hard though. New chars will get legendaries all over the place. Half my gear was legendary at like lvl 30 for the crusader. Gems drop like mad to upcraft them. A LOT more gear is craft-able, lot of set items to craft. They just tanked the cost and mats on most shit too.

I never found TL2 better, but that was obviously a debatable opinion at launch. Post expansion though, I don't think anyone would say otherwise.

Diablo 3 is a much better game

The combat and the loot in Diablo III with or without the expansion just feels better and makes me want to play the game way more than Torchlight II.

Cool, I get paid tomorrow. I will pick up reaper of souls.

Given the difference in development budgets, it seems laughable that Runic could have made a remotely competitive game.

It's not like the fundamental mechanics require an enormous budget to pull off, so I'm not really sure why it's so unbelievable. Especially when you consider that Runic basically just made D2 again with a new coat of paint and a few tweaks. Doesn't exactly require a deep budget.

Torchlight 2 is better for like 40 hours, Diablo 3 is better for another 100 or so.

I've put in 300~ hours into multiple characters in Diablo 3. I played and enjoyed Torchlight quite a bit. On the other hand, Torchlight 2 turned into a tedious and boring game. At this point I've played more Path of Exile than Torchlight 2. It is their opinion but I am unclear why people thought Torchlight 2 was better than contemporary games including Torchlight itself.

i skipped Diablo 3 altogether because I prefer Torchlight series instead. Something sweet and charming about it. The fact the modding community is still growing I can come in and have something ridiclious, endless pockets, llama pet, etc. Torchlight 2 is just comfort food of gaming.

I should note if you want a game with an actual modding community play Titan Quest.

I always thought Diablo III was better.

diablo 3 always FELT better. the control and responsiveness and speed and hits were much more satisfying. and it just got better w/ RoS.

i do dig me some torchlight, and the granularity of the items and skills does scratch a certain itch, but it just doesnt feel as tight.

Never thought Torchlight was the better product. It was just good enough to get you by until the real thing came around.

Or they are just to busy playing it to be talking about it.

Anyone kind of wondering about Diablo 3 who bought it when it came out should give it another shot, It's been much improved. I just reinstalled it a month ago and it's far far better than the original release at this point. The expansion is pretty solid and adventure mode is pretty much the post game-game.

@mariachimacabre: me either. I don't know why that is. I loved the first Torchlight but I never really got into the second game.

Torchlight 2 kind of proved to me that Diablo 2 kind of sucked. On the other hand I appreciated from the beginning how different Diablo 3 is from Diablo 2. It was always the superior game, I think the changed loot system and expansion was just enough for people to see that.

I don't think Torchlight 2 was ever better. I loved Torchlight and I played it for probably over 30 hours, if not more. The second game bored me almost immediately. I played it for as long as I could, but that only amounted to probably a third or half the amount of time I put into Torchlight. Diablo III, while not what I had hoped it would be initially, was more interesting to me and I found myself dropping over 60 hours into the vanilla version. Then with Loot 2.0 and ROS, I think they've really improved the game and I have now spent another 30 hours, playing through the expansion, starting a new character, and doing Adventure Mode.

Marvel Heroes is my favorite Diablo 3.

If by "still" you mean "always".

Torchlight 1 had some virtue in its simplicity of design, but TL 2 felt aimless to me. I never had any idea why I was putting points into anything, and even so my character was unintentionally invincible. Love my D3 Crusader.

Torchlight 2 was i think $20 and path of Exile was free when i first started playing them and i put in over 80nrs with both titles. Both to me exhibited a close enough experience to what Diablo can offer at a much cheaper price.

That's pretty much the same reason I prefer Diablo 1 over Diablo 2 (and certainly Diablo 3, which I'd probably even say I hated, I got to act 2 or 3 and hadn't enjoyed a single moment of it. Tried going back after some of the updates but after playing an hour or two I just couldn't find anything at all appealing about it). Diablo 1 was a beautifully focused game, having just enough narrative to be captivating, but never overexplaining itself or forcing you through hours of grinding through nonsense like the sequels did, and Torchlight stayed pretty close to that, even though it was nowhere near as good as the original Diablo.

The actual feel of the combat of Diablo 3 is so much better than any other ARPG so that alone makes it better than others for me. Path of Exile has a cool tech tree and character customization but it sucks to play and Torchlight 2 has a good balance, but ultimately the character customization in Diablo 3 comes down to loot which is nice because I can switch up a character build and only have to regear, not waste time leveling to max level with whatever the best exploit is at the time.

I think there's more flexibility to building your characters in Torchlight II, as you could create two of the same class and still have them play very differently from one another, whereas in D3 you're stuck in a linear skill/rune feed each time. That obviously counts for a lot, but overall I would say I still prefer playing Diablo III more, and this is only just with the console version, which is sorta in a limbo between the new increments D3 on PC has received.

Though I do also think Torchlight II has a more distinctive art style.

@rmanthorp: I was playing Marvel Heroes pretty steadily leading up to the RoS expansion - toward the end of that tenure and definitely in the few sessions I've played with it since, they have overloaded that game with so many ancillary items that I get overwhelmed with inventory management. Those runes in particular are the worst thing ever.

Surprised at the D3 love. I thought most people hated it for simplifying the level/loot progression. I vaguely recall everyone championing Torchlight 2 for being what D3 wasn't. D3's game feel and production values really blows the competitors away. I do Torchlight 2 I think is better than the first, having beaten neither game, I find myself more drawn to D3, console version. A lot of the things that make Torchlight 2 more complex did nothing for me, and I just really dislike stat point allocation.

@yummylee: D3 is about how you build your character now in terms of gear and that dictates what builds are viable for you; there's 4-5 optimal builds and 20-30 decent builds for each class and only some amount of overlap gearwise; so yes having an entirely different character is worthwhile.

This is my version of the list.

I could never get Torchlight 2 to run without immediately crashing my computer so... Diablo 3 has always been better than Torchlight 2 for me.

Same here. And I really liked Torchlight, and put in quite a few hrs. too really trying to get into TL2.

This latest expansion improved D3 in so many ways... just exponentially better than the old vanilla. And I'm into it for over a 1000 hrs., between the 360 and the various pc iterations. Playing daily still, due to this expos vast improvements, modes, loot et al..

Still the best of the lot, IMO.

Nonetheless, D3 with RoS is a far better game. As someone who was SERIOUSLY miffed whenever they released the original "turn Inferno into Easy Mode" patch (1.0.3? can't remember), I was outspoken against D3 after that point. I would go back, but even after MP levels and everything, it was a dull fucking hot mess. However, with SmartLoot 2.0 as well as the expansion, that game is a lot more fun.

Nonetheless, I've hit the point now where I need specific pieces of gear on my Barbarian in order to make the build I want for T6, and with there being so many legendaries available in the game, trying to get those specific pieces can be a pain in the ass when you are grinding for hours on end. Therefore, I've found myself pulling away from it just a bit, especially when there is no true end game.

I really wish they would add some form of WORTHWHILE PvP to the game, though. It's the reason you played D2!

That's still exactly how I feel. I still vastly prefer the Diablo II/Titan Quest/Torchlight 1/2-style character progression, but Diablo III just feels far and away much better to play than any of the other games in the genre. I never feel like I'm fighting the controls when I'm playing Diablo III.

I'm with you on the new loot system still having some pretty glaring flaws. I played about 100-150 hours after RoS launched. I never dropped below T1 on my Barb from 60-70 (I was already MP10 geared anyway so it wasn't that big of a deal). Finding some new upgrades at 70 was fun again, but once you put together the endgame build you want, it's a matter of actually getting that gear, and with no way to influence which legendaries drop, you're just forced into another unsatisfying grind (kinda like launch D3). I just wish they had left trading in the game, or made specific legendaries drop in specific zones. Without some way to actually work towards the gear I wanted, I just lost interest again.

Also, I have played Diablo II more than any other video game in my life, and I probably played PVP for about 10 minutes. I'm not one to shy away from PVP, but I'll never understand the appeal of D2's.

@ajamafalous: The one problem that I'm having with the new loot system is that trading is almost pointless. Unless something is rolling trifecta and you can reroll the main stat...or you get that one rare drop that is for another class, there's not really much reason to trade at all. It kind of kills some of the group aspect of playing together and getting stoked about the gear that drops. Instead, it's more of just "hey, wanna give me some company so I don't get bored of doing this 100,000 times?"

I know that they've increased cache legendary drop chances with this latest patch, but I'm still not seeing a Ring of Royal Grandeur. As a matter of fact, aside from literally two Sanguinary Vambraces, two Golden Gorgets, one Mad Monarch's Scepter and the plans for Devastator (which I was incredibly stoked about), I haven't seen another single legendary from a cache...in 800+ runs. I haven't been running caches lately, namely due to the need for other pieces of gear (and because I usually do cache runs on Public Games...and T2 players seem to not understand the concept of splitting up and finishing separate pieces of Act 1 in order to finish faster...probably because they aren't very well geared as is)... Yeah, it's been a fucking headache.

However, I do enjoy using my Whirly Barb spec and running through shit. I actually just picked up Invoker bracers last night. Replaced my Reaper's Wraps for them. Stats were the same besides Resist All on Reaper's vs. Vit on Invoker...and the 20% lightning damage on the Invoker's that makes my Whirlwind hit stupid fucking hard. Of course, I'm trying to get the shit I need for Smash Barb (fire spec with HOTA, 3 piece Earth, and Lut Socks for Leap-quakes). Getting tired of only getting up to T3 before getting smashed in T4 due to low health and such. Burning Axe of Sankis is OP as fuck.

My profile for anyone that is curious... With my buffs, I end up at 1m damage and around 4.7m toughness. If I could get a Burning Axe of Sankis, dying would be minimal in T4.

I also picked up a Litany ring last night that I'm pretty sure I'm going to equip (after a reroll for hopefully either AS or crit chance) that will give me an additional 11% damage reduction from elites.

@jakob187: Here's my stuff. Can't give you any hard numbers because I haven't played since the very beginning of April, but I'm running the build you're aiming for. Was super unlucky with weapon drops.

@jakob187: Yep same deal here, I have a perfectly good character and I've done all the T6 Ubers/Malthael; but I've gotten 1 class set piece in 150ish hours.

Of course the second I play another character I find a Witching Hour on Normal.

@ajamafalous: Well, shit. Now I feel terrible for linking a profile with all those legendaries! How much time have you put in since the release of RoS? Are you running rifts in Torment difficulty on a fairly regular basis? That's where I've gotten most of my legendaries. I did get ridiculously lucky on a couple of them (the Earth pants and Fulminator both dropped from one Rift Guardian), but the rest of the time, I'm wading through 6-stat legendary trash to finally get to the good stuff.

Worst part? My first kill on Malathiel? Got a Unity ring. Thought it would be dumb, so...I broke it. YEP! Didn't know about the undying follower trick. Also, I had a Burning Axe of Sankis drop...but it rolled 1980 damage, no main stat, lowest fire damage, and a socket...so...I broke it. I should've kept it, because the proc alone makes it worthwhile, no matter the damage. I could've off-handed it and things would've been fine. So pissed at myself.

That's not including that the reason I have Fire Walkers right now instead of Lut Socks...is because my friend wanted to see what the Fire Walkers did. I was just gonna break them. Therefore, I equipped them and ran around, showed them off. After the rift, I went and broke everything in my bags.

That included my Lut Socks.

So my luck? It's just a different kind of luck! LOL A terrible kind where I keep fucking myself until I'm immune to the chafing pain now.

@fredchuckdave: My buddy still hasn't replaced his level 60 Witching Hour! That's how good that belt is! He's a wizard, though, so he's already super buff just because he's a goddamn wizard.

@jakob187: Witching Hour is one of the rarest items in the game and an absolutely perfect roll is more or less dead even with a good 60 one; though level 60 Inna's Temperance (? the pants) is still best in slot for every class. But yes class balance is completely fucked atm; Crusaders can do well with the best gear in the game but other than that they're just support bots in higher Torments, Monks are basically just support bots in the higher torments as well. Wizards/DHs/WDs are all ridiculous (DHs still suck in Hardcore obviously). Barbs fall somewhere in between; I don't think optimal Barb gear is quite as bad as Crusader but it will obviously still take a while and it will just take even more time as your gear gets better.

40% Blind Faith is rather amusing, the only boss in the entire game that doesn't get perma stunlocked is Malthael.

@jakob187: Is there an easy way to see that stat? I'd say probably only 15-25ish hours at level 70 on my Barb. Spent most of my time leveling a Crusader to 70, then trying to level my other classes from 60 to 70. I played a ton when 2.0 came out (pre-RoS launch), then played for maybe another week afterwards. My main gripe was character advancement; my gear is all pretty much as good as it can be without it being a BiS legendary with a proc or special ability or whatever (i.e. my chest slot can only be better if it's Legendary X, otherwise my rare is still better). Only finding ~one-two legendaries per hour, and them either rolling like shit, being a legendary that doesn't even roll stats, or being a legendary that wasn't even for my class (lol) was too disheartening for me to keep playing. That one legendary I have equipped? Didn't even find it. It dropped for a buddy of mine while we were T1 rifting and it was worse than what he already had equipped.

Oh, to answer your other question: I was good for T3 (I think? either T3 or T4) but I was mostly playing on T1 (because I wanted class sets). If I was split-farming bounties then I'd play on Expert (or whichever difficulty had the double blood shards) because I could still 1-2shot elites there with HOTA.

@fredchuckdave: yeah, I kept all my 60 Witching Hours because they were still like 10-15% dps increases over the level 70 legendaries I was finding.

Elemental damage, set bonuses(generally Aug's and Crimson's aside from character specials and addition to), RoRG to make that easier and multiplicable, and aside from the general greatness of the SoJ, just builds that are fun and efficient are the order of business for me. Currently fucking around with the improved Mara's set on my DH.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Achilles5-1771/hero/13084084

@ajamafalous: Before 2.0.5, there was no point running Bounties above Normal, solely because there was no algorithm in place that made higher difficulty offer a better drop chance on cache legendaries. Now there is, but it's T2 and above. Regardless, I still want to get a Ring of Royal Grandeur just for the sake of actually getting one.

Beyond that, it just sounds like crap luck, man. I'm actually about to start doing reset runs. Essentially, you reset your quests, then run through on Normal until Malthiel, then beat him on Torment 1. Since you reset your quests, it means that the "first kill" on Malthiel gets you a guaranteed legendary (supposedly). Even then, I'm just wanting to do something different. Playing through the entire game again sounds like something fun...except for Act 2...because FUCK Act 2. Takes SOOOOO GODDAMN LONG!

@fredchuckdave: I don't know, man. Alkizer or whatever his name is has been doing T6 with only about 250k damage solely because of how powerful HOTA is. Then again, he's also using a shitload of %fire dmg gear along with Burning Axe of Sankis and undying Unity damage reduction. Nonetheless, he's doing it.

@pweidman: Are you going to stick with the quiver, or are you just waiting until you pick up a second weapon? Crit hit damage socket on a weapon > anything else on that quiver.

That's another thing I am super pissed about: two-handed weapons suck balls! Why? They cannot equal the same crit hit damage that can be found in two one-handers. I really hope they come up with a solution at some point, like crit hit gems getting bonus crit hit damage if it's on a two-hander. However, that would break Crusaders. I just don't know. I have, like, five excellent two-handers that I WANT to use, but I can't because my damage takes a MASSIVE hit!

@jakob187: Surprisingly not worth dropping a good quiver unless you have Calamity and Nat's Slayer, neither of which I've found(both are the rarest 1h bows). Xbows hit much harder and the damage span is much narrower. The 6-piece Marauders bonus is sentries using player equipped hatred spenders and the xbows lend the best damage to sentries apparently anyway.

@jakob187: Profile damage is mostly irrelevant to how good a barb will be; the most efficient barb I ever saw was at like 300k damage or something; + %Elemental is king now; but optimal gear is still scarce in general by virtue of being optimal. Oh, I have a Burning Axe of Sankis and I've never used it; hurray for Crusaders; though I don't have Fate of the Fell.

I don't know. I mean, I have played through both several times. I think they they are equally fun and frustrating in their own way. For example, Diablo's movement speed is fucking terrible, but I thought the game's story was more interesting. Torchlight 2 was faster and you got pets. While they are very similar, I'm not sure they are totally comparable.

Torchlight II has never been better than Diablo III.