Hard to boil it down to just 5. So, in no particular order:
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No balancing. There are aRPGs with good balancing. There are those with bad balancing. And then there is Last Epoch. No balance patches for months is one of the worst ideas I have ever seen in aRPG. Especially in a studio of this size. Obviously, there’s no workforce to properly playtest for balance (Profane Veil, Explosive Ballista, Detonating Arrow on Explosive Trap, Healing Hands - don’t go telling me these things were balance tested before release). Dropping one big patch of untested changes each cycle and forcing players to stick with it for months is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention meta staleness. Leaderboards? Just label each placement with a patch number. In the long term, ARPGs live and die by balancing. They can’t breathe without balancing. And LE is currently being smothered by this terrible policy.
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Oppressive RNG. This is not to complain about droprates. Droprates and player expectations are subjective. By “oppressive RNG” I mean the way LE loot system affects the reward-punishment duality of player psychology. LE developed their loot system so that the reward is fragmented, delayed and often denied. When you drop an LP unique or a perfect exalt to craft up, you may think you’re being rewarded. But you only receive a promise of a reward. The actual reward is gated behind further RNG checks - designed so that this promise turns out to be false more often than not. This is actually how psychology of punishment works. How is it different from other aRPGs where not dropping something is also kind of a punishment? In LE, the promise of a reward is palpable: you finally got it to drop, you earned it, only to see it go away time after time. This builds up frustration which for many players is not worth the actual reward at the end. Obviously this system cannot be scrubbed at this point. But the likelihood of failure in the further steps of loot acquisition should be looked at.
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Screen clutter. AFAIK, LE was designed so that some enemy mechanics are to be observed and avoided. This greatly conflicts with the visual design of skills such as Elemental Nova, Explosive Ballista or Tornado which turn the screen into a colorful mess where you can’t see anything. The large AoE effects or permanent DoT effects must be more transparent and toned down visually. In case of one of the more popular builds - RM on Frost Claw with Nova - playing it feels like it’s actually unhealthy.
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Merchants’ Guild UI. This is where I get unhinged. So click at your own peril. The above are complex issues but this one - there is no excuse. What do you mean I can’t look for a T7 of this affix and any tier of another? This is primary functionality of a trade listing. This is what 95% people do there. Furthermore, this system already exists - in loot filters. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, what do you mean I have to scroll through every single item I ever sold to complete a sale? Why? How? Who did this? Excuse me, but this wouldn’t pass in a freshman UI design class.
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Repeated grind on alts. Devs tried to alleviate it to some extent with partial campaign skips and corruption bonuses. But this is not enough. Arena of Memory? (Halving progress is a meme. Who came up with that?) Grinding corruption with pitiful stability rewards at low corruption on every character? Look at Grim Dawn. Shattered Realm 75 was a grind but once you got there you could buy tickets and use them on any char. In LE, your alt is often 300-ready at level 85. And you have to spend hours in mindless grind to get there again.
And two quickies:
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Unique diversity. Game needs more uniques. Nuff said. Also, less useless uniques.
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Questionable mechanics. Mainly enemies’ stun and DoTs.