I tried getting into PoE several times, the closest I got was getting around mid to late 80s with Righteous Fire before realizing I couldn't farm Essences with the build (which was my chosen plan to make currency and progress in the endgagme) and losing motivation to keep playing. PoE 2 has managed to keep my interest as I wasn't so overwhelmed by all the existing systems in the game that I could actually learn it and stay motivated. Helps that my build, Storm Wave Invoker using Porcilken to shatter packs is great especially at Breach which is the most fun and most effective endgame currency farming strat.
Campaign is great from Acts 1-3, but as others have said you breeze through Cruel and in general I never enjoyed replaying content I've already done. If Acts 4-6 keep the same level of difficulty and pacing as the first three acts, getting to Maps and finally being able to zoom a bit will feel like a justified reward.
Finally realized today that it would be prudent to just unreserve my Cast on Shock - Comet setup which is only used for Pinnacles so I could run Grim Feast, Vitality, and Cannibalism, switching back to CoS when I am going to do a pinnacle boss fight. This pushes my mapping Life + ES above 3,000 which is really the base threshold all endgame builds should meet to even have some modicum of consistency and survivability, and I'm dying a lot less. That being said, like many others have already expressed, on death effects are complete cancer and are still responsible for like 85+% of my deaths, especially due to the bug where they're invisible when an enemy has been shattered. Should remove them almost completely from the game and things will instantly feel much better.
Early Map Sustain feels pretty bad. Finally got to the point where I'm only running T15s, corrupting every one, but it took too long to get there, and it feels ridiculous that lower tier maps are still dropping in T15s. Waystone tier rate should be fixed, and the droprate could be buffed slightly, though it's not too bad with the right Atlas passives.
My build has very decent DPS (100k on Tempest Flurry before I use Bell, Unbound Avatar and Charged Staff), but I can't quite completely blitz down bosses while proccing Freeze + Electrocute to keep them permanently disabled. It feels pretty shitty knowing that if I grind for another 3-5 days I'll get enough divines and a few more levels where I can just upgrade my DPS to the point where I'll be able to perma disable all pinnacle bosses enough to kill them without learning any of the mechanics. Makes attempting the boss fights feel like shit due to getting only one attempt. I did all the bosses in only a few attempts during the campaign with pretty bad gear, dodging and weaving all the dangerous mechanics and coming out on top. I'm not bad by any means, but since Pinnacle Boss Fights have the opportunity cost of over one divine to even attempt them, it really sucks running attempts knowing if I slightly fuck up I just lost hours of progress. This is especially due to the fact that mapping consists of blinking around, right clicking to demolish packs of enemies not having to think, which is fun in its own right but doesn't put you in the right mindset to attempt a pinnacle boss where the exact opposite is expected. Hurts especially bad when you get plain unlucky by a mechanic exhibiting itself in a weird way that you could not have foreseen, as almost no one has done enough attempts to fully see all the ways that the boss mechanics can manifest so that they can utilize their skill to avoid them/get out of a sticky situation. Just found my first Citadel (copper) and died because I mistimed my blink by half a second (did it in campaign with dodge roll and got used to that timing) and he did a 180 degree turn with his big slam attack to instantly one shot me. Just Alt+F4'd out of the game after that because I knew I was set back by tens of hours, and the way in which I died just felt so cheap and unfulfilling. I don't see any negatives that would come up with allowing even just one extra attempt at Pinnacles, and the loot rates could be tuned down slightly if they're really worried about their unique drops being devalued due to more consistent completions.
In terms of the Endgame Activities, Breach and Delirium are great, though Delirium could definitely use a small buff to the amount of simulacrum shards you get (3-6 per map is what I average without any Atlas points and it just takes forever to grind it). Ritual is okay in terms of currency (found an Omen of Annulment once which was a nice 5 Divine Profit. Found the key to the Pinnacle Boss once on a reroll but didn't have enough currency to defer it which sucked), but it's not as fun as the other two. Expedition sucks. I stay that despite getting a Mirror drop today from an Expedition Chest I opened in the Expedition I decided to do on a T15 map that happened to have it along with a Breach. Opposite of fun and Expedition crafting seems as random as just using currency on items in terms of what the upgrades they offer you are. Probably not doing it right, but whatever.
Overall, enjoying the game a lot, though IDK how meaningfully different it is to PoE 1 outside of the improved production value and system changes. I've been hoping they'd release a PoE that was much streamlined in terms of total systems that needed to be learned so I could start from scratch, learning all the new systems as they got added to the game over time, and PoE 2 is exactly that.
