Tho, again, I'm not sure how much PoE can hold my interest anymore, seems that for the past year all I've been able to do is get to maps and get annoyed by the new atlas progression and kinda stop playing afterwards.
I can maintain my desire to get up to Sirus. And then lose to him 4 or 5 times (each repeat attempt probably taking 100 maps, but I could be exaggerating - whatever it is, it's a lot of fucking work just to constantly lose) and get discouraged. Can't never be assed to level up a new build that might be able to handle him better.
Had a similar issue with Uber Elder - could get to him but never beat him, then say "fuck it" because I obviously suck too much at a game where people can apparently do the final boss at fucking level 32 (reaching maps then intentionally de-leveling through a vendor recipe).
Even Harvest league, while well received overall, between the RNG of getting the right crafts and not being able to wrap wrap my brain around what I had to do to use them properly, I got discouraged from not being able to do anything in what should have been the easiest most OP league yet.
Each Sirus attempt takes 24-40 maps, plus a little overhead for RNG. In comparison, the current uberElder takes a minimum of 16 and has tradable keys, so you could just shortcut the entire process or swap keys around if you keep getting the same ones. And the Heart of the Grove fight... takes a minimum of 100 maps, personally run, cannot be done in groups (other than the host), cannot be accelerated, and for the first few weeks had a known hard-showstopper bug.
I find the current Sirus/Conqueror atlas to be a vast improvement for gameplay over the Elder/Shaper War for the Atlas edition (though the latter was more dynamic)
once you have it completed. The major advantage is that sustain is vastly improved (anecdotal), you have a lot more freedom to choose what maps to run (all regions are now high tier and advance content), and the Favorite system helps with keeping maps you like available and ones you don't like minimized (assuming you don't do something dumb with it, like I did for a while).