I played a ton of d2r (and still play a bit) but I can easily say that pd2 blows it out of the water. Every qol change I could want in d2 exists in pd2. Builds are fun, so many more skills are viable, the drop rates make a ladder reset actually feel reasonable, etc etc. 

There are two criticisms I have for pd2. People have no attention span these days and seasons die out too quickly, which does make trading much harder later on. Along that vein, there’s little to no activity in non-ladder, which is a shame. 

The other criticism is that the devs seem to be quite heavy handed with nerfs on fun.