Thinking about taking the dive...

[librarian]

Heiho,

The other classes and builds can ally play relatively well in Hell, though they are not dominant killers (am I forgetting any major build?). Of course, if a very strong hell character is not your focus then your mileage will certainly vary:)

You certainly forgot the Lightning Trapsin.

Just a few counterparts ...

1.) Skill synergies are great. For the first time 100+ skill points can feel like not enough. A bonus to synergies is if you are trying to make a uber character, you no longer wait until level 30 to start distributing your skillpoints. Many formerly poor skills are very powerful under synergies.

OTOH syns made the casters even more unbalanced to the aforementioned physical damage related builds. From what I've seen indeed many poor skills became more powerful, but the cookie cutter skills became even more powerful than before, so there wasn't really that big change.

2.)The monster randomization is frustrating for me. Rather than Boar spawns and Maulers in Bloody Hills there are Skeletons, Jav throwing Spearcats, and the little bat like creatures from act 1. You must be very careful going to Baal, since the lightening shooting Ghosts (think Plains of Despair in Act 4) are extremely powerful in 1.10 and are everywhere on Worldstone Keep.

OTOH monster randomization made Act5 in fact more of a joke than the native cubby zoo before. When all's said and done, as soon as you enter a map and there are ugly monsters you can't defeat you create a new game, and the chance of getting more handsome opponents is quite good.
You'll still have to find waypoints, true.

3.) The cow level doesn't give the fun exp it used to. The last time I play battle.net Act 5 was still where the exp was at. Mostly Baal runs, though this may have changed.

If you don't know anyone your chances of joining a botted Baal Party in pubbies go straight through the roof. And no other place in Act5 is visited for exp, just for shuttling chars to Malah's scroll reward and the Ancients.

4.) A CE nec can be extremely powerful, but they have become very item dependant. I had a level 93 Nec in 1.10 that was all CE, Iron Golem, Amp, and Iron Maiden. I Iron Maidened monsters and let them hit my golem, once one died I amped and CE'd everything in sight. It killed as fast as any uber build, but the problem was the high cost of equip (I had +23 skills in summons tab, +20 in the poison bone, and +19 in curses). Bonespear and Bonespirit are weak in Hell with anyone else in the game, making a Nec a poor soloing class without a lot of + skills equip. As far as Trap asn's, I personally dislike their power in 1.10. Though I believe there are other loungers out there who feel they are strong, so I'll leave it up to them to explain their strengths

All a CE Nec ( = basically every Nec, if you don't want to waste damage) needs is someone for the first corpse. Usually your hireling (preferably Act2/NM offensive) fulfills this role better than any native NecSkill. This hasn't changed since LoD release (disregarding hirelings it hasn't changed since D2 release). Nowadays Nec's skills are when focussed on either Skeletons, Bones or Poison strong enough to bring really quickly first corpses.
Forgive my maybe rude sidemark, but thorny effects, and especially Iron Maiden, are outdated since ... uhm ... 1.04 IIRC, and for sure since LoD release, when monster HPs compared to their dealt out damage shoot right away through the roof and physical resistance was invented on a 'free4allthatismonster' base.

5.) Since its been over a year since I last logged onto Battle.net, I won't pretend I know. Although very high end rune words were the top items when I stopped.

There never where legal cruels with six sockets, they could be cubed with three sockets in 1.09. 1.1x restricted that recipe to two sockets and invented the possibility of getting 450%ED on rares (and even more on crafts). Despite the bad chances of actually find/cube such an item the popularity of the easy 3CG recipe is gone.
This is surely promoted also through very irritating (and IMHO disgusting) runewords with just insane modifiers. Don't even dream about that ones when playing legal SP.

MSLEBs can't spawn anymore, or to be precisely, the Multishot attribute isn't carried over to triggered Bolts of a Lightning Enchanted Boss (or, same thing here, beetles).