Is it just me or does loot suck?

TL;DR: from lvl 1 to 60 I've so far found 1 item (twice) which was useful. Other then that I was forced to either trade or use crappy low level gear.

I'm a lvl 60 sorc in act 3 cruel and I find the loot I've found between lvl 1 and 60 to be utterly underwhelming.

The best thing I found twice was a wand with +3 on spells (which I'm ofc very happy with), but.. that's it. I have two items which I got from the trade site simply cause I got stuck way back in act 3 normal with my sucky gear.

Other then those I just mentioned, all gear I am using is between lvl 8 and 37 with the average lvl being somewhere around 20 I recon. Just about everything I find is utterly useless or not meant for my class.

I don't know if this is meant to incentivize you to trade your chaos orbs away along the way or w/e but it feels anything but rewarding. If you cannot upgrade an item within 30-50 levels with something you find, then loot may as well not exist at all.

I'm aware there may be a few items which with some luck I might be able to trade away and then use the currency to get something useful, but part of the loot I may want to keep for future alts. Not to mention that trading now feels pointless while leveling up to this point didn't take very long and I'm guessing I'll need every chaos orb I can get once I get into the endgame.

ps: at some point I also tried a bit of % increase item find (20 or so I believe), but that didn't have all that much impact either.

Mostly just you.
If you don't collect stuff, disenchant and craft some stuff to try and see if you get an upgrade, then you're limiting yourself to either drops or trade.

I suggest you to watch SSF and see how people progress to understand a bit.

If you expect good rare items to just drop, you pick them up and equip them, you are doing it wrong.

After a level up the vendors restock their shops, check them for useful bases. Check blue items, of the base types you need, for two good affixes and if found, try to craft on them (Regal, if third good stat maybe even Exalt). Disenchant items you do not need to get more crafting materials. When you have good items use the sockets/runes.

Worked well for me.

Also, later in the game good items will be "easier" to obtain then in lower level regions. Due to the item tiers where higher item tiers remove lower tier affixes from the affix pool.

Edit:
If you have one or two item slots that are really far behind, it may even be helpful to edit the lootfilter to highlight good white bases for these slots and pick them all up as well. And then Transmute/Augment them to hope for two good affixes. Or as a last ditch effort maybe even gamble. Although gambling did not really help me. I personally only got one useful magic base to further craft on.

just you

I do remember it took me until act 2 normal to see an item with lightning resist on it.
It would have been nice if GGG had added a low level crafting orb that you know you won't be able to use in the late game, so you feel more free to just use them early on.
I've resigned myself to wearing mostly blues. That said, the game feels great. Clunky and at times buggy, but great.
I should have just started in SSF, now that I think about it.

You are tying yourself up and complaining about the game. You do have the low level currency as regals orbs to upgrade those blues, have essences to start from a base white item near your level with a given stat you want.

NPCs sell white, blue and sometime yellow items too. This is a shift from purely loot dropping strategy of other games, but you have many avenues to pursue for better gear.