Map Juicing Being Tied to Increased Punishment is Just a Meta-Build Magnet - Nothing More

To juice a map is expensive already. 4-60 exalt? (I'm not sure what the top-tier players are spending, I know mid-tier is around 12 exalt per waystone.)

While playing a build that can do T16 with some danger/challenge involved, if I die, i lose everything I invested + all map mods/tablet investment.

I don't mind being far slower at map clearing than meta builds; but now meta builds are able to do these "difficult maps both safely and 3-5x faster than me...That's just ridiculous. Sure, it felt nice when we first got more than 1 life if I just didn't juice all the way up, but why am I being punished on 2 fronts (if not more) for not playing a meta/game breaking build?

I like the idea GGG, but in practice, it makes every single death a season quit-point for many non-meta build players like myself. This patch it's fine, but every bad patch you're just expediting player count drop by keeping this mechanic in-place. The feeling of danger isn't what you're instilling in people, it's the terror of losing 30-60 minutes worth of currency from a rare-mob 1-tap or pool on the ground that couldn't reasonably be seen. And no, those causes of death aren't the primary problem.

The problem is the punishment for death using a juiced/expensive waystone, it is too much to expect from non-meta build players; we are being asked to invest in the pursuit of decent drops, only to punish ourselves. Play meta or don't interact in a significant way with the waystone crafting system, it's the players choice.

Entire endgame is a meta magnet. You are going to face a LOT of frustration if you are not following the meta, because balance is in terrible state and/or the game is quite overtuned in general.

Sheer existence of +rarity mod on player gear is another gift they give to OP one-button speedclear builds. Because non meta needs to struggle with staying alive, maintaining defenses and using combos to actually do damage (without combo I can't properly kill a white mob) while meta just blasts through everything and has plenty of space to neglect defences for increased magic find.

I didn't even reach T15 yet and I'm already thinking the game looks at me with some kind of disgust for not following meta and punishes me for that every few minutes.