Feedbacj on uninteresting/obnoxious mechanics

I'd like to start by saying that the vast majority of changes from poe1 have been amazing. Things like not having to worry about skill gems on gear, or making sure they're linked for supports, the simplification of the flask system, and encouragement to not invest in spammy single skill gameplay have been things I wanted out of poe1 for awhile.

That being said, 2 of the most irritating/obnoxious mechanics that I would have loved to see some kind of different iteration on stayed the same: elemental resistances and rare enemies. (The word obnoxious makes me sound like I'm gonna go on a rant, and maybe I am a little, but this is honest feedback, not salty raving. I just couldn't think of a better description for how I felt about the mechanics of rare enemies).

One of the most irritating things in endgame is balancing elemental resistances, and even through the campaign, it's irritating when you're in a good place, only to defeat a boss and lose 30% of your resistances via some weird penalty. This has been smoothed out a bit by the 10% per act change, but it's still a little frustrating to have your build nerfed every few hours of gameplay when simply scaling monster damage up a little would achieve the same result without making me feel like I'm being penalized for progression. Secondly, when in endgame and you start min maxing, sometimes upgrading one item ruins your resistance balance and forces you to go shopping for other items, sometimes an entirely new build.

One of the things that got changed that I honestly loved is the removal of life from the skill tree, and the logic I heard was that it was not interesting as it was basically mandatory for all builds to take as many of those nodes as they could reach. Resistances on gear are the same. Mandatory and uninteresting, and sometimes frustrating to balance.

I'm not sure what the solution is here, I don't think outright removal is the right answer at all. Someone suggested that resistances work sort of like armour, maybe that could work. Or possibly endgame could just be scaled slightly differently in terms of elemental damage, act penalties could be removed, making resistances on gear still necessary, but not as all consuming, leaving room for more interesting options.

Now for the rare enemies. I fought silverfist in act 3 and a rare enemy found it's way into the fight. I was hitting both of them pretty well equally with aoe attacks, and by the time I finally killed silverfist (my build wasnt great at this point in the campaign tbh), the rare enemy was still at full health. Why is it that I'm more scared of rare enemies than bosses sometimes (even though bosses definitely hit harder)? The mechanics surrounding them are obnoxious at worst and boring at best. Periodic unvulnerability is just annoying, various area denial or Homing projectiles being spammed around is okay until you get 2 or 3 rares covering your whole screen with them, immediately losing all your mana or being slowed to a crawl is build breaking sometimes, especially when a rare has both of those mods at once. GGG did an amazing job at making bosses more engaging and fun, but still challenging and hard. Rare enemies are still just mostly okay, but sometimes horrible combinations of mods from a list that aren't engaging at all.

In a boss fight, I'm looking for tells and it feels like I'm actually strategizing. I would love rare enemies to not have mods at all, but rather just be more dangerous in general. Make quadrillas more dangerous at base, for example, but take away the crazy area denial. (Before people say stuff like get good or build problems, I rarely die to them, I've simply noticed I look forward to most boss fights but absolutely Dread seeing those colorful circles, purple orbs or Temporal domes running around. It just feels kind of cheap and lazy, compared to the new boss quality, for a rare enemy to say 'you cant stand there, and thats my whole thing').

TL;DR:
GGG made some amazing changes and I love them, but resistances are a little too all consuming in endgame gearing, and rare enemies are more irritating than they are interesting. We don't want them to be easy, but difficulty can be fun and engaging, or damage spongy with annoying mechanics.

Agreed. The rares can be a total nightmare sometimes. There should be, at a minimum, certain baked in protection from certain mod combinations. Most are fine, but getting rares that zoom in that area hasted, while simultaneously having a temporal dome or, temporal dome with mana drain, hasted with mana drain, etc essentially nukes your ability to do just about anything but dodge roll for an eternity while trying to kite them into an obstacle to escape.

Agreed. The rares can be a total nightmare sometimes. There should be, at a minimum, certain baked in protection from certain mod combinations. Most are fine, but getting rares that zoom in that area hasted, while simultaneously having a temporal dome or, temporal dome with mana drain, hasted with mana drain, etc essentially nukes your ability to do just about anything but dodge roll for an eternity while trying to kite them into an obstacle to escape.