@drmalawi your arguments make complete sense from a philosophical or historical standpoint. I don't care so much about about the philosophy behind it as compared to the fact that I think 1.14 is an S-tier game, and several of the changes make it less good in my personal opinion. The nihla example being a perfect one. I acknowledge the physical dmg is a bug as judged by developer intent. I still the game is better with the bug in (this particular example being an extremely minor one to be clear).
I said 1/10th the time for 98-99. Not from 1-99. And I think that's relatively accurate. ~10 hrs vs ~100. Yes ofc holy grail and lvl 99 and runeword grail are arbitrary goals. They're just the arbitrary goals that made me love d2. And I just happen to think that ~300hrs to achieve the arbitrary goal of 99 is a lot more satisfying than 60 (d2r) or 2000 (whatever it would've taken pre p8). Not to mention the fact that if you join any of the old 99er or grail challenges here on the forum, your efforts can't really be compared at all to those from before.
So yes I'm very much not a fan of tzs. I'm not saying I wouldn't play them for some side project or something, but none of my long term d2 efforts will include them. Feels like playing a mod made to make the game easier.
I edited my post to mention it, but i forgot to say sunder charms. I think one of the appealing things about d2 is how different characters are good at different things. I hate how sunder charms make it to where you can just play any build anywhere more or less.
I just am a huge huge fan of 1.14, which is not surprising considering I joined here and played it a ton. Is it perfect? No ofc not, but D2R with terror zones is strictly inferior to my taste. Without tzs though? d2r may be the better game despite some complaints (mosaic sin, buffed find item... like why?). But extra content with ubers, new alvl 85 areas, better fohdin and fire druid sound fun, better graphics. All sound awesome.