rate the endgame from 1 to 10

I'll give it a 5. It had a potential for 9 but I'm deducting points for:
- Choice of mechanics (particularly Delirium, Ritual, Breach, Beyond) is IMO unsuitable in current iteration. (-2)
- No precursor tablets for bossing. Let me do more of what I want. (-1)
- Janky atlas navigation. I fear it was a "only good on paper" idea but maybe it can be salvaged through visual overhaul. (-1)

I love the one life rule. I love the tactical, involved combat style. (I hope I don't change my mind in a few tiers when my damage falls off.)

I would rate it 4/10

Ascension system is just plain horrible and would put the game at a 0 for me if it wasn´t for the fun boss fights (except for some bugs).

Graphics are nice, even if they could improve or highlight some stuff better when it blends in with the background and you should avoid it. The skills are kind of fun even if I have not played a warrior/slammer yet and that actually looks awful.

Mapping is fun from T1 to T17, it feels good and the game is also surprisingly well balanced for SSF and HC, still not counting some bugged oneshots or the trials that again would bring the game to a 0.

Gearing is fun and even though I enjoy a new crafting system I think this could be improved somewhat.

More endgame content, reworked ascension system and better class/skill balance would put the game up to a 9-10/10 for me.

ACT I - Pretty good, 9/10
ACT II - Maps getting to large already, 6/10
ACT III - Just feels terrible to play, 4/10
Maps - Honestly I rather make new characters and go through the campaign again then play maps right now. 1/10

Sanctum - Look very interesting to play, just don't have a build that feels good for it. 7/10
Ultimatum - Yeah, this one got worse. Who ever liked escort missions? 4/10

3

I wish there was a faster way to uncover the fog of war than there is currently and for the biomes of nodes to be explicitly stated in their descriptions. One death per map is just not fun during the process of leveling my character. I rarely use more than 2 portals per map as I only leave if my inventory is full or some uber rippy rares left me without flask charges. Waystone sustain is very swingy; sometimes I'm swimming in waystones of a tier that gives me good xp, sometimes I'm in the trenches getting nothing done. Loot also feels quite inconsistent even when I'm using overlapping towers on T13-T15 maps.

Breach, Delirium and Ritual are all so rippy I feel as if they encourage people to build PoE1 builds rather than PoE2 builds. Same with Trial 4, particularly the Sekhema / Sanctum nonsense. If I'd made a Deadeye instead of a Witch Hunter I genuinely think I'd have had an exponentially easier time acquiring power to clear those pieces of content.

4/10

Way too much jank, missing way too many features that I'd like to see included.

- The citadels quest is total dog shit, it wasn't until level 92 that I found 1 of 3. There's no markers, nowhere to even slightly hint at their location on the map, and when you do find them they look the same as any other tile on the map, not the expected "big fortification" that catches your eye. Also, beating it was really easy, no different than clearing any other map.

- You cannot zoom out on the atlas so you can more easily find locations, or pick up a direction that you left off before, it's extremely tedious navigating it. We need a zoom-out overview of the atlas, and even a way to place pins and markers, for example highlight all locations with corruption, or map bosses, etc. We need this because the atlas is really freaking huge.

- A missing feature unlocked for me "preferred map slot unlocked", just to find out that there's no way to actually use this.

- I'd rather run my nutsack across a cheese grater than run another vaal forge.

- I'd prefer to be able to run the layouts I like back to back if that's what suits me, even if it's separate from the atlas.

I'm not sure what has happened but some of the maps are so stuttery and I'm being thrown all over the map and freezing, so much so I don't want to play them anymore. I've only done 10 tier ones and 10 tier twos.

I've even decided I would try a new toon which I told myself I wouldn't do as it was so bloody painful the first time to create one.

We need checkpoints on the map as they are too frigging big and if you miss a path you're wasting so much time going back, even though I start at one edge and go around I still seem to be missing paths.

I dislike the one portal experience immensely.

I haven't tried ascendency 3 and let alone 4, as again so painful with disconnects the first run through and don't get me started on the honour system for first ascendency. GGG are really masochistic and in some way are losing my respect and love. I get quite upset when I start writing about how I feel and may quit both POEs.

The last time I got EA was when they went from repeating act 1-3 in all 3 modes and we could try doing act 4-10. I had a break as my friends didn't have EA and ended up not coming back for years playing with my friends and every time I tried to return for a league I didn't understand what was going on as the game had changed so much. Which is why I am trying to persevere here but its a struggle - we want to play and have fun!

So far the only thing i utterly hate is the ascendency trails, it is so poisnous so i start to give up playing. :/

While I love the very idea of Atlas, I'm not sure how I feel about POE2 version. Endless.. in all directions? It feels MEH. In POE1 I liked that you have to move somewhere, the goal was tangible. It was there. And here it feels like mindless grind from map 1 with some random results. Maybe smth will appear, maybe not. Just keep grinding all those locations over and over. I feel nothing while doing that. The only motivation I have to go on is to find bioms I haven't seen yet.

Again, would like to see more strategy elements on Atlas. Smth in line with PoE1 shaper vs elder battles, where I could interfere the global fight. It was quite interesting. And getting 100500 parts of smth to have a key to try a pinnacle boss isn't smth I want to spend my time on.

0.

I reached maps. Maps are the same as always. Grind Atlas, get loot. There's nothing more to it, and it got boring in the first single map since I realized why I dreaded POE1 - the endless monotone map grinding bullshit.

The storyline mode is so fun as you constantly have to do something and climb. But after a certain level, you run maps over and over in hopes of not dying and losing progress.

Summoner life was super easy too, super safe, super easy. But the mapping is just the same blandness.

This made me realize that POE 2 tries to be different with all the added things and all the changed system, but the same issue as POE 1 remains, once you reach endgame, its the eternal brainrot of just doing maps and getting bored to hell and back in a single hour.

I might just start a new char to start from scratch, but I'm not going to grind out maps lol, those days are long over.

3

Not being able to target farm league mechanics is a very bad design, especially when they are locked behind tablets that have no way of dropping with mechanics that you actually want to do, then connecting them to Tower's nobody likes doing.

Terrible map sustain if you actually are doing league mechanics , instead of bossing.

Monster levels seem to cap out at level 79 unless your fucking with the Tower's then you get like +1 monster level like great but I want to kill shit that's near my level, but delve doesn't exist right now but light radius on gear does, so one can only hope.
I'm constantly buying maps off trade site, and I have Every node for waystones on my Atlas tree

I'm not enjoying it