While I understand the need to slow down the Hero leveling process, there now seems to be a mismatch between the speed Heroes level up, and the levels of the loot being dropped.

It really wasn't an issue in .75 if a Hero picked up loot that couldn't be used until level 5 or 8 when they went out for the first time, they'd be able to use it soon enough.  I was passing old items down to my champions almost every time I picked something new up.

However, with the increase in XP points needed to level up in .76, that same loot is useless for way too long.   Collecting loot isn't fun if you can't use any of it.

Maybe you could resynch item levels with the Hero levels by either changing the loot levels or adding more lower level loot.