Do you like the design decision that good items can be horrible?der

[swayzesghost]

Yes, this is extremely important. The existence of bad items is necessary for the existence of good items..However, they dropped the ball on this, as in D2 white weapons etc were sometimes even usable, or at least had value. By making white weapons never useful, and never valuable, the low end of the loot scale is as messed up as the high end.

[joeb]

I hate it! This rmah an ah...the whole game is wrapped around it. I vote the rmah an ah have got to go. If legendaries were the only good items...then there would be less items to sell in the rmah...less cash flow for blizzard. So. Make all items have a distribution on the high end....even...let's fudge the probability so that blues are better then sets or legandaries. Wink wink. The ah has got to go. I have made up my mind. They took out loot runs. This is why. That bleeping ah.

Let me explain:I totally understand the necessity of having variables on items -- especially high end items. If you're lucky enough to find a perfect Windforce, for example, then you can sell it for an insane amount of money. However, if you roll a comparatively bad Windforce it won't be worth as much but it will still be a really good item. It will still be high end, super rare, and super powerful. Right now, if you go to the AH and you search for Immortal Kings' Stone Crusher, you will get pages of results that vary wildly in prices. On the high end, you have 900+ DPS weapons selling for millions. On the low end you have ~600 DPS weapons with terrible stats selling for 200k.My point is: The item should still be good. You can technically find a "bad" version of a good item, but even the bad version is still GOOD. I would never use a 600 DPS IK maul with +Int on it instead of +Str. That's ridiculous.I could understand if the possible DPS range was, say, 800-950 or something similar, but a 300 DPS difference? It ruins the find completely. And then you throw INT on it instead of STR? Come on, Blizzard. Do not like this design at all.Let the good items be GOOD, but keep it possible to find an insanely powerful version of the GOOD item. Thoughts?

[Raesene]

I think the problem is ultimately that some bonuses scale far to well while some do not scale at all (apparently life leech % gets nerfed in higher difficulties which means as you get father in the game it actually gets worse in some ways).

So while the game has a huge *variety* of gear, the customization is actually very low, because the viable choices are very constrained. This is frustrating to players because most gear is (rightfully) perceived as crap, and very few interesting choices are involved.

It's not even like all gear options need to be perfectly balanced, they certainly weren't in D2. The big difference though is that you could make sub-optimal tradeoffs in D2 and still be viable. In D3, the better choice between two pieces of gear is not some small theorycrafted bonus, it's between one item that explodes your potential while the other is only a small gain from not even filling the slot at all.

EDIT: And I don't think any of these problems really have anything to do with the AH. Take away the AH completely and the problem still remains. I think having a much larger variety in viable gear options would actually make the AH much more robust and fun to use, while simultaneously making it less 'necessary' for those who choose to ignore it.

[XenoXb]

I certainly agree with many of the concerns mentioned. In particular unique item DPS being too low across the board is absolutely a valid concern. However, I'm surprised by how people make the comparison with Diablo 2 to argue things were better there. Just as a reminder, here are some super-rare D2X unique items with level requirements over 75:

Shadow Killer
Halaberd's Reign
Dragonscale
Head Hunter's Glory (value that with 1 socket instead of 3...)
Wraith Flight
The Cranium Basher (required level 87!)
The Reaper's Toll & Tomb Reaver (see how useful those are without being ethereal)
Arioc's Needle (remember the value difference between +2 skills and +4, not to mention etherealness)
Mang Song's Lesson (Do you recall how all 2-handers were worthless for a sorc?)
Warshrike

We all remember the few awesome uniques from Diablo 2, but we forget how many of the super rare end-game ones were trash. The trashiness of items may be more concentrated on weapons in Diablo 3, because of the DPS problem, but saying that in Diablo 2 finding a unique felt awesome was simply not true 90% of the time. The main difference is that when you did find one of those super unique weapons, they absolutely decimated everything, doing the equivalent of 3000 DPS in Diablo 3, and immediately making every single thing that was not that weapon a piece of junk. A choice that might work when your max difficulty is easy enough that you can complete it on hardcore even without that weapon, but an absurd imbalance in a game that actually has a challenging end-game.

As I said, I absolutely agree there is a problem with unique items in Diablo 3 and it's good that Blizzard will soon be taking steps to address it. I also agree with the OP that end-game uniques should be tweaked in such a way that even a mediocre roll will be at least somewhat useful. The argument that this is a new and unique problem though - especially one not present in Diablo 2 - is simply not true.



EDIT:

As for interesting and unique stats on legendaries, here are the most used end-game legendaries from D2X in each slot:
Rings
Stone of Jordan (+skills, maximum mana)
Bul Kathos' Wedding band (+skills, life, life steal)
Raven Frost (cannot be frozen, cold absorb, cold attack and attack + stat boosts. This admittedly is interesting.)

Amulets
Mara's Kaleidoscope (+skills, +resists, + attributes)

Charms
Annihilus charms (+skills, +resists, + attributes, +XP)
Hellfire Torch (+skills, +resists, + attributes, fire on hit)

Helms
Harlequin Crest (+skills, +life, +mana, DR, MF)
Crown of Ages (+skills, +resist, DR, FHR, sockets)
Vampire Gaze (lifesteal, manasteal, DR)

I could go on, but you get the point. Once again, this is not to say that there are no interesting uniques in Diablo 2. In fact, I loved Guardian Angel for its unique boost to max. resistances, even though it was hardly used and I always preferred the random teleporting from the Oculus to its more boring alternatives. And I wouldn't mind seeing things like that return to Diablo 3 for some cute extras.
What I am saying though, is that in the end, 90% of slots were filled with boring plain items anyway, simply because they were better. The last 10% were filled with uniques whose special powers were so great that you needed to have them (Dracul's Grasp anyone?)

It wasn't until we started weird builds with our fifth or sixth character in Diablo 2 that we started using the quirks (in fact, it wasn't until after the release of the expansion that most of them even existed). By the time we get to that point in Diablo 3, I'll judge again based on what's in store for us then. Until then, I still have Inferno to clear with a melee character, Hell to complete on hardcore and some interesting challenge achievements to collect.

Great post, thanks for sharing.

[swayzesghost]

Not really fair to compare D2 absolute endgame items to D3 absolute endgame items. Sure the d2 absolute endgame may be more "boring" to you...But the point is that every step of the way to get there was fun. I played D2 for 10 years and I never had items considered "essential" by many players like enigma etc....IMO to even get stuff like that you had to purchase it, dupe it, or play to an excessive amount so I was never interested in them at all

But what about the hats with +1 to a skill, life leech, mana leech, resists, spell proc? That you got at like...Level 70 in D2...The items ALONG THE WAY were fun. What about the crappy platemail you wore because it would proc frost nova?

My equipment has never seemed fun or interesting in D3, not for a second. I never cared that *I* found this cool rare quiver. It's not "mine" like in D2. It's something I will dispose of on the AH for an exactly similar item with bigger stats and hopefully, one better mod, if I can afford the extra 100k+ that the one mod will cost.

Or I could just waste several hundred k into the blacksmith and get a bunch of bows with strength and intelligence. Tying stats to items broke this game irrevocably. It will be undone in the expansion.