With nearly 600 hours of playtime across two characters, here's my experience so far:

For context, my first character was a full Strength Titan with heavy armor. I finished him at around level 95 with approximately 20k armor, 90% fire resistance, 80% lightning and cold resistance, about 5.5k life, and enough damage to one-shot Arbiter 2.

My second character is an Amazon, built as a mix of armor and evasion. She’s currently level 90 with 50% armor mitigation, 62% evasion, Acrobatics, 63% block chance, and around 2.3k life. It’s a bleed build, though I haven’t tested her against the pinnacle bosses yet. I expect the early tiers to be manageable, though without the one-shot potential of the Titan.

Even though my Warrior had a higher investment in gear and passive points (with key items like Against the Darkness having been nerfed in patch 0.2 — the % life leech stat was crucial for the build), I still feel that the Amazon offers a better sense of safety while mapping. This clearly shows the current issue with armor and life scaling in the game.

My point is that it's very complex to invest heavily in armor for such low defensive returns. The most frustrating part is reaching the final boss with a character that has well-above-average defenses and still getting one-shot by abilities that occur multiple times in quick succession.

I understand the fight is meant to be difficult and potentially long, but with the Warrior’s reduced movement speed due to heavy armor, it becomes even harder to dodge incoming attacks. And since investing in defense doesn’t offer any real advantage — because you still die in one hit anyway — the best strategy ends up being to go full damage and try to kill the boss before it kills you. That feels like the opposite of what the developers intended, since all bosses have really fun mechanics. But if the only way to survive is to not give the boss time to use those abilities, it discourages defensive builds and careful play.
So in my opinion, defenses need to be more viable to make the investment in them feel worthwhile. I haven’t tested Energy Shield yet.

Endgame has become much more engaging with the additions from the latest patch, but there’s still a lack of a rewarding feeling in some mechanics (like Expedition, Rogue Exiles, and Wisp), and inconsistency in others (such as Breach and Ritual). In Breach, the monster density and event duration vary a lot, making it only a good mechanic on some maps. As for Ritual, the "Chaos Plant" modifier is extremely dangerous without providing rewards that justify the risk — even with more altars, it's still hard to get anything valuable.

Unique maps are fun but still feel too rare. I’d love to have more opportunities to experience them — maybe something in the Atlas could help increase their appearance rate?

Item creation and item acquisition in general:
Even though I love the trading system and the whole player-driven market aspect of the game, I find the current crafting system very limited, especially when it comes to improving gear without relying on the market — which becomes even more apparent in endgame.

I really like the concept of crafting omens and essences, but I believe it would be amazing to combine these two mechanics — for example, using an omen alongside an essence to guarantee a prefix with a specific tag. I also think it would be interesting to have an item that could upgrade the tier of modifiers, even if only up to a certain level — maybe keeping the highest tiers as pure RNG, but allowing for a more consistent path to creating mid-tier items.

The recombinator is an interesting mechanic, but the odds still feel too low for it to be a truly viable option — especially when trying to transfer two modifiers, it should feel a bit easier or more reliable.

I understand the idea is to keep crafting RNG-based, but this approach works better for trade leagues. In Solo Self-Found, I can't see myself playing, as it would feel frustrating not being able to improve gear consistently. I'd love to engage more with the game's crafting system, but right now it feels too inconsistent and too costly for too little return — making trading a far more attractive option.

Even though this post focuses more on the negative aspects of my experience, I want to make it clear that I absolutely love this game — that’s why I’ve already spent over 600 hours playing it and took the time to write this detailed feedback.

I really enjoyed many of the changes brought by the latest patch, and I appreciate how quickly the team responded to important balance issues. I truly hope this continues, and that my feedback can help improve the game even further. I genuinely believe this game has the potential to become a masterpiece, and I also believe the development team is more than capable of making that happen.

I'm available and looking forward to seeing the upcoming improvements!

Thank you for your attention! If there's a better place for my feedback to be heard, please let me know — I’d be happy to fill out a survey or answer questions about my experience to help the game continue to grow and evolve.