DiabloFans

My response (copied from Reddit): 100% agree. Actually, I think this ruins itemization on so many levels:

• As Quin said, it makes certain items "required" for certain builds - just like sets. Utility bonuses (that change the interaction of a certain spell) are almost never required, but can often be replaced with more skillful gameplay. Straight damage increase bonuses, which we've mostly had on sets so far, are just mandatory.
• The cube introduced choice - those new items take it away again. Why? Because the damage increase can't be extracted into the Cube. For example, let's take a look at a Uliana's speed farming build that wants to use Lion's Claw+Fist of Az+In-Geom. Three weapons, you can use whichever one you want in the cube right now, and equip your two best ones. Once you add a straight damage bonus to one of those, this is not the case anymore - you remove choice. Even worse in the case of two-handed weapons which greatly reduce your versatility (as Quin showed, you can't use Istvan's anymore with a TR build).
• Resurgance of mandatory RoRG for many builds. Quin touched upon this - if you want to make a Wave of Light build, you need Tzo Krin's Gaze just for the straight damage bonus. You also need SWK for the straight damage bonus (because sets are mandatory as well, old story; unless they buff LoN at release). However, the only way to use the set and the helmet is a RoRG. 7 items completely fixed and locked in into your build - just because you decided to make something based on Wave of Light? That's stupid.
• Undesirable side effects. Okay, this one is arguable, but it just crossed my mind that you can't make a "real" melee-based WoL build anymore while maintaining maximum DPS. I wonder if there are other examples where items that give you a straight damage bonus come with utility effects that might be undesirable (I can't think of anything, but imagine you have a squishy ranged build that requires you to take an item with a pull-in effect just because of those damage bonuses)
• Less room for defensive stats. All those damage bonuses further remove the room for defensive stats on gear. We will likely see people getting into the GR100 range in S5, and we can only imagine how many billions of defense one needs to stack up to survive out there. Problem is, every one of those damage buffs removes another possibility for some defensive stats (because honestly, no one will take 650 vitality over 100% increased skill damage). That again will force players into coming up with gimicky defensive strategies, such as get 5.1% stun/freeze on gloves/belt, find some awkward game mechanic that allows perma stun/freeze, or go back to pre-S4 times where toughness didn't matter and you just hoped to not getting hit even once in the entire rift - entirely neglecting toughness/healing.
• Most importantly: it takes away gearing diversity. And that's my biggest concern with Diablo right now in general. LoN was such a fresh breeze, and if they were to nerf sets and buff LoN again there might be hope for S5. But if the patch goes live with those damage numbers not only on sets (500% multiplicative increase here and there) but also a 100% to skills on single legendary items, there won't be much (if any) diversity in gear. Also, since gearing up is so ridiculously easy and it's not the question if you get an item or are able to complete a set, but the question is only how long it'll take you to get a perfectly rolled maxed out ancient item, gear becomes almost "irrelevant" in endgame - it's a fixed entity. What differs are only your gem levels (a measure of playtime and tenacity), paragon levels (same), and how high the augmentations on all your top items are (same).

I don't like this direction Diablo is heading. Maybe I'm the only one, but I was never motivated in D2 to play for a "constant reward loop", i.e., one more level for another 100 Baal runs. What kept me playing was serendipitous discovery. An insanely lucky rare item with godly rolls. One of the elusive high runes that would unlock a new runeword. I felt like Ahab hunting the White Whale, except for I didn't even know exactly what it looked like - but I knew if I kept hunting, I had a chance (not a guarantee) to find it and leapfrog my character power. Diablo 3 doesn't have that anymore AT ALL. Play a day more and you get a guaranteed 50 or so main stat from paragon, in S5 add a guaranteed 200 or so main stat from adding an augmentation to a new item, and the only unknown variable in progress *might* be a new item that yields a 20 main stat increase due to even more perfect rolls. Yay. Does that keep you playing? Good for you then. It doesn't work for me anymore.

I just found a video of a leaked conversation between the developers that explains what happened yesterday night. It might shed some light on this issue (or not).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTRAagg02s8

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Edit: Moved from this thread, as I feel bad for derailing the discussion. On a more serious note, it's a video thread and to be d'accord with the rules here a short summary:

This is a satiric video in which, inspired by the recent popularity of a new meme, I try to bring a smile on some people's face that seemed a bit too much worried about barbarians being nerfed by the removal of the bracers just a day before the patch hit. The bracers had to be removed though as they were too strong and barbarians should be in a good spot anyways; if not, Blizzard will address this (see John Yang's tweet). What was really very unfortunate was the timing of the removal; many people don't follow Blizzard news that closely but have heard about the bracers and might keep gambling for them.

Quote from Sushifrukt»

Most recently I'm talking about giving non-season players access too all the new legendaries. As a gamer who played alot of D2 and LOD. I can say that it's not enough for most to just race for paragon levels or greater rifts.

Sure I could play non-season then. But that doesn't appeal to me.

I hear this a lot from season players. Yet, I don't get it. Why does non-season not appeal to you, but at the same time the season-only rewards are not enough for you?

So you don't think the rewards make it worthwhile to play season, but you also don't want to play non-season. Help me out - why do you not like non-season, why do you want to play season?

Season is a game mode that asks players to start over from scratch. Hit the reset button. I hate that. I absolutely despise being forced to start over again and throw away all my progress just because some artificial reset button was pressed. What's the point? And no, it's *not* fun to start over again, I was forced to do this in LoD with all the ladder-only runewords that, for a casual player, made non-ladder worthless.

If you want to start over, play season. If you don't, play non-season. But just because you personally prefer a certain game mode that does not mean that Blizzard needs to screw all those of us over that don't share your opinion and put all the nice and fancy stuff into your game mode. It's like a HC player asking for HC-only items. I never see HC player asking for this, yet they stay in their game mode. What makes season players so unique that they have to have access to all the items and take it away from non-season players?

No, no, no, no, no. I could not disagree more with this thread. Not everyone thinks like you. Diablo is still based on the ARPG genre, and for me an artificial restart has no place here. I payed the same amount of money for the game as you did, so I don't see why you should get significantly more content than me.