Welp..... After finally finishing Act 3 getting tired of this shit when it turned out Ketzuli was not the Final Boss of Act 3, I can say my desire to play the game is thoroughly gone until PoE2 actually hits 1.0. The dynamic playstyles, the ability to multiclass freely, and the ability to have fun with the game are being overwhelmed late in Act 3 by the sweatiness of it and how fucking badly balanced/arguably buggy shit is getting.
Mektul the Forgemaster is unkillable for my character, even with what seems to be high end gear for my level and even if I respec my character into doing Elemental damage so I can exploit his lack of Cold resistance. I've seen people saying to just go away and come back massively overlevelled.... which in my mind is a massive red flag: That's not a solution, that's a workaround to shit balance. This optional boss with unimportant loot (literally useless in my case, if it's just a Rank 10 Uncut Gem like I've read) is so fucking broken that people are struggling to fight him coming back with Cruel Difficulty characters on Normal Difficulty.
The Trials of Chaos seem equally.... not doable? I don't get how I'm supposed to possibly get to the end when I'm stacking multiple debuffs of which any individual one makes the run not feasible, let alone stacking '-40% Damage Dealt' and 'Kills don't restore flask charges' AND ''Take 1% more damage per second, stacks to 50%'. I'm seeming similar complaints from people that they're coming back to Normal Diff Trials at Lv70+ and are still totally unable to do them, even when they aren't getting a run that forces them to fight a specific bird boss that also seems like he's potentially not killable (does a nearly/instant-kill AoE tornado that can't be avoided).
Ketzuli, the boss above the Ziggurat Sun, has a nearly-instant-death beam that I died to about 5 times before I even understood what he was doing, because the assets of the attack wouldn't load in so I didn't know what the fuck was going on.
I get that PoE2 is trying to appeal to the hardcores above everyone else, which is why Endgame Atlas content is in the early access. I'm not that kind of player. I actually like enjoying myself. And I'm rapidly not enjoying myself even now while the game is 'still fun', let alone when I get to the mindless endgame grind of milling through tens of thousands of monsters to try roll items with slightly higher values on their modifiers.
I'm getting the impression PoE2 wants to be balanced within a gnat's eyelash of what is mathematically, theoretically possible within the game's formula and ruleset, which is a design style that has made me completely resent the Elden Ring DLC and the Doom Eternal DLCs too, despite the base games being two of my favourite games ever.
Not really looking for advice or builds, just venting. It frustrates me that every time I get into one of these aRPGs, they end up leaning into the shit I don't like, making grinding for levels or for gear with meta stats a requirement. Or, like with my Diablo II Summonmancer, I get a stupid amount of time into the game only to discover the way I want to play is not actually viable at all, so the only way I can play and beat the game is to do shit I don't find fun.
EDIT: Plus, they had just introduced Time Travel into the plot as I exited the game, and now I'm concerned the story I was actually quite invested in is going to turn into fucking nonsense full of plotholes.