You’re arguing that you can’t use an axe in melee when that has nothing to do with the skill trees. Being able to swap around skill points is a different argument than what skills you actually have to use.

Mods address developer inadequacies. WoW vanilla had some amazing mods because Blizzard’s interface was horrible. Over the years, they’ve integrated the mods into their game (raid frames, threat meters, quest helpers, auras, etc…). I do wish they had given more credit to the modders though. TL has mods because the game is unfinished.

What TL did right was streamline many systems to make the game much more accessible than D2. You can see many of those systems in D3. You can also see quite a few that they didn’t take in order to try to push people to the RMAH.

I also should note another neat thing TL2 does is allow character customization. It doesn’t make the stew, but it adds a tiny bit of spice. To be able to pick both genders, hair style, face, and haircolor(and skin tone), it’s a really nice little thing. For example, my ‘Casty’ embermage is an older, wise looking guy. My ‘melee’ embermage is a young, handsome fellow with a big 2H hammer who busts apart enemies before letting loose some frostbolts. My ‘Bot’ engineer who specializes in guns, mines, and tinkers looks like a curious young lady, where my 2H Tough Guy engineer looks like a Blue Collar Worker from Springsteen Country. It’s just a really nice touch. Would have loved to have seen something like that in D3 as well.

And tbh it works. It may not give you the flexibility that you want, but it does work.

I did want to say that it’s not necessarily the system Blizz implemented in D3, but the fact they purposely choked off builds from it for reasons that…well, sadly, I link to their putting in PvP and wanting to turn everything into an esport. :/ I imagine that we weren’t given the option for an awesome flavorful mage with a big 2H axe because ‘it would unbalance PvP.’

I actually am doing a test in TL2. Normal mode, I am picking classes and pretending I’m either a new player or one of those players who just want to shove points in stuff and run, and I’m seeing how effective it is. To be completely honest, it’s fine. Really, I’m floating around stat points and shoving points in skills and while the class definitely feels a little less cohesive, it won’t destroy a newbie. (I would not do this in Veteran/Elite mode.) See, I LOVE putting effort into this and picking stuff. But if you aren’t a crazy challenge gamer(which requires minmaxing in any game), you aren’t going to run into issues going nuts ”I wish I took that 1 point of Vitality!”

Also you have to remember. MODS. The mod community. Which designs classes for the game, some of which are *awesome*. Yes, I expect the Berserker to be able to be Monked up very very easily. The Mod Community will open up far more in TL2 than…well, D3 HAS none, so yeah. (Oh yeah, if respecs aren’t given normally they will be in about 30 seconds as I’m pretty sure they already pre-made a mod for it.)

I also have this thing where I’m a fanatically loyal supporter to the mod community, and with Blizzard basically giving them two middle fingers on account of their precious RMAH(regardless of the fact they helped keep D2 going far longer than it would have) I admit I have some rather hot bias there.

I’m looking forwards to checking out T2, but I’m so tired of having to care how much crit or stamina my character has and carefully assign points every level. I just want to pick cool gear and cool abilities that might work together in interesting ways and play. That’s what this system does, which is why I love it (Although you probably do have to care a bit about your vitality and defensive specs, which I don’t much enjoy.)

I don’t even know if I want to design a one-off character class, I’d be happy enough if they design one that is fun and balanced and that I never have to think about. It may be that my level of laziness in this respect is abnormal though. But what I really don’t want is to put any effort into character design and then find out it’s subpar (which it would be because I’m not a minmaxer.)

This type of design goes a long way to avoid that happening. If my talents don’t work out, no biggie, I’ll just reassign them. Yet at the same time, T2 only has three classes. If I wanted to play a monk I’d be SOL. It’s flexible if you have flexible tastes.

For example, Final Fantasy 4 on the DS introduced a system called ‘Augments.’ You could give other skills to your characters. It didn’t change WHAT they were, as, well, Kain the Dragoon could never cast black magic, but it let you build on their *themes.* This is great in a game like that.

In a ’3rd Person Looter’, I want as full a freedom as I can get.

I bring up the ‘melee mage’ build a lot since in games like this, I use it as my ‘Yardstick’, so to speak, to measure how much freedom I have. The ‘Melee Mage’ test is essentially: Can I take a Mage type character, usually seen as ranged and casty and not physical, and turn them into a head-smashing powerhouse with some weaker spells, more as a ‘hybrid?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’, then there is a lot of freedom in the game. In Torchlight 2, I can do this. I put points between my Melee Embermage’s Strength and Focus(the magic stat), with a little bit of Vit for survivability(he is a bit of a glass warrior/cannon type, something has to give), but I can then equip some fun spells on him, give him a giant 2 handed axe, and watch him cleave through enemies physically just as awesomely as my Berserker does, and then pewpew some others. I sacrifice Crit(Dex) and some HP/Armor(Vit) for this build, but i can do it, and it’s lovely. In D2, my Meleemancer did just fine. He was awesome to play.

In D3, I *can’t*. The closest thing to a melee mage that I saw was more ‘a mage that stood in melee.’ Now, of course there is that irony of on Inferno mode wizards being the best tanks, but the melee mage made me feel off. There was no physicality in there. I was stuck in *their* idea for it, and in this style of game, I dislike that. I *wanted* a wizard cleaving heads with a 2 hander with some spells, even if I had to give up some other stuff to do it. In TL2, they say ”Here are the reigns, have fun.”

Just my tastes, of course. (I mean, I guess my ideal 3rd person looter would be more of a ‘Build Your Own Class’ kinda deal where you select a bunch of traits and stats at the start to make a character with your own feel to it.)

For me though, I’m going TL2 the whole way. It just has so much love put into it(and to be fair, the talent trees have a nice little thing where they’re ‘noob friendlier’ than others, in the sense that many of the abilities scale with character level/weapon DPS than they do skill ranks, allowing people to sprinkle points around a bit more liberally. More points typically adds more secondary effects, of which you’ll probably want in the harder modes, but for Casual/Normal? It’s well done, I think.)