New POE player feedback (Chonk)

For starters, I’m new to POE. So far I’ve got 200+ hours into the game, four characters: Chayula(lvl 91)+ Invoker Monk(lvl 70), Stormweaver Sorc (lvl 57), and Gemling (lvl 48).

Rarity drops and Currency/Economy Balance:

I have to admit, the game is very addicting. Campaign was very fun, but out of all of them, act 1 was the best in terms of atmosphere and boss. Now my first character was my Chayula Monk. Throughout the entire campaign, not a single exalt dropped. So trying to get gear was impossible. I had to use whatever rare’s or bosses dropped. I didn’t see exalt drops up until the very end of Act 3 Cruel. The same goes for my Invoker and stormweaver. By the time I made my merc, that’s when I started getting exalts even in Act 1. Keep in mind that most of my characters had at least 40-80% in rarity during the entire campaign, for whatever reasons, exalts were just not dropping at all. Now fast forward to endgame, it’s very hard to progress especially around T15 due to every gear needed/ideal for pinnacle bosses being at least 80+ divs. I don’t understand how everyone else is getting Divines so easily. I average one or two in every 20 maps with 180% rarity. Nearly impossible to continue on like I said due to everything being so inflated in the trade site.

Craft instead of Gamble:

Before POE 2, I played a lot of mmorpg’s. Each one of them had at least a crafting system. When I first started POE 2. I was shocked with the fact that crafting in this game is essentially gambling. And since for whatever reason, exalts weren’t dropping for my first three characters, I could not get better gear. My chayula monk took nearly 8 hours alone just to complete act 2 due to having lightning res for the boss and just not having a good quarter staff. Even on endgame, since everything is 80+ divs, I’m left with just hopes and dreams that the Chaos orb won’t remove that +4 Level to melee skill or 160% increased phys damage and 100% elemental damage to attacks, or that my exalts won’t give rolls like increased light radius and % reduced attribute requirements. I get it, it’s supposed to be hard and grindy to get really good gear, but at the same time, I should at least be able to pick/control what rolls will go into my weapon even if it’s only low tier rolls. Even on the latest patch, they clearly said that weapons will have more desired rolls but I hardly see the difference. Most of the rates I pick up or “craft” will have 2 or 3 good rolls, slam the rest and it will give me really undesirable rolls, chaos orb or anul if and if takes out all the good ones, it’s very annoying and burns out the fun of it.

Auction House:

Don’t think this need any further explanation. I don’t mind the trade site that much, but it does get annoying having to switch tabs constantly. And this will most likely solve the bots issue.

Chayula Ascendancy:

By far the worst ascendancy there is. Like what the actual F LOL. There’s hardly any useful nodes for this ascendancy. The flames could be more useful if the purple flames had a longer duration, 10 seconds is simply just not enough and you hardly feel the difference because of it. I do have to say though, the Life and Mana flames came in clutch plenty of times during the campaign and some juicy maps. The mana leech nodes for this ascendancy doesn’t really feel like much either. I respec’t it for the ones that granted %chance chaos damage, didn’t feel any difference either. And scarifying spirit for darkness is very useless as well. Can’t pass up on grim feast alone otherwise you’ll be going back to your hideout after the first pack of mobs you run into. This ascendancy needs to get worked on hence why I made another monk just to get invoker which is 100x better especially since that ascendancy grants +1 spirit per evasion which comes in very handy cause now you can have either more energy shield or whatever it is you want on your armor instead of trying to get more spirit. It should’ve been a no brainer to pick invoker, but since I’ve never played POE before, I didn’t know. If I was playing a different class before my Chonk, I would’ve most definitely picked invoker over chayula especially after learning the mechanics. Chayula just doesn’t have any nodes that would make you consider it over Invoker.