This is the part, where I have to complain. And sadly for not just one, but for quite a few reasons. I try to go through them.
1. Trading/Loot/Gear Progression: Yes, it's still there and it's the dominant way to progress in this way - Trading. No other way is better to get good equipment at the right time compared to trading. PoE1 and 2 are games - at least in my opinion - that are best played solo. Like when playing Diablo 2. Multiplayer just doesnt work well, since players very often have optimized builds that can't one-shot enemies anymore as soon as the health pool goes up thanks to other players. I don't mind PoE having the option to play multiplayer, but I would guess that 95% of the playerbase is mostly playing solo. So they will very likely agree that PoE2 is best played by themselves. And what do players want from this game? What makes it fun? Killing stuff, leveling up, getting good loot and see my build growing. But that's quite not happening for me right now. Because right now, rare enemies mostly drop white/blue items. Bosses also and if you're lucky, they drop a rare, which sadly is very often very bad. Killing doesn't feel rewarding. I just wait for some exalted to drop and then I minimize the game, go to an external website, browse through items I haven't found myself, try to find a player who is willing to sell his item AND has time to do so, I go back into the game, open a party, go to his hideout, open trade, check for scam, accept trade, go back to my hideout and FINALY I can use that item. And did this feel great? No, it feels like I cheated. I haven't found or "crafted" this item myself. I used someone elses luck in order to progress. It's like summoning another player to a boss fight I couldnt handle myself. Not earned, not achieved, but kinda necessary, because the game is designed around trade right now. In my opinion, the game should give you plenty of stuff to work with and trade shouldnt be as necessary as it is right now. Keep it as an optional way to get something, but the game itself should give you enough by just playing it. And that means, loot needs to be increased. Not the quantity, but the quality of the items. "Increased Rarity" stats shouldn't ne necessary in order to find enough to progress. It should be more like "You get plenty without some extra rarity, but with it it feels even greater". But right now, the games loot table and the whole trade-focus just frustrates me.
2. Warrior/Melee: Ah well, melee. It's very hard to balance classes that play so differently. I get that. But there would be some seemingly easy fixes to these problems. Armor shouldn't have diminished returns against bigger hits. Just make it easier to stack and let the reduction work against big hits too, similiar to elemental resistances. Furthermore, remove the damn reduction in movement speed. Why should the class who needs the movement speed the most (melee) actually have the slowest movement speed? Yes, I know that in D&D and other old games, heavy armor reduces movement speed. But in these games, heavy armor is actually the most effective defense. But in PoE, ES, Evasion and Armor are supposed to be equal in effectiveness, so the speed down doesnt make sense. Also, the melee attacks are super slow. Why do ranged/caster characters have faster attacks then melee users? Nearly every mace skill has a huge windup time, which can kill you before unleashing. Combined with the bad armor defensive mechanism, it's just really hard and unsatisfying to play melee.
3. A weird mix of PoE1 and PoE2 mechanics: Enemies are very similiar to PoE1. Huge packs, lots of modifiers and they all jump at you as soon as you are in line of sight. But the player? He is slower (walking and speed of skills), he has to use dodge/block/parry in order to effectively survive and he has worse gear progression - these 3 things are the biggest changes. This just doesn't work well. Most player who are not complaining usually play broken builds that are not intended and therefore experience an "easy time". But the rest? The rest plays the game as intended and they kinda struggle. And I dont think PoE2 is supposed to deliver such an experience. You try to use the enemy mechanics from PoE1 and combine them with the new player mechanics from PoE2, but this doesn't work unless you alter the PoE1 enemy mechanics as well. Packsizes are way to big. This way, block/parry/dodge are more or less useless most of the time, because you are surrounded quite fast unless you play a build with very high clear speed. So no matter where you dodge, you will end up between enemies and if so many enemies attack you at once, block/parry will not last long. So the best way would be to reduce pack sizes quite alot and increase loot to compensate for the loss of packsize.
