I could not be more disappointed in the changes. First off, their stated goal is about 10% of the player base making it to T4 and they put mostly T4 Boss items in Chapter 7 of the Season Journey. Why would anyone play season if they have a 90% chance of not finishing it. This just doesn’t make sense to me.
Secondly, I started off playing HC and it became quite obvious very quickly they completely ignored HC. I had a well-equipped WWQuake Barb easily farming T4 and I get one-shot (insta-killed) by a T2 Beliel. No game with a HC component should ever have insta-kill or other silly death mechanics period. The bosses are rediculous and boring. They didn’t make Duriel any more challenging, just putting in silly invinsibility pauses to make you fight two waves of minions (very lazy change).
Thirdly, the boss chests are a solution in search of a problem. I had no problem with leechers in my public runs. As the party leader I have new joins spawn the next boss, if anyone didn’t spawn when it was their turn they got kicked. But they completely destroyed ROTA runs, essentially decreasing our run potential by 75%. Not to mention vastly increased the cost of helping your clan mates by having to provide them their own set of mats. The people I know including myself have quit running in parties. All of these negative effects over something that wasn’t a real problem. Not to mention having to take turns popping the chest is extremely annoying, one person accessing the chest interupts everyone else.
Collectively, all these changes have accomplished is slowing progression to T4, drawing out the boss fights making them boring and closing the door on 90% of the player base ever making it to T4 Bosses. Which BTW is almost the only place to find seriously good gear and high runes. I have 1 HC and 1 SC toons farming T4 and haven’t found a single high rune yet. The question I’m hearing the most is why bother?
Let the flaming begin, just my opinion.