New to POE here is my feedback on the endgame on POE 2 Early Access

I just wanted to say that I have enjoyed my time in early access and enjoyed the campaign a lot, I really loved the darksouls like with the boss mechanics in the early acts. (eventually you just steam roll through them once you gear and level enough).

I have leveled two characters, a Chronomancer to Level 78 and Stormweaver to Level 91. I am providing feedback based off of my experience as a newer player to POE.

Class Balance:
Some classes are just straight up much better than others in various forms of content with minimal investment in ascendancy. Chronomancer just feels lackluster in comparison with stormweaver. A lot of the builds revolving cooldowns for chronomancer feel like it's not worth it, there's also not many hard hitting abilities to make use of it aside from hammer of the gods, or comet with hourglass. Like why not just roll stormweaver with spark and lightning conduit and do more damage for less set up.

Endgame:
There are some issues that I have with the endgame after having spent 8 days of playtime on my stormweaver alone.

1. Being gated behind finding the citadels or grinding for breach to get all the splinters to do a boss 😪. The atlas system really needs improvements. Allow the players to receive hints from Doryani, "Traveler, we suspect the nearest citadel is west of our direction" (and as we start mapping west, the clues he gives are more hot and cold, and more precise). After killing the citadel boss, we are given the 2nd clue and so on, until we find all 3 citadels to kill the arbiter.

- It's extremely frustrating when my atlas map is vastly different than some of the players I'm playing with, and they were able to find their citadels much sooner, and I have yet to find any at all.

2. There is no Zoom out feature or search function to see the entire continent (Honestly I'd prefer if the atlas system was based off the continent or world we were in; (especially since I think poe 2 is leaning more into story and lore, would be cool if it had more of an in game world resemblance). I would suggest that once we killed the arbiter we would have the option to reset the map and do it again in a higher tier level. (Perhaps have this portion be infinite? but not the atlas map itself).

3. Currently the atlas progression system is a total grind for the sake of being a grind, and I'm not sure if that's the intention. But going off with what I said in number 1; Having to collect 300 splinters of either breach or simulacrum just to progress points into the system is just too much. Either increase the drop rate or lower the amount it takes to create a Breachstone. Imagine spending hours grinding for a Breachstone, and then doing a boss you don't know the mechanics of (unless you look it up on youtube) then just die; well now you gotta regrind all those splinters again, and you can't progress points into the tree to make the collection faster still.

4. The tooltip for how to progress the bosses is unclear. I had to google what were the exact steps it took to progress points into the bosses.

it would of bee much more clear if it just said this in a list format
2 points - Kill area level 79 map boss (T15 waystone)
2 points - Kill area level 80 map boss (T15 waystone with map boss + irradiate/corruption)
2 points - Kill area level 81 map boss (T15 waystone with map boss + irradiate + corruption)
2 points - Kill area level 82 map boss (T16 waystone with map boss + irradiate + corruption)
2 points - Complete pinnacle of flame quest

all the tooltip says slay a boss in a lv 79+ area, i could be doing that all day and not get any points until i had to google what else it entailed
It also says 2 points "can" be earned for completing the pinnacle of flame quest. the word "can" means that its optional, so that i could earn the other 2 points with other ways but like i said the tooltip is not clear.

5. Gearing in this game feels rough for someone who wants to play with minimal trading. It borderlines on being mandatory if you want any character progression. I could be playing for hours and not find a single upgrade in stats for my character because everything is based off RNG. I feel that I have no control on what my gear can roll for, and greater essences drop so rarely I don't even have a means to craft with those, I just have the lesser essences, but even then it's not ideal.

6. Gearing is confusing as a first time POE player, like how do you know which base item is best to start with? like what is Advanced, vs Expert? is there something better than those? The game doesn't explain that unless I look it up. Same with the tiering system, like what does a Tier 3 mean for my character etc. Often it seems that I have to look up or ask outside resources rather than in game. (it would be cool if there was an in game wiki or guide that explains stuff like this) (You guys did a fantastic job with the skill gems, showing a video example and talking about what the skill gem did, I really appreciated that). It's difficult to know if the item you pick up is an upgrade for your character or not, unless you do research beforehand.

7. Rarity of items found as an item affix needs to go or at least be adjusted. it really inflates the economy of the game, and makes trading impossible for someone who isn't geared enough to be obtaining even more currency. (The rich get richer...) Each day, I feel further and further behind, and I can't obtain upgrades for my character because players are selling everything for 1 divine or more. It's frustrating that I don't have agency over the progression of my character other. I can't imagine how even more frustrating this can be if you play SSF.

8. Getting your fourth ascendancy with ultimatum was also unclear, as the item said that doing this will get your fourth ascendancy, however when you reach the end it turns out that you needed 3 separate keys which can drop randomly at the end of the 10th round. Only with these 3 keys could you fight the trial master to obtain your fourth ascendancy.

9. Atlas system with the towers, either give us a boss in each tower, or allow the towers to unlock automatically after clearing the map next to it. Currently it feels like there's no reason to do a high tier map on a tower, it feels like a wasted waystone (other than to just get the initial atlas points for quest progress). Seems like towers is just slot in a tier 1 map run to the end and turn on the switch, like why bother with doing a high tier map on this, it feels unrewarding.

10. The tower system isn't explained in the game at all, also the precursor tablets are marked as white items on the floor with no special sounds or icons unless you have a loot filter on. Would of been nice to know that these were supposed to be important.

Overall I do enjoy the game, and have definitely gotten my time and money worth on the early access. I just wish that that there were more tutorials for newer players in game. I also wish for more quality of life features for the atlas system as well as reducing the grind needed to start doing breach or delirium, or finding the citadels.