The removal of armour and weapon random rolls was purely done for "balance" reasons. Unfortunately in a loot based game fixing rolls only works if you have enough armour and weapons that feel different (I can't think of the right term here). What we have is arguably the worst option. Fixed rolls on a very small number of different feeling weapons and armour that merely looks different without offering any real reason beyond cosmetic on why you would choose one over the other.
The mod system, something that could fix the issues with fixed rolls, is so half baked it may as well not be there. I honestly can't tell the different when gaming on my ability re-gens if I am using the corresponding mods. It is like using Tier 12 vs Tier 11 gear in D1. Yes there was a benefit to the former but the difference was < 5 seconds. Issue being now is that we are at 5 seconds between tier 0 and tier 12.... *sigh*.