I posted this on the official forums, but it gets buried in like ten minutes, so I'll post it here as well so you can tell me I'm wrong too.
Everything that I am writing here is assuming no set items are being used, because I believe that skills should be balanced around NOT having set items or legendaries to buff them in the first place.
Primary skills should be strong single target attacks, and spenders should be strong AoE attacks or some kind of support skill like Exploding Palm or Cyclone Strike. Right primaries are exclusively used to build resources (or for filler while passive regen does it's thing) and secondary skills range from useless single target skills to real AoE skills that are actually useful.
Secondaries should be big AoE attacks, because that's what the game is about. We kill hordes of monsters, not speedrun Mephisto, so it makes no sense to have spenders like Ray of Frost, Impale, Rapid Fire, Arcane Orb with the Obliterate rune, or most Shield Bash runes. They fill nearly no purpose except for maybe getting achievements for quick boss kills, but even there it's not that important.
It makes little sense from a Primary standpoint as well. Barbarians for example can choose between Bash, Cleave, Weapon Throw and Frenzy. But in reality the choice is only between Bash or Cleave for two handed and the optimal choice is frenzy for dual-wielding. This because Bash gives the most Fury per use, unless there happens to be an average of 3 enemies in front of you that all get hit by cleave, in which case Cleave with Reaping Swing is equal to Bash in terms of Fury gain. The skills do so little damage however that it is irrelevant, and Bash is almost always the superior choice. Frenzy stacks faster with dual wielding and therefor is better with the berserk rune. Again, damage is nearly irrelevant on these skills so the rune is also irrelevant except for the fury gain, or stacking Maniac.
Primary skills function is just building resources for secondary skills, and sometimes building buffs. Unless you have the new Depth Digger pants the choice is pretty irrelevant.
So how about instead making them actually good, so that they have a purpose? We are moving towards this goal now with Depth Diggers and the Simplicity Legendary gem. With them I can use frenzy as a single target skill VERY effectively on my Barbarian, while dumping my fury into Whirlwind is still something I have to do both to heal, and to move out of the way of AoEs effectively.
Now, I'd like to go into more detailed feedback on a per skill basis.
1.2. - Barbarian
Bash - This would be a decent single target skill for Two-handed barbarians if it did any significant damage. Currently it's just filler for when you can't keep up your fury with other skills, so you use it like once every blue moon. It's just there.
Cleave - This should be a secondary skill, honestly. It looks great and feels great, but it does nothing noteworthy at all. Rupture? Nerfed, and only good against stuff that dies instantly anyway. Reaping swing? An inferior way to build fury vs Bash. Scattering blast? Damage is irrelevant, so a damaging rune is irrelevant. Same with Broad Sweep, but Gathering Storm has some use as long as you don't need cleave for the Fury.
Frenzy - Great skill for dual wielding. You can keep up the buff between spenders so you can quickly build what you need. It also does the most damage out of all of the primaries (423% per second with a 1.0 speed weapon with Maniac), which almost makes it not a waste of time to use if you use whirlwind as a spender.
Weapon Throw - A half-assed attempt to bring back a build that has no synergies with the rest of the barbarians skill set.
So basically, Frenzy is the only skill that has any real uses except for building fury, but even then it's just barely.
What I'm saying is, there is no reason for primary skills to be so useless. Barbarians have tons of ways to keep the fury up, but other classes are not so lucky. Crusaders for example has to pick passives to be able to do anything at all. Let us compare the Primary skills of the two classes.
1.3. - Crusader
Punish - This is basically the Bash of the Crusader class. It builds 5 Wrath vs the 6 you gain from Bash, and it does around the same damage. On a positive note you also gain 15% Block chance, which makes this skill vastly superior to Bash. As Crusaders are forced to either use Insurmountable or stick to Reapers Wraps, this is the only real Primary they have.
Slash - This is one of the most useless Primaries in the game. It does 230% damage compared to Punish's 335%, and the trade off is that it can hit like 2-3 monsters vs only one. However, this is still completely irrelevant as the skill DOES NO DAMAGE. Every single rune is useless as well, and my personal nominee for most useless rune is Zeal. Ten stacks for 10% increased attack speed compared to Frenzy with five stacks and 75% increased attack speed. It's not even noticable and the Wrath gain is pitiful, especially on a class that barely even gains resources passively like Barbarians (Fury gained when hit vs. 2-3 wrath per second). Crusaders have a grand total of three skills that give them resources. Provoke, Shield Glare and Akarat's Champion. Shield Glare is a terrible skill overall and barely gives any Wrath so it is irrelevant.
So for a skill that does no damage, no utility, no resource gain, I wouldn't say that it is very useful.
Smite - Surprisingly even more useless than Slash. Even less damage, same wrath and it only has one useful rune which is Reaping. Healing is good. The only positive side of this skill is that it is ranged.
Justice - Like Weapon Throw except worse in every conceivable way. Oh, it's also like smite but worse in every way.
Again. No skill has any use except for Punish's block chance which is the only decent way to build Wrath. Even with One-handed weapons and Fervor+Fanaticism+Righteousness Slash with Zeal doesn't compare to a stand alone Frenzy with Berserk rune. Frenzy gains 75% attack speed and 6 Fury per hit, while Zeal gains 40% increased attack speed and 8 Wrath per hit with the help of THREE PASSIVES. Even WITH Depth Diggers Crusaders cant' use their Primaries for anything useful, except single target with Punish if you're playing with FotH, and even then barely.
So tell me, why do Primaries have to be so useless? Wanna keep going? Sure. You thought Crusader primaries were useless? Let me introduce the Demon Hunter.
1.4. - Demon Hunter
Hungering Arrow - 155% damage, 3 Hatred gained per use. Let me put that in perspective. Weapon Throw does 275% damage and builds 6 Fury. With runes it does up to 400% damage or builds 9 Fury. This means that Barbarians have better ranged primaries than Demon Hunters do, which is absolutely pathetic. Not to mention that Demon Hunters have the most expensive spender of them all, Cluster Arrow at 40 resources, and they don't have much choice in other spenders, but let's get back to that later. Oh, and it has a rune to build 6 hatred instead.. guess which one is the right choice? Yeah, the next skill is the right answer.
Entangling Shot - Again, single target, but now 200% damage. This skill has some use because it lets the DH kite very effectively and it makes Cull the Weak work, but other than that it is just as laughable as Hungering Arrow. It has a rune to make it build 6 hatred, which is the only real choice. Your options are fatter slows or a laughable DoT that does 40% weapon damage per second.
Bolas - This skill has literally no use unless you have the bola quiver, in which case it is still as useless but you won't have to wait as long for it to do nothing. Next.
Evasive Fire - Say hello to the only real alternative to Entangling Shot. It doesn't slow stuff, which is in reality much much better, but it lets you backflip away from monsters which is very useful since means you won't have to walk as often. Builds one more hatred than the other skills, but Entangling shot builds 6 with rune AND slows, so this skill is still useless.
Grenade - Like bolas except you don't have to wait as long.
Now, tell me again why primaries have to be so insanely useless? There isn't even a choice here. Entangling shot wins in every category.
The rest of the classes aren't better off. For Wizards your choice is "Do I want some minor CC, or do I want some minor extra Arcane Power?" and for Monks you pick between spirit, damage increase buff or damage decrease debuffs. Without Depth Diggers the damage difference will still be mostly negliable.
So TL;DR: The low damage on Primaries make them crap, and removes any point in picking the ones with high damage over the ones with higher resource gain or buffs.
Moving on to spenders.
2.1. - Demon Hunter
Single target spenders are utterly pointless and nothing but a waste of space. Let's take Demon Hunters as an example.
Impale - 20 Hatred, 750 weapon damage on one target. Amazing. So per hatred you can do a little more than Cluster Arrow, except only single target. (Impale = 2x750 = 1500%, Cluster Arrow = 550+220x4= 1430) Once again, Amazing. If you use overpenetration this skill almost becomes a Disintegrate with a really bad hitbox. Ricochet would make it a somewhat decent skill if the Ricochet effect was baseline.
Rapid Fire - This skill is Disintegrate except only single target. Roll a wizard instead, worst skill in the game arguably. Bombardment is useful since it makes the skill an actual AoE, but all of the other runes are completely pointless.
Chakram - Would have been a somewhat decent AoE if it wasn't so annoying to hit things with. The low hatred cost makes it easy to spam if you have some hatred regen gear. Still pretty bad.
Elemental Arrow - Frost Arrow is the only actually good skill here. It does just as much damage as the alternatives and slows as well, which triggers Cull the Weak before the damage applies. Ball Lightning and Nether Tentacles are somewhat decent because of the low hatred cost of the skill, and they hit pretty much everything. On the other hand they don't actually do anything else of note, and all elemental arrows are terrible single target. Lightning Bolts is like Impale with Overpenetration except it does less damage.
Cluster Arrow - The go to skill for Demon Hunters unless you want to run around with sentries. This skill does tons of damage, has decent area of effect and still does loads of damage on single targets, even for its high hatred cost. Not to mention that the game is skewed towards fire damage on items, and cindercoat reduces the cost for this skill. This is the Demon Hunter.
So basically the choice is between high damage single target skills, low damage AoE skills or one skill that does both. Quality. Skills should define play styles and be different from each other. Not just rehashes of the same stuff over and over.
I'd like to point out some skills in particular that are really bad in this regard and for other reasons, and why.
2.2. - Wizard
Arcane Orb - Frozen Orb and Arcane Orbit are the only real options for this skill. Obliterate is completely useless. All skills that have a small 8 yard radius and detonates on the first enemy hit are completely useless (Arcane Orb, Ray of Frost, Elemental Arrow with the new exploding arrow rune, Zombie Charger with the fire rune) because these skills have an average hit rate of like one or two targets. Arcane Orb with no rune probably does more average DPS than Obliterate does just because of the larger AoE. Now with the new Thunder Crash rune on Meteor, Spark has become completely obsolete since it's basically the same skill, except Meteor does twice as much damage. Scorch attacks in a line and the DoT neither scales or sticks to monsters. Instead they have to stand ON the extremely thin line of fire to take an additional 734% damage over 5 seconds, after the first 221% damage. Let's compare that to Blizzard with Apocalypse. 30 yard AoE that does 1075% damage over 6 seconds. Yeah. It does more damage single target more reliably, and hits about ten times as many enemies. As someone who wants to play a fire wizard, not having an actual fireball spell is insanely disappointing.
So again, the only good rune is the one that does a lot of single target damage as well as has big AoE. Frozen Orb. Arcane Orbit is only good because you can use it in Arcane Torrent or Disintegrate builds to do more damage to targets close to you, but it's heavy on the AP.
Ray of Frost - The mother of terrible skill design... Well, if you ignore the Demon Hunter. This skill is Disintegrate except the AoE is a 5 yard radius around the first enemy hit. It might as well be single target only. This skill is so crazy useless for everything except bosses that it makes me want to cry. Sleet storm is the only good rune for this skill, and it's kind of weird to use because of the slow build up time. This skill becomes good if you want to force yourself to use the Light of Grace source, but in my opinion you shouldn't have to. Ray of Frost should be a rune for Disintegrate, and Sleet Storm should be a rune for Arcane Wave or something, because this skill is nearly beyond saving. You shouldn't be forced to use a legendary to make a skill VIABLE, a legendary should make a skill GREAT. If they make Ray of Frost pierce, it would become good, but then again it's only a complete copy of Disintegrate, except cold. They could remove it and make it into a Disintegrate rune, but then the Secondary skill set will be missing a skill, and I know they don't like removing things like that.
The only thing I can think of myself is to make the skill hit the first target, and then turn into a 20 yard cone aoe behind it. It would still keep the skill, make it useful, and not make it a copy of disintegrate... except visually of course.
Energy Twister - This skill could be cool. But currently it's about as useless as it gets. It's basically a really really bad Blizzard with a 8~ yard AoE that moves away from targets that are running towards you. This skill cannot do damage. It will miss 80% of its duration every single cast, and it's expensive. The only rune that is remotely useful is Wicked Wind, but it still does less damage than every single Blizzard rune. So I guess if you REALLY want an Arcane version of Blizzard, this is your choice. To make this skill useful, it would need one of the following things:
A static amount of damage that is dealt when the twister first touches an enemy, and then keep the DoT part of the skill.
A vacuum effect.
Seek out enemies and sit on them instead of moving randomly.
Personally I think a static amount of damage in addition to its current effects would be the best, because it would keep the unique nature of the skill, but still make it somewhat viable in all situations.
Wave of Force - Whoever thought it was a good idea to make this skill spammable and keep the animation is an asshole. Sure, the fire rune is good, but other than that, this skill looks way too stupid to actually be used, also the runes are terrible. At least make an Arcane Explosion type skill out of it. You already have the explosion animation from Condemn. You just need to make it a bit more arcane-ish.
2.3. - Demon Hunter pt.2
Multi Shot - This skill is basically a bad version of your favorite Elemental Arrow rune. Cold, lightning and physical are all better in elemental arrow because it does the same amount of damage for less hatred. Also Cluster Arrow beats everthing for every element except poison, which for some reason is pretty much non-existant for DHs now except for chakram, bolas and spike trap.
Speaking of Spike trap.
Spike Trap - This skill is a joke. If you played a trapassin in D2 and wanted something similar, prepare to be disappointed. The Death Sentry shot lightning and exploded corpses all over the place. This skill costs 30 hatred a pop, requires monsters to stand ON TOP OF IT two seconds after you used it, and then it still only does as much damage as one elemental arrow cast in a smaller AoE. Completely unplayable except for fun before you get tired of how bad it is and change back to Sentry or Cluster Arrow.
Impale and Rapid Fire gets honorable mentions for utterly useless skills, but I've already talked about them above, so I'll move on.
2.4. - Barbarian
Ancient Spear - This skill is beyond bad. Boulder Toss is amazing if done right, but the rest of the runes are totally pointless. The area of effect and damage of this skill is awful. It hits about as few targets as Impale does, but costs more resources and the rest of the class doesn't synergize with the skill at all. The only things that keeps enemies away as Barbarian is Revenge with the Grudge rune, and it's only effective if you're in melee getting hit, and Threatening shout with the Terrify rune. The barbarian is about gettign IN and killing stuff, not standing at range and doing bad damage. Not to mention that Seismic Slam is a better Ancient Spear than Ancient Spear is. This skill should have been kept as a cooldown skill, because it was actually cool then, if somewhat underpowered. You should have made it like the Butchers ranged AoE, but with a pull in effect, and then made interesting runes from there. One chain is not enough. Oh, and it should have given you fury on use.
2.5. - Crusader
Shield Bash - Again, single target skills are not good. This skill is bad unless you have Rolands, and even then I still think it's inferior to Sweep Attack, since Sweep Attack does pretty much the same amount of damage but has a slightly more usable hitbox.
I know skill redesign isn't on the agenda right now, but I know that you are probably working on the next expansion already, so better to be early than too late.
3. - Overall Class Design
Next I would like to talk a bit about how I feel about each class overall. How skills synergize with each other and how well designed I feel things are.
3.1. - Barbarian
I like the Barbarian overall at the moment. Fury gain is great, damage is great, survivability is pretty decent. Almost every skill has usage except for Weapon Throw and Ancinet Spear, if you ignore Boulder Toss. They have great ways of keeping up the damage while dishing out stuns and movement because pretty much all of their skills do something and generate resources at the same time. There are only a few things that I'm not too fond of.
Hammer of the Ancients - The AoE is a bit too small. This comes back to the secondaries should not be single target skills issue I have been talking about. Imo it should be about as big as an Arcane Orb explosion. So about 12-15 yards big. I think it's closer to 8-10 now. I don't usually use this skill cause I think it looks like crap.
Overpower and Revenge - I like both of these skills, but they have one big glaring issue. Nobody wants to stare at the hotbar all the time to see if the skills are up. The unpredictable nature of these skills make them annoying to use, because you either have to mash the buttons all the time and listen to "I can't do that yet", or keep darting between what's happening and looking at the cooldown. They need some kind of on-screen indication of wether they are up or not. Some kind of aura or something around your character so you can tell without having to look down. Audial might work, but it wouldn't be very helpful to hearing impaired players.
Avalanche - Volcano - This rune is too unpredictable. You just throw it out and hope that the lava flies in the face of monsters. It should just do area damage like all the other runes. Also it looks incredibly lame. Should have been falling lava rocks instead.
Battle Rage - This skill is incredibly boring in my opinion. But I don't really mind it being there for people who wants less active skills to juggle. Just saying though.
3.2. - Crusader
This class is in an absolutely awful place. Wrath gain is so awful that people have to rely on Reapers Wraps just to keep up. 3/4 primaries are pretty much unplayable and they have nearly no ways of building wrath. Provoke and Akaraths Champion provides Wrath baseline, but other than that you have to choose between wrath on block or wrath on hit. Wrath on block is great against champion packs and normal monsters, but also means that you need to have one or two passives dedicated to that. One for Wrath on block and one to get your block chance up if your shield isn't up to snuff. This is also the only option for two-handers. The other option is Wrath on hit, but it just doesn't work with two-handers. Wrath on hit is however completely awful against champions and only gives you a slight edge against bosses.
Overall I feel like they are walking cooldowns, because their skills just do lots of damage but not much else. Barbarians can do 500% damage with stomp and 1000% damage with charge if they want to, and at the same time get fury for it. Even their support skills, shouts, give them fury. The Crusader however doesn't get anything. In my opinion low cooldown skills should always give some amount of resources to help you keep up your game, while big nukes should not. Their laws also feel like inferior versions of monk mantras since their passive effects are very weak, and their actives are not spammable or strong in the first place. They just feel like a badly thought out mix of the other classes.
3.3. - Demon Hunters
Probably the worst off class. Except for one or maybe two builds that work well, this is the worst designed class by far.
Their primaries build next to no hatred unless you specifically rune them for that, and even then it's pitiful considering that your only good skill costs 40 hatred. They are COMPLETELY gear dependant. They get all their hatred regen from quivers and cloaks, and before you have that you can barely do anything. Discipline is barely used for anything, so it just works as charges for your smoke screen spam, and now preparation doesn't even cost discipline so it's used for even less. Most discipline skills are completely useless in the first place so it's not like it matters.
Caltrops is completely pointless since Entangling Shot is the only good Primary skill, so everything is slowed anyway. Shadow Power does nothing except give you life on hit, but Smoke Screen already makes you invincible and heals you for 15% of your max HP, so that skill is useless. Vault is only useful for moving faster, otherwise smoke screen is better in every way. Preparation gives you back 30 Discipline, which we already confirmed was never used anyway. Marked for Death is barely a good skill, and it doesn't even cost enough discipline to be worth mentioning.
So not only do they only have one good primary skill, they barely have any good spenders, and almost all discipline skills are useless. Preparation is only used to gain more hatred for more Cluster Arrow spam, and it does NOTHING else. It's like War Cry with Charge! except it doesn't do anything. That is the biggest issue with the Demon Hunter. Almost nothing does anything. You just spam Cluster Arrow as much as you can and there are no other REAL options unless you have set items.
Rework the spenders when you can. They are so badly made that whatever you do will be an improvement. Make chakrams actually have real patterns that won't miss everything you aim at. Make impale bounce like 5 times baseline and design the rest of the runes around that. Make Rapid Fire pierce 100% baseline. Make elemental arrows work more like Exploding Arrow and Freezing Arrow did in D2 except give them 100% pierce chance.
Remember, spender = AoE or else they are useless.
Spike Trap needs to work more like Sentries. They need to shoot their effects like 20 yards away or something so that they aren't completely useless. Either that or make them arm instantly and make them throw out 3 traps baseline.
Learn from the barbarian. Most non-spender non-primary skills should BUILD resources spending discipline should restore hatred for the demon hunter. Same thing for the Crusader. Utility skills need to do things and not just CC enemies for 3 seconds. The game is about killing things, not dancing around them.
The key is not making these skills build TOO much resources so that you never need to use your primary skills. EITHER THAT, or you make primary skills into GOOD SINGLE TARGET SKILLS so that they are actually not a waste of time.
DHs also have some of the worst passives in the game. "Single Out"? Yeah thanks, single target passives that will NEVER APPLY. Grenadier? Makes your already useless primary better. Pass. Perfectionist, reduce discipline costs by 10%? Even if I ever used it it would still be a bad passive. At least there have been some improvements on the PTR. The new Awareness is nice, oh wait, I guess that's it. Nothing to help with hatred management except Blood Vengeance and I'm not sure I count picking up health globes as a reliable source of resources. Moving on.
3.4. - Wizard
This class is also not in a very good place. Sure, they are viable and can clear things just like everyone else, but overall they are not that well designed.
This is a class for which primaries are nothing but a crutch for bad gear. The constant regen means that all you have to do is make sure your attack speed isn't too high, and that you stack enough crit and AP on crit and you won't ever need to use a primary. Replace it with hydra or magic weapon instead.
So basically you just spam abilities, but even then most of your abilities are stand still and point abilities. Under secondaries we have a grand total of 3/4 of them, and Arcane Orb only has one actually good rune, other than that, you're stuck with Meteor or fire Wave of Force unless you find legendaries to make the useless skills viable (Ray of Frost, Explosive Blast, Hydra). Teleport is pretty much something you will find on every wizards skillbar, but other than that you have Frost Nova which is bad after you stop getting killed so much, and Diamond Skin is just a crutch for not being able to kite properly. Dominance and Magic Weapon - Deflection makes Diamond Skin pretty much useless unless you're a scared HC player. The rest of the skills are boring passives that barely do anything. Energy Armor gives you 5% more crit. Magic Weapon gives you Deflection because it's easily the best rune, unless you play on a difficulty level where you just want to one shot stuff as hard as possible. Storm Armor is only decent against bosses and Ice Armor is completely awful. The ice nova rune is maybe okay if survivability is key. Oh and familiar is another flat 10 % damage increase. Overall wizards are not well off when it comes to build diversity and well designed skills, but just like DHs they have a few skills that are good, even though arcane torrent and disintegrate are almost the same skill.
Also the new Elemental Exposure passive became nearly useless with the introduction of elemental damage on items. So what? I'm going to use a fire spell, an arcane spell, a lightning weapon and frozen orb, just to get 20% more damage output? You realize I'm missing out on 100%+ extra cold damage on those other two skills right? Sounds like less damage to me.
3.5. - Monk
I don't have as much experience with this class, but I know that they are lacking in the fun spenders department. When I think Monk I assume I'm going to punch stuff in the mouth, but the reality of it is that you either dance stuff to death with Cyclone Strike or you summon giant bells all day. Tempest Rush is an insanely ugly whirlwind and Lashing Tail Kicks animation gets old incredibly quickly. But I guess most of my complaints here are aesthetics. However, once again, no skills give resources on use except for Blinding Flash with a rune. It's exactly like War Stomp except worse since it doesn't build resources baseline. So once again, you need to completely rely on primaries and big cooldowns like Epiphany for resources, and that's just not good.
You still haven't applied the DoT fix to Exploding Palm either, and now that you expect it to be used as a real spender for damage, that just won't hold. The way crit works the skill either crits or misses, and a non-crit palm is 9 seconds of no damage. No thank you.
3.6. - Witch Doctor
Lastly, I barely play Witch Doctor because they are too silly for me, but it feels too hard to find useful skills to build non-pet builds.
4. - End Thoughts
Classes are moving in the right direction at least. There needs to be big changes in the next expansion though, or even better, in the patch for season 2. You've got three months to get something done. Most classes feel like they rely too heavily on just passive resource regen or primary spam, but having low cooldown skills generate resources like the barbarian GREATLY improves the flow of the game. I recommend looking to the barbarian on how to improve the rest of the classes.
There are still other issues remaining though.
Critical hit damage is one. 50% chance to deal 500% extra damage only means you have a 50% miss chance. This is ESPECIALLY annoying when you're using skills with long cooldowns. Bam, Molten Impact Meteor that didn't crit. Talk about disappointment. Even worse, bombardment that didn't crit, or Wrath of the Berserker explosion that didn't crit. Everything becomes huge misses because of how spikey the damage is.
Crits need to be redesigned, and with seasons you finally have a chance to do it. Crit damage should roll like 5% on rings instead of 50% so you can stack it up to 100% or 200% maybe. Numbers are pulled out of my ass at 6 AM in the morning, but you get the point I'm making. Base damage needs to go up, crit needs to go down. DPS should stay the same but less spikey and unpredictable. Imagine gems in weapons that aren't emeralds and actually being useful? Crit damage is the issue, not gem design... well... gem design is part of it. I mean what would the options be? More damage with rubies or more elite damage with diamonds? Elites are the only thing that matters anyway.
Greater Rifts are also a completely flawed idea. You implement dynamic difficulty that scales to our level, and you implement tons of difficulty levels that we can choose between, yet you come with a game mode where you basically have to wade through hordes of normal level monsters 3-4 times before you finally reach a level where monsters are challenging to you. Not only that, but you don't get any legendaries in the entire dungeon until you kill the boss, and there are nearly no shrines, and the monster density is not higher or more consistent so it's still completely random. So it's not competative and it's not fun. Not a good combination.
Monster density needs to go up on all maps. Right now in the MAJORITY of rifts you have to run like 2 screens to find four normal monsters over and over again. It's not fun, and is an even bigger issue than lacking class balance. At the VERY LEAST you need to make rift density more consistent. Some rifts are pretty decent, but 90% of them are terrible.
Well, this took like five hours to write in the middle of the night, so I hope it's somewhat useful and coherent.
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Everything that I am writing here is assuming no set items are being used, because I believe that skills should be balanced around NOT having set items or legendaries to buff them in the first place.
Index:
1. Primary Skills
1.1. Intro
1.2. Barbarian
1.3. Crusader
1.4. Demon Hunter
2. Spenders
2.1. Demon Hunter
2.2. Wizard
2.3. Demon Hunter pt.2
2.4. Barbarian
2.5. Crusader
3. Class Feedback
3.1. Barbarian
3.2. Crusader
3.3. Demon Hunter
3.4. Wizard
3.5. Monk
3.6. Witch Doctor
4. End thoughts
1.1. - Intro
Primary skills should be strong single target attacks, and spenders should be strong AoE attacks or some kind of support skill like Exploding Palm or Cyclone Strike. Right primaries are exclusively used to build resources (or for filler while passive regen does it's thing) and secondary skills range from useless single target skills to real AoE skills that are actually useful.
Secondaries should be big AoE attacks, because that's what the game is about. We kill hordes of monsters, not speedrun Mephisto, so it makes no sense to have spenders like Ray of Frost, Impale, Rapid Fire, Arcane Orb with the Obliterate rune, or most Shield Bash runes. They fill nearly no purpose except for maybe getting achievements for quick boss kills, but even there it's not that important.
It makes little sense from a Primary standpoint as well. Barbarians for example can choose between Bash, Cleave, Weapon Throw and Frenzy. But in reality the choice is only between Bash or Cleave for two handed and the optimal choice is frenzy for dual-wielding. This because Bash gives the most Fury per use, unless there happens to be an average of 3 enemies in front of you that all get hit by cleave, in which case Cleave with Reaping Swing is equal to Bash in terms of Fury gain. The skills do so little damage however that it is irrelevant, and Bash is almost always the superior choice. Frenzy stacks faster with dual wielding and therefor is better with the berserk rune. Again, damage is nearly irrelevant on these skills so the rune is also irrelevant except for the fury gain, or stacking Maniac.
Primary skills function is just building resources for secondary skills, and sometimes building buffs. Unless you have the new Depth Digger pants the choice is pretty irrelevant.
So how about instead making them actually good, so that they have a purpose? We are moving towards this goal now with Depth Diggers and the Simplicity Legendary gem. With them I can use frenzy as a single target skill VERY effectively on my Barbarian, while dumping my fury into Whirlwind is still something I have to do both to heal, and to move out of the way of AoEs effectively.
Now, I'd like to go into more detailed feedback on a per skill basis.
1.2. - Barbarian
Bash - This would be a decent single target skill for Two-handed barbarians if it did any significant damage. Currently it's just filler for when you can't keep up your fury with other skills, so you use it like once every blue moon. It's just there.
Cleave - This should be a secondary skill, honestly. It looks great and feels great, but it does nothing noteworthy at all. Rupture? Nerfed, and only good against stuff that dies instantly anyway. Reaping swing? An inferior way to build fury vs Bash. Scattering blast? Damage is irrelevant, so a damaging rune is irrelevant. Same with Broad Sweep, but Gathering Storm has some use as long as you don't need cleave for the Fury.
Frenzy - Great skill for dual wielding. You can keep up the buff between spenders so you can quickly build what you need. It also does the most damage out of all of the primaries (423% per second with a 1.0 speed weapon with Maniac), which almost makes it not a waste of time to use if you use whirlwind as a spender.
Weapon Throw - A half-assed attempt to bring back a build that has no synergies with the rest of the barbarians skill set.
So basically, Frenzy is the only skill that has any real uses except for building fury, but even then it's just barely.
What I'm saying is, there is no reason for primary skills to be so useless. Barbarians have tons of ways to keep the fury up, but other classes are not so lucky. Crusaders for example has to pick passives to be able to do anything at all. Let us compare the Primary skills of the two classes.
1.3. - Crusader
Punish - This is basically the Bash of the Crusader class. It builds 5 Wrath vs the 6 you gain from Bash, and it does around the same damage. On a positive note you also gain 15% Block chance, which makes this skill vastly superior to Bash. As Crusaders are forced to either use Insurmountable or stick to Reapers Wraps, this is the only real Primary they have.
Slash - This is one of the most useless Primaries in the game. It does 230% damage compared to Punish's 335%, and the trade off is that it can hit like 2-3 monsters vs only one. However, this is still completely irrelevant as the skill DOES NO DAMAGE. Every single rune is useless as well, and my personal nominee for most useless rune is Zeal. Ten stacks for 10% increased attack speed compared to Frenzy with five stacks and 75% increased attack speed. It's not even noticable and the Wrath gain is pitiful, especially on a class that barely even gains resources passively like Barbarians (Fury gained when hit vs. 2-3 wrath per second). Crusaders have a grand total of three skills that give them resources. Provoke, Shield Glare and Akarat's Champion. Shield Glare is a terrible skill overall and barely gives any Wrath so it is irrelevant.
So for a skill that does no damage, no utility, no resource gain, I wouldn't say that it is very useful.
Smite - Surprisingly even more useless than Slash. Even less damage, same wrath and it only has one useful rune which is Reaping. Healing is good. The only positive side of this skill is that it is ranged.
Justice - Like Weapon Throw except worse in every conceivable way. Oh, it's also like smite but worse in every way.
Again. No skill has any use except for Punish's block chance which is the only decent way to build Wrath. Even with One-handed weapons and Fervor+Fanaticism+Righteousness Slash with Zeal doesn't compare to a stand alone Frenzy with Berserk rune. Frenzy gains 75% attack speed and 6 Fury per hit, while Zeal gains 40% increased attack speed and 8 Wrath per hit with the help of THREE PASSIVES. Even WITH Depth Diggers Crusaders cant' use their Primaries for anything useful, except single target with Punish if you're playing with FotH, and even then barely.
So tell me, why do Primaries have to be so useless? Wanna keep going? Sure. You thought Crusader primaries were useless? Let me introduce the Demon Hunter.
1.4. - Demon Hunter
Hungering Arrow - 155% damage, 3 Hatred gained per use. Let me put that in perspective. Weapon Throw does 275% damage and builds 6 Fury. With runes it does up to 400% damage or builds 9 Fury. This means that Barbarians have better ranged primaries than Demon Hunters do, which is absolutely pathetic. Not to mention that Demon Hunters have the most expensive spender of them all, Cluster Arrow at 40 resources, and they don't have much choice in other spenders, but let's get back to that later. Oh, and it has a rune to build 6 hatred instead.. guess which one is the right choice? Yeah, the next skill is the right answer.
Entangling Shot - Again, single target, but now 200% damage. This skill has some use because it lets the DH kite very effectively and it makes Cull the Weak work, but other than that it is just as laughable as Hungering Arrow. It has a rune to make it build 6 hatred, which is the only real choice. Your options are fatter slows or a laughable DoT that does 40% weapon damage per second.
Bolas - This skill has literally no use unless you have the bola quiver, in which case it is still as useless but you won't have to wait as long for it to do nothing. Next.
Evasive Fire - Say hello to the only real alternative to Entangling Shot. It doesn't slow stuff, which is in reality much much better, but it lets you backflip away from monsters which is very useful since means you won't have to walk as often. Builds one more hatred than the other skills, but Entangling shot builds 6 with rune AND slows, so this skill is still useless.
Grenade - Like bolas except you don't have to wait as long.
Now, tell me again why primaries have to be so insanely useless? There isn't even a choice here. Entangling shot wins in every category.
The rest of the classes aren't better off. For Wizards your choice is "Do I want some minor CC, or do I want some minor extra Arcane Power?" and for Monks you pick between spirit, damage increase buff or damage decrease debuffs. Without Depth Diggers the damage difference will still be mostly negliable.
So TL;DR: The low damage on Primaries make them crap, and removes any point in picking the ones with high damage over the ones with higher resource gain or buffs.
Moving on to spenders.
2.1. - Demon Hunter
Single target spenders are utterly pointless and nothing but a waste of space. Let's take Demon Hunters as an example.
Impale - 20 Hatred, 750 weapon damage on one target. Amazing. So per hatred you can do a little more than Cluster Arrow, except only single target. (Impale = 2x750 = 1500%, Cluster Arrow = 550+220x4= 1430) Once again, Amazing. If you use overpenetration this skill almost becomes a Disintegrate with a really bad hitbox. Ricochet would make it a somewhat decent skill if the Ricochet effect was baseline.
Rapid Fire - This skill is Disintegrate except only single target. Roll a wizard instead, worst skill in the game arguably. Bombardment is useful since it makes the skill an actual AoE, but all of the other runes are completely pointless.
Chakram - Would have been a somewhat decent AoE if it wasn't so annoying to hit things with. The low hatred cost makes it easy to spam if you have some hatred regen gear. Still pretty bad.
Elemental Arrow - Frost Arrow is the only actually good skill here. It does just as much damage as the alternatives and slows as well, which triggers Cull the Weak before the damage applies. Ball Lightning and Nether Tentacles are somewhat decent because of the low hatred cost of the skill, and they hit pretty much everything. On the other hand they don't actually do anything else of note, and all elemental arrows are terrible single target. Lightning Bolts is like Impale with Overpenetration except it does less damage.
Cluster Arrow - The go to skill for Demon Hunters unless you want to run around with sentries. This skill does tons of damage, has decent area of effect and still does loads of damage on single targets, even for its high hatred cost. Not to mention that the game is skewed towards fire damage on items, and cindercoat reduces the cost for this skill. This is the Demon Hunter.
So basically the choice is between high damage single target skills, low damage AoE skills or one skill that does both. Quality. Skills should define play styles and be different from each other. Not just rehashes of the same stuff over and over.
I'd like to point out some skills in particular that are really bad in this regard and for other reasons, and why.
2.2. - Wizard
Arcane Orb - Frozen Orb and Arcane Orbit are the only real options for this skill. Obliterate is completely useless. All skills that have a small 8 yard radius and detonates on the first enemy hit are completely useless (Arcane Orb, Ray of Frost, Elemental Arrow with the new exploding arrow rune, Zombie Charger with the fire rune) because these skills have an average hit rate of like one or two targets. Arcane Orb with no rune probably does more average DPS than Obliterate does just because of the larger AoE. Now with the new Thunder Crash rune on Meteor, Spark has become completely obsolete since it's basically the same skill, except Meteor does twice as much damage. Scorch attacks in a line and the DoT neither scales or sticks to monsters. Instead they have to stand ON the extremely thin line of fire to take an additional 734% damage over 5 seconds, after the first 221% damage. Let's compare that to Blizzard with Apocalypse. 30 yard AoE that does 1075% damage over 6 seconds. Yeah. It does more damage single target more reliably, and hits about ten times as many enemies. As someone who wants to play a fire wizard, not having an actual fireball spell is insanely disappointing.
So again, the only good rune is the one that does a lot of single target damage as well as has big AoE. Frozen Orb. Arcane Orbit is only good because you can use it in Arcane Torrent or Disintegrate builds to do more damage to targets close to you, but it's heavy on the AP.
Ray of Frost - The mother of terrible skill design... Well, if you ignore the Demon Hunter. This skill is Disintegrate except the AoE is a 5 yard radius around the first enemy hit. It might as well be single target only. This skill is so crazy useless for everything except bosses that it makes me want to cry. Sleet storm is the only good rune for this skill, and it's kind of weird to use because of the slow build up time. This skill becomes good if you want to force yourself to use the Light of Grace source, but in my opinion you shouldn't have to. Ray of Frost should be a rune for Disintegrate, and Sleet Storm should be a rune for Arcane Wave or something, because this skill is nearly beyond saving. You shouldn't be forced to use a legendary to make a skill VIABLE, a legendary should make a skill GREAT. If they make Ray of Frost pierce, it would become good, but then again it's only a complete copy of Disintegrate, except cold. They could remove it and make it into a Disintegrate rune, but then the Secondary skill set will be missing a skill, and I know they don't like removing things like that.
The only thing I can think of myself is to make the skill hit the first target, and then turn into a 20 yard cone aoe behind it. It would still keep the skill, make it useful, and not make it a copy of disintegrate... except visually of course.
Energy Twister - This skill could be cool. But currently it's about as useless as it gets. It's basically a really really bad Blizzard with a 8~ yard AoE that moves away from targets that are running towards you. This skill cannot do damage. It will miss 80% of its duration every single cast, and it's expensive. The only rune that is remotely useful is Wicked Wind, but it still does less damage than every single Blizzard rune. So I guess if you REALLY want an Arcane version of Blizzard, this is your choice. To make this skill useful, it would need one of the following things:
A static amount of damage that is dealt when the twister first touches an enemy, and then keep the DoT part of the skill.
A vacuum effect.
Seek out enemies and sit on them instead of moving randomly.
Personally I think a static amount of damage in addition to its current effects would be the best, because it would keep the unique nature of the skill, but still make it somewhat viable in all situations.
Wave of Force - Whoever thought it was a good idea to make this skill spammable and keep the animation is an asshole. Sure, the fire rune is good, but other than that, this skill looks way too stupid to actually be used, also the runes are terrible. At least make an Arcane Explosion type skill out of it. You already have the explosion animation from Condemn. You just need to make it a bit more arcane-ish.
2.3. - Demon Hunter pt.2
Multi Shot - This skill is basically a bad version of your favorite Elemental Arrow rune. Cold, lightning and physical are all better in elemental arrow because it does the same amount of damage for less hatred. Also Cluster Arrow beats everthing for every element except poison, which for some reason is pretty much non-existant for DHs now except for chakram, bolas and spike trap.
Speaking of Spike trap.
Spike Trap - This skill is a joke. If you played a trapassin in D2 and wanted something similar, prepare to be disappointed. The Death Sentry shot lightning and exploded corpses all over the place. This skill costs 30 hatred a pop, requires monsters to stand ON TOP OF IT two seconds after you used it, and then it still only does as much damage as one elemental arrow cast in a smaller AoE. Completely unplayable except for fun before you get tired of how bad it is and change back to Sentry or Cluster Arrow.
Impale and Rapid Fire gets honorable mentions for utterly useless skills, but I've already talked about them above, so I'll move on.
2.4. - Barbarian
Ancient Spear - This skill is beyond bad. Boulder Toss is amazing if done right, but the rest of the runes are totally pointless. The area of effect and damage of this skill is awful. It hits about as few targets as Impale does, but costs more resources and the rest of the class doesn't synergize with the skill at all. The only things that keeps enemies away as Barbarian is Revenge with the Grudge rune, and it's only effective if you're in melee getting hit, and Threatening shout with the Terrify rune. The barbarian is about gettign IN and killing stuff, not standing at range and doing bad damage. Not to mention that Seismic Slam is a better Ancient Spear than Ancient Spear is. This skill should have been kept as a cooldown skill, because it was actually cool then, if somewhat underpowered. You should have made it like the Butchers ranged AoE, but with a pull in effect, and then made interesting runes from there. One chain is not enough. Oh, and it should have given you fury on use.
2.5. - Crusader
Shield Bash - Again, single target skills are not good. This skill is bad unless you have Rolands, and even then I still think it's inferior to Sweep Attack, since Sweep Attack does pretty much the same amount of damage but has a slightly more usable hitbox.
I know skill redesign isn't on the agenda right now, but I know that you are probably working on the next expansion already, so better to be early than too late.
3. - Overall Class Design
Next I would like to talk a bit about how I feel about each class overall. How skills synergize with each other and how well designed I feel things are.
3.1. - Barbarian
I like the Barbarian overall at the moment. Fury gain is great, damage is great, survivability is pretty decent. Almost every skill has usage except for Weapon Throw and Ancinet Spear, if you ignore Boulder Toss. They have great ways of keeping up the damage while dishing out stuns and movement because pretty much all of their skills do something and generate resources at the same time. There are only a few things that I'm not too fond of.
Hammer of the Ancients - The AoE is a bit too small. This comes back to the secondaries should not be single target skills issue I have been talking about. Imo it should be about as big as an Arcane Orb explosion. So about 12-15 yards big. I think it's closer to 8-10 now. I don't usually use this skill cause I think it looks like crap.
Overpower and Revenge - I like both of these skills, but they have one big glaring issue. Nobody wants to stare at the hotbar all the time to see if the skills are up. The unpredictable nature of these skills make them annoying to use, because you either have to mash the buttons all the time and listen to "I can't do that yet", or keep darting between what's happening and looking at the cooldown. They need some kind of on-screen indication of wether they are up or not. Some kind of aura or something around your character so you can tell without having to look down. Audial might work, but it wouldn't be very helpful to hearing impaired players.
Avalanche - Volcano - This rune is too unpredictable. You just throw it out and hope that the lava flies in the face of monsters. It should just do area damage like all the other runes. Also it looks incredibly lame. Should have been falling lava rocks instead.
Battle Rage - This skill is incredibly boring in my opinion. But I don't really mind it being there for people who wants less active skills to juggle. Just saying though.
3.2. - Crusader
This class is in an absolutely awful place. Wrath gain is so awful that people have to rely on Reapers Wraps just to keep up. 3/4 primaries are pretty much unplayable and they have nearly no ways of building wrath. Provoke and Akaraths Champion provides Wrath baseline, but other than that you have to choose between wrath on block or wrath on hit. Wrath on block is great against champion packs and normal monsters, but also means that you need to have one or two passives dedicated to that. One for Wrath on block and one to get your block chance up if your shield isn't up to snuff. This is also the only option for two-handers. The other option is Wrath on hit, but it just doesn't work with two-handers. Wrath on hit is however completely awful against champions and only gives you a slight edge against bosses.
Overall I feel like they are walking cooldowns, because their skills just do lots of damage but not much else. Barbarians can do 500% damage with stomp and 1000% damage with charge if they want to, and at the same time get fury for it. Even their support skills, shouts, give them fury. The Crusader however doesn't get anything. In my opinion low cooldown skills should always give some amount of resources to help you keep up your game, while big nukes should not. Their laws also feel like inferior versions of monk mantras since their passive effects are very weak, and their actives are not spammable or strong in the first place. They just feel like a badly thought out mix of the other classes.
3.3. - Demon Hunters
Probably the worst off class. Except for one or maybe two builds that work well, this is the worst designed class by far.
Their primaries build next to no hatred unless you specifically rune them for that, and even then it's pitiful considering that your only good skill costs 40 hatred. They are COMPLETELY gear dependant. They get all their hatred regen from quivers and cloaks, and before you have that you can barely do anything. Discipline is barely used for anything, so it just works as charges for your smoke screen spam, and now preparation doesn't even cost discipline so it's used for even less. Most discipline skills are completely useless in the first place so it's not like it matters.
Caltrops is completely pointless since Entangling Shot is the only good Primary skill, so everything is slowed anyway. Shadow Power does nothing except give you life on hit, but Smoke Screen already makes you invincible and heals you for 15% of your max HP, so that skill is useless. Vault is only useful for moving faster, otherwise smoke screen is better in every way. Preparation gives you back 30 Discipline, which we already confirmed was never used anyway. Marked for Death is barely a good skill, and it doesn't even cost enough discipline to be worth mentioning.
So not only do they only have one good primary skill, they barely have any good spenders, and almost all discipline skills are useless. Preparation is only used to gain more hatred for more Cluster Arrow spam, and it does NOTHING else. It's like War Cry with Charge! except it doesn't do anything. That is the biggest issue with the Demon Hunter. Almost nothing does anything. You just spam Cluster Arrow as much as you can and there are no other REAL options unless you have set items.
Rework the spenders when you can. They are so badly made that whatever you do will be an improvement. Make chakrams actually have real patterns that won't miss everything you aim at. Make impale bounce like 5 times baseline and design the rest of the runes around that. Make Rapid Fire pierce 100% baseline. Make elemental arrows work more like Exploding Arrow and Freezing Arrow did in D2 except give them 100% pierce chance.
Remember, spender = AoE or else they are useless.
Spike Trap needs to work more like Sentries. They need to shoot their effects like 20 yards away or something so that they aren't completely useless. Either that or make them arm instantly and make them throw out 3 traps baseline.
Learn from the barbarian. Most non-spender non-primary skills should BUILD resources spending discipline should restore hatred for the demon hunter. Same thing for the Crusader. Utility skills need to do things and not just CC enemies for 3 seconds. The game is about killing things, not dancing around them.
The key is not making these skills build TOO much resources so that you never need to use your primary skills. EITHER THAT, or you make primary skills into GOOD SINGLE TARGET SKILLS so that they are actually not a waste of time.
DHs also have some of the worst passives in the game. "Single Out"? Yeah thanks, single target passives that will NEVER APPLY. Grenadier? Makes your already useless primary better. Pass. Perfectionist, reduce discipline costs by 10%? Even if I ever used it it would still be a bad passive. At least there have been some improvements on the PTR. The new Awareness is nice, oh wait, I guess that's it. Nothing to help with hatred management except Blood Vengeance and I'm not sure I count picking up health globes as a reliable source of resources. Moving on.
3.4. - Wizard
This class is also not in a very good place. Sure, they are viable and can clear things just like everyone else, but overall they are not that well designed.
This is a class for which primaries are nothing but a crutch for bad gear. The constant regen means that all you have to do is make sure your attack speed isn't too high, and that you stack enough crit and AP on crit and you won't ever need to use a primary. Replace it with hydra or magic weapon instead.
So basically you just spam abilities, but even then most of your abilities are stand still and point abilities. Under secondaries we have a grand total of 3/4 of them, and Arcane Orb only has one actually good rune, other than that, you're stuck with Meteor or fire Wave of Force unless you find legendaries to make the useless skills viable (Ray of Frost, Explosive Blast, Hydra). Teleport is pretty much something you will find on every wizards skillbar, but other than that you have Frost Nova which is bad after you stop getting killed so much, and Diamond Skin is just a crutch for not being able to kite properly. Dominance and Magic Weapon - Deflection makes Diamond Skin pretty much useless unless you're a scared HC player. The rest of the skills are boring passives that barely do anything. Energy Armor gives you 5% more crit. Magic Weapon gives you Deflection because it's easily the best rune, unless you play on a difficulty level where you just want to one shot stuff as hard as possible. Storm Armor is only decent against bosses and Ice Armor is completely awful. The ice nova rune is maybe okay if survivability is key. Oh and familiar is another flat 10 % damage increase. Overall wizards are not well off when it comes to build diversity and well designed skills, but just like DHs they have a few skills that are good, even though arcane torrent and disintegrate are almost the same skill.
Also the new Elemental Exposure passive became nearly useless with the introduction of elemental damage on items. So what? I'm going to use a fire spell, an arcane spell, a lightning weapon and frozen orb, just to get 20% more damage output? You realize I'm missing out on 100%+ extra cold damage on those other two skills right? Sounds like less damage to me.
3.5. - Monk
I don't have as much experience with this class, but I know that they are lacking in the fun spenders department. When I think Monk I assume I'm going to punch stuff in the mouth, but the reality of it is that you either dance stuff to death with Cyclone Strike or you summon giant bells all day. Tempest Rush is an insanely ugly whirlwind and Lashing Tail Kicks animation gets old incredibly quickly. But I guess most of my complaints here are aesthetics. However, once again, no skills give resources on use except for Blinding Flash with a rune. It's exactly like War Stomp except worse since it doesn't build resources baseline. So once again, you need to completely rely on primaries and big cooldowns like Epiphany for resources, and that's just not good.
You still haven't applied the DoT fix to Exploding Palm either, and now that you expect it to be used as a real spender for damage, that just won't hold. The way crit works the skill either crits or misses, and a non-crit palm is 9 seconds of no damage. No thank you.
3.6. - Witch Doctor
Lastly, I barely play Witch Doctor because they are too silly for me, but it feels too hard to find useful skills to build non-pet builds.
4. - End Thoughts
Classes are moving in the right direction at least. There needs to be big changes in the next expansion though, or even better, in the patch for season 2. You've got three months to get something done. Most classes feel like they rely too heavily on just passive resource regen or primary spam, but having low cooldown skills generate resources like the barbarian GREATLY improves the flow of the game. I recommend looking to the barbarian on how to improve the rest of the classes.
There are still other issues remaining though.
Critical hit damage is one. 50% chance to deal 500% extra damage only means you have a 50% miss chance. This is ESPECIALLY annoying when you're using skills with long cooldowns. Bam, Molten Impact Meteor that didn't crit. Talk about disappointment. Even worse, bombardment that didn't crit, or Wrath of the Berserker explosion that didn't crit. Everything becomes huge misses because of how spikey the damage is.
Crits need to be redesigned, and with seasons you finally have a chance to do it. Crit damage should roll like 5% on rings instead of 50% so you can stack it up to 100% or 200% maybe. Numbers are pulled out of my ass at 6 AM in the morning, but you get the point I'm making. Base damage needs to go up, crit needs to go down. DPS should stay the same but less spikey and unpredictable. Imagine gems in weapons that aren't emeralds and actually being useful? Crit damage is the issue, not gem design... well... gem design is part of it. I mean what would the options be? More damage with rubies or more elite damage with diamonds? Elites are the only thing that matters anyway.
Greater Rifts are also a completely flawed idea. You implement dynamic difficulty that scales to our level, and you implement tons of difficulty levels that we can choose between, yet you come with a game mode where you basically have to wade through hordes of normal level monsters 3-4 times before you finally reach a level where monsters are challenging to you. Not only that, but you don't get any legendaries in the entire dungeon until you kill the boss, and there are nearly no shrines, and the monster density is not higher or more consistent so it's still completely random. So it's not competative and it's not fun. Not a good combination.
Monster density needs to go up on all maps. Right now in the MAJORITY of rifts you have to run like 2 screens to find four normal monsters over and over again. It's not fun, and is an even bigger issue than lacking class balance. At the VERY LEAST you need to make rift density more consistent. Some rifts are pretty decent, but 90% of them are terrible.
Well, this took like five hours to write in the middle of the night, so I hope it's somewhat useful and coherent.