How to fix POE2

[Jet Uppercut]

A lot of people are pretty dissatisfied with the latest update and have been generally upset about the state of the game since launch.
I don't think this can all be boiled down to 'skill issue' or blanket nerfs, because I haven't had any trouble with the game really and I still think its a clunky, boring mess.

Junk Mechanics

I started to actually think about it and it just comes down to how so many of the new mechanics added to the game are just completely at odds with the actual gameplay of an ARPG. They're like turn based game mechanics.

As an example: The Parry, the newest mechanic added to the game.
1. You hold the button and wait for the enemy to hit you.
2. You do the parry animation, which applies a specific debuff to the enemy and knocks them away.
3. You have to walk back up to the enemy you just parried.
4. You perform another attack that can consume the parry debuff.
5. Doing this gives the player a buff.
6. The player then spends that buff on a different skill to empower it.

That is six steps. And it applies to all of the new mechanics. The "Primed for" ones, the "Culling" ones, Armor break, etc.
Who the hell has time for all of that when you've got dozens of breach mobs trying to swarm their way up your ass?

Now let me break down to how Heralds work, to do functionally the same thing.
1. You equip the Herald and it does everything it does automatically.

Wow. No wonder all of the builds in the game are Herald builds. Or "Cast on X" builds. Because they don't needlessly interrupt my gameplay with stupid superfluous mechanics that I probably couldn't single out of a mob pack in a map anyway.

Slowing the game down by nerfing the crap out of builds isn't going to make people play with the 'new toys'. Because the new toys SUCK and they go entirely against the grain of how an ARPG is actually played.

Instead what you need to do is completely rework all of these new mechanics so people will want to use them. I'll provide an example so the generative AI you're pretending is a game designer can actually learn how to make them worth using.

Parry:
1. Remove this as its own skill.
2. Add Parry windows to certain skills instead. Including Shield Block.
3. When you Parry an attack, apply a buff TO THE PLAYER specific to the weapon type the player was using to Parry the attack.
4. Use this buff as a resource to empower skills.

For example:
1. You use Tempest Bell, which has a Parry Window during the animation when the Bell is enlarged but before it gets deployed.
2. Tempest Bell parries an attack and you get a buff called 'Finesse: Quarterstaff'
3. You can spend that Finesse buff to empower Quarterstaff skills, like getting to Instant Cast Gathering Storm at Perfect Dash level.
3a. Maybe add a Support Gem that lets you consume Finesse in place of a Charge for empowering skills, but give reduced benefits.

You could even call the mechanic on skills Finesse as the keyword. This immediately becomes a 2-step process: Parry attack -> Empower Skill. Much better flow. And the skill is still functional without it. Unlike Disengage, which nobody will ever use after Act 1 Normal.

Priming:
1. Keep the skills and debuffs, but rework them to APPLY the Prime to the enemy instead. So Staggering Palm adds the Prime debuff to an enemy instead of removing it.
2. If the debuff expires before it gets activated, give that enemy temporary status immunity.

Example:
1. I use Staggering Palm on an enemy and it applies "Primed for Stun" to them.
2. I don't actually stun the enemy before the debuff expires.
3. The enemy now has a red stun bar like it's just recovering from a stun before I can try again.

The "Culling mark" skills like Killing Palm could work the same, but just make it so if the player doesn't kill them in time they just can't apply it again for a certain duration.
Because its kind of ridiculous people would rather use Profane Ritual to build Power Charges on monk instead of the monk skill supposedly DESIGNED TO GAIN POWER CHARGES!

This way, people will actually use these damn skills because it doesn't interrupt their gameplay. In fact, Shattering Palm already works this way and people were using it!
Until you nerfed it this patch so it couldn't chain its own explosions. Even though Herald of Ice and Thunder still combo all day long in every build.
Whats next for the genius designing this game, removing the chain explosions from Gas Grenades?

Slow Skill Progression

The other thing I want to mention is the frankly atrocious Skill Progression in this game.

People are whining about the early Acts and campaign, not because it's too hard really, but because they have to use the deliberately clunky and crap skills that aren't a part of their build for multiple hours, just to get to the stuff they do want to use. And they have to then spend tons of gold and currency respeccing to what they actually want.
Its frustrating and demotivating.

It reminds me a lot of Torchlight 2, in that basically everybody played the same build on every character. Why?
Because the skills were so single-minded in use and heavily level-gated you couldn't use most of them just by virtue of what you picked earlier in the game. Plus skill respecs were super limited.
Even if you wanted to make a character to use those late game skills, you still needed to use something in the literal hours it would take to reach that level. And so you just used the same skills that made early leveling not a total chore and spent more time using those than your actual target build.
It made the game far more boring than it had any right to be and that's why the most popular mods for the game are about removing those level restrictions and giving free full respecs.

PoE2 is the exact same right now and it doesn't need to be.
PoE1 is quite literally the opposite and I haven't heard anybody ever complain about leveling in that game. Not having to get to end game to use a skill I want means going into a fresh league with a new build feels different enough that it isn't a slog.
I don't need to wait until I'm basically in maps to be able to equip a skill gem for my build. It isn't fun and there really isn't any reason for it. The Passive tree is the same, so why gate the skills like this? Decision paralysis is obviously not one of your primary concerns here.

Anyway, that's my whining done. I don't expect anybody to read all that ♥♥♥♥ I just needed to say it.
tl;dr New mechanics are way too clunky for an ARPG and restrictive skill progression means everybody is forced to play the same build until end-game. Which is why everyone hates the early game in PoE2.