Now that each class has a specific attribute which gives both damage and “survivability” at the same time, It concerns me that players will be funneled into prioritizing the stacking of their primary attribute over all other considerations due to the massive disadvantage that would ensue for not doing so. It seems that the new system will cause a much larger gap to arise between the supposed “mathematically superior build choice” which is bound to be worked out sooner or later for each class, and other “viable” builds. In the old system I felt confident that the way in which all attributes were equally as valuable to attain would help to keep the aforementioned gap to a minimum, allowing for a great deal of diversity without too much reduction in efficacy for users experimenting with creative and less orthodox builds.

I suspect this problem will be least prominent in the Witch Doctor and Wizard classes because of the seemingly weak secondary effect of the new intellect attribute, meaning for those two, builds will probably work pretty much as before, although now they will need to invest in global damage reduction (now armor) and/or dodge, and as a consequence build up useless (to them) +damage to other classes. For the Monk and Demon Hunter classes the problem seems a little more prevalent, as building up both damage and dodge as a means to tank damage is immensely advantageous over any other stat they could be building. Finally for the Barbarian class the problem seems most severe, as they will be able to build global damage resistance (rather than just survivability to physical, which is what I last heard the dodge stat does although this could have changed) as well as damage, essentially allowing for this to be prioritized over all other stats.

An example of my concern is as follows, consider an average player choosing the barbarian class who is about one third of the way through normal mode. Say this player currently has an axe in his possession with +20 strength; meaning +20% damage, and +20 armor. Equating to say 5% global damage resistance at his current level. He then finds an axe with exactly the same stats save that in place of the strength there is +chance to critical, which will increase his average DPS by say 25%. If the barbarian has 60% total global damage resistance, then a loss of 5% is an effective loss of 12% overall survivability, meaning even though the critical chance from the item is really nice (which it would be to give 25% extra DPS), it’s still better for him, and all other players using the class to simply prioritize that one attribute over all else.

This decision to change the core attributes and stats doesn't limit build diversity because the same stats exist on items as before. If you wanted precision, now you want +crit, if you wanted defense, now you should aim to get armor. It is the same concept for all stats, if you wanted attack, just go for your core class stat.

What this change is intended to do is increase the item pool by making more items that are clearly not for your character, and subsequently making it easier for you to be able to determine if you should be using an item or not :) If you are a Wizard and get an item with Strength on it, you know immediately that this item is not really for you. It used to be that you would be sitting there analysing an item with +attack for a good 10 seconds or more only to figure out that it's a bad item for you, but now it should only take a few moments to decide this.

We assure you though; this change will not affect the amount of build diversity in the game :)