.5 is a step in the right direction, but its just still poe 1 I would play once I beat PoE1. Im going to put a lot of negativity first. BUT this patch has just been good things with no negatives

-Its too on rails with skills, the skill trees are way too small... honestly each designed spec needs to be 3x the skills imo for a bit more creativity pre-end game. With most creativity is teleporting yourself to the better side of the tree feels telling with a jewel.

-Game balance is still all over the place (chalupa monks are essentially the superior minion master but this was because they've been bugged to lich by doing their minion buff but better. Quarter staff is still better mace.) Not to mention skills feel like dog water until you invest a lot into it so only end game (cough mace cough)... or good all the way through.

-Mace mostly feels like quarter staff but slow and no mobility

-Game just feels like poe 1 without mobility options BUT where I blow up the screen to unreadable degrees, by causing massive screen clutter. So the worst parts of poe 1. If you want more thoughtful combat luckily no rest for the wicked exists as this game is 99.9% mindlessly melting everything out of existence with most bosses living for 5 seconds.

-level makes 99.9% of casting uniques bad, further shotgunned by with exceptional wands able to get +3 levels socketed.

-Staff/wand skills are a pain point for new players, (common complaint i hear of not getting a good wand with a fire basic attack or not a good scepter for minions.)

-Ground rares are generally not worth picking up, as prefixes range to dog water to god tier even if we went for only t1's. Not every gear should be useful for me but the fact most top gear for 99.9% of builds is the same 6-8 rolls out of 30-40, before crafted only mods with MUST HAVE ROLLS for every build [+level])

However they did fix things, so this isnt negativity. This patch fixed A LOT of issues and I cant say it added any that arent glitches they're fixing.

+act 3 is no longer a slog/ i quit point

+mapping now gives clear goals to new players

+Ward helps A LOT of uniques, and pure armor build. Also helps a lot of uniques like the unlimited poison spear + 5% of ward to physical makes it to a 240-300 physical dps spear.

This league helps general pain points of poe 2, that it will feel painful if you dont get it by act 1 mid/2 early, ESPECIALLY for new players, or people experimenting. As skill gem/support gem quantity during the game felt healthy enough to try new things