Descent Good But Has Tedious Start

Descent is a sweet idea - I eventually made it to map 6 or so. I started to enjoy it after about 25 minutes and by the end I'd have paid an exalt to keep going for ten more minutes.

MONSTER HP AT THE START IS TOO HIGH.

Starting out was atrociously tedious. I rolled a Ranger (I have all season to cleave, ya?) and it took 4 or more shots to kill anything. Combined with the low attack speed of a level 1, and the occasional miss, progress was torturous. It didn't help that the mobs were those little exploding bugs spawned by carrion queens that don't grant any experience for killing them. I couldn't kill the queens: they took about 8 hits with burning arrow, and spawned minions so fast I couldn't land any hits.

And while the mobs did start granting experience on later maps, the pace didn't improve until the fourth map or so. The masses of Oak's Devoted on map 2 just had too much hp compared to the damage output i could do, and I don't think my ranger got unreasonably poor drops. But the monster HP on the early levels relative to my crude bow (remember, can't go to town to buy iron rings) just felt like I was moving in molasses.

THE PACE AT THE START WAS TOO SLOW.

I want to be clear that I didn't feel edge-of-my-seat pressured like I do in a BLAMT (or zomg LATIF!!) race because the damage the mobs dealt wasn't over the top. I felt bored because all i could do was sit there and auto-attack. If anything, I'd say that monster damage is a *bit* on the low side.

I really want to reiterate the point that I didn't feel overly challenged by the maps, but that the time it took to kill anything made the beginning feel quite grueling.

SUGGESTION:

The lack of vendors to even out poor drops puts a lot more pressure on classes with steep resource curves. Perhaps GGG could consider tweaking skill mana costs and/or skill damage since none of the gems move into the permanent leagues?

TLDR: I really enjoyed descent but mob hp is waaaay too high on the first 2-3 maps.