I think we have different definitions of "smother"
By smother I mean "literally can't progress without losing all your money." By smother I mean "if you're ranged everything one shots you-- if you're melee you can take maybe 4 or 5."
Like... if A1 inferno had A2's difficulty pre-nerf I'd consider that a smothering coming in there with hell equipment. By the time you hit A2 you have some degree of A1 inferno equipment so it's still not quite a smothering. Tough, yeah, but not a smothering. (Speaking as a wizard, mind you-- admittedly it might be smothering for people who use classes that are more gear dependent)
Now post nerf it's... well, close to reasonable. The only thing that theoretically keeps you from going straight through is that it's not really profitable to do so due to repair costs.
Now I'll give you that yeah, it's tougher than anything d2 had, but d2's endgame wasn't exclusively about powering up via loot, so it had lenience there.
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No problem!
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