Ok this is just me posting my thoughts and opinions having spent 100 plus hours in the game, feel free to ignore/skip/smirk at what I have to say.
How is combat?
I haven’t much to say here which must mean combat works for me, however, it feels to me that movement skills i.e. teleport/transplant etc seem a must for all character in this game at the moment, even just to move around at a decent pace you need such skills, as there are only 5 skill slots available this feels like a restiction as you only really choosing 4 skills.
Another issue I have notice is that the area’s shown for incoming enemy spells/minion aura’s don’t always line up the actual damage radius, I am basing this on fire golem aura destroying boxes and wedigo matriarch killing (one shoting) one of my characters with her thunder earthquake jump of I rage quit (when I swear I was just outside the ring).
What skills I like and why?
I will start of saying what I like most about the skills specialisation and that is the skill mutators.
I find them to be the most fun aspect of the skill development trees, skills with few mutators apear lackluster to me (I am looking at you mark for death).
Now my bias, I have to say my favorate classes are the Acoylte and the Mage as I like the the pet/spells that hit from far away variety of skills this affect the following list as bias/time playing with said characters.
Skills that stand out to me:
Skelton mage (“Deathknights glowing swords looks great” few necromancers later “Cryomancers WTF there awesome why did I go Deathknights?”)
Summon wraith (I was surprised by this one made me realise I built my first necromancer wrong and should have invested in the when minion dies passives, this plus other necromancer skills probably account for most of my 100 plus hours)
Teleport (illusions are great, did I mention I like pets)
Shatterstrike (“ok this is cool bit hard on the mana kinda miss mana strike” few points later… “how much damage” few points later “this is more or less an AOE spell I love it”… “Ice Spikes!”)
Glacier (have yet to go down this rabbit hole but the standard is already great)
Blackhole (same as with Glacier think my next character will be a cold focused sorcerer)
Other things I have liked:
Uniques: I like where this games goes with these items, I just feel that characters get bombarded with them too much (maybe that is a beta thing).
I particularly like Dreamthorn as this glowy sword of death made my early play with the spellblade very enjoyable and my runs with sentinal and primalist bearable/ok (this maybe my bias against melee characters).
Forge/crafting system: once you get the hang of it, provides your character with that must have stat I aprove of this but needs better explaining for people who have not watched youtube video’s on how it works (I assume a tutorial will be put in place before release).
Why have I invested 100h plus?
I like the necromancer, I generally love pet focused classes and have spent most of my time in the game pushing a HC necromancer (currently on the 4th iteration of Luciea, 1st, 2nd, 3rd Deleted in peace).
I like exploring new ideas for characters I currently have 7 characters all above lvl 29 however, after I get the subclass specialisation I play around a bit with them and for most I have lost interest only taking necromancer and spellblade to lvl 50.
Problems:
when your starting your 8th character just to get to know what it is like for x subclass early levels can be boring/tedious, I felt this very much so with my sentinal and to a degree the primalist and mostly between getting the second shard of the epoch and getting the third shard.
As I said above most of my characters are around lvl 30 after getting the subclass I am not feeling much incentive to push them further.
My experience with monolith: I have heard people loving monolith/arena play, I am not feeling that as yet.
My spellblade kept being oneshoted by wedigo matriarch jump skill led to me stop playing him beyond lvl 50 in monolith and my HC Necromancer, well lets just say I am going through the story again with her.
One shot character kills: there seems to be high disparity between damage, alot of mobs will not significantly threaten your characters life, then bamm you go from 100% to dead without seeing the inbetween bit.
I approve of difficulty and to a degree we get warning with damage cicles but most of the time I have had a negative reaction to this especially when I tried to build tanky.
Random stuff:
There are a few places in the game where you can’t see the mobs because a tree or pillar is filling you screen which could be an issue for melee characters.
Mobs around waypoints, I have had an occasion where a mob was standing over a waypoint I go to attack and then my screen is filled with the waypoint map not too big of a deal as it was only some skeltons but annoying.
Suggestions:
More ways for our characters to mitegate/avoid being one shotted would be nice (which is what I hope the devs are building to).
how about a timestop effect (make everthing go gray and stop moving) when you enter a timerift (cool effect and stop mobs smashing you face in while you cannot interact).
More time rifts? way to fight fatigue of early levels, perhaps random time rifts? 
.
More glowy swords of death please (did I mention I liked Dreamthorn appearance) i.e. uniques that are visualy appealing.
Anyway to the Dev’s, thank you for what you have created so far and I look forward to what is coming next for Last Epoch.
