Though most of all the thing that disappoints me is the forced pointlessness of lifesteal, and completely cornering people into all just stacking vit and taking a majority of defensive skills. It's especially discouraging me from playing barbarian when you cannot feasibly use most of the cool barb abilities, as you'll just die.

This is exactly how I feel as a monk. I have all these cool abilities that I just can't use because I'll just fall over dead without using almost entirely defensive abilities.