150 Hour Feedback

Obviously thoroughly enjoying the game, given the amount of time I've played. Haven't made it to T15 maps, but both my characters have been 97% SSF. Also worth noting that I've played a significant amount of POE1.

Characters:
- Started off as a warrior, titan, slam based build. I never found more than 10% MS boots even into maps, so I felt pretty handicapped.
- Currently playing a ranger, snipe based physical damage and poison build.

Campaign feedback:
- Absolutely love the boss fights, even though I'm awful and die repeatedly, but I've walled on bosses in souls like for upwards of 10 hours before, so I guess I'm pretty deranged (and bad).
- When I was playing on warrior, most of the boss fights felt really good when the bosses were relatively slow and I could play around them.
- Act1 highlights / low lights, Lachlan, crowbell, the executioner, burrower, all were a ton of fun. The biggest issue I had was Geonor where I could only dodge his slam attack (wolf form where he drops from the ceiling in the circle), maybe 10% of the time? It felt overtuned or like I didn't have enough MS, but that may have been lingering chill? Not sure. I also felt like, for a melee character the fight had a TON of downtime where I couldn't do anything, at least on the first playthrough.
- Act2 was almost exclusively a positive experience for me, again thoroughly enjoyed the bosses - deathlord was a phenomenal fight. Biggest issue I had was again the lack of downtime for the final boss, where it didn't feel like there were solid opportunities to attack (at least as a warrior).
- Act3 was more of a mixed bag. Chimera + Silverback were fantastic fights. I found the bog witch fight awful, as I didn't have to tools to knock here off her broom (2-hand melee, no shield), I also found it really hard to see the exploding bone circles on the ground in the second phase with the arena turning red. Maps were way too large, and dragged out the duration of the act.

Feedback on game systems / mechanics:
- Dodge roll and WASD feel solid, even though I personally prefer a dodge roll with i-frames.
- I enjoy the gem system in general, and like the limited gems per skill. I constantly find myself wanting more skill gem slots, but constraint is probably a good thing. The gem slots per skill allows me to combo skills and diversify / use multiple skills, which I love.
- The loss of the crafting systems / determinism feels pretty brutal. I'm constantly finding myself wanting to simply spend my currency trading to get an upgrade rather than wasting it on the gear that I have, though I have restrained myself on the whole. I generally pick up bases I can use and immediately transmute + aug, inevitably get nothing worthwhile, and drop the item back on the ground. The tiered drops feel good / worthwhile.
- Vendors feel great during the campaign, and it's where I got a ton of my decent gear.
- Breaking down sockets / rares / magic items to get currency feels pointless, and the items aren't worth picking up once you hit maps. I pretty much exclusively pick up rare items and identify them, and if I don't see something decent, drop them back on the ground.
- After reaching maps, gold becomes seemingly pointless, since vendors refresh so infrequently / you don't level up.
- I felt extremely starved for regals during the campaign, and similarly during maps.

Mapping
- I'm echoing sentiments from many people here, but mapping feels like a massive step back compared to the campaign, and I'm not enjoying them half as much as the campaign.
- The mob density in maps is high enough that I feel punished for trying to combo together skills. Things with long setup are a recipe for getting nuked off the screen, at least prior to maxing block on my warrior. That said, it's boring / not engaging as you're not responding to the actions the mobs are making, as there's 15 on a screen at a given time. Maybe I'm just bad, but bullet hells are not my preferred form of game, and I just find myself rolling around, avoiding ground effects and kiting enemies in a circle, whittling them down, provided I don't immediately delete them.
- Delirium and breach both feel bad. Both reward super fast, hyper aggressive play, high movement speeds, all of which work against wanting to combo skills or set things up or encourage the methodical, deliberate play that was rewarded during the campaign.
- Towers are boring, and I burn low tier maps on them just to get through them quicker, if there's some reward associated with completing these on higher tiers, I'm missing it.
- Map sustain feels bad.
- I'm not a fan of backtracking, so the existing rare hunt system just feels clunky.
- The bosses in endgame feel far too infrequent, especially since they're the best part of the game, as far as I'm concerned.

Class / Weapon Feedback
- Ranger feels pretty good, deadeye ascendancy seems super well rounded, I think all the nodes are great.
- Warrior feels ok. At the end of the day, I still had a fun time playing through the campaign, but that's more a statement on how good the campaign is then the warrior itself.
- Boneshatter feels great early game as a clear option. Come late game, I ran into this big issue where I'd immediately stun enemies in the first hit (without even taking the ascendancy passive). It also feels rather underwhelming during boss fights.
- Earthquake's delay feels rather excessive, especially given that the damage is rather low. There's also something of an identity crises, as jagged ground provides its own utility, but it doesn't provide enough identity to make it a utility skill to apply jagged ground with. Sure, you can use shockwave totem to trigger it early, but it's not enough to justify using up a skill slot.
- Armour breaker just doesn't provide much. Armour break simply isn't that valuable, unless you're running sunder. Throwing the armour break support on your autoattack is going to do a better job without using up a skill slot. The only redeeming quality is that it's pretty quick.
- Rolling slam feels underwhelming, and the targetting issues make it feel even worse. If I could circle enemies and attack while avoiding attacks it would have some niche utility, but instead you just beeline the boss, and lose the ability to strafe. As things stand it's just rather slow, and doesn't do enough damage to justify its use.
- Sunder is so slow that it feels super dangerous most of the time. Between enemies that run at you super quickly, and the frequency of most boss attacks, there don't feel like a ton of opportunities to use it.
- Leap slam feels too slow to be useful. It's primary utility is as a vector for consecrated ground.
- Supercharged slam is so slow that it again feels rather pointless, none of the enemies are ever going to sit around long enough for you to use the skill.

Miscellaneous:
- The proximal tangibility mods feel REALLY bad on a ranged character, where much of my safety is built off staying far away. While I realize this is much of the point, the inability to see where the boundary is compounds the fact that I simply don't feel like I have the tools to address these mobs. Snipe requires me to stand still to execute, and it's my primary single target tool, and I don't feel like I have any real path forward except to hyper invest into survivability. I didn't even know these mods existed on my warrior, because I think slams go through these, not sure.
- The shield enemies as a general archetype feel overly punishing and annoying as ranged, or again, like I don't have the tools to address these. Maybe I'm missing some critical information, but you only get maybe a half second when you roll behind them in order to attack, before they turn around. Face-tanking and attacking them as they attack you as a solution just seems ridiculous. Special mention goes to the guys in act1 who shoot out projectiles in response to incoming damage.
- I forget what they're called, but the enemies who phase out of existence then reappear and freeze you are super annoying.

Suggestions:
- The single biggest improvement I could propose would be to reduce the mob density in maps by at least a factor of 2, and then enable players to tune the density via the atlas. Reducing enemy density would increase the life of enemies, presumably proportionally to the amount the density was turned down. Ideally rewards to would scale in such a way that it's agnostic to what density the players target.
- Boneshatter: I wish there was a short window after heavy stunning the enemy where you could throw down a boneshatter, provided of course you didn't use boneshatter to heavy stun. I also wish that you could throw them down during boss fights without heavy stunning the enemy, perhaps at sub-intervals through the heavy stun bar?