My thoughts after spending 400h in EA

General:
So, EA was my first time with POE—yes, I didn’t play POE1. At first, the game felt really complex and challenging, and I enjoyed it. However, some boss mechanics are not well-designed—there are issues with area-of-effect clarity and visibility, at least for me. That being said, the tactical aspect of boss fights was refreshing, and I liked it a lot.

BUT, the further the game progressed, the more it became about one-shotting or being one-shot, which some people are okay with, but for me, it's a bit meh. The game was supposed to let you craft your build and progress in your own way. However, it forces you into certain skills and specific builds, which kills creativity. The more I played, the more I realized that the game revolves around just a few viable builds, and class choice doesn’t really matter, as the same builds can be adapted across different classes. That sucks because it removes any real class identity.

Skills:
Skills are generally unbalanced, and most early-game skills stay relevant all the way into the late game, which is boring. Channeling skills, in particular, are practically dead and could be removed in their current state.

Evasion/Armor/ES:
These mechanics are also not balanced. You have to commit to stacking one type, and they could be designed in a more interesting way. For example, Energy Shield could be more dependent on mana/life pools rather than gear, while armor and evasion could be more gear-dependent but actually useful—especially armor.

Passive Tree:
It looks complex and creative at first glance, with many possible development paths, but in reality, most nodes are copy-pasted and uninteresting.

Atlas Tree:
Some options are far better than others, making certain choices practically nonexistent.

Endgame:
Some endgame boss mechanics are really counterintuitive and overly punishing. I don’t want to watch YouTube just to learn how to fight bosses properly, only to still get killed by some stupid one-shot mechanic that isn't even intuitive to recognize or avoid. There isn’t much to do in the late game right now. Something like raids or additional challenges could be added (and no, I’m not talking about those trials…).

Unique Items:
The problem with unique items, in my opinion, is:

They are terribly boring and don’t change the way skills or builds work in 90% of cases.
90% of them are just low-level boosters.
This is quite problematic. I understand the idea of not making them overpowered or best-in-slot while providing build direction, but if that’s the case—why do they even exist in the first place?

Crafting:
Crafting is just pure lottery. Omens are not well thought out and are too rare to make crafting truly satisfying.

Cosmetics:
There’s a lack of transmog options—and no, I’m not talking about purchasable skins. I want to be able to transmog my gear into pieces I’ve found and disenchanted. As I mentioned, 90% of unique items are useless, but they look cool, so it feels like a waste of art to not let us use their appearance for transmogs.

In General:
It’s not a bad game—I enjoyed it and spent 400 hours playing—but it could be much better than it is in its current state. It needs a lot of work to make players like me stick with it for longer.