Played very little of ROT for exactly that reason: poor balance overall and in particular unkillable champions and (some) incredibly tanky normal enemies. I have hundreds of hours in Grim Dawn and play hardcore runs on stream pretty often so I feel comfortable to say this.

In the end I cannot tell if your install is broken or not, all I can say is this is also exactly my experience.

Originally posted by tukkek:

Played very little of ROT for exactly that reason: poor balance overall and in particular unkillable champions and (some) incredibly tanky normal enemies. I have hundreds of hours in Grim Dawn and play hardcore runs on stream pretty often so I feel comfortable to say this.

In the end I cannot tell if your install is broken or not, all I can say is this is also exactly my experience.

I was afraid of that. If it's as intended that's a really weird design choice. Everything was feeling really great and then I run head first into virtually unkillable walls. If this is intended without a fix then I'm afraid it's a drop for me. I'm not gonna grind out levels or spend thirty minutes tanking while chugging potions to kill a boss.

Originally posted by Hawk:

Everything was feeling really great and then I run head first into virtually unkillable walls

Exactly this and it happened pretty fast too! I saw a couple other ways where it seemed to me like the developer didn't quite get the Grim Dawn rules system, such as weapon categories and their mappings to skills - kinda like they tried to port Diablo as faithfully as possible rather than try to make a Diablo mod from within GD's rules. Would explain a lot...

We can hope they will balance it better in the future but it's a pretty hefty download even with top-tier fiber-optics Internet speed, so it's gonna have to be a pretty in-depth rebalancing for me to try it again. Such a shame too, considering all the effort put into it :(

Look on nexus theres a mod thats called "Unbalancing Reign of Terror". Its a cheat mod but it works great. Make sure to read instructions it requires a specific Rot version.

Personally,. I'll wait for a proper fix. If it never comes I'm OK with not playing ROT either.

Ram intentionally modded it to be harder D2 +8 solo was what he was used to playing back in the day. Nothing to do with his understanding of GD 😉

Nothing for him to fix when he designed it to play how he likes to play.

You can call it a preference, I will continue to call it unbalanced, not fun and broken compared to the base game it's a mod for and choose to play better designed games and mods.

I remembered seeing a similar complaint on reddit as well after trying the mod for myself:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/m6i9vc/reign_of_terror_bosses_way_too_tanky/

Originally posted by powbam:

Ram intentionally modded it to be harder D2 +8 solo was what he was used to playing back in the day. Nothing to do with his understanding of GD 😉

Nothing for him to fix when he designed it to play how he likes to play.

That's horrible design. It's a mod, it's their personal taste I get, but I was having a ton of a fun thinking the mod was better then the remake was and then WHAM.

If that's what people like then that's cool. I'm a casual who has a lot of time in D2 spread out over decades who wants to play a badass D2 themed mod without having to grind or potion spam for thirty minutes just to progress a little. The only other option is to run from anything champion'd but how is that any fun?

Good point, I also played D2 and don't remember even once spending many minutes killing a normal mob. Same goes for base Grim Dawn and I would even like tankier mobs!

Fair enough but at the end of the day it's his mod and he designed it to be how he wanted to play it and how he played D2.. which was with the multiplayer buffs but solo. He invested years of his life, for free, building this mod and he doesn't owe you, me, or anyone else anything for it.

The way I see it if noone likes it, well, they are free to make their own mod then. The fact remains though RoT is quite popular so he must be doing something right.

Fair enough but at the end of the day it's a Diablo 2 mod for Grim Dawn that by your own admission doesn't resemble the balance of any intended difficulty of either game but instead literally of a extreme multiplayer exploit. The fact the creator put years of his life into it and provides it for free means nothing to me because the balance is borked and I'm not playing it.

As for the popularity, my current theory is that at one point the balance was good as prior to 2020 or so I can't find any complaints about bullet-sponges. Hopefully it can be fixed again.

I had seen playthroughs of earlier versions of ROT and don't remember seeing anything remotely close to what I've experienced trying it for myself more recently, so must be it.

I also have to say that most children eventually realize popular and good are different things.

Pretty sure the balance has remained more or less the same throughout as far as I can recall.

Popular and good might be be two different things but at the end of the day they both resolve identically.. within the eye of the beholder. Just because you determine something to be good doesn't necessarily mean the next person will agree. Same as "popular".

Originally posted by tukkek:

The fact the creator put years of his life into it and provides it for free means nothing to me because the balance is borked and I'm not playing it.

To that I would say good for you. I doubt it's any skin off his back if you don't. You can always try to appeal to them to rebalance on their discord, or the forum thread and I'd wish you the best of luck.

For me it comes down to disappointment. I truly was having a lot of fun with the mod until I ran into those champions. In the end, it's a mod made by a dedicated fan (or fans?) who are free to have the balance anyway they want. But as a player of said mod, I made this post hoping *I'd* screwed something up so the mod's balance wasn't out of wack for what I was enjoying. To me, it's an absurdly odd decision to have everything else balanced nearly 1 to 1 and then have champions be the way they are. I just find the design philosophy there very confusing and unfortunately not for me.

Originally posted by Hawk:

For me it comes down to disappointment. I truly was having a lot of fun with the mod until I ran into those champions. In the end, it's a mod made by a dedicated fan (or fans?) who are free to have the balance anyway they want. But as a player of said mod, I made this post hoping *I'd* screwed something up so the mod's balance wasn't out of wack for what I was enjoying. To me, it's an absurdly odd decision to have everything else balanced nearly 1 to 1 and then have champions be the way they are. I just find the design philosophy there very confusing and unfortunately not for me.

Just an FYI.. the named monsters I do so believe aren't intended for you to be tackling on the first difficulty and you should probably try to avoid doing so. They become more possible once you've advanced up to higher difficulties.

Searching back on Ram's comments on the topic this was his advice (and other people's advice). The only way you would be able to handle them so early on is if you did a ton of farming. Better to hold out until your build and gear are naturally ready for them.

You can't kill champions before you beat the game? LOL so many excuses it's unbelievable.