For myself, being an ARPG veteran, this switch was amazing because it meant I didn’t have to relearn an entirely new system and took the burden of learning even more systems off my shoulders.
From what I can see it was a smart choice too, when you have a singular type of defence (glancing blow) that is 100% necessary for every single build then it lacks variety and needs to change. But honestly the only thing that’s changed for me is that instead of protections that really had no cap, resistances being capped at 75% means I have a ceiling to stop at and not have to worry about taking as much as I can possibly fit in my build. I like that limit because it leaves room to gear for other options, creating more variety in builds and gearing now.
I get this is just my personal experience, but I never really liked how essential GB felt, like how crit avoidance has become the new GB (imo) really. But having a resistance cap leaves a lot more room for taking other affixes and maxing out res with just a few items which means you can take those special class only affixes on your chest/head armour instead of needing that location for GB/Protections. This change only made things easier and brought more variety from what I can see, and how I’ve felt playing almost every day since the change.
It’s even made crafting less punishing along with the amazing changes they made to that as well, now if an item fractures before you capped out your res you can likely cap it on another item, and you’re not left struggling because your item cracked at low tier GB or something. Every way I look at it, this new defence system has made things better across the board, at least for me. Better crafting, more options in terms of gearing (I feel better taking a unique in my build now too), easier to understand for newer players, or even veterans like me that are used to the same system from other games and appreciate that it’s an effective system, tried and true as they say.
Again, the only changes I see, is the loss of GB being an essential take (which was bad, and may have just moved over to crit avoidance anyway) and the protections (now resistances) actually have a cap, meaning that there is now a whole bunch more room for other affixes. I don’t feel bad taking the unique class affixes now, or taking a unique item or two in my build. I don’t have to max out GB before I can start taking whatever I like on my gear. Hell I might even go a dodge build now (never touched it before, no class has synergies with it yet, til Rogue is released I assume) now that there’s more space for affixes on items.
The things you say you used to be able to do but are lost now, are still the same things I’m doing now, but with greater ease and less stress. I have a glass cannon build still, I have a bruiser type build, I have a block based build, I have a pure tank build (same as the block based build). I still have all those things and even more. I now have a Spellblade that generates ward so fast he is basically a tank, but has like 50% res. The options are endless now, whereas I felt locked into stuff before, namely GB and stacking protections infinitely with no end in sight for them. Now I’m free to take HP if I want it, or again, the unique affixes that I ignored before for the sake of GB/Protections, which was boring as sin before. I really think it’s improved the game ten-fold for me, and opened up variety in multiple ways for me as well. Maybe take a wider look at the whole scope of the changes? I feel like it’s done a lot more benefit for the game that you may be missing at the moment