1st impression

The areas resetting is a technical issue that the devs are working to fix, the minions not appearing when you use a portal to go back to an area is a bug that they are aware of (the minions reappear back at the area portal if there is one).

Yes.

What does hte game guide say? Alternatively, I believe Boardman21 did a youtube guide for crafting.
https://www.google.com/search?channel=trow2&client=firefox-b-d&q=last+epoch+crafting+boardman21

You want a skill/tooltip dps which is on their list of things to do. Plus, this…

Please see above.

Yeah, that’s probably a decent idea, as is being able to respec multiple passive points without having to click the accept button each time…

No, they’ve balanced things around using 5 skills. Though if you can get some skills proc’d by other skills (eg, Smite proc’d by an idol on throwing attack), then you don’t need the proc’d skill (smite) on your skill bar.

They are working on a loot filter, like Grim Dawn’s.