Well... I sort of agree and disagree.

It needs to be tweaked around a bit, because I find T3 either extremely hard and borderline impossible or extremely easy. I'm talking about doing an arena and getting 12 of those electric jelly things blowing up your 5* shield in half a second and then killing you in the next second. It seems almost impossible to do certain things like that, however other things like soloing up to the second last firestorm citadel stage is really easy. I think that they should tone down some things and possibly also work on certain mobs, but not all of T3 is super duper hard.

To be honest, dodging puppies' bullets is easy. I have more trouble with Kats than Gun Puppies.

My main problem with T3 is profit. T3 is pretty much the only point in the game that you can ever actually die at, even with amazing gear. But the loot, heat and crown wise, just doens't make up for difficulty. Arenas and danger zones are insanely hardcore and the only way to complete them is pretty much to get five star gear and some specific weapons. (usually, combos of haze bombs) Their loot is what, only ~20% better than T2 ones, which are much easier to do?

Not to say Quicksilver Arenas. Those aren't difficult, those are plain ridiculous. I tried one at depth 20 yesterday - Four waves with 12+ quicksilvers each in a relatively small room. (It was a Center Brambles) It took me about 8 T3 health pills (from quitting party members, myself and monster drops) to actually complete it without dying, and even so I was at about 10HP after I finished. (Had total of 36 health) There wasn't really any exciting loot - The heat meter didn't even get to the final stage.

But in particular, the problem isn't really T3 - It's just all those ridiculously faulty system the game is based on currently. I mean, if you want to profit, you have no choice but to run Royal Jelly Palace if you're a T2 player, or Firestorm Citadel if you're a T3 player. No other gates or levels can offer as much profit and heat as those, except for maybe doing tons of danger zones and arenas past terminals - But as I said, those are not viable options until you're pretty much at endgame and have all the correct armor and weaponry. And besides, there's no specific stratums that creates a lot of arenas or clockworks, it's completely random. Take a look at current gates; No stratum has more than two arenas. Some have none. The most arenas I have seen in a single stratum post release were about three. (Two in a single depth) And clockworks, aswell - It seems stratum-specific levels such as Jigsaw or Dark City end up being more common than actual clockworks.

But my main complaint is how ridiculous damage is on T3. You can easily lose 30 health in 4 seconds if you're careless - Being frozen by lumbers, stepping on ice-traps, (Spikebox Danger zone - The ice-traps in those zones can freeze you and potentially cause tons of damage, however they do not break freeze, and shields get easily broken by then - Meaning you're pretty much dead if you step on one and no one rescues you) getting grabbed by a zombie's lunge while facing the opposite direction, (impossible to hit the zombie and escape - forced to take damage) getting cornered by trojans, and etc. I don't think I even have to say more than that, it's already obvious how unbalanced those things are.

Another major complaint would be the way the status effect system works. There's no complete immunity, no matter how much resist you get, and even if you hit the maximum resist amount, it won't really give amazing protection, just decent/great. And considering status effects can refresh, (Being frozen, hit, freeze breaks BUT you're instantly frozen again, for example) shock and freeze can be really lethal on solo. If you find yourself surrounded by shock mobs, and get shocked, for example, it's instant death - Shock ticks remove the invulnerability time you have after getting hit, so you can essentially be hit again, shocked again, and the tick repeats.

To sum it up: Devs are still terrible at balancing! Those issues are all thread-worthy on suggestions, but I have no real incentive to post them myself - Ever since release, the devs have been mostly silent around the forums, and I don't think any of them has answered suggestions, and it doens't seem like suggestions are actually getting added.

Not to say that even in CB, when the devs would actually answer and there were way less threads, they did even answer in some of our threads - But nothing ever got done, balancing-wise. No matter how good the suggestions or ranting was.

I seem to recall a discussion between one of the devs and a friend of his... it was along the lines of:

"He's kind of tough; there's almost no warning before his attacks."
"If he's visible, he's attacking."

>I'm not saying it's not fun
>Point is, tier 3 isn't fun.
It's a lot more fun that the boring Tier 2.
The rewards are crap though.

This isn't meant to be that kind of game

Because you say so?

T3 is too hard for what it gives. Should probably give a lot more rewards for the difficulty.

I hate that area. three rows of spiral gun puppies, 1 healer bat at the beginning, and 3 in the middle? *ow*

The only thing I really despise in T3 are Quicksilvers. I think the majority of my deaths in my entire experience with this game has come from them and Oilers. I'd rather Alt + F4 than do the Quicksilver danger room.

The blog post for this comic:
http://threepanelsoul.com/2011/04/11/on-ironclaw-menders/

You haven't went to the fiends yet. Once you go there, you'll be doomed. The only tip I can give people is use the blocks as cover when those fiends throw stuff at you. The Kats, you just have to knock them back.

but I'm not Ian McConville. If I were, I'd be 1. more successful, 2. a much better artist, and 3. married.

And then I'm sure I'd find SK to be a walk in the park.

Statistically speaking, I'd probably also refresh the 3PS page less. That might be a good thing.

I enjoy the difficulty of tier 3. Sorry that I didn't have much to add to the discussion, but I've found others who do as well, and just wanted that to be brought up.

Three reasons why I enjoy it:

1:It is hilarious listening in vent to "RUUUUUUN, OH SWEET JESUS *^#* RUN!".

2: The feeling of accomplishment that comes from tackling difficult things with friends is great.

3: It kind of goes with #1, but there is a TON to be said about wandering somewhere unexplored and actually being afraid of the monsters one encounters there!