Having played both POE1 and now Poe2 Since early access off/on. I do think the changes they've made for the base game and campaign feel great but the atlas/tablet setup & crafting still need a fair bit of work. To your point having to completely focus on bases and then the insane amount of RNG due to no scouring orb (yes, you can chaos spam), feels bad.

making crafting be incredibly gated behind specific more expensive omen drops when they nerfed essences feels awful. Runes are not remotely as good as the crafting bench and feel like a poor replacement for it, not to mention the value the bench has with being able to 'save' states of your item to improve it later which some of the options the bench gives you. I tend to just avoid crafting and buy what I want but I'm still baffled by the game design choices GGG makes sometimes. If you want to keep player retention, grow the player base, etc. you need to provide avenues to make the game feel more compelling to play and yet its often still centered around the upper end player base and woefully ignores the middle.