[Feedback] PoE 2 is going in the wrong direction (Ele Caster / Crafting / Game Design)

TL;DR: Love PoE 2, but Ele casters feel forced into bad mechanics (Infusions, multi-element, projectiles, Lightning Warp overshadowing everything). Mana costs kill cast speed. Crafting has turned into shallow determinism + useless complexity. Biggest issue: GGG is patching reactively (“look we listened!”) instead of with design-led vision. Patch 0.3.1 (towers → worse system) shows this worrying trend.

Context: Thousands of hours played on PoE, hundreds already on PoE 2. Always made my own builds, always reached powerful ones. I’ve never regretted the time and effort I’ve put into PoE… until now.
For the first time I feel very disappointed and frustrated as a player, because patches feel either random or strictly following player feedback without real design thinking.

For this league I decided to play an elemental spell caster, which is my favorite gameplay in H&S.

There are just so many negative things to say about this league and where the game is going in general.

Gameplay & Balance — Elemental Spell Casters

The new Infusions gameplay is absolutely atrocious for numerous reasons that have already been discussed, so I'll list problems without going into too much detail:

Forced to do annoying combos to deal decent damage (infusions, exposure).

Forced to play with infusions which are terribly designed.

Forced to play multiple elements (impossible to go full cold, fire, or lightning).

Forced to play with projectiles (WHY change Arc into a projectile?? Hello??).

Forced to play Lightning Warp because it's a free teleport + cull, YET it does way more damage than any other skill in the game. I played full cold this league and Lightning Warp is still outclearing any other skill I use (Comet, Ice Nova, Frost Wall). It doesn’t make any design sense

Despite overall skill power being very low, Infusion nodes, Archon nodes, Crit nodes and passives have very low numbers compared to just taking generic elemental damage.

Mana costs are through the roof, which makes playing with decent cast speed almost impossible. Therefore cast speed nodes are close to useless as well.

Overall, skills are poorly designed too:

Almost no single-target skills available, if any.

AoE spells too small for map layouts.

Crafting & Itemization

Crafting is heading the wrong way:

Too deterministic at endgame → favors only the richest players in Trade League.

Too many currencies → overcomplexity with little payoff (“this orb for gloves, this one for boots…”).

Too few real affix choices → feels like fake complexity.

PoE 1 had flaws but also good ideas:

Conqueror Exalts, Shaper/Elder mods = identity + mix of luck/determinism.

Even 6L fusing was fine: random, but achievable, exciting, and had deterministic backup for SSF.

Now it’s just determinism + complexity = shallow outcome.

General Game Direction

I think GGG is making a terrible mistake.

It looks like they're stuck in this “we listen to the players—look, you asked for this, we changed it!” mindset, without thinking the changes through with intelligence or carefulness. Everyone claps at first, then a lot of people feel something's wrong about the game—and they're right.

For example: Crafting.
GGG decided to go in a very simple direction to “fix” crafting and make it more deterministic. I think they're wrong and it's way more complex than that.

YES, it should be a little more deterministic, but not in very late game (for Trade League), and WITHOUT making everything 10× more complex for almost no benefit. I'll explain.

Right now crafting is in a place (and it's ok because the game is developing) where there are very few meaningful options for affixes. A couple examples:

Armour: Prefixes = ES/Mana or Life—nothing else. Suffixes = Resistances, Rarity (which is also bad in itself for reasons I can detail), Mana regen.

Wands: % damage, mana/regen, cast speed. Crit = bad. +X levels = mandatory.

It got a little better with Abyss/Essence modifiers, BUT it multiplied complexity by 10× for only a few more real choices. TBH PoE crafting used to be good (up to a point), but too random for first affixes (transmute/augment spam) and probably too complex overall.

I think the Conqueror Exalted Orbs were a VERY good idea, as well as Shaper/Elder affixes. They had identity, simplicity, and a mix of determinism with luck.

Complexity problems: WAY too many crafting currencies because they're too specific. This currency for gloves, this one for boots, this one for a wand, and so on...

Determinism problems: In very late game on Trade League, the best items are monopolized by whoever has the most currency/farm power, because they can craft the best items without taking risks or actually thinking their crafting through.

Good ideas and understanding of affixes/crafting have been replaced by determinism and useless complexity (because in the end there are only a few viable outcomes).

Maybe it's a bad take for most people, but I even think 6L with Fusings in PoE 1 was good because—even though it was very random—it was achievable AND it always felt good to hit it, with options to 6L deterministically for SSF or for players who preferred to farm enough currency to buy their 6L.

Another recent example of this design problem: Patch 0.3.1.

“Look, no more towers!” → replaced with an even worse system that clearly wasn’t thought through → players clap → then realize it feels bad anyway.

This shows a pattern: changes are pushed live too quickly to earn applause, but without enough design depth to hold up long-term. This has become a cycle: listening to players has become an end in itself, instead of part of a bigger design process.

Conclusion

PoE 2 is an amazing game at its core (mechanics, atmosphere, potential). But it’s drifting into shallow determinism, overcomplexity, and reactive changes.

Please:

Re-evaluate Infusions and elemental caster design (no forced projectiles, more single target options, fair mana costs).

Streamline crafting currencies while keeping identity + risk/reward.

Stop patching reactively for applause. Bring back design-led direction.

If this keeps going, the game will slowly feel worse each league, even though on paper “player feedback was applied.” I’d be really sad to see PoE 2 go down that road.

Side note: There is a LOT more I want to discuss and detail… I’m thinking about making a giant but detailed, organized and well-argued feedback thread that I would really hope GGG considers, but I’m not sure it would come to their attention.

Hell no.

Too much argument, can't respond to all of them.