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As useful as this option might be, it goes against Blizzard's views of how the game should feel. As it is, drop rates are already too high and hiding those drops (players don't need to pay attention to them) only reduces the rewarding feeling associated with legendaries. I personally dislike having to stop so frequently to pick up death's breaths, crafting mats and gems, so I would welcome an option that picks those up for me. On the other hand, the idea of a completely passive looting system is unappealing to me. I would prefer the option to auto-scrap white/blue/yellow, coupled with a better inventory management system. Either way, I doubt we will see this sort of functionality in the near future, if at all.

Rings and amulets can be surprisingly difficult to come by, as they have higher BS costs (from Kad) and large pools of potential rolls (which affects everything from drops to Kad and even Cube); this isn't made any easier by the fact that the vast majority of rings are universal (meaning they are common for any given class). My advice is to focus on upgrading everything else first (via Kad/Cube) and just keep hoping they will drop in the meantime.

I don't consider it to be a race; you get like 3 months to do it. From the looks of it, no-life players can do it in 1-2 days, efficient (but not no-life) players can do it in ~1 week. I would expect 1 month is plenty for a less devoted player and 2 months should be enough for any casual.

I don't really see this as being a huge issue. Just get a new pair. They're only nems, so they don't need to roll with even a single desirable stat (just hold in inv and swap at pylon/shrine). I can see why you would be a bit peeved that you lost them, since you deliberately farmed them; but you don't really have anyone to blame for losing them, except yourself.

A quick question; why did you have nems stashed together with unwanted crap? I don't put crap legs in my stash, ever. I can understand holding onto sets, since they change retroactively, but legendaries don't do this. I recommend to only hold sets, build-defining legs, well-rolled ancients and gems/mats/keys/etc. with some very minor allowance for legs which are not yet cubed (with the intention of then immediately running bounties for the mats to get rid of them). If you want a full "trophy case" to hold 1 of every single item, or legacy gears/etc. then I would recommend to use mule accs to store them within inv.

I actually quite like WW, although I tend to focus on the Hurricane rune for the epic pulls. I'm toying around with a LoN WW build atm. It needs decent paragon to get anything done (since I need some para into vit for HPz), but that's fine as it's LoN anyhow (meaning full ancient, with appropriate stat rolls). I figured I'd make it more interesting by setting it up like a WotHF Monk (uses high APS to proc on hit), as It runs rimeheart and frostburn. The rest of the dmg comes from avalanche and earthquake which are my source of fury. The build is pure cold, to make best use of +% ele and frostburn. It gets decent dmg reduction from aquila, mantle and LoN (and APDs can be cubed to synergise with the build). As for rings, there are plenty of options, including skull grasp, zodiac, CoE, band of might, overwhelming desire or an immunity ammy.

As you can imagine, the dmg is unlikely to contend with any meta build, but I like being able to provide some level of support in a non-meta group (pull, debuff, toughness buff and CC), while still providing some measure of DPS. The build also performs as efficiently in solo as it does in group (in that it does not rely on other players to sustain its dmg buffs/toughness buffs/healing/pulls/CC/resource management/etc.). In contrast to this, a pure zDPS barb works great in group, but is literally useless in solo.

Keeping casuals happy doesn't automatically mean that it makes the game crap for everyone else. If the majority are casual, then by playing differently, you are fighting against the norm. Personally, I like to construct non-meta builds which suit my own playstyles and tweak them to the point where I can run them in a difficulty which actually feels challenging (as opposed to TX/GR75). This works great for me, since I can run meta builds to farm items/mats/para and then switch over to a different build to actually put my loot to use. I think far too many players are getting stuck in the trap of thinking that meta is the only way to play, and focusing too hard on LB (which doesn't give any rewards anyhow). What I especially don't understand is how some players can force themselves to play for extensive periods on a regular basis, without actually finding enjoyment in the game. Seriously, if you don't like what you're doing, then why in the f**k are you doing it?

Throwing this in to support Jamoose's comment (have recently posted something along the same lines in another thread). You can tell that D3 is aimed at casual players, which is evident when you consider the frequency and time requirements for in-game events (GR, bounties, random chests, etc.); the maximum time for any given event does not exceed 15 minutes per run (whereas I used to play Korean MMORPGs and each dungeon needed huge groups and took 1 hour - obviously, the target audience was less casual). Another key point here is drop-in drop-out multiplayer and automated group searching (public games), which are clearly to support casual gaming. Last but not least, loot drop rates, nuff said.

It seems to me that the simplest solution to this issue would be to create/join a community which has established structure for handling non-meta 4 man groups. I think in practice, it would need to list various known-good compositions and rate them according to their GR clears. In essence, what I am describing is just an extension of the meta, in that it lists the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. best compositions, as opposed to just the top composition (meta). To cater to the free spirited, such a community would probably also want to establish a free-for-all sub-community, whereby anyone just joins with the expectation that any player will bring any class of any build type (possibly with some minimal restrictions, i.e. must be a Set or LoN build), although accuracy in determining the appropriate GR lvl to open would be prone to error.

The main issue with this approach is that it would require some level of effort to establish. For instance, testing would need to be performed to determine the performance of any given group composition, which involves farming and building numerous sets/LoN setups and then determining the most appropriate GR tier for each. This level of build testing is probably uncommon amongst players who do not take interest in meta (read as efficiency), which I would imagine as being the largest barrier to such a solution.

My favourite part of the example was when Carol was swapped out for Charlie. Maybe She changed her name? Charlie is a unisex name, so perhaps Carol even got a sex change during this boss run.

@ OP

As everyone else has pointed out, stricken is rarely (almost never) useful in TX. Based upon your post, I would recommend;

Bane of the Trapped, as jade harvester uses haunt and/or locust swarm, both of which should proc the primary. The secondary is also likely to proc the primary due to soul harvest's radius (18 yd; just above the 15 yd radius of the secondary).

Bane of the Powerful, which provides a fairly consistent dmg bonus throughout the run (assuming no deaths), and offers some protection against elites.

Enforcer, as you have mentioned that your build has some level of focus on pets. It should be noted that a significant portion of your dmg must come from pets for this option to outweigh Bane of the Powerful, which is unlikely in most jade harvester builds (often focus much more heavily on DoTs, rather than pets).

As for Pain Enhancer, I would argue against this selection, as Increasing atk spd does not appear to have any effect what-so-ever on the dmg applied by DoTs, such as haunt and locust swarm (as evidenced by D3Planner). In the event that this is to benefit pets, Enforcer would be a significantly better choice, as it offers a multiplicative dmg bonus as well as unparalleled pet survivability.

Honorable mentions also go to Boon of the Hoarder and Wreath of Lightning for their move speed bonuses, which greatly improve bounty/rift farming efficiency.

"Why they're cheating" would be a super interesting thing to know for a developer of a game like this.

It's a useful discussion.