Diablo 3 normal items useless?

[Beefy]

So does anyone know if there are future plans to actually utilize normal items in the game? I know you can sell them for gold I guess maybe that is their only use. I haven't seen any normal items with some actual attributes. I remember in D2 a normal wand with +4 to bone spear was worth a good amount for a normal item because it could make a good "White" runeword wand.

Am I the only one who has thought about this?

[konfeta]

It may or may not come as Blizzard introduces new stuff later on in patches or expansions. White items are currently intentional noise to make blue/yellows seem more special.

[Raesene]

White items are mostly useless, but I've definitely been in situations where I found a white weapon that blows away the blue I currently had equipped. White weapons are worth a passing glance if they are a name you haven't seen yet with that character.

[Urzuxo]

White items are good in the early stages of the game obviously, before you get any magic items. But they also help the player appriciate magic items more. If the game would only drop magic items or better, we wouldn't be so happy when we found one. But now when the game is throwing worthless stuff at you you're more happy when you see something other than white.

PS: It's really not worth selling white items, they sell for less than a single gold drop from a monster. Plus Blizzard has even said you're not supposed to sell white items

[The Lord of Darkness]

If they have better DPS or Armor on them then I'll use them otherwise they are vendor bait for stash increase and crafting gold. I found myself not even selling blues in the beta, they were scalvaged.

[wrugoin]

White items are mostly useless, but I've definitely been in situations where I found a white weapon that blows away the blue I currently had equipped. White weapons are worth a passing glance if they are a name you haven't seen yet with that character.

I had the same experience. I actually used superior white weapons on my barb until I got a yellow to drop off the skeleton king. Nothing blue dropped for me that could match the dps I got off two random whites.

[Frostlion]

I was actually surprised that I found some white items worth using. And I say surprised because the only real reason to use white items in D2 was for very specific purposes (to make runewords, for example).

My demon hunter at lvl 13 was still using a white one-handed crossbow with 15.4 DPS, one of my templar got a white shield with over 100 armor. In general, it seems pretty similar to how it was in D2, in that most white items are useless, but you soon pick up on the rare few worth picking up.

I like that it's more rare to want them though. That combined with the larger and better ordered inventory actually makes inventory management a lot less of a chore.

[cozmiccc]

White items serve the purpose by being bad, it makes other item looks more valuable.

That's it really, Blizzard went out of the way to made them useless, not even worth picking up as the next gold pile you pick up will worth multiple times anyway. They're there just to give that loot explosion feel.

[HardRock]

From purely a damage standpoint, Superior items can be good while leveling, if you reach content where your current weapon is starting to get weak. In the case of Balanced items they even have an affix which you won't find even on Magic or Rare weapons, a flat APS bonus.

[Rashiminos]

Normal armor items were useless so far. I'd rather use weaker armor with exp bonuses than worry about nonexistent damage problems. Weapons are an exception, but only due to the need for dps over other considerations (and not for very long).