Which again points to either him not being as good as the game/lore says or D3 did simply a terrible job at showcasing his strategic value (I’m willing to look at the latter honestly). Because honestly, the fact that we beated Belial should’ve made Azmodan consider defeat was possible, at least he should’ve if he were actually a good strategist.
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He really hasn’t had a win in 1000s of years. His most recent campaign saw him failing and having all of his armies turnef into The Fallen. Im sure he was once great, he’s been past his ptime and living off his past success.
You are also looking at it from an outside perspective. Azmodan is arrogant and believes he should be a prime, and the top one at that. Every demon is below him, even the primes, in is own belief. Nothing is going to make consider defeat is an option.
That kind of goes for nearly every great evil and member of the angiris council. After Sanctuary was created, most of the Eternal Conflict (save for a few stragglers or groups mostly cut off from either Heaven or Hell) came to a halt. That’s a bit of what caused the dark exile in the first place, the Lesser Evils were growing tired of the Prime Evils focusing mostly on corrupting mankind rather than waging battle against the High Heavens.
Which goes back to either Azmodan wasn’t as great of a strategist as the lore built him up to be, or that Diablo 3 did a lousy job at portraying his strategic ability.
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I’m willing to bet that a guy with the massive armies he had and couldn’t take over a weakened Diablo isn’t as good as the lore built him up to be. And let’s face it, the lore is all from one mans perspective pretty much. He may have been exaggerating a bit.
The only strategic victories came before any nephalem were around. Same can be said for the HHs.
When did that happened?
A long time ago. I don’t have the wiki up to look but he tried to ursurp Diablo, lost so bad his armies were turned into the lamest Diablo enemy.
But that was before the Dark Exile had even happened, so in other words Diablo was at the height of his power.
Look it up, ICBW, but there was some sort of opportunity that led him to believe he could ursurp Diablo.
Assuming you’re talking about the fallens, then again that was before the Dark Exile, so Diablo wasn’t weakened in anyway. The attack would give Azmodan the information he needed to assist him later in successfully overthrowing Diablo and rest of the Prime Evils. But if I remember right, they never said when Azmodan’s first attempt of overthrowing Diablo happened. It could’ve been decades before the Dark Exile, or even centuries before Sanctuary was even created.
Why not both? It would be the easiest explanation.
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It would, and it was something I had also considered. The only problem is that it also suggests that nearly everyone else who was involved in the Eternal Conflict and had faced Azmodan were nearly just as bad as he was if they had struggled against his strategic tatics.
Strategy and tactics are two different things.
As the strategist, Azmodan handed off small issues to his subordinates, which is why we see the minor bosses before we get to Azmodan.
All of them went in overconfident. One could make the argument that Azomodan talking trash was his attempt to stall while trying to get other forces in line to deal with the nefhelim.
Azomdan gives the impression that he punishes those who bring him bad news.
Sorry but I don’t follow.
Eisenhower was given a directive in 1944 - Invade Europe. He wasn’t targeting pillboxes on Omaha and Gold beach.
His subordinates developed the plan for his approval.
Their subordinates executed the plan.
A better example is the other side. In WWII, the German General Staff ended up with multiple levels of divisional readiness, based on their effective combat power - Hitler only saw “divisions” and was still thinking that they were at peacetime levels of equipment and personnel.
That is even before you get to the levels of delusion that took place in his command circle. People that brought the corporal bad news had a tendency to end up in a concentration camp; so the policy was to not bring bad news to the fuehrer bunker, right up until the moment he played the sport of chumps.
What went wrong with D3’s story?
All of it.
Poorly written, stuffed to the brim with tired cliches and worn-out tropes, characters with no depth, and enough bombast and un-warranted hype to make Baz Luhrmann blush. The voice actors did the best they could with the trash they were given, but it was clear from the get-go that what passes for the game’s story would fit right in to a middle school creative writing exercise.
One could say the same thing for Diablo and Diablo II, though I wouldn’t completely agree. Sure, the narratives of those games have problems, and they both suffer some of the same pitfalls (to a much lesser extent), but they also both developed their stakes, character arcs, and frame narratives in far more coherent ways.
Diablo III felt like a gory spin-off of Power Rangers.
Right, but that’s a strategy used by plenty of the bosses (Belial and Diablo for example).
Sure, but Azmodan’s lieutenants are known for other things beyond strategy. Ghom for example is just known as a disgusting glutton who can devour nearly anything. Cydea was mostly known for her ability to seduce others, which absolutely failed against the Nephalem. Thus far only Vidian, shown actual strategic ability, which I would even say was better than Azmodan’s.
In this case though, Azmodan was doing nearly all of the strategising. He was the one to tell Ghom to attack Bastion’s Keep from below. He was the one to instruct Cydea to allure and kill our characters. Azmodan wasn’t accepting ideas or suggestions from minions, he gave out orders that he expected them to follow.
That is EXACTLY how the Austrian corporal was conducting Russian campaign. The only German general that successfully stood up to him was Model.
There was a reason that Hitler never made Sergeant during WWI.
Okay, but what does that have to do with Azmodan? Sorry but I’m literally out of focused on this topic.
The question was how could someone who is so “brilliant” in strategy & tactics fail so miserably against the player.
I gave a possible explanation of Azmodan’s thought process.
Ah gotcha. But in that case it would suggest the same as nearly everyone else who fought against Azmodan.