D3 has the reputation of being super-complicated because of all the libraries that are based on it, "simplifying" it so that everyone can use it. In the past year I wanted to create pretty unique type of data visualisation, so I dived into D3 and discovered it a makes a lot more sense than I though. Of course, if you only want a regular bar chart, you'll do better with things like C3, nvd3 etc'. But if you want anything a bit special, D3 itself is very powerful and the documentation in pretty good - there's no reason to avoid using it directly.
Definitely looking forward to try the new release.
Definitely looking forward to try the new release.