Map tiers, death, and leveling

I am not sure how many peoples experience reflect my own. Feel free to chime in on my post and report your own experiences. I say this knowing my cousin whom I begged to play this game with me, and I am glad to say he feel in love. Because lets be honest, this is the best ARPG of all time (in the making) I think its WAY better than PoE. No hate to anyone involved in the game from players to dev. Its an amazing game, I wish I was better at it, I loved it even tho I was horrible at the game. But I think this game is just better in almost every way.

Here is my concern with the balance of the game.

There was not a huge difference from map t1 to map t6 for me. I went from leveling to t1 fairly okay. But from t1 to t6 there was not a huge difference. Now truth me told, I have a TON of friends that played the game, one of them helped me as did my cousin hence why I was careful to say I am not sure how much that influenced the season. With all that said, my season has not been going well. I got to a point, and now I feel stuck. I went back and leveled something different because it was fairly impossible to play my monk (Invoker)without dying, and losing my experience, he is fairly stuck. Then I went pathfinder, took less DPS/surv. nodes, and still somehow I had a MUCH more simple time. In very close to the same budget I can rip through 13 and 14s fairly well. Dying WAY less with the same investment. I think this version of mapping has a ton of potential. But I think there is some way to go. One of the things I would love to see for a league or too is a very clear difference between the tiers of maps. I think the EXP loss is too punishing too soon. With out the levels you cannot progress, without the gear, you cannot progress, and without the points you cannot progress. But what if you're stuck? What if you've made a mistake? There is no way to retreat back to correct the mistakes. IF you go back, you lose levels and you gain no experience, so you're literately pushed into higher tiers you can't do. This makes people hit the power button and walk away. I think the numbers of the game demonstrate that clearly, with how nearly perfect this game is, this game should be in the millions of players. But its often times at 10K on steam charts. Thats amazing, I am not trying to poop on anyone, but its not what this game deserves. Also I watch a lot of live streams, and the chats are showing the same frustration. There are a lot of things that make games fun, the power fantasy, the challenge, and discovery. This game (if all goes well) gives you the power fantasy in spades. The other two however I dont think you get much of it. In order to builds, I have to grind, builds would be discovery. But there is a gate there for some people [Removed by Support]. This causes people to look for help online. Streaming youtube etc. This robs the discovery process. Min maxing can be fun, for some people with that brand of autism.. That is not mine personal brand. I need to be able to see a PATH. I want to be able to put a build together, and it sucks. But I can use the build it works. It just sucks. The way the game is balanced now it discourages that. I cannot even get the money together for a working Monk build. Thats a huge flaw, and I had a lot of help, and I am not stranger to these games. I admit, I am not a god, but I am also not new. I was successful in many of these games my entire life, I am old ass man, I would assume the same as some of the folks that built the game, because what clearly inspired them was same thing that made me a gamer. Tho this may be a waste of time to those who read it, I promise I want this game to do well. I have already spent a good amount of money (and continue to, even if I can't play it) because I love this team so much, I think they are the best dev team ever, top 3 for sure. But as a guy that has played these games my entire life, I can say you need to build the ladder now that you've built the wall. Perhaps plus 10 attr. vs 5 in the tree, making it a lot more simple to get the stats you need for your gear. Another huge roadblock is defensive stats. Its not even worth going defenses. Its seems to be better stacking dps so you can blast bigger maps and have a possibility to get geared. If I was making a game, I'd think you want it the other way.. Dps checks. The def. should be the easy part. Let people get as tanky as they want, but you ain't killin shit. But this game its the other way around, you can blast through maps with little def, all you need is range. So perhaps the balance is to add range to gear, but make the defensive stats easy to hit. My favorite games to play to day are the Rogue like/lite bullet heaven/hell games. That is how a lot of them are designed. You need that Multi-casting, the area of attack, and the casting speed to make the build pop off. But you can get the build going very early, it just wont do much till you meet those requirements and as it goes on, it scales higher and higher, so only the best of builds meet the requirements. In those games, I am addicted, I cant stop, I want to keep going. I got so close before. Kinda vibe. Sorry for super long word salad. But I feel the need to qualify where I am coming from.