Exceptional!

My experiences are based on playing the game much as a Rogue-like, though my Titan has since happily pushed very far past the others.

Multiple different classes checking vendors as they level and able to cross-purchase quality crafting bases and such for each other. Also passing several exalts to my Titan. But these exiles haven't progressed very far so it's not quite the "see we need more currency so I can only play one exile!" that it could be.

Early game was where crafting twink items was toughest and this multi-exile support crew helped with that but.. as it should be. My Titan has been able to support himself pretty well lately and the epic items wouldn't feel as such if they were easy to craft or dropped frequently.

It's SSF HC. I will die. And I have several times. But it's about rising to meet the challenges, in whatever form they are, and leaving stuff behind for the next attempt, which should go just that little bit smoother.

Actually hard gear and skill checks that seem to slow the pace significantly until their mechanics are well learned or SC Zerging is an option. This is fantastic and they are actually fun encounters. There isn't actually a boss fight that I dislike or feels flat and players will be better overall for learning the fights.

Enjoy the journey. Very happy the pacing has been slowed and loot isn't generally the toxic screen explosions I recall, though perhaps this changes in maps and I'll still feel a need for a filter at some point. I did not feel a need for a filter at all throughout the campaign even once I started leaving more (but still few) items behind.

I greatly prefer running a small area 50 times by choice in search of loot/currency/levels than being forced to run that same but extremely large area once so was glad to hear of some changes in that regard. The difference is that I may not need to grind the same area every play-through so when I want to just progress I'd like to be able to get there fairly quickly.

A permanent account-wide Game+ where we can optionally run any part of the campaign as it scales in level to maps would be amazing after unlocking maps in any prior or current league. The campaign is great, but at some point please let us just grind leisurely throughout it.

Seem to get enough currency items to craft what I need if not what I want. And when I did ultimately get near enough what I wanted, they were exciting and lasted a very long time - far longer than they likely should and so I needed less than I expected. I'm very picky though, and +skills really carries.. worth waiting for.

Alts would be nice for re-rolling bases, especially early on, but can live without them.

Selling everything for gambling felt like a very bad plan where I got near-enough nothing for it and I mostly stopped that early on aside from a few attempts here and there. Once I started melting Magic/Rare items and being picky on what to use the currency items on, I was doing much better.

I rolled my own rather than following a guide as I figure trying to force a build will generally lead to disappointment, especially in SSF HC where a build-defining item likely won't drop. I enjoyed adapting and coming up with something that worked with whatever I could get and am happy that this is actually approachable.

The +skills mod is very hard to replace even with what looks like a very good item without it. It does give long life to an even otherwise blah item, so give and take. Probably in a good place though I struggled to replace and did very well with my initial gloves forever.

Movement speed is never enough and there are no boots, no matter the mods, that I would consider wearing if they lack a good MS roll. Really wish boots had movement speed as an implicit and it would just scale with iLevel, even if they lost an affix in compensation.

I love how this new gem system removes one aspect of gear lock-in. This significantly improved my ability to adapt as my Titan levelled and faced different challenges.

Ditto with the rune replacement - I wish they were non-destructively removable, but they have dropped well enough to keep me mostly covered despite having to juggle resists between areas/bosses and are a huge help in smoothing progression.

As far as I can tell, armour feels great. As in PoE1, I aimed for minimum 400 total Life/es and capped resists per act until end of Act 2 cruel where I hit a bit of a wall at near 1.9k Life and 50% resists (with relatively no es). I just crossed 2k Life with 49% armour at maps, so this is low, but understandable with a 0 life/es chest traded for +100 spirit to fuel three gems.

This was sufficient to tank everything except that damn monkey, which I have so far avoided because it's that damn monkey, but it's probably also "fine". And for some reason, I just couldn't not keep taking such as guillotines, slams, and even Ketzuli's "rocket buggy barrage" to the face as I progressed.

My poor eyes! The bright screen flickering is ruthless. I can't enter the bubble without almost completely losing vision until I spam Leap Slam enough to kill the Rare, so usually had to use the totems to kite but it's not usually so many slams these days. I assume this isn't a widespread phenomenon.

I'm there, so mission (very surprisingly!) accomplished, but haven't gone into one yet. I'm sure they won't disappoint and I'll likely rip very early, biting off more than I can chew.

This is the point I expect to go even slower because I'm just hunting for those BIS crafted items and uniques and I'll be taking it easy to ...enjoy the journey (back to the beach).

As positive as I am for the state of the game overall, I'm past the point where I should be doing my third ascendancy. More than I want/need my ascendancy points, I absolutely detest these trials. I fumbled through the first two as they're early enough and relatively short.

It comes down to several points, which are ultimately a me problem but nevertheless are currently the only but major black mark I'd apply to PoE at the moment.

• In context of league content, both trials are well done, provide interesting mechanics, and can be approached as optional farming content where you abort between rooms when the risk outweighs the reward and move on. Small doses. Kinda like Delirium where you can stop pushing forward at any time, take a fraction of the potential rewards, and move on?
• In context of forced class-advancing content, having to abort (especially the second Sekhema trial) midway for safety is a waste of my time and it blocks progression. As with large areas, I'd rather optionally run something 50 times on my own terms than be forced to run it to completion once.
• The debuffs are insane, and that they persist between phases is ridiculous. Sometimes there's just no reasonable path and it becomes a total waste of time. No armour (Titan here), 40% less damage (I took it and smashed the boss in the first phase because I have 14k on Leap Slam + lacerate, but wtf!?), ...
• Escape trial, from what I saw in the first pass is trivial, being able to just run past enemies, hit the crystals, and go back for mobs later. But that failure to reach them for any reason is death in HC, I can't know what you may put in the way of them, and I can't get out if things go pear-shaped is a deal-breaker. I hit a wall where I had the option of three rooms, all Escape Trials, and left. They're probably the easiest of the trials and I should just go for it, but I have no intention of losing a character to that rubbish mechanic.
• There is no guaranteed safe-ish but low-reward path through (for purposes of just obtaining ascendancy) and I am not looking forward to repeated attempts to get lucky with one as tokens drop. I probably still wouldn't be happy if there were such a path, they're just that objectionable for purpose to me.

Would it be so bad to keep the league-like sub-game mechanics out of the main character progression and award ascendancy points as quest/challenge rewards at key points? Killing particular (or several of a list of) bosses in the acts and map tiers, or clearing an irradiated corrupted map for the first time, etc could each reward a point or two, while directing the player towards endgame content.

Chaos trial isn't much better and I didn't like Lab in PoE1 either, but these both feel much worse. I play games for fun, so having part of an otherwise fun game force unfun content isn't a great feeling from my perspective. I'm sure lots of people are getting through it and that I can too if I just push through ignoring the mods and room types, but at the moment unfun and unjustifiable content is between me and the natural progression of my character's fundamental ascendancy skill set.

These would be unfun for me in standard where I can Zerg them if need be until I pass and then never think about entering them again. In hardcore, these are [redacted]. Maybe they'll feel extra great if I ever commit to pushing my character through unreasonable content before I then never think about entering them again.

If I expressed how I really feel about these without this constructive self-filtering I'd probably get banned.