Thoughts playing through Campaign as a Warrior

Early Access Feedback as a Warrior currently in Act 3 (normal).

First I will say that I like the change in direction. I stopped playing PoE several years ago because too many builds felt identical to play as the focus shifted to theorycrafting builds that could break open the mechanics of the game for exponential bonuses. Figuratively most PoE 'players' aren't even engaging with the game at this point aside from a handful thought leaders (streamers) and tinkerers.

I decided to try PoE2 EA to determine what had been done regarding melee as I feel that if GGG can manage to make melee vs. range feel like a reasonable tradeoff, then that bode well for the rest of the design.

This EA build is a good deal closer to making my wishes a reality than PoE one ever did or could. Range abilities still have some inherent advantages but the environments and enemies punish all inattentive players. If I had any broad advice it would be to lean into this more and encourage engagement with the environments and enemies from players.

Some Specific NitPicks.

Transmute/Augmentation/Artificer's/Regals are too rare. Transmute and Augmentations are especially still to rare in early Acts. Regals feel close to correct but could be slightly more common after Act 3. Aritficer's feel almost completely absent.

Crafting on items needs a proper introduction in Act 1. It should probably come with a big pile of Transmute and Augmentation Orbs to encourage the player to actually use them. If crafting could start working early, then you may get fewer complaints about 'item drops'.

Gold needs numerical tuning. Vendors in Act 1 are selling items with more gold than you can make in Act 1, and that's if you're not spending it on anything else. A 4000 gold random amulet doesn't make sense given the current gold numbers generated in Act 1.

Respecs feel appropriately priced in Acts 1 and 2 but start to trend vertical ~Act 3. The passive tree has much less power per node than PoE and we no longer get Respec points from quests. It is safe to give players cheap respecs while levelling at least.

A vendor needs to sell Uncut Gems of various levels; at least by the time you complete an Act. For instance, if I want to try a level 1 elemental skill I would either need to mule one over or farm it in Act 1.

Character's should probably all have some base Spirit innately, and then I would grant redistribute Spirit quest rewards more evenly throughout the campaign. As a Warrior I stopped levelling my Herald of Ash because it needed 34 Spirit near the start of Act 2. I can't do anything with it until mid-way or more through Act 3.

Bossing feels like a slog after awhile. Especially from mid Act through mid Act 2. This may be somewhat down to my class choice. But most boss fights for Warrior are EQ and ShockWave Totem for a small amount of passive damage. Wait for an opening then auto-attack 1-3 times, then strafe/dodge, repeat. This is until you get Perfect Strike and your auto-attack window becomes a Perfect Strike window. Minor bosses are interesting until you learn this at which point their large health pools become busywork. The Act 1 and Act 2 final boss fights were both quite fun. Perhaps reserve the big health pools for fights that have a proportionate amount of design put into them. Some bosses _should_ feel easy. This gives more distinction to the bosses that are actually a challenge.

Enemies still fall into the trap of being more dangerous the closer you get to them. Not all mobs or bosses should feel this way. There ought to be instances where playing at range feels like a disadvantage. Currently melee skills encourage you to maintain a distance from or orientation to enemies to get the most out of them. Ranged Attack skills should go in a similar direction. Then you will be able to design bosses that punish the over reliance on specific abilities based on where you can _expect_ the player to want to be.

Conclusion

Overall really enjoying (slowly!) finishing the campaign. Don't let the negativity on the forums or reddit get you down. There are definitely some flaws with the game but many PoE players have gotten used to barely needing to pay attention to what is happening on screen and are grumbling that what you made wasn't their favorite clicker with a graphical update. But that just means you made something of actual artistic merit.