Well, the thing that makes PoE and Torchlight I and II better than Diablo III is:
-Drop rate is comparable to that of Diablo II
-Skill diversity
-Character is badass by skill and not exclusively by gear like Diablo III
I have to disagree
1. Drop rate is based on trading and economy and a long term gamplay, if all the gear dropped at once you would be done within a week. Diablo 3 is a primarily multiplayer game and already even with low drop rates the game is massively over inflated with high quality gear, Diablo 2 was the same in this respect. As a solo player in both D3/D2 it can sometimes feel like you get no drops but if you persist you WILL get drops, this was no different in D2 and as someone who
still has an active Diablo 2 account, with online characters going back 10 years, I last actively played it last year.
In Diablo 2 I have an exceptionally well geared Barbarion, but that is the result of years of playing, trading via forums and recieving gifts from a friend who regularly bought items from item stores. A friend who too this day still plays Diablo 2 with a new character every ladder.
So I have a great idea how the drop rates were in Diablo 2. In Torchlight the drop rates are far far higher than they were in D2, in Diablo 2 if one was playing solo he/she would hit a brick wall in progression somewhere during early hell, unless there was gear coming elsewhere via trading or hand me downs or a lot of hanging around in nightmare waiting for item drops, the difference in top quality gear and low quality in Diablo 2 was often ridiculously big, too big, bigger than it is in Diablo 3 by a long way, making D3 far more balanced and user friendly for people who want to solo.
2. Skill diversity - There are more builds in D3 than in D2, in D2 there were cookie cutter builds and there were crap builds, a handful of each per class. In D3 there are many workable builds and many "inbetween builds" on my barbarion alone I have been through a whole bunch of different playstyles that all excell at the end of the game.
3. Based on gear not skill? In all of these games it is based on both, Diablo 3 on launch was certaintly based on both, I saw countless of people with better gear than myself moaning that the game was too hard and that they couldn't survive because of not good enough gear, so how was it that I was able to actually beat the game while it was this hard?
I'l tell you how, skill, strategy and planning, not whining about gear (most of the guys whining had great gear, just wasnt great enough for them to play 1handed whilst watching eastenders). Diablo 3 has been nerfed and now caters to all levels of player, with Monster levels put in to allow extra challenge. But with a numbers game like this there is always going to be a cutoff point at where the only way forward is to improve your gear, that is no different for any of these types of games.
To say that Diablo is more about gear and less about skill and then comparing them to identical game styles is to be biased against one without just cause. And I'm saying this as a big fan of the genre in general, I played Diablo and then Diablo 2, Dungeon Siege II and then Titan Quest, then Torchlight and Diablo 3, then Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile.