The next 3 big things that need to be addressed.

(1) Monster balance
(2) Loot rewards
(3) Crafting


(1) Monster balance is clearly not where it needs to be, and as many people have described, monsters currently feel as if they were designed for PoE1's pace rather then PoE2. There are probably many tweaks that need to be made but I will focus on the one issue that stands out the most to me.

One of the biggest issues has got to be the way monster mods work, which to my knowledge, is almost the same as in PoE1... which means it is in complete antithesis with what PoE2 is trying to achieve.

A lot of the mods give monsters the types of advantages that go completely against more meaningful combat.

https://poe2db.tw/us/Monster - A quick read of this list and analysis shows that almost all of these mods are at fault for most of the monster imbalance present in the game.

You'll see this a lot in my posts but, sadly, there is no other way. This system needs to be reworked entirely as it's not going to work for PoE2.

My suggestion? A more controlled approach, but a more tedious one to design as well. Monster mods should not give completely random stats and on death effects and whatnot at all. What it should do instead is to give monsters new abilities relative to their type and rarity type.

Here's an example:

White Demon x - baseline, has whatever abilities it would normally have.

Blue rarity Demon x - has everything White demon x has + 1 or 2 additional tier 2 abilities.

Rare rarity Demon x - has everything Blue rarity Demon x can have + 1 or 2 tier 1 abilities.

Tier 3 is something that never changes, it's what the basic monster abilities are.

Tier 2 is a pool of abilities that blue monsters from specific types can pull from when they are generated on a map.

Tier 3 is a pool of abilities that rare monsters from specific types can pull from when they are generated on a map.

Note that these abilities should be well telegraphed and be more dangerous to go against as the rarity goes higher.

(2) Loot rewards - It feels extremely unsatisfying overcoming challenges if nothing of real perceived value is gained at the end.

There are multiple suggestions that can be made here but, I will forego that here and instead insist that something more important needs to happen first that is holding your judgement back. Magic find on gear needs to be removed entirely. In my opinion, you can't even begin to properly balance loot while this exists in the game. A relic of the past that simply needs to go.

(3) Crafting - is honestly just not good in the current state. I am not a fan PoE1's systems either however.

My best suggestion here would be to do your own version of what Last Epoch did for their crafting as it was one of the best experiences I've had in terms of crafting, personally.