[PoE] has a pretty steep learning curve
Wait until you get to 70 (I think it's 70) and exp gain changes.
Really, my two biggest beefs (beeves?) with PoE are:
1) The game
actively punishes you for standing still. WAY too many enemies either harm you somehow when you kill them (punishing melee characters) or else they constantly summon powerful allies/effects on top of you at range (punishing ranged characters)...
but almost all attacks your character makes require you to stand still. There is no "Shoot/attack while moving" perk (or if there is, I've never found it).
2) There are too many effects in the game that freeze/stun/immobilize or otherwise CC you and there is no way to avoid them all, meaning that standing still for extended periods of time is UNAVOIDABLE
unless you pick one specific character and follow one specific path, and even then it’s not a guarantee.
Also a lesser beef is that while leech/regeneration work great at lower levels to keep you topped up and compensate for #1 above, at higher ones the regen/leech curve doesn't rise fast enough to keep up with the amount of damage that mobs can deal to you, essentially meaning that unless you combine it with an absolute TON of armor/resist, you might as well just put your points into something else and use potions anyway.
Also, fuck the bleed mechanic. I will walk away victorious from a hard battle and then die unexpectedly 5 seconds later because I didn’t hear the squishy bleeding sound over all the other hubbub, or because my only staunching potion was still on cooldown.
--Patrick