Speaking as a monk in inferno,

I actually like bargain hunting on the gold auction house, so it doesn't really me. In fact, when you start farming for stuff, the AH serves as a backup source to offload the good items that isn't useful for your class right now so that you could at least convert those into something useful (ie gold).

I think part of the problem with the high end drops available in the AH now was due to the broken (now hotfixed) abilities of Wizards and Demon Hunters that allowed them to easily farm Inferno and flooding the market with high end items. It isn't something Blizzard can fix immediately.

While I agree about the item variability (especially the lackluster uniques and sets), I think what Blizzard's trying to do is to streamline item stats to make build choices more tactical. Generally guides is to stack primary stat and vit, but I'm seeing more different builds (for Inferno monks at least) taking advantage of crit chance %, life/spirit spent and attack speed % because stacking stats aren't very viable or efficient in later acts. Still, I would hope they add more interesting stats, especially for level 60 items, maybe stuff to counter the special attributes of elites to add more depth to character gearing.

For skill builds, the problem is apparent in Inferno, I think Inferno has a big problem in a sense that all the melee classes are forced to play extremely defensively/kiting. As a monk I think all the builds now have BoH and Serenity as necessary; only a handful of passives are actually viable and I don't think anyone even bothers much with the secondary skill class spells like Tempest Rush. I'm not asking for every build be viable, but every spell should at least have some form of utility at level 60. I can't use spells like Cyclone strike (which pulls enemies into you), because that's suicide on Inferno. Mantra of Retribution (thorns) is useless because even some normal mobs can oneshot you. Perhaps it's an issue of insufficient gear, but considering Kripp (Barbarian player streamer) only managed to break past Act 3 with millions worth of gear farmed by his DH/Wiz friends from Act 4, even gearing is an issue here because it's doesn't make sense to have people only progressing with stuff from the later acts.

Surprisingly tho, despite the fact that builds are easily respecced, I feel that builds do have a certain playstyle attached to it, and just because you can reorder your skillbar to be the same, if you don't play right, it'll suck as well. Sometimes I would stick to certain core spells because I simply liked the feel of a it over another. I think Blizzard really succeeded it having a tactile feel to the spells/combinations.