Hey everyone,
I played through the core game when it came out in hardcore mode, but never played the expansion yet. I did purchase it though.
I’m coming back after about a year and interested to play season 10 and experience the expansion storyline.
I always play hardcore in most games, but I have good mental discipline and sometimes I just play hardcore on softcore servers, playing iron man and deleting the character if it dies. This way, I can be sure that the death is legit and not disconnection or fatherly duties interrupting a key moment.
I’m trying to decide, now that I’m a father (10 months), if it’s worth playing hardcore this season or if there is no need and I can get the same experience on softcore.
For those who stick with hardcore, why choose hardcore over softcore on d4?
Are any mechanics different between the modes? I’ve never played softcore d4, so not sure.
Ps: I did not die to any nonsense on my first playthrough. All my deaths in hardcore were my own fault. So was I lucky or is this the norm?
I just want to enjoy d4 as a hardcore experience without worrying about dying to nonsense, like dying in town, dying in loading screens, dying to disconnect, etc. Which mode is best for this?
D4 in general has gotten a lot easier compared to when it was first launched - so for most of the game, playing hardcore is fine so long as you got the necessary defences up. The MAIN thing to watch out for will be BOSSES. The Pit bosses are fine right now. BUT the LAIR Bosses and Astaroth and Bartoc - unless you can finish the fight very quickly, always better to go a difficulty tier lower before challenging them. This is especially so on T4 - these bosses health pool are significantly higher than in T3 and can easily one-shot you even at capped out res and armour. But the rest of the game is fine. The other issue is disconnects. I had no issues the last 2 seasons, but this season, just died when game just froze 
Unfortunately, disconnects can still be an issue - so that’s just part of the risk.
Enjoy!!
And randomly you have a chance that your toon dies in town. Pretty rare (you have more licks to get mythics than to die in town) but it happens. (Twice for me and I’m not the only one)
Not worth it until they fix the network issues, just lost 3rd Sorc this season to network issues like rubberbanding and lockups. I’m done with their incompetence. I am not going to keep wasting time on an inferior product and not buying the next expansion.