Completed 40/40, reached level 100 and did all uber bosses this league - here is my feedback:

I had a ton of fun in this league; honestly, I think Endgame PoE is in the best state it has ever been (I am playing since beta). The improvements to the atlas passive tree and the addition of new uberbosses were very well done. What I enjoy the most is, when I have the agency over what content I want to do: this was made possible this league with league mechanic blocking and the atlas passive tree, where I can invest into mechanics I like and switch around freely. Great addition to the game. I did all Endgame content this league from Uber Bosses (killed 20 in total), Delve 600, Raveged Blight maps, 100% Delirum maps, Wave 30 Simulacrum, some juiced Metamorphs etc., even Uber labyrinths because why not, I also tried every available non-uber boss encounter like Oshabi, Delve bosses etc. - I tried out everything PoE has to offer, it was a great journey and fun to do.

As for the challenges this time: Most of them were fair and fun to do. This time the developers did a particular well job in creating those I feel, since many of them promoted learning and experiencing the game (try out sextants to force specific content, try out specific atlas passives you may have overlooked last time, play very methodical and learn boss fights, create a build to overcome most difficult challenging content) - that was awesome, please more of that in the future! What I disliked were the RNG gated challenges like the Harvest/Essence ones, they are simply not fun for me and can be very frustrating for many players, I feel. I also think the altar grind was a little overkill - clicking 2000 altars is just long and tedious, it requires so much playtime to do that most people simply will give up. PoE doesn't need such an extreme grind challenge on top of "endgame grinds" I feel - reaching lvl 100, going to 600 depth delve etc. is already enough grind to do - what I want to say is: one grind challenge is enough per league there don't have to be multiple.

I know I am in the minority here, but I personally don't like the sentinel mechanic at all. It doesn't fit in PoE for me. Robots following me around, empowering monsters which give an absurd amount of loot. Empowered monsters can be pretty overwhelming at first while you are leveling or when your character is not setup for it in maps - since it is so rewarding, players feel obligated to do it. I also don't like strategies that involve dying left and right 5 times a map since it is extremely rewarding to do so. A league mechanic that incentivizes dying multiple times and getting away with it and is super rewarding doing so is not good in my opinion (I think others will disagree and that is okay). The sentinel mechanic is way too rewarding and makes some other league specific currency easier to get so that it is almost irrelevant to do that specific content - I hate that.

Recombinators are a great addition to the game, but in their current form I think they are a bit too powerful. Them working with mirrored and influenced gear is a bit too much. Recombinators should be a great stepping stone to create a 2 or 3 mod base you can continue to work with I feel and not a tool to create mirror tier items. I hope they make it core and are "available" so that normal players can use them too (maybe add them as a reward at betrayal safehouses or to heist or something)
That said, you don't need recombinators at all to create awesome gear I feel - I self-crafted all my gear and the only item I used recombinators for was to create 2 suffixes on my weapon and go from there, nothing more - I have not planned for them while planning my build before the league.

Gearing and making gear upgrades is the heart and soul of PoE for me. Creating a build and see it grow and work out is a great feeling. Endgame gearing and crafting has never been better in PoE. Thanks to giving players more agency over content they want to, the game became a paradise for crafters. I am a crafter myself, it is usually my currency strategy every league I play to craft gear for popular meta builds and sell it to other players for profit, so I can invest into my own build(s).
Crafting is very complicated for most and has a huge learning curve, which makes it not as accessible for newer or inexperienced players. With content getting harder and harder each patch, the demand and strain on gear gets bigger and bigger. This is, on one side, a good thing, since it provides something to do and figure out, on the other hand, gear needs to be very specific those days to match with difficult endgame content - this leads to less build viability in endgame.
An inexperienced or new player isn't having much fun in todays PoE I feel - content is very difficult and crafting is still obscure - many people can only make a couple of exalts worth of currency a league, while others make more in a day. There is a huge knowledge gap between players which leads to inequality.

PoE is a very time-consuming game - a couple of patches ago, I played multiple characters a league; these days, I only plan one min-maxed character a league that can do everything and then be done with it, though I like to create new builds and experiment. I also used to play off-meta builds more often in the past because they were "viable"/could compete with the economy fast enough.
While I think build diversity is rather good this patch, I feel that PoE has so much unused/underused skills that could be viable if they just would recive a little bit of love from the developers.

Builds those days need very specific requirements to "be good"/do all content - if you can't fit most of those layers in, you rather not make the build in the first place, if you are experienced and know what you are doing, or if you are a newer or inexperienced player - fail and get frustrated (which maybe leads to early quitting the league)

Archnemesis rares, despite being more challenging, are a lot more punishing than older rare monsters were. Especially when your character is leveling through the acts and is not setup well for maps. Some Archnemesis mods are impairing builds greatly, so are map mods (but you can roll them, you can't roll rares) - so you feel inclined to make a build which can deal with all of them - this limits build and gearing choices greatly, which leads to less creativity and makes everything look samey when it comes to defense.

I would like to remove archnemesis mobs from early acts and slowly introduce them when you progress through the game to create a learning experience.

On death effects and degens are a little bit too much currently I feel. A monster should be scary while it is alive and not after it was killed.

Building defense has never been better and more rewarding in PoE - it feels great to do so. Still, I feel some ways to get there are way better than others, especially when it comes to physical damage reduction. Auras and reservation efficiency are very dominant. I would like if there were different ways equally strong, reliable and versatile to get there.

Suppression, let's just say it, is overpowered since you can pair it with other great defensive layers. Having 50% damage reduction against spell hits and ailments from spells is just brokenly good. What suppression achieved is, that uninfluenced rare gear is good again - hope this won't go away, but I think suppression needs to get a nerf.

Regarding Ailment defenses - Ailment design in PoE seems flawed; either you die to it/it is to punishing to deal with, or you get immune to it to not deal with it. It is very binary at this point. Ignite is in a good spot I feel, you can deal with it with pantheon, reduced ignite duration suppression so you don't need complete immunity to it, same goes for posion by stacking chaos resistance. Bleed and corrupted blood on the other hand are overtuned - get immunity or get destroyed. Shock and Chill, especially chill are punishing, reduced shock effect helps most times, but not enough against very heavy hits and for chill; reduced chill effect feels like it does almost nothing - most new cold based ground degens apply 30% chills even with 60% reduced chill effect stacked, so becoming immune to it is the only way to deal with it besides some special interactions. Scorch, brittle and sapped can be dealt with in other means and are not that common besides altar mods (which you can opt out of) and Delirium. Freeze immunity is just a necessity on every build at the moment.
It would be great if you could look at bleed, corrupted blood, chill and shock regarding affecting the player and adjust that a little. Giving players access to complete immunity to ailments makes it hard from a gamedesign perspective to create new interesting mechanics. Maybe there is a better way.

You can become pretty tanky against hits in PoE these days, but DoTs are more difficult to deal with. PoE features more and more DoTs in the attempt to kill a player, which is not fun, since we don't have many accessible ways for every class to deal with DoTs. Many people pivot to high unconditional regen classes to deal with it. Too much unconditional regen for players limits design space again, since you can hardly kill them besides oneshots - which everyone hates. This is a problem that has to be addressed, imo. DoTs are currently a big problem for many builds out there, since they are found everywhere, especially on on-death effects and endgame encounters.

Let's talk a moment about Aegis Aurora here - the most used shield in the league in endgame. Why is that? Aegis is a great supporter unique which pairs well with Melding of the Flesh (which should get nerfed imo) and because of recovery on block. Aegis isn't the problem here, recovery on block is just very powerful. Nerfing Aegis would not solve the problem - people would just go back using recovery on block shields with max resist on them. I don't know a solution regarding that but nerfing Aegis and letting every other mechanic which makes Aegis good survive would do nothing for gameplay and only would anger players by making one of the most iconic PoE uniques less desirable and, depending on the nerf, even useless.

While Crystalized Omniscience and Ashes of the Stares are chase items now, which lead to a great economy around invitations for both bosses (great! You accidentally have created an economy here for multiple types of players - players how just farm maps feed the invitations to bossers - both get currency out of it and farming those is accessable to everyone) - that's the good thing that came out of that.
On the other side both uniques are too powerful at the moment as they are I feel. Ashes of the Stars is "The Stone of Jordan" of PoE for me rom Diablo 2 - it is great for everything and on top of that it enables cool alt quality gem builds. Crystalized Omniscience on the other hand is just broken for any elemental build, since it not only solves damage but also solves resistances and stat requirements in one item without a significant downside.
I hope those get rebalanced next patch. If I would to balance those, I would remove the reservation efficiancy from Ashes and give it all attributes instead - so it is still great and build enabeling but isn't BIS any longer for aura stackers etc. For Omniscience I would lower the resist scaling, so that you require to still invest into some resists on suffixes on gear and add one line: With at least 500 Omni ignore monsters elemental resistances with hits. That way you can't reach absurd amounts of penetration for every element.
With proper nerfs in place, the drop rate could be raised again to make them more available for people who want to build around them. Nerfs are needed I think, since those two amulets make such a great impact in creating build and gearing diversity - almost every build/way to many builds want to use one of these amulets, which should not be the case imo - that is not good for PoE in the long term, I feel.

Same goes for Mageblood - I am not a fan of it honestly. I got one when it was introduced back in Expedition league and it is just too much power behind one item imo. Headhunter has downsides attached to it and it doesn't work very well against bosses and some other content. Mageblood on the other hand works always, anytime in any content. The baseline power this item provides is a little bit much since it doesn't have a real downside attached to it. Every build can fit a Mageblood but not every build can fit a Headhunter - Mageblood is almost always BIS for almost any build out there I feel; that is not a good state for a unqiue item in a game like PoE. The belt slot generarly needs some love and attention I think: At the time it is either Headhunter, Mageblood or rare Stygian Vise, that's basically it besides some niche cases.

As I wrote in my post above: Yes, DD is a broken meta skill (despite not abusing the spectre bug here), and yes I would have had a bad time going into this league if I had chosen an off-meta build for sure - since I played in Archnemesis league I already knew what was going to come when GGG decided to port Archnemesis rares into the regular game. I also just wanted to play a corpse skill before they all get shafted and nerfed to the ground next league, as I expect.

Regarding recovery on block (I already wrote about this in my post) - yes it is very good and when scaled and layered properly it is somewhat broken, I would like to see adjustments to that - since it is there, I use it.
My build doesn't use Melding of the Flesh btw. just spell suppression and I can tank Uber Shaper balls and Ultimate Chaos with that without issue... just with capped suppression which isn't that much investment compared to getting max res or other shenanigans which makes you able to do that.


I totally can understand everyone's concerns and see, why many players don't have fun this patch, because of the difficulty and annoying unfun stuff added to the game - but I feel GGG is going to address that next patch.
If I was a new player, a casual player or not a very knowledgeable player I would not have fun at all this league for sure. I am with you there, that is not okay.