This post pretty much sums up my feeling on the loot, as well as a lot of others(taken from battle.net)
TL;DR - If the loot didn't have crappy stats on all the time and had a little better drop rate so I didn't have to rely on the AH to progress all would be good.
This was a post from one of my previous threads that I think should be seen by Blizzard and to realize what it was that we liked about the loot system.
We all know that loot is not where it should be. We all know the issues that exist, that trash blues sometimes are better than rares and usually always more powerful than legendaries. I’m going to break this out into various sections of how loot could be improved upon.
A) Stats Currently, I get the feeling I’m playing Wrath of the Lich King when it comes to loot. The only stats I care about is +mainstat and DPS. This does tie into the Inferno issue (discussed below) to some degree, because even +vit is useless as a stat, because no matter how much +vit you stack, you will die in one hit, maybe two, if you’re lucky. So what’s the incentive to stack +vit? The same goes for +res, why should I stack that? The only stats that matters are +mainstat (which increases my DPS) and the actual DPS of the weapon itself; other than that, the rest really serve no other purpose. There are good and interesting stats, we just don’t have any incentive to stack them. The only thing we need to do is just increase our DPS. This is why we see Witch Doctors and Wizards running around with 2h weapons and bows instead of their class weapon!
B) Loot doesn’t make sense In general, loot doesn’t make any sense. I have found a legendary level 60 bow with a “Zombie Charger returns 7 mana” stat on it. A bow? I think stats like this need to be restricted to their class. This stat should be a on a dagger, ceremonial dagger or on a mojo. I would even accept a 1h sword… not a bow. This bow should have had a stat related to a DH ability, not a WD. Never in Diablo 2 would I see a bow with +2 to Raise Skeleton. It wouldn’t have made sense. It’s not uncommon to see a blue 2h axe with something like +108 int. Who is going to use that and why would it make sense? I understand that loot is random and there is a chance for loot to suck. There was sucky loot in D2, but at least it made sense. If a 2h axe drops, I think it should have a higher chance to roll a +str, +vit or any other stat that benefits melee. It’s up to the player and his current build to determine if it’s an upgrade or not. Currently my WD is running around with a shield because it has better stats than any mojo I have found.
C) Loot is not interesting This sort of ties into point A and B, but I want to touch onto what makes loot actually interesting. In Diablo 2, +dex on a bow was nice, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t THAT important (I would take a bow with +3 to Bow Skills, if my current one was +1 Bow Skills, but a loss of 25 dex). It was the other stats that really made you consider if it was better than your current gear rather than just simply looking at +mainstat. You had +skills, skill charges (it was nice being able to teleport as a Necro), life leech, thorns, and a cadre of other interesting stats. Yes, some of these exist in some form in D3, but they take a back seat to +mainstat. I would love to see something that modifies my skills. I would love to see items that augment certain builds. +Radius to Acid Cloud. +Target jumps to Locust. +Radius to Frost Nova. +Duration of Archon. Whatever, get creative! It could even be something simple like +dmg to Bash. Maybe this would give us a reason to farm for loot to augment a build. Maybe we could add stats that add immunities from champion and elit pack affixes, like Immune to Arcane or Immune to Jailer, etc. It wasn’t uncommon to make builds specifically around a set of gear in D2, but it wasn’t required either. The damage a character did wasn’t based on just raw DPS, but enhancing our skills and being creative with gear combination to get the most bang for our buck. Loot just isn’t exciting in D3 because all we’re looking for is +mainstat.
D) Legendaries I think there are too few of them and they are too rare. Unique items in Diablo 2 were items you could potentially get fairly early on, and they would be replaced at some point, but they would sometimes last beyond normal and even into nightmare (I have a level 78 necro with a level 42 unique helmet), because the stats were interesting (see point C) and they made sense (see point B). Take the Pelta Lunata in D2. Amazing shield; it could be found in the very early levels and it would last you well into your mid or even late twenties. The design decision here appears to be similar to WoW when it came to epic items; ultra rare. While they were rare in Diablo II, they were common enough to award the pleasure centers in our brain. Unique items also had set stats. We knew what it was for and who it was for and we knew which unique items we wanted to farm for. If Leoric’s Crown drops in D3, we have no idea if it’s going to roll +int or +str and that sucks. If I was farming for the Arm of King Leoric in D2, and it finally dropped after hours and hours (or days or weeks) of farming and it rolled with something like +str and other crappy stats (for a necro) when it dropped… I wouldn’t have been a happy camper. This same argument can be applied to set items in D3 as well. To be honest, I haven’t had a set item drop once yet. In D2, I would have had at LEAST three or four of them drop (for different sets, sure, but they would have dropped).
E) Gems Right now gems do a small number of things, boost +mainstat or increase DPS and to add a tiny bit of MF. I see we’re missing skulls, diamonds, jewels, runes, etc. Having a slot on gear opens up a HUGE range of customizable options and I feel that it has been squandered in D3. Now that we can also put them in amulets and rings too, if we had anything CLOSE to D2’s socket system, we would be sitting pretty good right about now
