Are HC groups viable ?

[ThomasJ]

I played in 3 man and 4 man HC groups and I feel that it may not be worth grouping in HC. It can be such a struggle just to complete an area and it felt like my characters really did not make any difference. At times I would see maybe 2-3 damage per hit on my Monk. When I soloed with my Barbarian,Witch Doctor and demon Hunter it felt like I was actually making a difference. Do you think many will attempt grouping in HC once release hits ?

[SirAdis]

If everyone is skilled and people playing all know each other( so they can craft builds to support the whole group, Healing Monk for example), I'd say that groupping in HC will be the way to go. In randoms it'll be different, unless you're lucky and get a good group. Knowing that, I'll personaly be playing in Single Games, since then I only have 1 person to blame for failures

[X an th]

At the moment i'd say Groups are dangerous. There is no need to stay with each other and as a result you find yourself fighting solo and thusly fighting harder monsters with no extra rewards. Hopefully the later difficulties will force grouping but for now solo seems like the safest option.

[Gamekk]

I played in 3 man and 4 man HC groups and I feel that it may not be worth grouping in HC. It can be such a struggle just to complete an area and it felt like my characters really did not make any difference. At times I would see maybe 2-3 damage per hit on my Monk. When I soloed with my Barbarian,Witch Doctor and demon Hunter it felt like I was actually making a difference. Do you think many will attempt grouping in HC once release hits ?

You have to take in consideration that this is beta, and in the beta, there are a lot of noobies in HC games. Actually, I often feel like the players in public games are mostly afkers/noobs... which is just making the game harder.
I think we will have to wait and see how it is in the final version with real HC players, in higher difficulties.
So far, I see that public games will only slow down "good" HC players.
Playing with other "good" friends will still make the game much easier. So, I'll go solo or with friends only.

[galzohar]

If people are sticking with you and are at least 1/2 as good as you, and assuming they don't do stupid stuff that get you killed like training lots of monsters onto your position, then it'll be worth it to group with them. If they're running off on their own you can just leave and find a new game. As for people getting you killed directly, not sure how possible that is, but if that's a real problem that could be a big downside of grouping in HC (but not in SC, as even if it will exists it'll probably be rare enough to not discourage you from grouping).

Overall, you must remember that the way the game scales makes it quite easier for groups.

[HardRock]

My experiences with public groups were positive so far. Sometimes I ran into people who rushed ahead, skipping all monsters on the way, but that wasn't the norm. The fact is that playing in a group can save you more often than not, even if your party isn't the best. The only rule is that you should stick together. If you ask me, even if 1 or 2 people run around like idiots in a 4 player party you're still better off staying with the third guy than playing in solo. The reason is that together you have much better CC capability and a positioning advantage compared to playing in solo with a follower.

Let me try and illustrate why I think that is. Today I rolled a new Barb because I wanted a challenge, since playing with level 13 chars in the beta gets boring fast. I didn't craft or buy items, because I wanted to see how the early game experience would turn out on a completely new account. Things went smoothly more or less, until level 6. I was on my way to Leoric when I run into a Rare Nightmarish Unburied.

Despite the new 30% extra DR that Barbs got, I got raped pretty bad. I had Ground Stomp with me, but it didn't really help since I couldn't round up all the Unburied, because if I waited even a second one or two started to stun me with their knockback or fear me. Stunning only one or two didn't really work either, for the same reasons. Combined with their knockback, the fear was pretty brutal. Once they feared me into a corner and kept stunlocking me for what seemed like 5-6 seconds, easily enough time to kill me. Luckily, I could drink a potion between two fears (you can't drink potions while you're feared).

I survived the encounter (thanks to that one potion), but just barely and killing the pack took more than a minute of hit and run tactics. It would have been much easier if I had one more player with me (even in a 4 player party), since then we could have used two CCs or I could have kited the pack around, while a ranged class could have picked them off one by one.

This wasn't an isolated incident either. Risingred run into problems with his DH as well. In his case, it was a Rare teleporting Unburied that made him sweat: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4365748308

The beta is only the first third of Normal Act 1, but you can run into dangerous enemies even in this limited content. Many people died to Molten bats in the Den of the Fallen and to Elite scavengers as well. Blizzard weren't kidding when they said that we'll die a lot. My advice to Hardcore players is to play in parties.

[Mn_Swe2]

Parties will be absolute key to success in HC Inferno, and also Hell.

Tank / summon / healer / nuke in a good combination will always be better then playing solo as long as they co-operate.