My feedback: Campaign, Trials, Slow vs. fast

Background
I am gaming for 25 years now. My personal greatest hits where: WoW,LoL, Diablo 2, poe 1, various single player RPGs.
I am usually rather quick at learning games and I do not shy away from a challange but I do have limits there. I enjoyed the souls games only up to a certain point.
I love theory crafting and usually when I am playing games I am watching guides, have 10 research tabs open and constantly think about optimizing.

Preface
This is personal feedback. I am just reflecting what my experience is. I am not suggesting that poe 2 should do a) or should be b). I leave the solutions to the pros. After all gamers are usually great at detecting problems but tend to provide rather... hasty solutions.
I am playing a stormweaver archmage. I tried various different skills. I play SSF.

Campaign
The campaign was a blast. The story is done well. The atmosphere is a blast.
Progression is sometimes a little bit rough but I never encountered any great roadblock (aside from act1 endboss initially).
I loved the boss design. Each was unique, each had its own mechanics. They where fun! I enjoyed learning and beating them.
I also loved the length of the campaign.

Trials
The trials where a source of big frustration for me. I initially was looking forward to them as they sounded fun but that turned quickly.
First Sekhema was quite great. It took me two fails, then I understood it and beat it.
Temple of chaos was unbelievable frustrating already in campaign. I was playing arc at that point, which worked well in campaign. The monster density in the temple at that point just overwhelmed my character and switching out skills did not help much. When I finally reached the boss, it oneshot me instantly. And here was my first problem: I could not just learn it. I had to redo the temple before that and then there was suddenly a different boss. I took it down 12 levels later in the end.

It got worth from there. A few bad luck runs depleted my keys and now I noticed, that not even do I have to redo everything over and over to learn the bosses. I also don't have the keys for it.
I decided to quit trials for the time beeing and not get further ascendency points. Big Frustration!

Endgame
I love the meta map you created. There is not to much content yet but that will change in the future and it is so engaging. I would love to have a leaque with some meta game, where you have to defend an area that is attacked, similar to the old eater of world/shaper thing.
Mapping is good old and works. Aside from that I can not give much feedback. I ran my lvl ones and twos, spiked to lvl 5 thats it, see below.

Slow vs Fast
I actually don't like to talk about slow but about methodical. But well it is the "slow vs fast debate". For the bosses you nailed it. The bosses are methodical (not slow) and are a lot of fun.
For the mobs you did not. There are some that feel methodical but most mobs are still running at you with the speed of ferrari on steroids. It is either you can instant kill them or you can take their hits.

This one saddens me because if you fail to correct this, poe 2 will become just as fast as poe 1 without a doubt. I loved poe 1 so no great fear from my side but I think a more methodical alternative would have been great.

Loot
I am playing SSF and I know that you do not balance arround that. But I want to play the game and not farm currency to buy stuff. I want to find and craft stuff.

Loot is miserable. During the campaign it works. You get just enough materials and the shops refresh frequently. So you get upgrades now and then and crafting works since you do not need every affix to be good. Slaming is huge fun btw and beeing able to do it without beeing super rich is great!

In early endgame that is not true anymore. I am rather stuck in white maps and I ran maps for I think close to 10h now without getting any upgrade. The problem is not that my gear is good...
Bases are quite rare, actual drops non existent and the vendors don't refresh anymore.
Doesn't feel rewarding.

Magic Find
Please remove it. I know the ooold debate. I want my power fantasy and I want to optimize character power and nothing else. Just my taste and two cents.

Hard stuck
That is probably the main reason I am writing this post but also the most inconsequential part for the game. I just can't let go yet.

I am playing a stormweaver mom archmage. As I am in SSF I do not have an everlasting gaze and will probably never have one. I love the playstyle with lighting warp and conduit. And I love the mechanics from a theory crafting point of view. It's great fun! When it works...

But I am hardpressed by stuns and freeze is even worse. I get stun locked or freeze locked and die (nearly exclusively to that). My live pool is low, my es pool is in EB. I am not able to scale my stun threshold or my freeze threshold since I can't scale them from mana. I am already using charms for both. I was so happy when I found a belt with two charm slots. But its not enough. There are no further tools available to deal with these anymore. Neither on the tree nor anywhere else.

So I die from time to time. Which is fine for me. Yea dying with an exalt on the screen hurts but that only happend one time.

Today I noticed that I am no longer getting experience. The penalty has risen over what I am getting. Also map sustain is... streched. I peaked to lvl 5 but I am actually back to lvl 1 now. The difficulty of the maps is practically irrelevant the only relevant variable is: are there mobs that freeze me.
Since I don't get any meaningful gear upgrades either, I have no ways to deal with freeze and stun and I have no hopes of getting my ascendency points, I just realized I am hard stuck. Thats rather new to me in any game so I am a tiny bit frustrated ;)

In the end its EA and I am trying to force an archetype here. The right call would probably to rerol. But I don't want to rerol yet and spend so much time to get where I am already. I would also miss the great gameplay of that char.

So despite me thinking that poe 2 is a great game overall (or will be) and despite me having been looking forward to christmas holiday with poe 2 I will temporarily quit.
There are just EA quirks, which frustrate me to much to enjoy the game.

On the bright side I have a lot of free time on my hand the next two weeks. Thats never a bad thing ;)

Looking forward to the next set of ascendency classes and the upcoming trial changes (we all now they are coming ;))