The core defense and recovery patch was really good

I know GGG copped a lot of backlash around the time this was implemented (I think really largely around Harvest that rolled into this), but I think it's been great.

I've largely moved from playing SC to HC. As a player with moderate experience, very far from a veteran, I was finding it difficult to make defenses work, seemed like the only options at my ability were all out dps or some overpowered block build. Now to me it seems like basically all options are possible Armor, ES, evasion, block, suppression, hybrids and the rest.

Regen and recovery improvement also have helped a lot, I played through this season without logout macro and it was more enjoyable than exiting game when ever chunking, also it forced me to improve and have a better understanding of certain mechanics. I still think a lot of improvements need to be made for the game to exist without logouts, but its pretty close to this being possible.

Information external to the game, for one, still needs improvement. If it not possible to figure it out in game without extensive trial and error, it should be readily available. Not giving probabilities of chancing orbs is one thing, but having things that can instantly delete your character without warning and no way of knowing what happened, so you wont be able to improve in the future, is a major issue.

As an example, I'm playing RF, I want to know what in the game can debuff or completely turn off healing, how can I know this without simply being a veteran or a full time streamer with a hoard of people answering my questions? PoeDB, Lootfilters, Craftofexile, Poeninja, Poetrade, Path of building, Wiki(Not so much any more), PoeLAB, Youtube/twitch etc. are all amazing tools, but you need a large amount of game knowledge to even interact with these. That in itself is part of the charm of the game, but there is a fine line between charm and straight up frustration of not understanding and not being able to actively learn. Debuff icons is another example, seems like something that should be fairly available, perhaps this is in a menu of the game and I'm just not aware of it? Physical damage reduction from armor? The system being complex is great, it makes the game interesting, but if you don't know that armor mitigation drops off as physical hit size increases, and your getting one shot by Izzaro, you look up that he's doing physical damage (If you can find this information) it can be frustrating. Some with armor for mitigation of physical dot, versus elemental resistance against elemental dot. Even just knowing what is the base type of the damage over time you are receiving from any particular source. It can be a great challenge and achievement to overcome, but it can also be just frustrating.

Some more examples: How can I know that 'less' is not the same as 'decreased'. Which modifiers on items are applied globally, and which are local? I want to know if monster damage can chain off skitterbots? How can I figure this out without testing it on Piety or some other minion? Programmers seem to understand this because of collision box or something I dont understand, but as a player it's hard to know. Tempest shield, can elemental damage be reflected back to me? The obvious answer is yes but when you have other damage like reflected damage from molten shell that doesn't reflect back, these questions become a little less obvious for non veterans. Item level, I understand the devs don't want to bombard new players with too much information in a game full of information, but there comes a time when a player is advancing in their knowledge and realize that item requirement is not item level. What is this hidden item level? I'm crafting on the wrong bases? I dont feel wonder that ive found a new game system, but rather frustration that I have been playing the game wrong because of hidden information. How does character level alter the item level of items offered to me by Gwennen and Rog? Some people just want to play the game without knowing this kind of stuff or figure it out themselves, I'm not concerned that I don't know the optimal strategy for haggling with Tujen, but if I'm a new player and I use 100 chance orbs before realizing its not an effective use of chancing orbs for chancing items in most case, it's a little frustrating.

Another example, how can I know a skill is not just terrible. Yes all skill can be fun and niche to play. However, I've heard the devs speak about the problem they have with people going on to PoeNinja and just selecting the top builds. It's kind of necessary to be able to interact with the endgame and new material each league, at least as a non veteran, who doesn't knows what skill to avoid. Don't get me wrong, the balancing is not too bad, all classes are playable, which is better than many other games, skills not too bad either, but if I'm playing glacial hammer, And I get to level 70, and I cant really make it work (Someone can, I can see there is a level 100 this league), It can feel like largely wasted time, more frustrating at being punished for not using a meta build than wonderous for the challenge of battling against non endgame content. Particularly when most new additions to them game are weighted towards the end, and not the beginning where newer players are, and may be stuck for multiple leagues, without searching for meta builds.

The Dev's have made an amazing game and in general they certainly have a greater understating of what is good for the game (Eg. harvest nerf, defense buff, not constantly adding power creep where it can be avoided), there's still a lot of room for improvement, though I suppose when the biggest problem seems to be that people don't have enough time to play everything, it really is an amazing achievement of a game.