Agree completely. For long threads, Discourse is a usability disaster. phpBB is awful software, but everyone in the world can click on page 20 and know where they are. Jumping 2/3rds into a long topic using Discourse is essentially impossible for the average user.

But I love Discourse for at least trying something new and different - thats how progress is made. But some of their UI/stack decisions seem to have been made with no thought for normal people/web admins.