I would rather see a way to upgrade gear - if I do find a piece of gear I like, (especially a unique or +skills), it would be nice to be able to enhance it, or level it up to your current level.
This is the best suggestion here.
A decent crafting system will make up for or eliminate all these problems.
And NO crafting does not have to be tedious.
Simply putting two slightly uncommon items together for a level appropriate weapon with the possibility of adding a third for a magical stat bonus is far more elegant and less time consuming solution for that 'missing weapon your rogue needs because he hasn't upgraded in a few levels' than rechecking merchants every level. It's also less hamfisted and code intensive than [party check] - [stat check] - [ability check] then loot generation for four characters that can have literally ANY COMBINATION of attributes and skills. Crap like that works in diablo because you're a wizard who needs +int and the rest can be whatever and all the game needs to check for is [wizard?]
