I think the river hags "drowned" balls are overtuned and not fun to play against

As a melee fighter, playing against the river hags is a uniquely unpleasant experience. Not only does the hag have two very powerful slows that stack on each other, the ball thing (that also has a powerful slow) will kill you if you stand in its aura for 3(ish) seconds. Just straight up kill you.

I totally get the niche this monster is supposed to fill. It's supposed to be a very dangerous monster that you target first to ensure you don't get trapped and slowed. And when that monster fills that niche I find it enjoyable. However I think the fact that the drowned status effect is an insta kill when you get trapped doesn't feel great to play against at all and can be difficult to play around if you miss the ball in amongst the clutter that is the aoe's the monster can give out. Changing the roll only made this particular monster only marginally less of a problem.

Having a super punishing damage penalty for staying in the balls aura for too long is totally fine in my books, and would work well with the monsters toolkit. I understand you're not supposed to be able to facetank that ability. They're supposed to keep you moving, and to punish you by letting other monsters attack you if you get caught in the maelstrom. But the hag having an ability that can insta kill after 3 seconds, with a kit that can make your movespeed a fraction of what it can be if both skills hit at once, it's all too punishing IMO, especially in Act 3.

I think that's the only monster in the game that I think is genuinely not good to play against in my opinion.

First time I died I had no idea why I died. Second time I died I figured out why, seems that we drown ? By the third time I figured out that's it's seriously busted. An aoe chill zone, plus a tracking chill death ball without it being related to life apparently. Seems a 3 sec one shot because I swear I was full life 0.1 sec before.

Agreed on the busted monster of the game. Especially if the dodge roll is related to move speed, by the time you react, you are already slowed and you can't dodge it anymore, and you can get destroyed because when you are mid air (leap slam), you can't dodge roll (obvious but ... I had deaths where stuff spawned mid travel in the wrong place and you're just dead).

We need space to stop. And currently I'm just leaping around the hags. Which is not fun/very fantasy.

This attack shouldn't be an instant death on a timer, plain and simple.

It can be heavy ramping damage, but that still would allow for defensive countermeasures against it, as well as extra 0.1-0.2 seconds to roll away.

We had an fundamentally different level of power in Path of Exile 1 that essentially made our characters gods compared to PoE2 characters and there was literally never once a single instant death mechanic from any uber pinnacle boss or any other mechanic in the entire game from anything ever. If there had been 100% of the playerbase would have left in 24 hours.

Now we have far weaker characters and suddenly it's ok for us to instantly die to random homing projectiles from white mobs?

Ya know what, fine. I'll accept this actually meme tier ridiculousness as long as GGG sticks Raise Spectre in the game and does not modify the skill in any way from the monster to the Spectre version. It's super easy to create stupidity incarnate when you don't have the balls to let players uno reverse you.