My Personal Feedback on Path of Exile 2 early access version 0.4.0

Hi GGG! I wanted to start off with the most positive things I wanted to say to hopefully set the right mood: this has been by far the best league since launch for me! I absolutely love Path of Exile 2 and I look forward to the game continuing to get better as early access progresses and you continue to tirelessly improve the game's balance. I'll admit - and you can probably tell from previous posts of mine - that it was touch and go for a while because this game's difficulty can be so excessive in late game, but things seem to gradually be getting better. That being said, I'll get into the bulk of the feedback now.

Firstly, I felt like the league mechanic had a major advantage relative to previous league mechanics: the fact that the "above ground" portion of the mechanic was quite manageable and fun. That was actually the best part for me - the fact that I could skip the whole "underground," hard part of the mechanic pretty easily when I didn't want to engage with it. With the wisps and Abyss, so often I would get very frustrated with the mechanics blocking my ability to progress because they would so regularly be placed in the way of things I wanted to do and prevent me from doing those things (by "things I wanted to do," I'm referring to things like map completion objectives for example). The wisps and Abyss were also so overpowered that they would almost always result in my character getting killed which meant that I wanted to avoid them at all costs. I'll admit that I still felt like there were parts of this league mechanic that are also brokenly difficult such as the Molten Lava and Flame Warden bosses (I hope I used the right descriptors for those bosses since I can't remember their names off the top of my head) who are always way too overpowered - but at least I can avoid placing those rooms in my temple and keep it manageable that way.

So that was my feedback on the league mechanic, but I still have much more to share. I want to re-iterate what I said in 0.3.0 - I hate bosses in this game and your choice to make bosses mandatory in every map almost led me to give up the game altogether. I still dread having to fight the boss in every map and I really wish you'd consider some way of making the bosses optional for those who want to fight them every map but not required for those who prefer not to engage with the bosses. For me, I tend to just repeatedly play the "trial of the sekhemas" in endgame since it's the only endgame content that I can reliably complete without getting killed all the time, but even there, I only complete the first three levels - up through the scorpion boss - and trade the "test of time" baryas for currency since the fourth level boss is too much for me.

I feel like I should recognize here that I know there are builds out there that can do all the content very reliably, but a big part of the fun in Path of Exile 2 for me is making my own build, and so far I can't seem to find a way to scale both my defensive stats to avoid one-shots and my damage to keep up with dps check bosses like Atziri. No matter what I try, I can never figure out how to meet those two requirements simultaneously - at best I may be able to meet the dps check, but still get one-shot all the time by enemies and bosses, or get really tanky and fail the dps check bosses. At the time of writing this, I have 1,505 hours played in Steam for Path of Exile 2 - so it's not for lack of trying. Also, while I'm on the topic of one-shots, please nerf enemy slams - no matter whether it's a boss or a regular enemy, slams always one-shot me and I've tried all the tricks I could find to scale health and defenses. Another thing in need of serious nerfs is AOE on bosses which are often way too large and broken. A good example of this is the flame warden boss in the temple league mechanic or in towers since he can outright one-shot slam me through a wall. It doesn't matter what terrain is in between me and him, the AOE will kill me even when it makes no sense. Also, as far as just flat dps, most of the bosses have much too high dps right now which is why people so often are forced to scale as much dps as possible to kill them before they kill us.

Finally, I had a few minor pieces of feedback to share too. I still struggle with understanding some of the stat reporting in the game. I'm often left wondering if some things are just bugs or if they are intended. To give some examples - the support gem that allows the supported skill to scale dps with projectile speed includes a flat 40% projectile speed increase, but when I equip it, my skill's dps never changes. My understanding is that, since my dps should scale with projectile speed and I get a flat 40% increased projectile speed, I should also get a 40% increase to damage - but I get no change to damage whatsoever. Another example is the unique gloves that allow you to penetrate enemy elemental resistances to -50% - even if I get my elemental penetration to 143% for both lightning and cold, I don't see any change to my dps in my skills menu. Now, I understand that the calculation may simply be unable to recognize the impact of that much penetration because it will vary based on the specific resistances of the enemies I'm facing, but it makes it very difficult to make calculated decisions when so much of the impact is unclear and hard to gauge. Another thing I'd love to see is some sort of color adjustment for enemy abilities and player abilities - what I mean by that is - with the headhunter for example - it can often be very difficult to discern whether an ability is my own or that of an enemy. Another example is that, when I play with friends, I often can't tell the difference between my abilities and theirs in the "visual noise" of the fight. It would really help if we could assign separate colors to each player and to the enemies - that way, while the graphics would still be the same - the color adjustment would allow me to distinguish the origins of each effect on screen more easily.

Well! I'm sorry for the really long post, but I had a lot to share. I hope you know that I really love this game and I'm not trying to be negative when I provide this feedback. I'm only providing the feedback because I see just how much potential is here and I'd love to see Path of Exile 2 get better and better going forward. I wish you all the best and keep up the good work!