Not exactly. Not all hell mobs are high enough level to drop everything.
Hmm. Difficulty and mob level. Will keep that in mind. I am getting the itch to play because it will be something new to me.
I am playing pd2 and have a self found zeal pally. If you no where to grind you can still make your rune words and get nice drops. My pally can clean chaos now in about 5 minutes. You could easily make a bliz sorc, frost sorcs can farm naked in ancient tunnels. That is my plan, roll a sorc get it to 80 and farm ancient tunnels for a week or 2 to fund an amazon or pally.
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D2, and likely D2R, are grind-heavy games. If you’re playing solo, the grind is prolonged and serious.
I played D2 for 10 years, and without online trading and multiplayer help, I never would have gotten the gear I eventually acquired. Remember, D2 isn’t just about weapon and armor drops. It’s about ultra-rare items combined with ultra-ultra-rare runes to create the items necessary for your “end-game” builds to feel, well, end-game.
I’m not saying this is good or bad–that depends entirely on the kind of game and experience you enjoy. But if you don’t want to engage in online trading and you don’t play with groups, D2 is a slog to find anything remotely close to end-game gear.
The grind in D3 is completely different. In D3, you grind low GRs to level up gems, then run groups for XP and 150 gems, and then push solo. The grind in D3 boils down to the totality of those activities. It’s a sequence that you do over and over, almost always the same, to push 1 or 2 tiers higher.
In D2, you’ll be doing Baal and Mehpisto and Countess runs over and over for items and runes, then River of Flame runs for XP and loot, and while the gameplay is more varied, true “end-game” runs all mostly boil down to the same thing: spam teleport (regardless of class), nuke enemies, grab drops (before someone else grabs them), and remake the game. Be aware that some classes require some very specific gear to be efficient in the higher (Hell) difficulties. Love playing WW Barb? Well, unless you get some ultra-rare rune and item drops, you’ll be farming that stuff on a different class (or tons of battlefield runs with an Item Find Song Barb) until you get all the stuff you need to make that build shine. Sure, there are many viable end-game builds in D2, but the catch is that the gear required to get many of them to shine is beyond rare for solo players.
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These were really informative posts for newcomers 
I’d emphasise on loot drops. This is going to be a major shock to the system after D3 where you’re constantly getting better gear that adds more variety, making you feel rewarded for your time.
In D2 the loot is abundant and the vast majority of it is junk. Only on odd occasions will you find something you can use for your character that actually feels like a meaningful upgrade.
But this is why the others above me said that you need to farm a lot, or progress slowly when playing solo in order to compensate for that. Decent items are scarce if not farming, so you’ll either find that satisfying (compared to D3) or you’ll give up on the game because of it.
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