Some feedback on the endgame after 300 hours

Ive been playing for over 300 hours now.
Im playing a lvl 94 Blood Mage, tested several different builds but currently using fireball, frostwall. Know there are alot of way better builds that can one shot bosses, etc but my feedback on endgame and difficulty is from the perspective of my ascendancy.

Overall I want to say I hugely enjoy the game and while its obviously EA and there are alot of content yet to be added and tweaks to be made I think the base of the game is looking amazing.
Im especially happy with the difficulty trough the campaign all the way to mapping.


Breach:
My favorite league mechanic currently.
Feels both challenging and rewarding, and even tho it takes some time to get a breachstone you can easily see that your progressing and this gets sped up alot by the time you get a few points into your atlas. The end boss for breach also feels very well designed. Challenging but fair mechanics.


Expedition:
Never personally found expedition all that interesting. But its probably the second best mechanic currently. Difficulty and loot drops feel onpoint. I know some people dont like them but i think its very exciting when logbooks drops. The endgame boss also I think is a very good boss. The only thing i feel is off about expedition are the vendors. Maybe others have had better experiences but ive never been able to use them to craft anything good. I mostly just get the "reroll prefixes/suffixes" option spammed so if i finally find an item with good prefixes or suffixes im just forced to skip until i cant anymore.


Ritual:
Ritual I feel as a mechanic is close to being good but it needs some tweaking.
The spawn locations of rituals need to be looked at (this has been pointed out numerous times so wont go on about it).
I also feel like the mechanics of the rituals are too strong. Most of the time the ritual zone is so small that you just cant avoid standing in them. So it just boils down to a gear check if you have enough regen to outlive it which I find boring.
The rewards also currently are extremely boring, havent found any good items, found 1 divine once and maybe 3-4 of the regal/exalt omens. The rarer omens i havent seen once and if i try to look for them in the currency exchange it looks like they dont exist. So its basicly just an extra exalt every now and then. The endgame boss I havent gotten to do because it never drops. And the invitation ususally sells for like 400+ exalts or something crazy so even if i got a lucky drop i would probably just sell it instead of risking doing it.


Delirium:
Very bad mechanic currently I feel.
The speed of the fog moving doesnt really fit too well with almost all of the maps being massive with 8 different paths to go, its also for me very unclear which way the fog is going and feels very inconsistent. Would probably be better if the fog was just covering the entire map but was time based. The annointing of maps/amulets feel fine but the splinters drops are way too low. Ive played for 300+ hours and im currently at 44/300. So here aswell I havent gotten to test the endgame "boss".
Ive also just had one unique boss spawn in my zone and he seamed to not drop anything. Cleared almost the entire map + the boss and i think i got 5 or 6 splinters.


Corruption:
By far the worst and most useless mechanic. Its just incredibly annoying, your doing breach or some other mechanic then you randomly have these super fast demons spawning ontop of you blocking you in while stunning you to death. There is also no reward outside of the +1 to monster level. Here aswell ive only once had the unique boss spawn and he dropped less then the average rare drops.
Was said that each league mechanic should reward some unique way to increase player power, so im assuming this isnt added yet and that later these will drop items to modify corrupted items as in poe1? Which i think will be fine when its added. But i think the demons randomly spawning on you and blocking you in needs to be looked at.


Shrines, essences, strongboxes:
Shrines more or less the same as in poe1 seams fine to me. Strongboxes a big improvement, maybe the mobs could spawn faster sometimes.
Essences i feel are too much of a glass cannon. Its usually a case of me oneshotting them instantly or them killing me with 1 spell. Also the drop rates of greater essences are abyssmal and they might aswell not exist at this point. Ive even specced into more essences on my map and so far ive found 4 greater essences.


Strongholds/pinnacle boss:
Havent found a single stronghold even after doing hundreds of maps so havent got to experience it or the arbiter.

Overall I just think the drop rates need to be increased. If youve played for 300+ hours and found 0 strongholds, 44/300 simulacrum, 0 ritual bosses, 2 expedition bosses and 3 breachstones theres something wrong with the endgame and alot of players might get bored b4 getting to try it.

Im very satisfied with the difficulty so far and I hope that ggg dont listen to the massive amount of posts wanting them to remove the loss of map and exp on death. I feel this deffinetly has to stay and that all the people complaining about it just dont understand what the problem is.
The problem isnt being punished when you die, the problem is when you die to something that is out of your control and then you get punished ontop of it. And since its early access theres obviously still some issue that need to be tuned.

Currently I feel the biggest issue is the nonphasing and stun treshold.
Feels like maybe 20% of my deaths are to me making a mistake and the other 80% are either ritual/corruption mobs spawning ontop of me blocking and stunning me or me walking down a narrow path only to find 7 crossbow mobs that stunlock me to death b4 i can see them. And I have 3.3k hp 1.5k energy shield and have invested several skill points + an annoint into stun treshold.
I think that when mobs spawn trough breach, corruption or ritual they should be phasable for the first seconds and that the stun treshold should be heavily increased, especially ranged attacks shouldnt stun as easily as they do.

The dodge roll feature I like as a concept, atleast for bosses. While in maps it feels like using the dodge roll is a death sentance. My character is so slowed down (which im fine with) but the mobs are the same speed as in poe1. So you just have mobs spawning ontop of u or running at u at insane speeds and if i see an attack i need to dodge roll then by the time my roll animation ends im swarmed and stun locked by mobs. So im just relying on constantly spamming spells one shotting anything that spawns before im blocked in and stunlocked.

Life/armor vs life/energy shield:
Kripp alredy made a very good video explaining this.
Something has to be done with the power difference between life/armor and energy shield.
Personally I would like to see some nerfs to the energy shield nodes and add some nodes to let us better stack life and life regen.

Crafting:
Currently the biggest problem that needs to be adressed in my opinion.
Crafting just feels non existant outside of just gambling with exalts everytime you find the right base. We were told there would be some level of deterministic crafting trough greater essences and omens. But that just isnt true because these items are so rare that they might aswell not exist. Crafting in poe1 was my favorite part of the game, farming mats so i could craft bespoke gear customed to my build, and im not saying i want it to be easy, getting enough mats to make a good item should take time. But currently its so rare that even after 300+ hours you havent seen a single drop. My character in poe2 im wearing 0 pieces that ive crafted and every single piece ive been forced to trade for. Which just forces you to do whatever gives the most exalts so you can buy upgrades from other players, instead of focusing on different league mechanics based on what you need. Which becomes incredibly boring.
The drop rates of greater essences, orb of anullment and the anull/chaos omens need to be massively increased.

Also as have been pointed out several times we need to be able to overwrite the runes in our gear, i cant see any upsides to them being permanent. It just prevents you from getting new upgrades without replacing 2-3 other pieces aswell.

Tldr:
-End game content like simulacrum, strongholds, ritual boss, etc appear too rarely
-Corruption needs some purpose other then just giving maps +1
-Crafting needs a buff, increased drop rates of orbs of anull, greater essences, exalt/anull omens?
-Let us overwrite runes on our gear
-Dont change exp or map loss on death
-Stun treshold needs to be looked at?
-Better balance between life/armor vs energy shield

Great post and useful criticism. But 300 hours?? 12 days, Hope you are fine man.

Good Feedback.