I’m new to hardcore. Is it also true that playing in groups on HC make the mobs stronger and getting more HP? Or doesn’t it scale with group members?
If it doesn’t scale, then groupplay will be better i think?
It does scale but group play is still significantly “better”, faster and more efficient because the fairly easy difficulty and scaling of the game, doesn’t really affect your performance. You’re basically just killing everything several times faster which I think is kind of lame tbh.
That said, I dislike playing in groups and having to match others’ pace and schedules. So I mostly play alone and it’s great 
Ever since d2, the main cause of death on HC has been lag/disconnect. Since d3, when the stupid shutdown timer was introduced, the problem has become many times more acute. Playing in a group is many times safer
I don’t know about your statistics… I’m mostly a solo player and I’ve had a lot* more legit deaths than lag deaths especially in d2&d3 which had better servers. I’ve only had a few low level deaths in d4 and most of those were my mistakes as well.
*I’ve only died a handful of times across all the games so my sample size is rather small but I can count lag deaths on 1 hand and legit deaths on like 2-3.
I think the shutdown timer is a good thing. What was stupid was the instant save&exist/townportal nonsense in d2. Hardcore was reduced to rapidly quitting the game or worse using the “chicken” hack to automatically close the game for you.
In d4 we have an escape scroll. But in fact, it performs the same function as save and exit in d2 - only worse. This season at level 100 I had a disconnect and it didn’t work. In d3, I think I died 3 or 4 times due to disconnection and only once due to my own mistake (I went to check a new build and was not ready for rotation). So I’m in favor of scheme d2 with both hands. There, people with save and exit often got into trouble with snakes, dolls and souls.
Scroll of escape works better (faster) than save&exit. And from season2+ it’s limited enough to actually be relevant and valuable instead of mindlessly spammable. Both are a win in my book.
Snakes/dolls/souls and a bunch of other things could only kill you because they could 1shot you or kill you stupidly fast before you could react. You had to be really bad to die under any normal (slow) circumstances. All of my deaths happened in a split second and I don’t remember a single protracted fight where I felt like I was in danger and had to really work to survive. There is nothing good or fun about such game design.
Instant exit with no timer is only better than scroll on legit disconnects. I agree on that point. Everything else we have different opinions and I’m glad we moved past D2’s design.
I am also against one-shots and cited them as an example only to show that in d2 there were dangers from which even fast hands might not have time to save you. In d4 the situation is many times worse. My opinion is subjective because… I play a necromancer with a minions and he has low defense, but with 13300 armor and 14-15k HP I can very often get a one-shot from off-screen from a ballista, a red ghost, etc. Also, the environment in the form of a crystal is one-shot, a number of mobs in close combat may not leave you a chance. All this applies to the T100. It seems to me that a character who took care of protection should never receive one-shots, otherwise this is bad game design.
My top fear is that bandit which is invisible and then stabs you in the kidney. What’s the name…? Slicer or something? Anyway, I see a group of bandits or the like, I use frost armor directly. I play sorc HC, I don’t know if there is any similar option in other classes.
Multiplayer is safer because while the monsters have more health they aren’t doing more damage. If your game disconnects or has an error, you’ll still be able to say something in vc on psn (or if you’re grouped in psn it will show you left the group - probably the same in discord). If you have good teammates and they see you go offline or you can say the game crashed there’s lots of ways to help.
- scroll of escape and immediately take your tp, some classes can heal teammates beyond killing whats around you
- some classes can cc monsters away (charge, kick, steel grasp, fear, freeze etc)
- if in a nm dungeon, they can remove you from the group to start a countdown, or the leader can promote/leave so the dungeon forces people out.
If you’re really worrying about dc deaths, toss the bubble aspect on your amulet, thats 7.5 seconds of safety added to give a chance.