Fixed. The only way to obtain good gear in D3 at any level (aside from once-in-a-blue-moon drops, the majority of which won't be an upgrade for your specific character/build) is to skim the very thin film of cream off the top of the AH, purchasing worthwhile items that others simply don't need. An ocean of hundreds of thousands of players getting loot they don't need 99.99% of the time is what makes this thin film of worthwhile items possible. The thin film of cream is what's left after almost everything else has either been vendored for virtually nothing, or simply left on the ground. And even that thin film of decent items costs a tiny, tiny pittance to buy, because they're worthless since they're not for endgame.
In PoE you can (and I personally did) collect things such as Gemcutter's Prisms and other various orbs before reaching the endgame that are quite valuable. Orbs and gear that can conveniently be made into orbs drop almost by the minute.
