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The thing is there is a balance between forcing someone to adapt, and punishing someone for just playing the game. I remember playing with my barbarian in Durance of Hate lvl 2. For some insane reason, every single stygian doll went directly after me. Even when the merc was standing just next to it or bloking its path, the doll went after me no matter what I did. There was no way to shake it of, distract it or whatever. Every single one of them did the same thing through the whole level. Try and adapt to that. Mechanics like these can get broken when not balanced properly and some of those I mentioned just were not balanced the way they should have been. There is a difference between making melee harder for you because you'll take more damage and making it impossible for you because you'll just die. When one single stray monster that your merc kills can rob you of hours upon hours of HC work without you actually making a fatal mistake, it's just wrong. As mentioned above, some of it was too overpowered. You can force people to adapt their gaming style without punishing them in such a strict way.

Quote from -Mephisto

For some reason, my Bonemancer took about 2 minutes killing each Regurgitator, and every Oblivion Knight. That being said, they aren't really that annoying. The Undead Stygian Doll certainly is a bitch, but with Bone Spirit, you can easily cast and escape. I did die once when he snuck up on me like a ninja.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Sand Leapers (that's what they're called, right?) since they were annoying as HELL until I got Bone Spirit..and they were a bitch to kill with my Barbarian.

Yeah Regurgitators take ages to die. And just when they are down they eat a corpse and get like half of their health back :biggrin: They weren't really all that dangerous so I didn't include them. I guess my most annoying/difficult monsters list ended up more like the most difficult/bugged monsters list.

Leapers are sure as hell one of the most annoying monsters in the game (perhaps tied with Zakarumites). They aren't really dangerous but I can't think of a single class that has fun/easy time killing them. If they would at least make a satisfying dying sound when you go through all that trouble.

Your comment on the regurgitators reminded me of one more monster that should get an honorable mention at least. Zombies! I hate those in all forms, though plague bearers probably the most. The reason is, they are sooo though. I remember quitting with my first characters that tried nightmare and hell just because it took me like 10-20 hits to kill them. It just made the characters feel so weak! I was like, what the hell if it takes this long to kill these suckers, how in the world am I going to make it to the end? Only after gritting my teeth and making it past them did I learn that they are among the toughest monsters you ever encounter, so taking a long time to kill them is not an indicator of the character's strength/weakness. I guess wendigo's would fit right alongside them, the difference being they are maybe even tougher, definitely faster, but allow better lifesteal.

Quote from Siaynoq

Ehhhhh, I guess. But fuck the Sorceress. Seriously. :happy:

Well, it's not just the sorceresses. For example, several of my characters prefer to hide behind a hireling to be able to dish out damage undisturbed. They are able to do without him but it's much more dangerous and takes a long time and some kiting to separate the enemies a little bit. For that reason, I hated IM with everyone because the merc just kept dying and gold started getting a little scarce at times.

Eh, I don't think the bitch was even enchanted. She just killed me with the normal explosion :biggrin: My point was, fire enchanted or not, they are just too damn strong.

It is an interesting mechanic for sure. The problem is they overdid it. Instead of making them dangerous on melee, when one has to constantly watch his life and when he drops below half he has to run, they made them in such a way that if accidentaly one fast bastard runs up to you and your merc with Bonehew nails him, you can kiss your HC character goodbye. I had a 600 life Assassin die to just one of these guys from full health on nightmare. Hell gets even worse. Add into that the fact that these bastards mostly appear in Durance of Hate lvl 2 which is the largest and most annoying dungeon in the entire game and from an interesting mechanic, you have a very very unfun and therefore annoying mechanic. It may be an interesting challenge, but I don't think it is the "fun kind" of interesting.

Quote from Don_guillotine

Before they nerfed the Fire Enchanted mob affix, a Fire Enchanted Undead Stygian Doll was death's incarnation.


I lost a HC hammerdin when I was teleporting with it in the Durance of Hate, and my merc killed a fire/cold enchanted stygian doll with one hit when I was heading down. I died in one hit. It's the way one dies in HC; when least expecting it.

I don't think the nerf really helps all that much. Though the lightning bugs are not so dangerous anymore, a single stygian doll still easily killed me on nightmare.

Thanks :smile: The name you are looking for is Unravellers (or Guardians or Hollow Ones or whatever variety). Yeah, I hated those too, but not as much as these others. The poison was powerful and the unholy bolts hurt, plus the constant raising of the undead was a major pain in the ass. I was mostly just lucky that my characters happened to have a good way to deal with these (Taunt, Cloak of Shadows, Dim Vision etc), otherwise I think I might have squeezed them in here somewhere. Definitely worth an honorable mention though :thumbsup:

So I started playing D2 again recently and, as everyone I guess, had to take a nice few breaks just because of how annoying/powerful some mobs or uniques were. As I rammed my head into the table in despair I began to wonder whether it's just my lame character/gaming style or simply an overall rule that some of those monsters are just plain hell. That led me to creating this list of top 10 monsters that just annoy the hell out of me, and I'm curious how much this list would correspond with yours. Note that by annoying monsters, I mean regular mobs, not bosses or uniques. I know many of those I named are mostly due to bugs but after quite a number of patches, I think it's fair to say some of this just won't ever get better, and can be taken as a part of the game.

1. Gloams - Who the hell cares about resistances huh? Got 75% lightning resist? These guys just don't give a damn. They will hurt you no matter how much resistance/life you have. They fire from more than a screen away, hit you even when they are aiming for someone else because the lightning passes through and almost every hit sends you into recovery. Just. Freaking. DIE!!!!

2. Undead Stygian Dolls - What the hell? So these little buggers pack a punch just about equivalent to those massive muscular blunderbores...and when they die they more often than not just straight out kill you. Combine that with the fact that they are quite quick to die, small and move hella fast and these guys just turn into a nightmare. Who the hell even thought of a monster that says such a big FU to every single melee character? You just have to stand back and let your merc do the work. Did I mention some of these guys don't freeze on Holy Freeze? How is that supposed to be fun?

3. Scarab Demons - Ok, they are fast and they hit quite hard and quick. I can deal with that. They shock you with every hit for solid damage. Ehm, ok, this gets annoying. Ooh, look this unique is fire enchanted. :wallbash: Why? Why in the world does fire enchanted, cold enchanted, spectral hit, cursed and all this stuff have to translate into that damn charged bolt proc? And even on minions??

4. Ghosts - Sorceresses laugh in the face of these guys. So do most amazons and necromancers. The rest of the characters just pray they don't meet too many of these guys. Immune to Physical was NOT a good idea. The fact that 10 of these guys can all occupy the same spot and suck mana like Slurpies was probably an even worse one. These guys alter whole builds just by existing. If you can't deal with PI, don't even touch late Act 1 and late Act 2 on Hell.

5. Act 5 Tomb Vipers - What the hell were the devs thinking here? I don't know what went wrong, all I know is that if you stand in the poison cloud these guys can shoot out of their ass, you can lose about a 1500 life in less then two seconds. Bug? Maybe. But the fact that the damage you take has obviously nothing to do with poison at all, coupled with the javelin hit sound it makes when you stand in it makes me think this was an intention. All I can say is... Good thing these guys are kinda squishy.

6. Reanimated Horde - Well, these guys are slow like hell most of the time, don't pack much of a punch on normal attack and can drop items more times than once. What's there not to like? The charge attack would be my answer. For some insane reason, the charge attack will deal damage to you regardless of whether the charge actually reached you or not. I had two of these guys stuck behind a Claw Viper constantly charging and stopping on the spot. My pally went from full 700 life to 0 in three "hits". If only it were a rare occurence. That very same pally fell to this stuff about 6 times in Frozen River alone. No wonder he ended up a whole clvl lower than most of my guys by the end of hell.

7. Heirophant - Bastards. That pretty much sums it up. If you have solid lightning resist and cold resist coupled with cannot be frozen, these guys will just be a pain in the ass. If you don't, these guys are a horror to deal with. Killing four champions of these really is not fun. The bastards will just heal each other to no end.

8. Poison Spiders - If you get hit by one of these, especially the Spider Magus, you can just about open the portal and go find Ormus. Except for antidote potions and wells, I don't think I have ever seen anyone heal from Spider Magus poison outside town. Even Andariel has a lot to learn from them. These guys don't kill as much, they just soften you up or make you go to town about every two minutes. Either way they are among the most annoying monsters there are. They could publish a book on annoying.

9. Oblivion Knights - Since Iron Maiden is gone and Lower Resist too, these guys have become a little bit more bearable. Just remove the Decrepify, Amplify Damage and the armies of Doom Knights these guys always hide behind and we might have a reasonably strong monster. Until then, these guys will always be among my top ten of strongest monsters ever seen. They won't kill you on their own. They'll make sure that just about anyone else will.

10. Death Lords - Yep, that's those big minotaur guys. The amount of damage these guys deal is ridiculous. The fact that they attack so damn fast AND have frenzy is no fun at all either. They also happen to have a disgusting amount of life. But to make one kind of these unfreezable even with Holy Freeze and another IMMUNE TO PHYSICAL? Are...you...kidding me??? The only reason these are not at the top of the list is because you don't meet them all that often past Normal and at that time they aren't so dangerous.

So that would be it I guess. You are more than welcome to disagree with any part of the list and I'd really love to see your own (perhaps with some details as to why you included the various monsters as well) :wink: I would have made a poll out of this but there is just too many monsters that could qualify as annoying.