For me, it was a welcome and predictable change, just as fixing Leech. A rather big chunk of all damage in the game is elemental. To be completely immune to it by mid game and thereby virtually invulnerable to magic attacks struck me from the very beginning as well, odd. Especially since it was so easy to obtain. It begged to be patched, really.
Still, I can see how people who has characters completely dependant on leech/100+ resists feel reluctant to start over. I just find it hard to believe people didn't see this coming. For me, the only thing that irks me is it wasn't fixed before the game shipped, or in an earlier patch.