For what it's worth, here are my thoughts about 0.2.0

E.g. the Archnemesis mods for rare monsters, which are needed in PoE1 to balance the power and speed of the zoom-zoom meta builds that dominate that game. GGG have pretty clearly signaled that PoE2 isn't going to be nearly as zoomy, so why do we have so many mechanics that simultaneously slow the player while speeding up the monster *and* preventing the player from fighting back, *and* also doing a bunch of unavoidable damage? Why do those populate randomly on monsters at any stage of the game? They've blocked the life regen mod, since that just makes monsters unkillable at the level of power we're being given, but why is that mod in the game at all?

Content which the player can opt out of can be random like this, but having a monster which randomly turns off your build, *and* can't be escaped because it's all over you, *and* doesn't even drop anything decent if you do manage to kill it... that's not a fun and rewarding challenge, it's just randomly and arbitrarily hard.

This includes the Trials, the structure of which just layers multiple layers of random bullshit on top of each other, and then drops that in the path of players' progression like a roadblock. We're supposed to learn from our failures and try again, but how do you even do that when the thing that killed you was multiple layers of RNG bullshit that you might never see again? How is a trial in which success is easy if you high-roll and impossible if you don't supposed be a test of our skills?

I'm now through Act 2 (yes, still going very slowly), and the Jamanra act-end fight was exactly as much fun as I expected, which is not very much at all, for exactly the same reason as Geonor: These bosses are still about 10% too tanky, and it turns what would otherwise be an exciting high point of the experience into a chore. Mechanically, they're fine, and I enjoy learning and beating the mechanics, but learning the mechanics just isn't enough the way these fights are tuned, and I find that I'm spending days away from the game whenever I get to one of them simply because I just don't have that much energy. Yes, I am old enough to be grey already, but I don't think that's the only reason for this.

I do think that reducing the health on these bosses is probably better than just turning up our damage by the same amount, because most of the act areas getting to these boss arenas feel relatively well-balanced (with some caveats, which I'll get to). Turning up player damage would just trivialize the rest of the campaign, but still leaves the act-end bosses feeling like they were air-dropped in from some other game, which doesn't sound like a solution. I want to have more fun beating these bosses, and I feel like that's GGG's intention, but we're not there just yet. They're close, but it feels like they're about 10% off.

Being reasonably far into Act 3, I can say that the problems with Archnemesis mods are still problems, and I'm still firmly of the opinion that all of the AN mods need to be removed and replaced with mods that were designed from the ground up for PoE2's intended pace. Either we need to act and move faster, or the monsters need to stop slowing us down, or something, but something needs to give here. Again, rare monsters should be fun and exciting things, and right now they're mostly not.

The other problem with AN mods is that they mostly have terrible signalling and conveyance, and often very little in the way of counter-play. In PoE1, this wasn't a problem since monsters mostly didn't have mechanics that we were expected to learn and counter, but in PoE2 this lack makes them feel wildly discordant. Maybe that's the solution? Turn each AN mod into an active skill that the monster has to use, complete with an animation to signal that use to the player? That would be a ton of work, though.

The fast monster swarm problem is still a problem, too; it's better now, but it's not fully fixed yet. I do appreciate the work that was done in 0.2.0E on this issue, and especially the fact that they looked at, and adjusted, monster behaviours on a case-by-case basis, which shows solid attention to detail, but it still feels like too many monsters are too fast, and also too tanky, while also hitting like F150s. Act 3's Diretusk Boars leap to mind here; put a Mana Siphoning mod on that one of them, and fun dies just before my character does. More work is needed here.

Next, the Trial of Chaos... it still sucks, and I like it even less than the Sekhema Trial. I will eventually get lucky, and be presented with just the right choices of modifiers in the right order to work for my build, but the sheer randomness of this Trial is just so not fun for an activity which we essentially have to do. I will get it done eventually, just like I did in 0.1, but I'm not enjoying it.

And yes, I know that technically I could just run the Sekhema Trial repeatedly to get all my ascensions, but that Trial also sucks, and you only get a reusable quest-item Barya for the first of them. Having to grind for multiple baryas, which don't drop that often, in order to take multiple cracks at a Trial that I'm not really enjoying in order to eventually beat it, is not much of a choice, even compared with the Chaos Trial. Neither one is fun, and I seem to recall both Mark and Jonathan saying that weren't trying to coerce us into doing things that weren't fun in order to progress.

BTW, I'm glad that Warriors are having a better time of it this time around. I haven't played Warrior yet, so I can't comment on whether e.g. active shield block makes the Sekhema Trial into a fun experience, but I've seen enough Warrior players complaining about the Trials on the forum to have my doubts on that score. I'm not having so much fun that I'd want to roll another character this league, though, so that experiment will likely have to wait for 0.3.

Basic crafting is still lackluster. If we're meant to be picking up whites and blues to craft, then regals, exalts, and artificer's orbs need to drop more often to make that possible. Disenchanting rare drops does not make up this gap, and has the side effect of making a rate drop feel bad because you just know that you're going to be disenchanting it rather than using it.

I'm starting to wonder if the basic crafting currencies don't just a need a rework -- maybe allow augmented orbs to add a mod to any blue item (including items that already have 2 mods), have regal orbs add mods to any rare item (rather than adding a single mod to a 2-mod blue), and have exalted orbs raise the tier of all mods of any rare item? That would make both augments and regals more useful, have exalts be more than just jumped-up regals, and make crafting more enticing in general. Maybe. They'd need to make similar-ish changes to essences, too (with lessers working like neo-augments, and greaters working like neo-regals).

Drops also feel really stingy in general, but 0.2.0G is supposed to address that aspect of things, so we'll see how drops feel after that patch goes live. Fixing drops might make Wisps feel like they're worth the added risk of running them; right now they're not, in no small part because of the Archnemesis mods that the final Wisp mod randomly receives in addition to its Wisp bonuses. I still like the basic design of Wisps, but I've already stopped engaging with them.

The belt and charm changes do make charms a little more useful, but charms still need work. Are rare charms a possibility? They're just not very impactful right now. One change which might improve them is to remove the charges, and instead give them a cooldown -- a charm which can't be up 100% of the time, but which will always protect you if it's off cooldown, would be so much better than the existing system. Right now, I'd rather have utility flasks back, along with the instilling orbs that let us automate them, flask piano and all. It wasn't great, but it was noticeably useful, which is not something that I feel from my charms.

On a related note, do we know how quickly flasks and charms regain charges when killing monsters? I don't know if this is working properly, but I'm still having to run back to the Well more often than I'd like, and it's breaking up my flow. It's a tiny thing, I know, but still. Also, I think we could use some reliable way to regain flask and charm charges during boss fights; PoE2 bosses don't seem to have much by way of adds which would normally fill this gap, and it might help with the "10% too tanky" problem, by giving us a little boost to our own resources that equalizes things a bit there.

Another random gripe: it is possible on a player death to respawn only the monsters, without resetting the entire area. I killed an AN Wisp-empowered rare, watched my very first unique item of this patch drop, and then died to a DOT which was still running. Feels bad, man; GGG, please fix this. I'm OK with having the entire area be full of monsters again, but I would like a chance to grab that juicy drop which I had earned by killing a really tough thing.

The added stash tab affinites are very nice. Moving charm slots from explicit to implict mods was a good change.

River Hags are ridiculous. I don't know why they have abilities that negate all of our defenses and resistances, and which also don't have any counter-play beyond avoidance, but even more than that I don't know why they spawn in packs. I encountered a pack with two rare hags, six blue hags, and a swarm of humanoid mobs (all of which were faster than me, and included extra blues and rates in addition to the Hags), and it sucked so much. I eventually managed to kite the fast movers away from the hags, and then went back and kited the hags away from each other one at a time, but the whole process took fifteen minutes and it wasn't fun at all. Why can hags spawn in packs? Why are humanoid enemies so much faster than the (still human) player character?

I'm now stuck on the Mother of Filth, and OMG I now know why Warriors are loving this patch so much. It's a great idea to have a boss that just uses skills that players can also have against us, but this boss is just brutal, and I don't remember this fight being such a difficulty cliff in 0.1.0. This is a progression stopper, too, since you have to clear this boss to progress the campaign, and she's just ridiculous compared to everything that led up to her. I'm OK with bosses like the one in Molten Vault being over-tuned because they're optional, but I don't know if I'm up to grinding the Apex of Filth for hours to level up enough to take down an unavoidable boss.