On Death Effects, Area damage/degens, Access to Defense and Map layouts. PoE2

Level 85 Deadeye doing tier 15ish maps. Also have 55 Stormweaver and 41 Titan. My feedback so far.

Area Damage and Ground Degens:

So my main problem with PoE 2 is currently the large area damage and ground degens. The game feels good on more open maps, but when 3 different monster types are casting AoE damage, have an exploding area damage aura, and are leaving ground degens and on death effects in tight, cluttered maps it feels really bad.

I remember when players complained about this in PoE1, as these types of damage dealing effects are unpopular in PoE1 as well. We were told the designers felt it was one of the only ways the monsters could fight back because in PoE1 the monsters are usually insta-killed. In PoE2, this is not the case, however we are still having these annoying damage types thrown at us, now with less tools to deal with them.

That doesn't really make sense to me. Feels like the PoE2 and PoE1 just have had certain aspects of both games mashed together without much thought to the consequences. Which is fine, because we're in early access, but monsters can't be difficult to fight, have huge area damage exploding auras, have on-death effects, leave ground degens, and then also do their attacks and abilities which need to be dealt with.

Playing an evasion based character the area damage is also unavoidable, and there aren't any defense tools I have access to that will mitigate the damage unless I just don't get hit, which I can't do indefinitely.

All of these things combined on top of failing a map when dying a single time feels a bit unfair and very deflating.

Map Layouts:

So first of all, the zones are too large. The layouts either need to be made intuitive and linear to complete a zone or player movement speed needs to be increased. I'm playing a Deadeye with stacked movement speed on tree and it still feels like a slog to complete certain maps.

A compounding factor I mentioned already is the tight, cluttered maps, such as Mire (the treetop layout). I always had a problem with this in PoE1, and I'm guessing it's a bit of an aesthetic and 'feel' decision for the game to have these claustrophobic, tight spaces that add a bit to the horror aspect of the game.

That being said, we now have more skill-based combat gameplay in PoE2 that requires dodging with the dodge roll, but most the times I die, it's not that I fail to dodge roll the incoming attack or ability, it's that I have no space to do it.

Yes, I could just sit back, bait all the monsters to come down a bottleneck after aggroing them, walk backwards to a safe, open area, and then kill them there, but that's slowing the game down even more and is a very boring playstyle.

Feels like I'm playing Classic wow as the tank pulling mobs backwards to the group, not an ARPG.

For an example of what I'm talking about by the way, go watch Ben's last death in HCSSF on his Gas explosion Deadeye build.

Thank you for reading.