I played last league, I don’t think the devs there hate their players, but they want their game to remain somewhat challenging and “hardcore”.
The problem I felt is BS one-shots. Even if you go with a defense-first mentality, keep you hp at defenses up to date, and focus on them, nothing matters and you will still end up one-shotted. The game is so ridiculous that at the end my biggest survival improvement was to focus in offense instead. Kill them before they can react, you skip so much BS that way… is so sad.
People say is you have enough experience, you can avoid one-shot situations, but when you don’t have that experience, really feels cheap, and in mapping, without too harmful mods, sometimes a random white mob can instantly kill you, while 95% of the time the damage you receive is insignificant. Feels the game balance is all over the place.
I really appreciate monsters in this game, and the approach to combat. I like how non-rare enemies can keep you in your toes, how you can predict what is and what is not lethal and how you can react accordingly. I didn’t encounter cheap BS one-shots in this game, you feel you’re in control, while in PoE is was waiting for my next death, sometimes I could identify what I did wrong, but many others was truly BS one-shot out of nothing.