Having played the ARPG genre for about a decade (countless hours on D2, about 2k hours on D3), with the way Blizzard dealt with Diablo Immortal, I had recently switched to Path of Exile.
I had played Lake of Kalandra - while the league was not taken well by the community - I was catching up on the core mechanics. Even this league I am more or less ignoring the Forbidden Sanctum mechanic and focusing on clearing the campaign first.
I get what you are saying about the one shot death mechanics. Last league, I stuck to white maps and rarely went up to yellow. I just went with a view that - I am not “leet” enough for that.