Suggestions from a new player

I'm a new player to Path of Exile 2. I have not played Path of Exile 1.

I was playing SSF and reached level 95, earned all Atlas points besides Arbiter Difficulty 3+.

Here are some of my questions and suggestions about the game:

1. Classes, Skills, and Ascendencies.

New players would likely choose the class of their first character based on class features. Just like other actions games we have warriors, rangers, casters and summoners. And we have weapon and skill suggestion for each class, which is nice!

Everyone is Raking their campaign, though... However, I do not think this is a big issue, because it depends on whether you want to speedrun your campaign or try different play styles.

The biggest issue happens when the players got ascendency points, entered Atlas, and tried to optimize their character. This is when they realized that their class is not the best for playing specific weapons or skills.

I know this exists in Path of Exile 1, but as far as I know, most ARPG players are like "I want to play Lightning Spear" instead of "I want to play a class that can make their Frenzy Charges spent count as double". However in Path of Exile 2. people are forced to make that permanent choice limiting their future potential at the start of the game.

Allow class respec, experience sharing in league, or at least campaign skip. And also, Venom Draughts.

2. Endgame mapping and Pinnacle Bosses.

Infinite Atlas is a good concept, however we all see how poorly implemented it was. Only the chunks near home or recently explored can be correctly loaded. Whenever I clicked a bookmark set several days ago, there is just fog, until I waited several seconds and dragged the map here and there.

There must be some mechanic that allows map reset. For example when you beated all three citadels, finished hundreds of maps or explored far enough, you will enter some boss fight and allows you to reset the map with some rewards. If that does not fullfil your vision of Atlas, put some Rouguelike side areas, or some side stories.

Death penalty is too much. You lose your maps, citadels or even pinnacle bosses, and when at high level, several hours of experiences. Yes, you want to make the game challenging, but that does not mean heavily punishing deaths. Soul like games do not require you to farm the key to the boss, and you do lose your currency (or experience), but you can gain 100% of that back by carefully making it to your corpse.

Honestly, if you keep experience loss on death, why not add back equipment durability and item dropped on death?

Death penalty is at point.

I think the issue is that at 90 we still power hungry to disere more 10 points...
With better gear and itemnization we shouldn't have that need and be fine with lvl 90...

Really let be 100 level a true grind

I am not against the grinds towards 100, but I think it would be great to make the leveling less painful. We have Omen of Amelioration, but I think more could be done, for example adding a checkpoint every 5% exp, so you would only lose exp until your last checkpoint. This would make poeple feel like making progression, instead of at the risk of dying several times in a row and drop to 0%.

The more unbearable part of death penalty for me are maps and boss tickets, though. I just do not think it is fair to lose your efforts towards that pinnacle boss. I would try 100 times without tireness on T4 pinnacle bosses if I could.

And to complement my opinions about ascendencies, here is an example:

Suppose that I want to play Spear, so I would league start with Amazon. After I got some good stuff I might want to change to Deadeye for hard contents. Eventually I made perfect gear so I would try Ritualist for the third ring, or Gemling Legionnaire for stat stacking.

These are just build progression of a single skill, however I might need to level 3 characters to benefit the most from ascendencies based on gear progression. This does not make sense.

Most ascendencies behave like Keystones that do not affect your play style too much. You still play Lightning Spear, it is just how you scale your build is different. Some ascendencies are direct damage buff, while others may require optimal gearing. There are only few ascendencies (e.g. Chronomancer) that dramatically changes your play style.

For such reasons, I (and many other players, I believe) would hope to be able to change my class more easily in game, or just share the experience between characters in a league. Or, at least, when I reach certain level, I would be able to create a twink at level 65 with all campaign completed.