Burned out earlier than ever some thoughts

I don't feel like this game is worth the 20+ hour tax that is the SLOG that the campaign on a fresh account as someone whose played many characters through it already. The reward at endgame just isn't there and while its better than 0.1 systems/implementation wise, it still has the problem of pacing that 0.1 had where by the time you eventually do get to pinnacle bosses etc. you are so overpowered its not even really a challenge, and now im seeing setting up atlas, and league mechanic nodes is just as bad as redoing the campaign, but at least you only do that once a league.


1. IIR has to be decoupled from currency drops like PoE1
IIR isn't some niche stat that certain builds use for bossing or group play etc. like in PoE1, its a stat just as mandatory as resistances are. Playing without 100-150% IIR is just absolute CBT. Having to get IIR on gear also puts more pressure on gear, coupled with the absurd attribute requirements, and the fact that chaos resistance is mandatory and not a luxury endgame stat like it is in poe1 means that you gotta squeeze as much stats out of gear as possible, in a game that has significantly less loot than 1, and its just not great. I'd go even as far to say decouple the chance for tiered gear from IIR.

2. Campaign needs buffs to loot to make fresh start experience not hell for players that wont, or don't know how to trade.
Playing self imposed SSF on a fresh account the campaign can be like 2-3x harder than someone with good RNG or is willing to use the trade site. Its not about monster HP or damage, its just the fact you have tons of people running around with no res, absolute shit weapons and the game is just impossibly hard for them.

Bring back vendor recipes for phys% weapons and + to gem level caster weapons that we had in PoE1 or bring something similar to this. Make unique mobs drop guaranteed 1 rare item on top of their loot table so when someone has to stop and grind a zone out in acts for power it doesn't feel like a helpless situation, and it might even avoid that problem altogether. Make the act bosses drop a unique item guaranteed the first time you kill them, make them actually feel rewarding at least somewhat, how many dad gamers spend like 30 minutes on Geonor to get 400 gold and 2 blue items?

3. Character speed needs to increase
Half the playerbase is currently playing chicken jockey lightning spear, and its not because its a 1 button clear build, but because its moves so much faster than anything else atm, you get like 20% ms from being in that part of the tree and using dex jewels, you never get slowed from attack animations. People are going to get a reality check when it gets nerfed, or they play something else.

All builds should probably feel about as good to play as that build does now, im not saying poe1 levels of zoom, but we are not going to have any build diversity if a few builds/classes move 30%+ faster than the other builds nothing else matters in a game about clearing maps as fast as possible to generate wealth.

4. League mechanics/pinnacle bosses should be made significantly easier to access early on and remove the dilemma new players/casuals have with the invitation system at least early on.
Right now except for possibly expedition it costs about 1 div for invites to get your +2 points in each tree, for a lot of players esp this early in the league wasting a div on 2 pts and drops that wont cover 10% the cost of entry is kinda a no brainer in what you should do early on (sell and buy power via gear upgrades).

And even without that, I really only found a single king of mists invitation, enough shards for 1.5 breach stones, and never found an Olroth, by the time I got to t15 maps and the +0 version of these bosses were an absolute stomp. Players should be getting into this content earlier. Maybe make quest versions of these bosses to get your first 2 or 4 points so players can dip their toes in these mechanics before spending 100 hours on a character.

5. Atlas tree feels incredibly weak
I tried like half a dozen different trees when I got to 40/40, none of them felt like they did anything, and if you disabled all the points randomly in peoples maps they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference most times. Investing in rogue exiles makes them appear once every like 10 maps instead of 20-30, to a similar but not so significant degree the rest of the mechanics felt like this. The power of the atlas tree needs to be significantly buffed, and it needs to feel like you are actually changing how things play in your maps to a noticeable degree.

6. Loot is just ruthless 2.0
The main reason people play ARPG is for loot, and building characters around it. I played ruthless when it came out, its not as bad, but its pretty damn close. Loot in this game does not at any point feel good until you have invested an incredible amount of time and currency into your character to have a good baseline of stats + 100-150% IIR, and are running t15s with enough sustain to only be running maps with extra qaunt/rarity on top of that.

7. Add IIR/Quant as the scalable for negative mods on maps instead of waystone drop rate or add it on top.