3)
Skill gems suck
90% of all skill gems are rubbish for different reasons. Most of them are just not viable in end-game. If you remove those gems from the game completely it wouldn't have made a difference to the game at all which just shows how redundant they are. The remaining 10% of skill gems become the 'OP' skills not because they're OP in itself but because they're OP when compared with the other rubbish skills.
Edit: many people mistakenly assume I was talking about tweaking numbers, but it's more than that. More often than not it's the skill effects, handicaps and the interaction with other support gems that matter.
6)
Playing self-found close to improbable (drops, crafting and trading)
99.9% of the drops are rubbish, no matter whether it's unique, rare or otherwise. Crafting is a joke because of how it works, that there're so many potential mods and levels of mods, each mod and level with different success rate, and most of the time you can save a lot more by just buying the items you want from other players. None except one of the items my marauder is wearing is found or crafted by myself.
The only realistic and reliable way to upgrade your gears is by buying them from other players. But when drops are rubbish there's no way you can earn enough currency to buy some decent upgrades unless you have some lucky drops which happens rarely and doesn't happen to everyone.
To trade you must stalk the trade chat. You can literally spend hours or days stalking it and not find a deal. The other option is to use the forum, but it's where the competition is the most fierce and you're expected to pay a much higher price than you would've done had you used the trade chat.
7)
Solo players at a huge disadvantage compared with party players
When partied up, you can generally clear monsters faster and safer, have more loots and share resources. For solo players the opposite is true.
Nothing really drops when you play solo; you can clear the entire map without getting a rare item at all. Most solo players like myself also lose their net wealth very quickly by doing maps because you get less out of maps than what you've invested in them, especially when your wealth is already very limited. Forcing a level 90+ player to do low level maps like 66s and 67s is very very depressing.
It's partly due to the fact that higher level map drop sucks or is too RNG-oriented. I'd seen people get no map drop at all, not even a 66 map, after about 15 73+ maps with good mods and high quantity, and I'd seen people get 8 maps in a single map.
8)
Everything too RNG (items, currency, maps, crafting)
I used up all the fusings and jewellery I'd been collecting and buying for nearly half a year which should be around 1k fusings and still I didn't get a single 6 link. I know getting a 6 link is a long-term goal, but I didn't expect it's that long. Now new leagues have already started, but I still haven't reached that goal. Time to give up.
The best drop I had after playing for nearly half a year is Astramentis. I didn't have any other drop which could be sold for more than a few gcps. On the other hand, I'd met a lot of new players who got koam's, shavronne's, lioeye's glare, etc as drops several times and they hadn't even played PoE for more than a week or two.
Yes, it's RNG. I just feel very very unfair because your time investment is, as opposed to what most people would assume, not proportional to your rewards whatsoever. Their first week in PoE already earn them the currency to buy all the gears I'd put so much time and effort in collecting over nearly half a year.
I wish 'RNG' functioned in a way that is similar to how 'evasion' in PoE works if you know what I mean.
9)
Lag, fps drop hell, desync and crash
They speak for themselves.
I just want to let you know that, since I'm forced to play in a party to optimise my wealth and progression, my fps in maps is 0-10 with no sound, graphic settings below what is allowed in the in-game panel, and I can tell you it's not fun whatsoever. By the way my laptop can handle all other games with high settings without any problem at all.
10)
Stash tabs pay to win
Not a serious complain, just pointing it out for the record. Though I think it's a legitimate way of having a stable income stream for the sake of the financial stability of the company.
You can make tons and tons of mules if you don't want to pay, so long as you don't mind logging on and off dozens of times transferring currency, items, gems and maps between the stash and the inventories.
Edit: stash tabs - more space to store things to sell to both players and vendors - more currency - buy better items - stronger characters.
11)
Gradual in-game animation withdrawal
Also not a serious complain, just pointing it out for the record. The good old auras's animation were withdrawn and replaced by those little circles. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future someone told me GGG was planning to sell different aura animations as part of its micro-transaction business.
13)
ES > HP
There's nothing inherently wrong with one option better than the other. The problem only emerges when there's outright no competition whatsoever which is becoming clearer and clearer with the introduction of new unique items.
If you go ES, you can have higher survivability and higher dps. All the advantages that HP users used to have are pretty much negated by new mods in flasks, items and changes to the skill tree.
So if you have the currency to buy those items, it's a no-brainer that you'd want to go ES.
14)
Uniques becoming legendaries
One of the funniest development of D3 is when people don't bother to pick up rares at all and just farm legendaries because they're just so much better; they're BiS. GGG is well aware of this issue and most unique items are handicapped in one way or another. However, some do go through the radar and make it into the game.
The best recent example is Soul Taker unique Siege Axe. Pretty much a must-have for all those whose builds can make use of an axe. It has high damage, high attack speed, chill and most importantly you don't need mana or hp to use your melee attacks. What it means is for most people you don't need blood magic gem and can replace it with other gems whilst the value of life regen and hence survivability increases significantly. Even if you've two of the best axes in the whole game you'd still want to use Soul Taker because the benefits are just so good. To balance it out perhaps a 'cannot use resolute technique' mod might be suitable, and it can at the same time make accuracy on gears more valuable.
15)
Blood Magic > Mana
Mana and mana regen can't even be compared with blood magic because the mana pool is usually very small and mana regen is so low. Eldritch Battery, mana nodes, mana regen nodes, mana and mana regen on gears, pots and mana leech gem can help, but that'd be a totally different build and requires a lot of investment when you can just solve the problem with a blood magic gem, node or unique.
Of those who do go for mana to use their skills, they probably all use ES and they've no choice but to use mana; it might require a mana pot or two and mana is not good in half-regen and no regen maps because you'll have difficulty spamming your skills.
16)
Spell > attack
Spell has 100% chance to hit and therefore casters have no need to use resolute technique or any other accuracy gear, and in general it has pretty good fixed damage range and can crit and is range.
Players who use attacks almost all use resolute technique unless they can't get it or playing a crit build. Attacks are especially horrible in enfeeble maps because you're pretty much missing half of your attacks. Accuracy gears can help to an extent. Though attacks become very very powerful when you have the best weapons in the game.
17)
Elemental damage > physical damage
It's easier to get elemental damage on gears, and the damage range is a lot larger. For example, on a ring you can get over 100 combined elemental damage whereas for physical damage it's below 20.
Also crit with elemental damage creates all sorts of good effects on monsters such as shock stacks, burning and frozen, whereas crit with physical damage does nothing at all.
18)
Totem OP
Tank + dpser in one.
19)
Range > melee
In terms of survivability and sustained dps.
20-x)
Reserved for later editions
