I'm such a troll with my post titles.
No, neither have I used AH. So far I have found loot thats been sufficient to keep me progressing and I don't see the appeal of AH.
The skill system does lack a bit of depth, though I am finding that I am starting to swap skills about more. Initially it was a case of 'ooh new skill, thats pretty but the other one worked better. Sticks with earlier skill' It doesn't feel like a progression of skills, before you had cold arrow/ice arrow/freeze hordes arrow. Freeze hordes was defo a higher skill but you balanced that against the amount of mana. Now your level-stats/weapon seems to have more to do with the 'power' of skills.
Despite that, I am enjoying it and I suspect that as usual the pack of time I have to play has extended the playability for me. I am beginning to think of secondary chars and what style to build them in
I've played an ungodly amount of hours now which may colour my opinion somewhat (hence the stockholm syndrome remark). I got my monk and wd into inferno and did magic find runs for days to start equipping my other characters and trading to flesh out builds. This was the same sort of nonsense as it was in d2 with necro/sorc first chars after a ladder reset.
I'm very poor in comparison to the super hardcore & as a result have been spending my time picking out builds & item sets that function adequately at the mid monster power levels for not too much gold. Although the 'bigger number is better' itemization still rears its ugly head once in a while, as your power ramps up the options for skill loadouts open up pretty well. Additionally, the dps (mainstat, crit dmg, crit chance, aspd, avg dmg, dmg vs elites) and effective hp (vit, life, resist, armor, mitigation) balance becomes more a more interesting balance. If you just head to the forums and get heavily involved in efficiency arguments, sure, there are still builds that hold up 'best' for certain classes, but some of the skill updates in patches have begun to open up your options nicely without your character being too gimped. [Additionally paragon lvling vs legendary hunting vs demonic essence farming is starting to open up playstyles further, which the next round of monster density improvements will only build upon].
An example:
My
Demon Hunter a skill loadout & item set solely geared to allow me to say permanently strafing through mobs. It's not the most effective build (folks are running grenades builds at high mp and bola/lighting builds at low mp), but it's a satisfyingly synergistic playstyle that involves almost no clicking:
Strafe eats up hatred rapidly based on attack speed, so in order to keep up perma strafe I have to look at:
1. Keeping my attack speed low
2. Finding some way to generate enough hatred during strafing to cast it again before I run out of hatred.
Low attack speed lends itself to the standard manticore/2h crossbow route and also cheapens a whole host of items you might trade for (rings/amulets/gloves) since aspd bumps up prices there.
I need a lot of hatred to perma strafe, but I don't run any hatred generation skills - wut? By running preparation with the punishment rune, I get to restore my hatred to full at the cost of most of my discipline. This changes problem 2 to a problem of 'regenerate enough discipline to recast punishment before strafe runs outof hatred'
All 3 of my passives and bat companion are geared towards this discipline regeneration aim: passive disc regen, regen on globe pickup and regen on crit with additional crit chance. These passives also lend themselves to gearing options: bump up crit chance on gear to proc nightstalker, look for globe radius to proc vengeance. To complete the circle - strafe is one of the skills which has '+crit chance' gear deliberately designed for it, allowing you to pick up gearing options that most folks don't look for. I have a total of 14% extra crit chance on strafe on top of my other crit chance. It's a set of 6 skills that form an excellent synergy circle for a very specific build.
On top of this, you can vary the loadout somewhat: raven could be dropped at high crit chance for boar companion for more survivability, a one handed crossbow could be used to add another 10% crit chance from the archery passive.
The other 3 skill slots & gear also compliment the playstyle in less critical ways (allowing for flexibility). Since I'm strafing I generally want to be moving around the map fast (so high move speed on gear is good, possibly through mobs (so the local AE rune on chakram becomes extra damage). You can't strafe through jailer, so vault gives me the 'break jailer' option for particularly annoying elite packs. Shadow power - Gloom allows me to both run through mobs without being ripped a new one, and the lifesteal is snapshotted to the original strafe cast, so if I gloom & then begin strafing, I have life steal for the (hopefully permanent) duration of my strafe.
My other classes have similar complimentary build & gear setups designed to maintain a specific playstyle through resource management & skill use. They're also (with the possible exception of my wizard) not the only viable base setups at high MP. The main problem, still, is that the level of play required to get to this tweaking phase is quite extreme if you're not trading, but with the new paragon & mp levels, as well as the new crafting recipes, you can break into inferno & start ramping up your gear much more smoothly than at release.
