Since RMAH has just become an extension of the Gold AH, as gold was being readily transferred via paypal at a consistent albeit declining rate, the merit of patching and "balancing" from Blizzard is quite unsettling.
From the design start they said they wouldn't be focused primarily on fixing mechanics in the game unless they were severely broken. This is fair, and some things were fixed where entire parts of the game could be ignored with one or two abilities.
Pre-1.03: The true story of IAS
Item budget disparity
Please consult your respective spreadsheets if the figures below seem foreign or disagree with you. Nonetheless, let's take a look at the recent IAS nerf and the repercussions. Prior to the upcoming nerf, increased attack speed (IAS) was in essence superior to increase crit chance (ICC) and increased crit damage (ICD). However, it wasn't due to it granting more dps point for point than the other two stats but rather how some items like Rings and Legendaries were over budgeted with IAS.
An example being: A typical ring could roll a max of ~16 IAS and only a max of ~4 ICC and ~25ICD. However, a typical glove could roll a max of ~18 IAS and a max of ~10 ICC and ~35ICD. Weapons also share a similar story with ICD vs IAS budgeting.
If we analyse IAS we find it scales at roughly half the rate at which ICC scales point for point, and 5 times as much as ICD point for point. Meaning, it was actually balanced for gloves and weapons.
Dimishing returns of IAS compared to ICD/ICC
Another important factor is that IAS diminishes with itself rapidly. If you were to stack upwards of 70 IAS, you would soon find ICC and ICD creeping up in stat weighting to even overtake IAS on items like rings and legendaries despite IAS being over-budgeted. Thus stacking IAS would inherently be bad and lead to an overall inefficiency of maximising item budget usage. However, although increasing ICD or ICC would also cause diminishing returns of the respective stat, it would cause the other stat to gain value at almost the same rate - meaning ICD/ICC gains suffer very little diminishing returns in tandem.
Post-1.03: ICD/ICC dominates, IAS obsolete
The blanket nerf to IAS across all items even though items budget IAS/ICD/ICC ratios differently seems to be a very miopic approach from Blizzard. Pre-1.03 IAS was slightly better than ICD/ICC on a FEW slots but post-1.03 we will be seeing complete dominance of ICD/ICC in all slots by at least a factor of 3 times than what it was before. It seems as though they did not factor in alot of variables and just made a quick blanket solution. ICC/ICD will become the new 'overpowered stat' but by a significantly larger margin than IAS ever was deemed to be.
Balancing or?
Furthermore, this balancing is really miniscule in the grand scheme of things. There are so many issues riddled with the game ranging from simple User-Friendly Interface issues to Bugs involved with current items and abilities; not to mention the severe lack of build diversity. I seriously wonder whether or not Blizzard just looked at statistics and saw everyone using IAS items and after very little experimentation then decided yes that should be nerfed by 50-60% across the board. The community at the moment is still very young and lots of players just go with the flavour of the month without consulting proper spreadsheets so using statistic so early on to determine overpoweredness is very amateur. I'm sure experimentation was done, but I feel that it was very limited and not alot of variables were considered.
The Gold or $$ I just spent...
Luckily for me I only used the Gold Auction house system and even though gold and $ is directly related at a given exchange rate, I still keep the two separate. I can't help but wonder what all those people who were buying BoJ Anglers, Lacuni, Andy Visages, and all the other plethora of IAS items are going to think. All the assets they bought with real $$ with a justified marginal utility has now been dramatically altered. Introducing the RMAH before such a big change is really unprofessional and there is definitely something wrong with the chain of decisions leading up to this. Changing an item's inherent worth after it is already on the market is very concerning, especially in this case where IAS wasn't even that overpowered to begin with. I wonder what will happen Post 1.03 when ICC/ICD will become the dominant secondary stat...will people purchase immediately knowing that their assets may lose value the next fortnight. It's akin to selling someone a colour TV only to have it break the week after.
Conclusion
I highly doubt anyone was stacking pure IAS over all else and progressing through inferno act 3 / act 4 easily (I myself have around 40% IAS with 28% ICC and 238% ICD as wiz and clear cydae/azmo 5 NV stack runs easily). This game can't be treated like WoW where changes affecting dps performance only results in players changing playstyles; real money is involved with every item bought/sold now. I understand Blizzard acknowledges them making mistakes from time to time, but there is no point in acknowledging past errors if no better attempt at preventing future mistakes is implemented.
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Post-1.03: ICD/ICC dominates, IAS obsolete