Feedback on Secrets of the Atlas and Eldritch Monsters

Now that a year of keepers of the Atlas is under our belt and it's gotten it's time in the sun and reworks, I can't say I'm a fan of it. When I feel it out and think it up, to me it is just "lucky crafting" when crafting is in a terrible place and these expansions have been on a downward tilt since Eldritch. The Shaper and Elder are core to the concept of PoE and have earned their place as the core of my view of expansions. Next comes Conquerors and they were an interesting direction to go along with dual influences making some insane items, while the lore I think is foggy, they had great detail and were front and center in the development of the player's Atlas. Maven took a further backseat and felt she was always kind of behind the scenes of other farm strats, but with the introduction to the Atlas Passives it was an incredible expansion as well.

After this Eldritch and Zana seem to further fall behind the previous player options we had and they take us out of the scene that exiles were in both from lore perspective and the character customization scheme. It feels like with the last 2 expansions we've kind of got to a point that was chase after side-lined shaper/elder/conq gear, corrupted implicits, eldritch implicits, or uniques with the 3 alternatives having an ebb and flow to their choices while eldirtch implicits just adds a stage of gearing after you decide you don't want to go with the other options. From a lore perspective we don't seem to feel the weight of Zana as she pushes the player away and the eldritch creatures seem more of an encounter of right place right time and almost feel neutral in my perspective.

All in all I think PoE is in its best state it's ever been, but the neutrality of the eldritch in both player power and my perspective does not land as oppositional enough, and Zana's angst is perpetually distant and is heavily devalued by the tree and shipments that take away from the aspect of "lucky crafting" when better gear is spawned at the click of a button.