So I totally nerd-raged at D3 last night. 53 or so Monk, 2 friends in Hell mode on Act 1. The Barbarian and I had been dying constantly to elite packs, while the Wizard typically was able to kite the stuff, until we'd respawn and die again once everything piled back up. After 2 or 3 rotations of this, enough stuff would have been winnowed down that we could finally kill all of it.
Secondly, nothing had dropped for me pretty the whole act. What did drop, and has continued to drop for the last 4 times I've played, is caster gear. Caster gear all day everyday. Even with both other people looking out for monk gear, nadda. So I've been struggling to keep my HPs and damage up throughout all of Act 1 Hell.
And then we get to the Skeleton King and he keeps one-shotting me, seemingly at random. With 12k Hp, I'm low but I'm not THAT low. All his super big fancy attacks did the amount of damage I'd expect. But his basic, standing swing fucking one-shot me EVERY TIME. Even built out for as much range as I could put between me and enemies, he'd still seem to, possibly in a moment of lag, turn and clobber me for one hit. I think I died 5 times in that fight.
The high gear dependency of the whole game is really starting to show itself. You didn't notice in lower difficulties because generally one great item or weapon meant total overkill. But now where the difficulty spikes, suddenly you're literally dying for gear that's a real upgrade. I'm sure that's entirely so you'll go to the AH, get addicted to buying gear and then decide you want to throw down real money on the whole thing once the RMAH goes live.