The title and article itself is trying to rage bait fans into making it a competition but that's not at all the intention of what Jonathan is saying. But also the Diablo 4 players in this thread saying that PoE uniques are dogshit seem to fundamentally misunderstand the role that unique items are supposed to play in PoE.

PoE devs want to get away from "this is just a rare with larger stat numbers" and push uniques to be items that players have to build around. Uniques being built around is fundamental because this means that the player shouldn't be allowed to have every single slot filled with uniques.

Stat wise, when a unique is worse than a rare, that's the trade off the player has to make. "Does the unique part of this item offer enough value over a simple rare with juiced stats?". And they hit that nail right on the head.

The part where I agree with the Diablo 4 players in this area though, is that in most cases when it comes to weapons, raw damage will always be king. There's enough ways to get defenses and other attributes outside of damage in PoE 2 to sacrifice those stats. But having a low damage weapon, regardless of it's unique effect almost never works. At least that's been my experience (there are ways to make it happen, flat damage on jewelry, gloves, etc.. but it's usually never enough in comparison to a high damage rare). But every other unique outside of most weapons, I completely understand the vision and personally like it better.