Auto targeting...why?

I'm a long time PoE player, with 10k+ hours in the first game...and the switch to PoE2 has been more than a little jarring for this one reason.

The egregious levels of auto targeting make playing a melee class nearly impossible. I thought I'd try out a Monk, as new class, looked fun etc etc...nope.

Oh, you're hitting a rare mob and he's ran to the back of the pack? Welp, guess you're tracking through 20 trash mobs, and now GUARANTEED to be trapped in the horde with no way of getting out.

Placed a Tempest Bell right in front of you to buff your damage on a boss? Nah, the bell is untargetable, so the one time an auto targeter would actually do GOOD, it won't, you shuffle walk right on past it, miss it completely, and wander into some AoE attack you would normally miss.

For the love of Wraeclast, turn off/heavily weaken auto targeting, make 'always attack without moving' an option again...SOMEthing. I can only assume the targeting is so strong to make controller play a little more bearable, but I'm on keyboard and mouse...I know what I want to hit, and where I'm aiming. A little less hand-holding, please?

I am facing the same issue and in some bosses, especially the stone giant where you basically just damage his fists (forgot the name), I place down a bell and my character won't even turn facing the bell cause it is auto targeting the hand. Normally the bell is in AoE range to damage him but I am not allowed to aim my character. It is ridiculous.

Everything was fine in poe1, have almost 6k hours almost melee only on console & this while auto targeting is too much, a controller can be as precise as a mouse with effort, really don't understand why they did this.