POE2 feedback, some issues

Just wanted to share some thoughts/address some issues with the game after a weekend of playing.

I'm loving the game, and I'm astounded with how much love and effort was put into it. It's beautiful. Keep that in mind here.

UI

Gems:

The ui/design for gems needs work. It feels like there's this overarching hand holding theme going on with the UI, and while I've been playing Poe for thousands of hours, and I can see the value of some of the decisions made for new players, a lot of it is to the games detriment.

I dislike that you can't select a gem that you currently can't use. I dislike that you can't even play the preview video to see what it does without the weapon to use it physically equipped. I can see why this was done, but it's frankly insulting and overly tedious. Having to stop what I'm doing, go back to town, equip the item I want to be able to use the gem before I can even see what it does, is unnecessary. Players with experience should have the option to disable this "training wheels" behavior. We shouldn't be restricted from making decisions the game thinks are bad just because assumptions are made that we can't simply acquire the item to use that skill later. It doesn't help that we need a gem to view the gem list, but thankfully they're common enough that it's not a huge issue. Too often I realize that a support gem that would have solved a huge issue for me was burried under "all gems", because it's not listed under what the game thinks I should put on the chosen skill.

limiting the gem info to the gem menu

This wasn't a good call in my opinion. I appreciate the need to clean up the UI and not overwhelm new players with information but we used to just be able to mouse over the skills on our bar to see things like their damage, etc. Now we have to press a button, wait for the gem menu to pop up, find our gem, and expand it to see info that was previously available on hover. This continues with the weird hand-holding theme from the first point and should have been an option, not a forced decision.

The UI is slow. This has been said to death already but the game really grinds to a halt when opening my map or really anything other than my inventory/gem panel. It takes too long for menus to open.

Gameplay

why do we have to click a fountain when entering town, when previously potions auto refilled on entering town? I'm having a hard time understanding why you would ever go back to town and not want your potions filled automatically. Unless there's some tech for builds that relies on potions missing charges, in which case disregard. But if not, they should auto fill.

namelocking doesn't work well. When right beside a boss using things like perfect strike, I almost always have to use attack in place, or I'm definitely missing. It often feels like where the skills aim when you target an enemy isn't tuned very well. As if I right click the boss and my characters aim snaps somewhere slightly off center from where I'm aiming.

attack cancelling is brutal. I'm sure there's some skill expression here I'm missing, but I just wanted to comment on how much of an adjustment it is to not have certain attacks follow through if you click more than once.

Bugs

Kabala, constrictor queen

a bug when she reaches half health where she occasionally just doesn't take damage for a few seconds and her energy shield refills to full. If this is intentional it's not well telegraphed what's happening with her. I have video and can provide it if needed.

the game frequently crashes. I can control my character (I hear sounds when I move/press my skills), but the game is visibly stuck on one frame. It's early access so this is to be expected, just sharing. I noticed it happens when there's a patch, but sometimes it happens just because.

Balance

I don't want to comment too much on balance, as we're all still very much learning the game, but some skills just feel way undertuned. The one that stood out most was resonating shield; it does less damage than basic attack, even with a rare shield with above average defences. There was a missed opportunity to remedy the fact that sources of "increased defences from equipped shield" on the tree don't buff your damage with shield skills. I'm sure this will get better but it really felt like a mistake clicking that skill early compared to some of the other choices.