There… they said it. They are essentially experimenting with how much to incentivize Seasons and are basically using S3 as a test bed for introducing (in this case, re-introducing re-worked legendaries) seasonal exclusive items.
Even John Yang said he was not happy with this decision due to the re-worked Deadman’s Legacy quiver that synergizes with Multishot, only dropping in S3. Wait, why would he be unhappy when they are the ones making it drop that way? People need to remember he is an Associate Designer and thus reports to the Senior Leads; the ones who are more or less making the final call.
I know a lot of folks look at this particular Tavern Talk and noticed how both Cheng and Day seemed out of touch. Makes sense since as senior leads, they are more than likely not even deeply involved with the details of current RoS patches. Those tasks seem to be delegated to Yang (as point person for items) and Vu (as point person for seasonal content).
The lead designers and probably larger bulk of the team are probably at work on two projects; the next Diablo expansion (which they will likely begin ramping up discussion for around summer time to allow the hype to lead into BlizzCon) plus the work needed to support the changes for the new China region (where the game will be F2P with micro transactions). Since I do believe that cosmetic micro transactions (as well as stash space and character slots upgrades) will eventually roll out to the other regions, these core designs need to also be made in the games frameworks for all current regions.
Judging by this particular TT, it seems they have a skeleton crew working on RoS (makes sense since there is the next expansion content as well as the work they need to do for changing the game for the new China region where the game is being made F2P with micro transactions) with Yang being delegated as the point person for re-working items and Don Vu being the point person for seasonal content.
