Raze lighter is bad ass but, as you say, you have to get down and dirty to reap the rewards. The big health thing actually started in PoE. The "critical targets" were ridiculous. I didn't enjoy that much either but at least we had monster weapons to drop them if it was getting to close. It continues now in strikes like the sword quests, elemental shielded enemies that just soak clip upon clip of primary and there's just to many of them to secondary them all. Getting in the thick of the action and going all gung-ho isn't an option often these days, you don't last 5 seconds.

PoE actually moved away from bullet sponges because they all had mechanics to deal with and you weren't on an enrage timer. You only burned bosses if you didn't feel like dealing with the mechanics. Let's take Skolas. Skolas wasn't the threat, mines and juggling poison were the threats. You were actually supposed to whittle away at him with primaries because the adds and mines spawned based on where his health was, and you didn't accidentally want to trigger mines and two waves of adds all at once. You wanted to clear as many adds as you could before damaging Skolas. And personally, I never had an issue with Kill Targets, but, I'd be lying if I said that wasn't due to Gjallarhorn and Found Verdict. Yes, the epic strikes are more obnoxious now without elemental primaries, but with fireteams, they're certainly manageable. I dunno. I did Xyor the Unwed at 27 with all rare weapons and no elemental primaries, so maybe I've just been conditioned. And, I'll repeat, Sleeper Stimulant does more damage than Gjallarhorn. If people want to do huge spikes of damage to bosses, they still have that option.

I think, as you say, we have been conditioned. I also did the xlar back in the day and it seemed brutal, but doable. The equivalent now is probably black spindle. I hate the black spindle run, I got mine and I will happily never do it again.

[quote]Xlar[/quote] Haha, when forum memes take over. Honestly, I haven't done the Black Spindle run since the first day it was available, and I'm not going to lie and say it was easy, but it wasn't really bullet spongey. Epic isn't even on.