My experience/thoughts on the game in it's current form

Instead of just complaining to friends on discord, thought i'd throw my thoughts into the pile.
Cheers for the game GGG, keen to see how it progresses.

Past exp:
4k+ hours in PoE1 at medium level(no mirror level build, but I now like to get 40/40 challenges done)
~100hrs in PoE2 at low level(getting to high maps but never much deeper, mostly boredom drove me to quit)

General
I like the idea of a cool souls-like ARPG with POE style loot and crafting but right now this just feels like a slow movement speed PoE1 where everyone and everything just oneshots each other WAY too quickly. the curve of damage from both mobs and the player skyrockets INSTANTLY after killing the tutorial boss.

That boss is kinda fun, dodging about, chunking 1/20th of his hp every attack. and his melee auto's/add damage feels fair and i'm getting mobbed but not one shot. As soon as he's dead and im in next zone if I get surrounded by a pack of mobs, I'm dead. Already it's teaching people offence is BY FAR the best defence. So why bother trying to make own build just follow w/e fubgun is playing because he's surely going to play some offscreen cringe build that oneshots everything 3 screens away.

General - Map Size - Act Sizes
This is a bit common sentiment on reddit and whatnot but I have to echo this. The maps are WAY TOO BIG. With how slow our characters are it makes the campaign and mapping a DAMN SLOG. I'd be totally fine with maps/campaign if these maps were ATLEAST linear, But no theres 20 damn deadends and areas with useless magic/common chests... Like please, Cut down on this. Checkpoints are a terrible bandaid

General - Maps only having x amount of tries based on how many mods it has
This sucks completely, please remove it. Feeling like I totally wasted a T15+ map with 6 mods because I looked away for one second and died to some random detonate dead effect or some offscreen missile one shotting me sucks. Sure I should be locked in but I also don't want this ... kind of FOMO? maybe not right word but it feels OVERLY stressful to open these maps, and so frustrating to die to lag/not paying attention/knowledge check and losing out on currency. I totally get this design though, in PoE1 I'd get to the point where I want to test out my build on a full 100% deli T16.5/T17 Map with some rippy/risky scarab combos. and realizing I cant do those maps sucks, but it doesn't feel so bad like in PoE2 where I die once and maps over. PoE1 I can try a few times to actually check if its doable and only lose exp for trying.

Ascendancy Trials
Like the maps above, These feel overly stressful and just plain horrible to playthrough. PLEASE not everyone likes sanctum or cares to buy good idols to make it bearable. Same with trial of chaos, it sucks. WAY TOO MANY BUILD CRIPPLING MODS ARE ABLE TO SPAWN WAY TOO EARLY. I tried 2-3 times on the first trial of chaos and atleast of them had 3 options of build crippling debuffs for my first choice. Killing the run before it started. Horrible. Again in PoE1 I get the stress from doing lab, sucks dying at the end or losing a run to something out of my control(lag - very rare) but it happens. I think actually since there's no cost to entry on the early labs is what makes it SO MUCH less stressful. It's just overly less stressful in general and I don't really know why. Sanctum debuffs just feel SO crippling, For example this league, no joke/exaggeration my first choices on the first 3 doors of Sanctum was:
Player isn't always transported to room they pick
Cannot see whats in rooms
Player has no Energy Shield
Like... Just terrible. Run dead on first door. and Ultimatum debuffs are also just WAY TOO crippling.

General - Defensives - Armour
Armour sucks - I went hybrid Armour/ES this league with my wyvern, as is kinda intended with the new tree nodes and the position druid is on the tree. I'd have ~70% armour(on character sheet) + Maxed Res and get turbo chunked by a pack of random white mobs in T1-9 maps. How can it be so weak? I took all of the Armour -> Elemental damage and the shaman -Elemental Damage taken nodes/Adaptability and I just died to nothing sometimes. It sucked.

General - Passive tree - Charges
Passive tree feels so weak right now, defensive nodes that aren't ES just sucks. No support for generating charges sucks(except 1 node in witch area, which isn't general %chance to generate charge. Passive tree feels like there just too many downsides. Feels like way too much overcooking with making something strong but giving it a downside to compensate. Remove the downsides, it sucks to have to build around. Just generating charges in general sucks. For Wyvern it felt OK but it was still rough on boss fights sometimes when they didn't kill my lingering illusions, and there are no adds to devour(PLEASE ADD ADDS TO BOSS FIGHTS? Like... wth?)

Damage creep
Damage everywhere feels too high in general - Why design boss fights with interesting and fun mechanics when I(and everyone else let's be fair) oneshot bosses. Tone it down. I want to dodge and do the bosses mechanics.

Wyvern Specific - My experience with Homebrewed Wyvern build this league
Early wyvern abilities sucked, specifically Rolling Magma. I was fully specced into fire/ignite damage with relevant supports and it did no damage. Also the fact it can miss targets when they are close to you is terrible, I was down for the fantasy of bombarding mobs from afar with big fire damage and igniting them. but no they just bum rushed me into melee range I couldn't hit them with my Rolling Magmas. Took me too long to just realize I have to use the lightning empowered auto attack(Rake)... Having my strongest ability be my auto attack(Rake) is lame design in general.

Early-Mid maps(1-10) with Oil Barrage + Lingering Illusions for powercharges just oneshot bosses... disgusting.
Just Rake and Devour and Oil Barrage for whole map

Late maps(12+) with Oil Barrage + Lingering Illusions for powercharges just oneshot bosses... disgusting.

Loot / "Crafting"
Loot feels bad. I LIKE the idea of no scours so every base feels impactful but its just not hitting right. Everything is worthless, I'd self craft a pretty decent item with Perfect Transmute + Perfect Augment + Essence -> Greater Exalts/Omens and i'd price check it at end thinking the craft was pretty good and it'd be worth an exalt and never sell. Which means people are crafting gg items way too quick and have too much of an advantage with the advanced omen + abyss crafting they can do.

Outro
Overall, feels game is just in a weird direction right now. it wants to be PoE2 but right now its just PoE1 with much MUCH slower movespeed, less league mechanics, less crafting options(or maybe more, but I need an inventory full of expensive omens), less build options(Feels like i need to follow some cringe meta build to even have fun... Super lame). Definitely think the game has SO much potential and i'm definitely not out for good. and I'll keep coming back each new release to give it a go/watch streamers if i don't play myself. Hopeful. Lets go GGG. ty.