According to Blizzard

[FattyXP]

How to beat imba seemingly impossible champ packs:

...

Yeah, find out for yourself. All are doable. Even the invulnerables in Pony land or Act IV. Just gotta know how to do it. And no, I don't mean using exploits.

How to beat the imbar champ packs... smash pots till you have enough gold to buy items good enough to survive said champ pack. Win.

[Gheld]

Trying to kill "impossible" elites was fun. It taught you different approaches to your class and the game in general. Now it utterly bankrupts you and so must be avoided.

Oh, and losing NV should you try out different skills is very encouraging too

One more thing... "Blizzard" is just a label now that Activision bought it. It no longer confers the quality and attention to detail that it used to, since the people running the show are Activision.

This (First 2 paragraphs). It was worth it to stick to the elite packs that really sucked, because it was fun, and chances are you would at the very least break even in gold, and get to "unwrap" a rare present (which would probably suck anyways, but it's still fun to identify items).

Worst case scenario, you could checkpoint zerg them (fixed with repair cost increase) or park them in town and move along. (fixed with portals to town.)

Other 1.03 changes were completely convoluted.

"All inferno bosses are now more difficult, but drop crappier loot, because you know... the more difficult the task, the worse the loot it should give."

I really didn't see what was wrong the whole get 5 NV and then go kill a boss model. (i.e. farming entire quests.) But now your best bet is exclusively farming elites, absolutely ignoring bosses all together. (except for the prohibitive repair costs forcing you to call GG every time you see the affix that is anti-your-class).

Sadly your absolute best bet now is to slap on a full set of MF gear, and go farm Sarkoth in act 1. Because there's nothing Inferno Diablo could possibly drop that Sarkoth can't. It's nearly impossible to die farming him, and you get a ton of gold to go with all the gear that drops, and if your class has a go fast button (teleport, vault, heroic leap, etc) you can do it in about 20-30 seconds per run. He essentially gives you the contents of a resplendent chest, but is affected by GF/MF.

So literally, the less effort you put into the game, the more rewarding it is. Of course, blizzard is going to respond to this eventually by nerfing Sarkoth farming; when in reality they should be making greater challenges more rewarding, and let people who want to cheapen the game for themselves be. The Diablo 3 economy is un-salvageable, due to the fact that it is region wide, and you can resell used gear. So a 1500 DPS sword will be back in the mix as soon as a 1501 dps sword drops and inevitably the RMAH is going to render itself unnecessary and there's absolutely nothing Blizzard can do to stop it from happening.

TLDR : It's time Blizzard admits that Diablo 3 was a failed experiment in microtransactions and lets players enjoy the game the way they want to enjoy it; be it by punishing themselves with fast walling vortex mortars, or smashing barrels.

For non MMO products gaming companies need to get back into that "1 game, 1 paycheque" mentality. I paid 0 dollars for Diablo 3 thanks to WoW Annual Pass, and unless there's another Annual Pass for whatever Diablo 3 expansion content they make I won't be partaking.

I'm getting old, and I would rather spend a weekend fishing than gaming these days. Not because being old makes me more likely to want to go fishing, but because of the garbage the gaming industry has descended into (i.e. designing a non MMO around the anticipation of a steady stream of revenue from an individual consumer). The incentive used to be "you only have 1 chance, so it better be finished on time, and as big as the hype." Game libraries have been replaced with gaming niches, because when eventually every game has an RMAH and DLC you better be a millionaire if you want to play them all.

EDIT: I mean, 6 million units for Diablo 3 sounds pretty badass. But when you compare that to the radical inflation of the number of potential buyers (i.e. the growth of PC gaming over the years.) Adjusted to inflation, that's balls compared to Warcraft 2, or Diablo 1.