I get what you're saying. The flip side is that fixed stats will make a lot of guns undesirable because, stat wise, they are outclassed by others. Which means instead of the chance of any gun being viable, only certain ones will rise to the top and then the rest are useless. Either way you're grinding the main difference is D2 grinding guarantees you're going to get useless gear. At least D1 gave you the chance to get awesome gear every time, note that, every time thanks to the rolls. Would you rather have a chance for god rolls or a guarantee to get mostly junk?

By the end of d1 there were only like 2-4 viable weapons... and guess what, they all required "God rolls"

Blah- Viable for what, sweaty Trails? What people are supposed to go charging in against scout/snipers with an auto/shottie? Don't be silly. Why people use the standard of the most elite type activities to measure a weapons viability is ridiculous because it ignores the vast majority of activities. When I say viable I'm talking about a persons playstyle and activity. A person who prefers wild spray and pray may focus on impact, reload and clip size. Guns that lean towards accuracy with reduced rof and clip size will never be useful to them. The rolled stats removes that, making most autos viable depending on the roll. Giving you more options and more chances to get a good viable weapon. I know the pain of getting a bad roll doesn't mean you make make static guns with bad stats just to tier the weapons. That's artificial inflation by intentionally giving you crap.

Sweaty TRAILS are the worst... and the fact that people did all the raids using NLB shows that pvp was the only thing that really needed decent weapons.

No the abuse of a few guns doesn't negate all of the others that are great and very effective. People can cheese, that is always an issue with complex gear systems. Min/max. I play with what feels great. An Arminius-D for 320 strikes l, Grim Citizen III for Heroic and Nightfall. Always my Jabberhakke-D solar sidearm. First s rocket launcher then Sol Edge then finally Young Wolfs Howl. That my set day to day for pve and pvp. So NLB was never and issue, my sniper rifle was some nonspecial purple just had good reload speed.