Feedback for 0.3 / Rise of the Abyssal League

My feedback on the league, in short note / bullet list form. Background: my first PoE2 league, PoE1 player since Delirium league. Played Merc / Tactician first with Fire Grenade Mortar / Explosive Shot (Palsteron) then later Cluster Grenade Mortar (Lazy Exile) deep into Endgame 40/40, 10/10 and 8/8 for Ritual and Expedition. Also played a Ranger through Act 1 with my spouse for the free weekend.

Major Things

No Controller with KB/M Support - Honestly shocked not in the game, given how much feedback was given about this at the reveal with content creators. ARPGs are the RSI genre and I was really looking forward to getting to play PoE like other modern ARPGs with a controller in combat and a mouse in inventory / menus.

This is my #1 request for next league.

Lack of loot - I never used a loot filter until red waystones, there was no need. Almost all Uniques in the game are barely worth the chance shard the disenchant for. Rares are not worth the effort to ID as normal and magic offer better gear due to crafting options.

Atlas tree has little impact - I spec'd into Ritual Omens and Expedition Logbooks and running corrupted T16's I could still go 5 waystones between seeing more than three Omens in ritual (with 2 rerolls) or a logbook. I had essences for a while then tried spirits and never noticed and change in drops, just saw the mechanic a few more times.

Visual Clarity and One Shot Bosses - I'm not against bosses having a telegraphed one shot attack, but it is far overused in PoE2. On top of this visual clarity is really poor for a lot of skills and you cannot see the boss or floor degens, etc. I am hesitant to say the difficulty is too high, but the current engine doesn't not support the current mechanics.

Evasion needs work - I think this is covered well and often, so I'll just note it. I stared pure evasion, then went into armour / evasion hybrid and added a defiance of destiny but even then a white mob could win the rng roll and kill me every now and then. RNG defense is no defense.

Balance / Skill Diversity / Information before launch - I think a big part of the Lightning Deadeye dominance is lack of patch notes before launch and no one could theroycraft starters. While I expect some nerfs please make sure to spend more time on the huge pile of ignored skills, classes, and ascendancies buffing and reworking them.

Minor Things

Improve expedition crafting - no idea why the options are "delete all prefixes" and "add a prefix" but this should match the options (and number of crafts) as PoE 1. As it is, I don't think there is any use.

Use filter in merchant screens - Expedition, Ritual, Shops, etc bring over the PoE1 check box to apply filter.

Show item level for items on the ground - would also like to see rolls on the implicit / stats if holding alt.

Control Click into into market search filters - helpful to price and item

Atlas search - Some way to search waypoints, but not by making them flash or highlight. Instead I'd like to see a box like the bookmarks that list matching waypoints.

Chilled ground - way over tuned, there is far too much ground covered and the effect is way too strong. This was a bricked mod for me not because I couldn't run it but because I couldn't stand to.

Death Penalty - right now an endgame death can wipe out significant time in exp, delete mechanics if it was from a boss, and remove an attempt possibly locking you out of a map. This seems excessive to have all these at once and is pushing to the point of logout macros in softcore.

Skills on gear - I'm not sure why this exists after a rework to make skills not tied to a piece of gear. Skills can already be limited by weapon type equipped so this really isn't adding anything other than a pain point of find upgrades in the campaign before trade is available.

Final note

While I listed issues above, I do want to say i enjoyed PoE2 overall and liked the combat pace, new style atlas exploration, and in game trading. Looking forward to future leagues.

I guess if I have a final bit of feedback is you need to do better advertising that a PoE2 key is included in many PoE1 bundles. I didn't realize a key was included in the Kirac Vault Pass until I decided to buy it last PoE1 league.