Dying in maps feels awful, especially with the tower system

I thought I might get used to it, but it's just feeling worse and worse as I get into higher tier maps. Going for towers and any kind of juice seem strategically at odds with losing the map upon death. I would love to raise the challenge a bit, but I can't risk dying. It just feels awful and it wastes nodes that I spent time building.

So here I am just aimlessly doing plain map nodes with magic waystones. I want to be making rare waystones and using the juiced map nodes that I've built with overlapping towers, but I can't, because it's too risky. I'm actually looking for the boring atlas nodes instead of the good ones.

We also still have the same old problem from PoE 1 where, at any given moment, I'm either doing fine or I'm dead. I very rarely feel "in trouble" anymore after getting into higher tier maps. The telegraphing and on-death effects honestly don't feel any better than they were in PoE 1, only now they're far more punishing because I only get one shot at a map.

Yeah it just makes maps stressful and not enjoyable majority of the time. I had a string of awful luck last night and got deleted 3 times in a row trying to do juiced up boss maps. Wasted my good nodes and my good waystones in an instant and then just grinded shit nodes until I leveled so my time wasn't completely wasted.

The thing is, I also really like having to play carefully. I honestly don't know what the balance is.