Are Rares realy useless?

[HeLRaZR]

After restarting Realm play a couple of month ago (and due to this experiencing first hand how the new Ladder start will feel) I still feel irritated everytime I hear people stating how useless Rare items are.

First of all, they are obtained rather easily by gambeling.
All you need is a fair amount of cash and a bit of luck and you can get your hands on some realy remarkable Items - early and easy. Which is a good thing when your Werewolf Druid is using the Horadric Staff throughout Act 2 Normal as he could not find any better Weapon.

Depending on Character Class and Item slot, Rare Items can be more desireable then Uniques or Sets

My problem with rares is this:

I am currently playing exclusive classic hardcore and frankly, unless I trade away most of my hard earned gear for a classic HC dupe from 1.07 or lower there is very little chance of finding, imbuing etc., a weapon of nightmare class quality. Never mind hell. The way the affix pool was changed in respect to rares makes it difficult to chance across a decent weapon. My rare problem doesn't apply to any other class of item.

Like all players that care to trudge through classic mode Sanctuary, I keep on playing for the challenge.

My personal feeling is that classic was destroyed by LoD(at least in respect to weapons).

EDIT:

Meant to address this originally. There are lots of simply amazing items that are rare that spawn in classic and LoD no question. I use them all the time. Most of my playing compadres address the rare issue only when speaking in terms of weapons.