Hey there,
even though this is not your first, but second post:
Welcome to the LE community!
Some thoughts from me
BROOOOOOS where are ya?!?!?
IMO this is in a really good state since the last 2 major patches, which majorly buffed base item drops and general quality of gear.
But you definitely need a decent loot filter for high level content.
I’m all in in discussing different points of view form different people.
But don’t tell other people they are plainly incorrect when it’s about a subjective thing, like a looting experience.
If you want to state your opinion i would recommend using one of the designated threads, like one of the more recent ones here:
They are meant for items, that already dropped with very good affixes, but have medicore or bad implicits.
They reworked and overhauled alot of parts in the early story already. And many more areas are probably to come.
If they reworked all i am almost certain we will get one major balance/leveling pass on the entirety of the story.
But yeah, as you mentioned. It really doesn’t matter that much. It’s just a number, that alot of casual players probably don’t even notice.
I can understand that they are very opressing for people that want to go afk because of RL, or generally for HC characters if you are distracted.
But outside of those scenarios i really do like them, because it makes the combat very dynamic.
I think Mike talked about this in one of his streams.
I am pretty sure this will no longer be a thing, once we have server-authenticated game sessions.
I think Mike said they don’t know how they will handle this for Offline play yet, but maybe they will come up with a solution.
Coming from an IT background, having customers say “this is priority” is almost never true 
The first loot filter implementation already was insane, with the recent additions to functionality, the loot filter already got even more amazing.
While more customization is already nice, it will never be priority.
Once we get more inclusion features in, like colourblind modes etc, i could see more colours being added though.
This is really cool to hear.
I always can understand why people like PoE, because the sense of progression and getting to god-like pace does feel great, but it negates so much moment-to-moment decisions in-combat, because the pure speed and Damage-Projection is PoE is out of hand.
I think LE and PoE can co-exist and neither of them need to be “better” then the other one, they are wildly different, besides some rudimentary genre defining features.
And LE does not even try to be PoE-like in alot of regards.
EHG did state on multiple occasions, that they want all game systems and features to be accessable in-game.
However trading will look like, it will be very likely 100% in-game.