If loot wasn't dogwater 90% of complaints wouldn't be here

I agree with this. The core game is good, I am not a fan of the souls direction. But arpg's are loot hunting games. If there is no loot there is no reason to play.

I would never play through PoE 2 a second time. Just thinking about playing a season every 3 months. That would be a punishment seriously.

The game is 100% dogwater so improving loot won't fix it.
It's not Path of Elden Souls. its fucking POE.
Nobody is going to play the game in this state beyond 1 or 2 playthoughs.

Loot is my biggest gripe so far. There needs to be more deterministic ways to get upgrades through bosses or crafting. I feel like i only get an upgrade after every 2 to 3 hours and it isnt even anything special, its just 2 or three affixes that actually apply to my build. I dont mind grinding but theres not even any gear source to grind.
Level 43.

well said

Loot seems to be better out of chests and crap on the ground than it is from monsters. If we had alch orbs that might help. Seems the strategy now is find a base > trans a bad affix > aug a bad affix > regal a bad affix

And if most abilities actually scaled into maps. The base dmg of most spells are so atrociously low that they are completely unusable in maps right now.

As a sorceress, I am literally forced to run around and spam Firewall rank 1 to proc cast on ignite so that I can use my only spell that does any dmg called COMET. There is also cast on crit, but I can't get enough of it without sacrificing too much defense (energy shield), so now I am stuck spamming fire wall rank 1. Spells like spark, lightning ball, arc, fire storm, fireball, etc, they do no dmg. The lightning spells do so little dmg that they don't even trigger shock most of the time.

If I had some gear, maybe I could go archmage to scale the base dmg of abilities, but I don't see how I would ever get the gear required in the current state of the game.

They understand that if they increase the drop rates, you’ll realize how little there is to do in the game since they removed 95% of the content, replacing it with “epic” boss fights. What will you do after completing the campaign? Search the ground for Chaos Orbs and throw them at random items, hoping for a lucky roll. Truly an epic endgame.