First off, I just want to say that I'm having a blast. I wanna start off with some of the things I'm enjoying.

1.) Questing -- I love the voice acting, I love the story elements, the humor... It's fantastic. It's such a big departure from questing in WoW -- I actually pay attention to quests pretty frequently in this game.
2.) Theory Crafting -- There are SO MANY ITEM SETS. I love it. I feel like there is a ton of room for theory crafting in this game and I'm really enjoying trying to come up with new ideas for builds that I enjoy playing.
3.) Dungeon running -- I've been pretty blown away by some of the dungeons in this game. They're gorgeous, some of them have really fun mechanics like the grappling hook and enjoyable little puzzles spread around. Some of the boss mechanics are totally wild, but when I die I usually feel like I know what I did wrong, or I can easily look up what I did wrong and improve. I really feel like I actually improve as a player when I get clapped by a boss mechanic. It's punishing but usually it feels pretty fair and I Love it.
4.) I like that I don't really feel super pressured to perform when playing casually. I can just kinda chill and do my own thing, and nobody is putting me on blast for not having an optimized build or anything like that.. but I can tell that there is a ton of room for optimization that I can grow into. I get to find the right blend of optimization and fun playstyle -- and I like that.


So before I talk about things I don't like, I want to preface it all with this is purely my own opinion, based on what I like -- as a casual Andy.

1.) This game isn't very alt friendly. Mount speed / crafting / inventory space / etc not carrying over between characters feels REALLY bad. I really wish more things were account bound than CP level.
2.) Inventory space feels really tight, even with lots of bag upgrades

Alright now I'd like to give some feedback on combat, and some feedback on tanking.

COMBAT:
I really enjoy a lot of the aspects of combat, but I find it really punishing to have utility/playstyle abilities on my bar. Example: I want to run around on my nightblade and feel like a ninja. So I grab my spammable.. and my execute.. and the dual wield AOE move... and a teleport... and my cloak... and I'm out of moves on my front bar... and then I feel like I have a cohesive kit for my playstyle! But.. my damage suffers really heavily from having these utility moves. What is most optimal in this game is to use moves, dots specifically that have a high damage output per button press... and having utility on your bar is a pretty big dps loss. And that feels like a pretty big shame. So I end up having to load up my back bar with all these dots/buffs.. but then I'm swapping away from my fun bar to do all these maintenance dots/buffs. Turns out I don't like switching bars, cause my brain is smooth and I get confused about which bar I'm on.. then I'm watching buff bars instead of playing the game... and I really don't like that. I feel compelled to go fast and push my buttons quickly, and then I end up messing up light attack weaving and I burn through my resources really quickly.

I know with practice I can get better at it, and that's what I'm working on improving on.. but there is a really big divergence in what feels natural to do, and what puts up good numbers. It's one of those "Even if I do it correctly, am I still having fun?" kind of questions.. and I think the answer for me -- is that I don't enjoy looking at buff timers. So a big challenge for me personally is finding a playstyle that rewards me for weaving light attacks with my spammable -- and ignoring the buffs/dots playstyle.

In my mind, a perfect rotation is something cohesive that feels natural to do, and doing bar swaps really disrupts that natural feeling for me. I'd much rather have 10 abilities on one bar and 10 keybinds. I'd like to keep the bar swap for things like changing play styles. Example -- Having a backup tanking or healing bar, and the front bar being for DPS. I know that's probably never gonna happen though cause it's too radical of a change. I try to play like that now, but only having 5 buttons to work with per bar really doesn't let you get fun utility moves and enough damage to do content well.

TANKING:
Okay, so I love tanking. I tank in every game I play... and I have a lot to say about tanking in this game. First off -- it's chaotic. I spent a good bit of time watching some content creators talk about tanking and it blows my mind how radically different the tanking meta is in this game. All the content creators try to optimize buffing and debuffing.. and completely ignore how important it is to position mobs and make sure you're actually tanking things. It's all spreadsheets and min maxing tiny buff windows to get your DPS 6 seconds of %damage boosts.. but it completely neglects how useless that is when your DPS is tanking 3 mobs you ignored.

AOE Grips and AOE Taunts are almost shunned in this game and it blows my mind. I feel like area grips and area taunts should be incorporated into tanking kits naturally... I almost feel like the Tormentor set w/ Stampede and either Rush of Agony/Void Bash are mandatory items in order to tank efficiently.. and the sentiment that I'm reading from other people is that those are things for lazy/bad tanks... but I just completely disagree. I think tanks that run past enemies are missing the entire tank fantasy.. not only that but they're leaving chaos all over the place. It's disorderly and sloppy to have your DPS running all over the place trying to clean up mobs. It also is pretty miserable feeling having to walk around and manually puncture 10 enemies. Threat generation is inconsistent.. honestly it's a mess.

Then you get into a group with a guy who dashes in, AOE pulls all of the mobs into a nice little AOE Death Zone and the DPS just annihilate all the mobs and it's beautiful. But the tank has to give up some REALLY strong defensive set options in order to obtain that kind of order... it's honestly a travesty. I legit think that the sword and board tree needs love. I also think that each class should have their own taunt/pull abilities or morphs to give them flavor. It's kind of lame that if you want to tank you 100% need to run a sword and board or an Ice Staff... or in most cases both.

It's pretty common to get into a dungeon and not even be able to tell who on your team is actually tanking, because the tank is over in one area fighting 2 mobs, and your DPS are separated killing different mobs, while your healer is running around getting slapped by everything else. I can just hear benny hill music playing in the background while all this chaos ensues lol. Heck half the time in the random dungeon finder your tank is just a DPS anyways, and they don't even have a taunt on their bar.

And when you watch content creators tank, they're literally rushing into the mobs to try and get the initial aggro/hit in and using some kind of snare to just slow mobs down.. but it's all just seconds away from pure chaos. That probably works alright when everyone in your group is on the same page, and everyone is doing tons of damage so weaker mobs just die instantly... but it's still so disorderly... and personally.. I just don't enjoy manually taunting every enemy that is a threat. I don't say that out of laziness.. because I will walk my slow arse over to every single enemy and taunt them, and lasso every straggler to make a nice AOE death zone. It just isn't very fun to do.

CLOSING THOUGHTS:

I always struggle with two different mentalities. There is the min-max part of my brain that looks at how strong I can be by exploiting whatever I can do in the game currently.. and then there is the fantasy nerd inside me who always struggles with "Am I having fun.. Do I feel like my character is living the fantasy I imagine?"

My feedback here is largely from the second perspective, so this is really just opinion/subjective. I know a lot of people will disagree completely, so hopefully this is taken with that in mind.

I'd like to end by saying that I'm still having a blast. I love the game so far, and I'm really enjoying myself. I know I have a long way to go in terms of developing my own skill at the game, and its possible that maybe once I learn more of the systems in the game that I'll come to appreciate things I wish were different now.

Cheers