One other thing I really, really genuinely hate about 4E (as opposed to just attention-grabbing whining) are magic item dailies. 90% of the equipment in the books are made absolutely useless because of this system. There are no equipment out there that holds up to the magical item dailies of Stone Bands, Salves of Power, Timeless Lockets, that fucking cloak in the AV2 which gives you encounter-long persistent concealment, Battlemaster Spiked Gauntlets, and the Dancing weapon enchantment.
It's really infuriating how badly they fucked this up. If I didn't have a lottery for my game every melee character would be using Frost weaponry (with Siberys Shards), Iron Armbands of Power, Backlash Tattoos, Blackiron/Necrotic Resistance/Vanilla chainmail or heavy armor, vanilla neck slot items, Casque of Tactics/Skull Masks, Frost Gloves, and Boots of Eagerness/Rushing Cleats. Magical item dailies are the big reason why the system sucks so much.
3E sucked for this, too; I think in the DMG a little more than half of the unique magic items were just not worth the price they were asking for. However, in 3E at least most of the equipment they handed out players wouldn't out-and-out
throw away in the trash. I don't think anyone would actually spend money to buy a darkskull or a mattock of the titans but people would still be glad to get it. That's a massive improvement over the 4E system where you introduce anything that's not on the Winner's Tier list of magic item equipment and you get blank stares.
When I say that the vast majority of magical items in the game are worthless, I am not kidding. I mean, 3E was awful, with like half of the magical items in the basic book being worthless, but 4E manages to top that.
So here's a list of the useful items in the PHB. I tried to be as charitable as possible, picking items that were either useful at the time even if they're not now (like Bracers of Mighty Striking) or would be useful in the future (like Eladrin boots). I also included equipment with clear exploits like Soulforged Armor or Vorpal Weapons. Equipment that used to be useful but isn't anymore is marked with an asterisk.
*Angelsteel Armor: Would be worthless if the effect couldn't be applied to AC, which it can be. Since it's a defense.
Black Iron Armor: Necrotic and Fire damage are two of the three most common damage types in the game (missing poison resistance), so this armor is actually really helpful. Especially in epic.
Bloodcut Armor: This armor is pure gold if you're on a one or two-encounter workday. It sucks anus if you are.
*Curseforged Armor: Epic-tier versions of this armor is good depending on how your DM rules things. It's a good armor if the DM reduces the penalty by -1 with each save instead of going straight down to a -1 penalty.
*Dwarven Armor: Great! Surgeless healing. Excellent level 2 and level 7 armor, kind of sucks from then on. Oh, well.
Eladrin Armor: Funnily enough, this armor is practically worthless in the base PHB because the heavy-armor classes (unless you were building a Hammer Dwarflock before Pact Hammers got nerfed) DON'T TELEPORT. But there are various stupid ways to finagle small amounts of teleport in later expansions.
Hydra Armor: You should just pretend that this armor doesn't exist. Even if used 'normally' it's a ridiculous exploit, letting people heal for 250/500 hit points if they get a critical hit. Way to encourage people falling asleep in battle thar.
Soulforged Armor: There are various silly effects that restore hit points to you without using regeneration. If set up properly, such as two clerics wearing this armor while using Stream of Life on each other, this is some 'I win the fucking game forever, biatch' armor.
Trollskin Armor: As a magical item daily, you heal all of your hit points. If you get banged up in one encounter, ambush a foe after waiting for two minutes (healing 100-200 hit points) and then win the batte you heal all of your hit points again. Awesome.
*Dancing Weapon: If you're at super-epic levels (like level 25+) then you need to load up on these things and spam them for each encounter. Yes, you'll be two points of attack behind (and will miss 2/3rds of your attacks if going by the basic book) but it's an extra attack that lasts until the end of the encounter which makes this the most damaging use of your daily in the game.
*Flaming Weapon: Weapon of choice for basic-book only Stunlock Tieflings, because of their dumbass Hellfire Blood feat.
Frost Weapon: Lasting Frost + Wintertouched for the fucking win. Best weapon in the book, took a backseat to Bloodclaw and Reckless--roared back with a vengeance with the release of Gloves of Ice and Siberys Shards--is now king of all of the weapons except for some oddball ones like Staggering and Cunning.
Lightning Weapon: You only want this weapon for one reason. But it's a pretty gigantic reason. You get to abuse the awesome Mark of Storm feat. There's also a really nice PP in the Eberron's Player's Guide which gives characters using lightning/thunder keyworded powers +1 attack/+CON damage to all of their attacks at level 11.
*Vorpal Weapon: Had a pretty trivial infinite damage loop with the Astral Weapon. Now mostly just kind of sucks. Sad.
Symbol of Power: Stackable -2 penalty to saving throws. Would be ridiculously useful except that there are only FOUR divine class powers in the basic *book past level 9 that actually have a (save ends) effect and all of them are ongoing damage/minor d20 roll penalties.
Symbol of Victory: Gives you or an ally an action point when they score a critical hit. Which means that you get an extra action point for winning the encounter. This is actually very useful if you are doing a workday with more than one encounters in it.
*Staff of Power: Extra daily powers are always very nice. Completely subsumed by Salves of Power.
*Bracers of Mighty Striking/Perfect Shot: When going by just the book, this provides a perverse incentive for non-rangers to spam basic attacks over their At-Will powers. Nice going, 4E.
Shield of Deflection: Enormously good magic power, especially the level 22 ability. If you don't have Iron Armbands of Power or if you're something like a Laser Cleric then you get this shit.
Acrobat Boots: Eh, they're practically cheap-as-free after awhile and the minor action thing does come in handy now and again. Might as well ahve it.
Eladrin Boots: See my earlier note on Eladrin chainmail.
*Gauntlets of Destruction: Before we had Strikebacks these were the gold standard of hand slot items. Already REALLY insanely annoying to use in actual play. If you're online, sure, 2d4+whatever becomes 2d3+2+whatever, but why unnecessarily slow the game down in real life?
Gauntlets of the Ram: Essential for the Thunderglaive wizard build.
Helm of Battle: Someone has to bite the bullet and wear this for the team.
Helm of Ghostly Defense: Gives that coveted resist 10 necrotic. But the real prize is the insubstantial as an immediate interrupt. You take half damage for one attack and for the rest of the attacks that round as an encounter power.
Horned Helm: Important factor in the San Diego Supercharger build.
Amulet of Health: Aaaand here's where that missing poison resistance went. Pair this with Black Iron armor and you can breathe a lot easier.
Cloak of Survival: Cold is the fifth-most common damage keyword (fire is the second or third, I'm not sure) and the +enh. bonus to Endurance was very important back in the bad old skill. Not a back neck slot item.
Iron Ring of the Dwarf Lords: These things are A) cheap and B) give out a healing surge. You get these rings unless otherwise noted (for example, you want a Shadow Band), especially if you are spamming Salves of Power.
Ring of Regeneration: Makes Trollhide Armor obsolete. Get back all of my hit points AND a healing surge? Su-weet.
176 items, only 30 of them are any good (I do not count vanilla implements/weapons/neck/armors). This means that 5/6ths of the magic items in the fucking Player's Handbook are completely worthless.
And you know what? The Player's Handbook has the biggest ratio of win/suck out of any book with a substantial equipment list. It's a goddamn gold mine compared to, say, Eberron's Players Guide or the Adventurer's Vault.