If you check out the top DPS people (or even the top EHP) on diabloprogress.com, you’ll often encounter odd combinations of gear these people. I find it interesting how people determined what the best in slot items would be to achieve these means. For instance, seeing monk gear on a demon hunter, or monk pants being used by wizards and witch doctors. It gets weirder when you start seeing barbarians using witch doctor gear. Of course, to achieve their end of being the top, they’ll have to find certain combinations to push those numbers higher.
That said, it got me thinking what the point of having set gear was when most people end up ignoring the entire set? Some people might just go for a few bonuses, like a demon hunter’s critical hit chance set bonus or the dexterity bonus from a monk’s set. This may work out depending on the elements in a given set. But overall, the way gear has been designed in the game thus far, it feels poorly thought out considering that people end up having bizarre piece meal style combinations.
Part of the current issue is the game play styles. At the moment, PVE dictates either top DPS or EHP. I think a lot of people tend to favor DPS overall so that they can cut through higher monster powers. As a result, you see this odd combinations of gear. However, the end problem becomes the near cookie cutter play style that people seem to complain about both in appearance/gear and potentially talents.
Now, this may alter when PVP comes out. Also, this can be altered for those who seek to paragon level or farm lower monster powers. But it feels as though the game needs even more variety in terms of gear. A lot of the variable gear comes from rares since they can roll better stats at times. However, rares still shouldn’t beat out legendaries and set items if such an item can exist.
I think Diablo 3 needs to put in more set items and legendaries. Make it so that the bonuses are a little more varied or that there can be more combinations that help optimize high end DPS rather than a few random rolls. For instance, what about having weapons beyond manticores, for instance, that can do competitive DPS but with some interesting abilities like life on hit (yes, I realize you can get life on hit with a manticore, but you’ll also sacrifice some stat like a socket). Or perhaps something besides Echoing Fury for the main hand. Or maybe more class set items like gloves, shoulders, bracers and pants for a demon hunter.
Either way, I think the high end DPS at the moment is quite good. It’s more of a matter of adding more variety to that existing chart so there’s more choices for gearing.