The amount of damage two handers and warfare skills do is crazy and trivialises the game (dualwield close second).

General suggestions:
-Reduce 2h damage by like 20%
-Dualwield and 2h increase AP cost of skills that use weapon damage by 1
-Warfare skills that are aoe and apply status effects should have a negative damage modifier instead of the extremely high positive they do now. E.g. crippling strike/battering ram should do like 80% weapon damage. The fact that they have AOE, extra damage, low AP cost, apply status effects and in case of battering ram are great for mobility is ridiculous.
-Rage is ridiculous, suggest dropping that 100% crit chance to like 30% max (or maybe double your existing crit chance instead so that crit chance does not become irrelevant).

Otherwise all supposed tactical depth is nullified by oneshotting everything on sight.

pretty much spot on, on all accounts.

Although I agree that Two-Handed Warrior is strong and there should be some adjustments. This would be way too punishing.

Well, 2h auto attack does cost +1 AP compared to 1h auto (and is relatively balanced, with best 2h weapons doing over 2x damage of one hand weapons).

So +1 AP on skills would be only natural. In fact, if 2h weapons do 2x of 1h damage then 2 AP skills would still do 33% more damage per AP and 3 AP skills would do 66% more damage. This reduces utility of the 2h however, since 1h can use more skills and do more CC/movement.

Alternatively, reduce the 2h and dualwield auto attack to 1 AP (just as 1h), but make them only do maybe 30% more damage than 1h (straight up nerfing 2h damage and reducing offhand damage for dw). Dealing 30% more damage with auto attack/skills would be a fair trade for a shield. Dealing 100-150% more damage with all skills at same AP cost is certainly not.

There are no 3 AP skills -- the most likely reason? It would be clunky with the 4 AP base system. Now, if you're talking about the 1 AP Warfare skills -- I could see some change in that. But in that case let's not forget about the 1 AP Teleport, Hail Strike, Winter Blast, and whatever else exists.

I'll say again, I agree with some of your points like scaling back the damage of certain skills or reducing the critical strike chance provided by Rage, but attacking a 2-Handed Warrior's AP is not a casual change. A Two-Handed Warrior is a fighter that gives up the the luxury of being range and having amazing defensive stats like their shielded counterpart so that they can be a wrecking ball in the battlefield -- let's not take that identity from them.

Actually, Fireball costs 3 AP. Just sayin.'

There are 3 AP "ultimate" skills like Onslaught which are utterly ridiculous with 2h.

Extra defensive stats of 1h are not "amazing", they are not worth having over two times less damage with skills (and autoattack too if you use shield for said defensive stats). As I said, I could see 2h/dw doing maybe 30% more damage per AP over 1h with skills/auto for a fair tradeoff with survivability.

Hail Strike is OP for 1 AP too, but it's a different topic.

Onslaught is a source skill, of course it's strong. And by the way it costs 2 AP not 3 AP -- there are no 3 AP cost skills.

I won't debate you on "amazing defensive stats" since it is subjective -- I was just trying to illustrate having a shield could be the difference between life and death (or being crowd controlled).

*I went in game to actually check.
3 - AP Cost: Fireball and Infect
4 - AP Cost: Snipe and Chain Lightning

It also depends on the quality of the offhand shield. Were my 1H warrior with a shield worth 72 armor points, +2 str, + 10% fire resistance and +0,5 meters of movement to face, let's say, alexander in a 1-on-1 fight, my 1H warrior would win thanks to overpower (more physical armor), rage, battle stomp and bull rush to keep his opponent permanently stunlocked, and this is despite alexander's monstrous damage. Frankly, I don't really believe that imposing 1 extra AP point cost to 2H warriors skills would be a fair way of balancing things.

Nerfing the damage output of cripple, bull rush, and rage, on the other hand....

Says 3 AP for me in the game. And oneshotting everything isn't strong, it's broken. More so with dw/2h when you do 2x or more damage compared to 1h.

There's no way in hell a mediocre physical armour bonus is worth halving your damage.

Maybe no warfare 3 AP skills...

Ya I end up checking -- I was actually surprised at a couple of them -- fireball!?!

How about setting the damage multiplier of a 2h to 1.5 instead of 2, and of the offhand weapon to 0.5 instead of 1? After all, one arm is bound to be weaker than the other...

I feel like we are talking in circles -- the damage of Two-Handed Warrior is insane, I don't think there is a single person that would contest that. I just said that of the suggestions that you purposed, increasing AP would have more punishing implications than you might think.

Believe me, I do understand the implications.

Alternative way would be to make dw/2h do roughly 50% more damage than 1h like GrumpyMcGrump suggested (still might be too much I feel).

This way 1h with no shield would have the best auto attack, 1h+shield best survivability, 2h best skill damage. Still feel like 50% more skill damage is the best option out of 3 tbh.

Plus nerf damage output of crippling strike, bull rush and rage on top of this of course.

Truthfully, what really bothers me aren't really 2H equipped warriors, but rather 2 wielders. They have the potential to be even more devastating than the 2H, why?

Let's make an example:

Warior A: 2h Weapon, deals 112-136 damage per hit.
Warrior B: Dual wielder. Main hand: 72-84 damage. Off hand: 64-78.

The dual wielder can whack even more than the 2h; even assuming minimum damage, it's 72 + 64 = 136 vs the 2h's 112 minimum damage. Now, I'm fully aware this is purely hypothetical, but I've already stumbled upon quite a few powerful 1 h purple-tiered weapons in previous playthroughs, and their damage output combined surpassed the damage output of my warrior's 2h axe (something along the lines of 120-130 iirc). And let's not even mention what could happen were both weapons to possess a crowd control chance on hit (like, say, 15% chance on hit to set stunned and 15% on hit to set blinded, which means that per successful attack you get 30% chance to CC your target). The real "weakness" with 2 wielders is that they have to make two separate attack rolls, but with high enough stats that's hardly an issue.

To piggyback on Dual-Wielding -- the stats they provide should be considered. There are also Tormented Souls and Elemental Essences in the game (granted you can't craft with them yet).

I contest that! I contest everything everyone has said in this thread and in every other thread on this forum and on every other internet forum ever since the beginning of time! :3

Don't mind me, just passing through.

No, overkill if all your other suggestions take place.



This is sensible.



Skills should never have negative damage modifiers, mage spells don't deal less damage than wand attacks, archer skills don't deal less damage than arrow shots. Increasing the AP cost is enough in this case.



This is the main problem, and yes Rage should be toned down.

Mage skills don't depend on wand/staff damage. Their damage increased by level mainly. Same goes for some of the non magical skills.

Tbh this part of my suggestion would be easier to reason about if there were known numbers for all weapons of all tiers.

So far I've seen 2h hammers do about 2.5x damage of any 1h weapon I've seen. Maybe just my luck. But even with +1AP to weapon damage skills 2.5x more damage looks like too much of an advantage. In general, I think about ~2x more damage would be ok for this option. Maybe it's specific to certain weapon types and just 2h hammers need the nerf.


Actually quite a few skills in mage and ranger trees would do same or even less damage than bow, staff or dw wand attack if they have aoe or high utility. Plus crippling strike has insanely high damage modifier anyway even compared to other warfare skills. Both of these skills have AoE, CC and battering ram is a mobility skill which is also quite cheap. They don't deserve high damage modifiers. Exact numbers are debatable.

1h = 1ap, 2h=2ap, 2h=2x1h dmg, which makes autoattacks balanced.

Now the problem is this warfare, ap cost is the same whenever you wear 2H, dual or 1h, dmg is not.
So they need to change warfare, and not the weapon's dmg.

If they don't deserve damage modifiers they don't deserve increased AP costs. If two handed skills cost +1 AP like you suggested AND these skills didn't have damage modifiers I would only use basic attacks, because it would be more efficient.

Battering ram would still be 2 AP + knockdown + teleport + AoE damage. Compared to 2 AP single target auto attack I'd say it dealing bit less single target damage would be totally fine.

Crippling strike is AoE + AoE debuff, at 3 AP it would still be very beneficial to use if you can hit more than 1 target (which should be the case with most AoE skills, they should not be good for single target damage). Maybe it can have bit higher damage modifier than battering ram cause no mobility and not as good at CC.

High damage skills should be the ones that have little utility, and AoE skills should not outdamage single target ones (like it happens with crippling strike compared to many other skills).



Anyway, after some thinking, I'm inclined than the best approach would be to reduce 2h damage across the board to 1.3-1.5 1h damage and likewise nerf offhand damage to the same 30%-50%, while leaving skill AP costs as is. This would be easier from balancing standpoint.

Plus nerf rage/crippling strike/battering ram.

No, as I said, this would make 2h and dualwield useless. Because right now, 2h/dual = 2 attacks of 1h.

Here's my opinion - there should be single-target skills and AoE skills, and obviously single target should deal more damage, however I believe that ALL skills should always be better than a simple auto attack in EVERY way. Skills require memory and have a CD you use them only once in a few turns and some also require more AP, so it's justified.

I'm generally not a fan of broad nerfs. It would probably serve better if they figured a way of making 1 hand, and 1 hand + shield more attractive with a specialty or mechanic unique to them that dual wield and 2 hand lacks so that it can serve a niche or other desirable function outside just dealing damage.

Right now, they are all essentially competing for the same job at the moment, with nothing to differentiate besides damage output and ap cost.

Personally, I hope that if they do a nerf to dual wield/two hand it is not too severe. I have played way too many games where those two styles are incredibly lackluster or not worth using over sword and board.

Yeah, they would be bad for basic attacks, but good for skills. A fair tradeoff imo.



Fair enough - that's one way to balance it. Still, the aforementioned skills are disproportionately good compared to many others, so some adjustments are imo needed either way.



Well, in terms of role, 1h shield is more tanky, however the damage advantage of 2h/dw is too big compared to what a shield offers. If AP costs are adjusted 1h would also have more utility with cheaper skills so more CC/mobility.

As for the nerfs - current 2h makes the game ridiculously easy, so imo nerfs are what needs to happen. If the game was too hard for 1h I'd argue for 1h buffs, but it's not. D:OS has potential for tactical depth with a lot of various statuses and combos but it's not going to happen if you can simply hulk smash through everything.

All styles should be equally useful without being powerful enough to trivialise the game. Current 2h power level calls for pretty serious nerfs.

The mainproblem regarding damage difference between weaponbased Warfare and Ranger skills and magic skills is: Finding a good highlevel weapon is sufficient to increase your damage largly. While the damage of mage skills depends mainly on your level. At the beginning also from your int, but the higher your level is, the worse the benefit from int gets. So a mage can hardly increase his damage just with finding good equipment.

^ this. Sundering cleaver, anyone?

But seriously, I don't think that increasing the ap cost for 2h skills will balance things out. The main problem seems to lie in good measure with skills; for example, everybody seems to agree that the uberpowered crippling strike could use a hit from the 'ole nerfhammer. But raising the AP costs? This means that 1 handers will be able to use uberpowered skills with more frequence.

Edit: perhaps there could be another way of balancing things out, and that is modding warfare in order to boost the shield parry chance with each point. Since the shield parry negates damage, that'd definitely improve the survivability of 1H + shield users. Of course, this would have to be coupled with some small nerfs to other departments.

I wonder what Warrior will look like if some or all these of the suggestions purposed go through (these are various suggestions from different posts).

- Scale back the damage output
- Lower the effectiveness certain Warfare skills
- Raise Cooldowns
- Lower the AP given by Warlord
- Take away The Pawn
- Increase AP costs
- Limit access to skills like adrenaline, tactical retreat, and teleport by moving them to higher tiers

Warfare is the one and only strength-based school that we have. I just hope that when the dust settles the play styles offered by Warfare are still competitive with the other schools.

#WarriorLivesMatter

You, good sir, have officially cracked me up

I aim to please.

It's not about which class has the biggest manhood, it's just that the game is being dumbed down by having stuff like that in it. You could always argue that you can avoid using it, but character building is a large part of fun from games like this for a lot of people (including me), plus you don't even have to cheese, pretty much the stock Knight is already OP.

Divinity 1 suffered from similar syndrome btw, 1st act was quite fun but then characters became too strong and any semblance of tactical combat disappeared, even though the base system showed a lot of potential. At least the 1st act was pretty fun to play. Here, you get to be OP from level 1. I really hope the second instalment avoids the flaws of the first one.

100% agreement with the original post on this one.

The combination of the weapon scaling AND the Strength scaling for 2H weapon users makes using them in conjunction with Strong, AoE, and undercosted Warfare skills too strong. In particular, Battering Ram, Crippling Strike, and Rage are all very overwhelming for this archetype, are much better than the options other weapons (wands/bows/spears, etc.) have, and are available right from the start! These combined with Warlord means the warrior can finish the entire fight once it reaches his turn. They are literally that strong.
Compared to a standard attack, Battering Ram does more damage, at half the cost, to multiple enemies, and knocks them down! So powerful. The opponents aren't strong enough to pose a challenge, and other playstyles aren't close to on par.
That being said, I think extra combat points spent in the Warfare skill itself are directly inferior to the strength of the 2H weapon skill, only the abilities themselves are too strong. In fact, the Warfare passive only boosts damage to armor, by less (in most cases) than the weapon skill boosts ALL damage, making points spent in Warfare very underwhelming.

TL/DR, Warfare abilities are too strong, right from the start, when used with a 2-hander especially.

Call me a doomsayer, but this is what I expect on launch.

Have to agree that melee in genereal is imho too op, with 2h being quite extreme. Was that way in EE already, sadly.
Especially compared to ranged fighting, as positioning on the field isn't hard at all, thanks to a lot of movement skills and low AP cost for walking. And as the AI backs up a lot when coming close, it's actually even a plus, as they often run through environmental fields and additionally damage/debuff themselves.

Probably because they assume you need the AP to actually walk up to the target. Having a 3ap Fireball isn't as punishing since you're at range already.

Agreement: 2h Warfare too strong.
Solution: Make 2h warfare weaker.
How? Who knows.

Also. Fix rage.

Next topic? is 1h warfare OP even a very little bit?
My guess is no. So I think making 2h skills cost 1.5-2AP (in carefully applied areas) of 1 hand is perfectly acceptable.
2AP bullrush for 2h bullrush - Fair and balanced.
1AP for 2h bullrush - WTFBBQ?

That or decouple grey weapon damage from on weapon skills and scale them like wizards. You could still get a few bonus damage from an elemental or buffed weapon but legenday 2h no longer scales so well with crippling blow that auto attacks become meaningless.

Having a 3 AP Fireball isn't punishing because there are many great 1 AP cost AoE magic skills, so no one picks it up.
E.g. Spontaneous Combustion, Winter Blast, and Hail Strike.

TBH the core of the problem lies in the new "less-AP-per-turn" system...
There is simply no way of gradually increase/decrease AP costs, like say 1,2,3,4,5... It just goes discrete 1-2-3, not 1.5 and 2.5 (which would obviously would be stupid).

So, crippling strike is more or less balanced now.

Rage I would say is still OP as long as you can 1 turn enemies with it. If higher difficulties have much higher health for mobs maybe it would be not as OP there.

Battering ram is still way too good for 1 AP. Should be 2 AP imo.

1h did become bit better with magic def on shields, but x2 skill damage of 2h is still unchallenged.
I don't see a way of making it balanced without altering AP costs or bringing 1h and 2h closer together.

E.g. Make 2h do only 30-50% more damage than 1h and reduce autoattack cost for 2h to 1. This way you're trading extra HP from shield for 30-50% damage buff. I'd say 50% would be ok for starters. (offhand damage is also reduced to 50%). Not sure how open Larian is to such serious changes, but the current system is inherently unbalanced.

Warlord needs to be capped at 1/turn. 2 extra AP per turn is still super powerful. Currently it's way too good for any kind of damage dealer.

Single handed attacks only cost 1 AP? Pretty sure my sword-and-board warrior always spent 2 AP when swinging that axe of his.

Warlord is still quite strong, but there will always be stronger and weaker traits. The limit of 1/round sounds good.

Afaik, single attacks cost 1 AP only when they are carried with small weapons (daggers), otherwise it's still 2 ap per hit.

That doesn't seem balanced at all. All 1-hander should be 1AP due to greatly inferior damage compared to 2H attacks.

No, single handed cost 1 AP, while having nothing equiped in secondary slot.
Shield or dual wield, add 1 AP cost.

So either they need to buff shields or make it 1AP for shields. That could be a way to balance things out as well.

Ah yes, shields need to go down to 1 AP auto as well in my suggestion.

1h + empty should either not be a thing or maybe give a dodge bonus for empty offhand so that it's viable for finesse hybrids or smth.

Either both auto and skills need to cost the same across all styles or AP cost should change for skills as well when using 2h/dw. Otherwise it will never be balanced imo.

I'm fine with sword and board being 2 AP. It gives one-handed with no off-hand item a niche of versatility, though both one-handed with no offhand and sword and board need buffs to compete with two handed or DW.

Single-handed could have unique skills. Maybe stuff like "Duelist" where you counterattack, or grapple abilities. Stuff where you use your free hand to do things that would be impossible with both hands occupied, or abilities that require a great deal of accuracy and focus. Maybe it could just grant a slight accuracy and/or damage bonus (perhaps just for abilities), not so much to equal two-handed or DW, but to make them not totally suck when you use abilities.

Not sure if there's an aggro system or not (doesn't seem like it at the moment), but increasing enemies likelihood to attack shield users could help.

The other option is to do something to nerf two-hander defence. Our parties warrior at the moment uses a two-hander, he's the only melee and he's never felt under threat of dying at all really. The shield doesn't do enough to justify the massive loss of damage compared to two-handers.

The only other way I could see to make shields useful is if you play a spell-casting melee (instead of a flat warrior) for that extra bit of defence (and still allowing you to dump points into intel)? But I've yet to try that out.

One way to balance both 2H damage output and the weakness of sword and board would be to reduce how much damage Warfare abilities get from weapon damage, increase how much they get from Strength, and add a flat, base amount. That would increase the ability damage of sword & boarders while decreasing ability damage of 2Hers, while not affecting normal attack damage (which should be skewed in favor of 2Hers).

Think this is a nice suggestion, although it would kill INT warfare hybrids with staff. Maybe select stat for bonus damage depending on weapon?

Indeed, and it's already poor to use an Int Warfare build with a staff anyway. Stalves have lower base damage than Str 2 handers and Warfare abilities only scale off of Strength, so it loses damage on 2 fronts.

Think most warfare skills are based off weapon damage atm, although I might be wrong. Battle stomp is a STR based spell, but flurry is just 5 regular attacks and battering ram/crippling strike are x% weapon damage. I haven't tested it fully so I might be wrong here. Staves indeed do less damage, especially compared to hammers (I think hammers are way better than all other 2h str weapons for no good reason), but that's what makes it balanced but still viable hybrid. You do less damage, but you still get some powerful melee moves w/o having to max STR and can be a proper spellcaster at the same time. If you want more damage you still need a STR build though. If INT staves warfare did same damage as STR warfare it would be OP. But gutting it completely is also bad, cause it's a fun option that should be viable imo.

You're right. The Warfare skills that are based off of the weapon use the damage the weapon deals, and then scale up additionally from Strength. I meant that Strength was the only attribute that scaled up Warfare abilities in addition to the regular attack's damage. Because of this, if your staff hits hard, your warfare abilities will hit as-hard. Str users will have their Warfare abilities hit harder than standard attacks though.

I'm sure playing a hybrid is viable (playing any way is viable at the moment), but I don't think it's optimal.
Melee characters generally have damage boosted by a weapon Combat Ability (e.g. 2H, dual wield, etc.), and spells will be boosted by Huntsman or Pyrokinetics. The only viable Combat Ability overlap that boosts both is if one stacks Pyrokinetics and always uses a Fire Staff and Fire Spells. Even in this case, the lower weapon damage of the staff and lack of stat scaling on the Warfare abilities will hurt (compared with standard Str 2H). The character won't be any worse off at shooting spells at least, but you'd still have spent some slots on the Warfare skills, and any time you actually have to use them it'll be strictly worse than what a Str user could do.
I think one can do it, but I don't think it's particularly rewarding. I'd rather just bring a Fire Wand in this case, ditch the Melee abilities, and try to assume high-ground for the damage boost and safer distance.
I guess I'm wondering, what are the advantages of Staff melee over a standard mage or standard Str melee?

I did some tests and it actually got me thinking.

You're right about warfare abilities based off weapon damage getting additional scaling from STR. But I think it might be the reason of the ridiculous damage they do. Thing is, you get the attribute bonus TWICE. STR increases the base damage of the weapon which is then used to determine the ability damage which is then AGAIN scaled by STR. Seems clearly broken to me, I'm probably going to make a separate suggestion about that.

E.g. on character creation 12 STR knight 22-26 damage with crippling blow (feels pretty balanced).

14 STR - 36-44...

Sooo, the actual damage bonus is 1.3*1.3 = 1.69. 26*1.69 = 44. Seems legit (and broken/bugged). Rogue skills work the same, but somehow get worse scaling for whatever reason btw...

As for INT staff warfare, well, yes, you do less damage than 2h, but:
-You might want to play a staff wielding jedi
-Elemental damage has certain advantages, get electric staff + rain for example
-Flurry + staff is probably still one of the best single target magic damage abilities, although you'll need both high STR and INT to maximize it currently. If you're gonna use mage CC might as well focus on doing magic damage to destroy magic armour

Staves do benefit from 2h skill btw...

Absolutely, you nailed it. If the scaling was just from the weapon (perhaps with a fixed % modifier) it would be a lot more intuitive, and the schools wouldn't be so unnecessarily restrictive.


This sounds like a recipe to accidentally stun yourself. Having to be next to the AoE is more of a drawback. Although the Phoenix Dive pairing from Warfare could make this work for Fire and Fire-triggered effects.


Right, but if you stack the 2H skill it won't buff any of your spells. I'm just saying options for boosting weapon attacks and spells simultaneously are slim, basically just Pyrokinetics. Also, if one were only stacking 2H then spells would be very weak compared to someone who had stacked Huntsman instead. It would make the whole hybrid hard to justify. One can already go standard Str Warrior and bring a few elemental spells for CC and utility. Trying to have damage boosted in 2 directions at once is what weakens a character, I think.

It's interesting issue that strength basically boosts warfare ability damage twice. It makes sense in one hand, that strength would improve warfare abilities, but too bad there isn't a way for strength to improve warfare abilities in a different way than just +dmg, since added damage on weapons already improves that.

Without CC application chance scaling up with strength, I'm not sure what else they could add. Increased range? Steps on huntsman a bit, but that's the only reasonably scalable attribute I can think of besides damage.

Would just be nice if warfare abilities could be a little viable with spears, for example.

Well, if you had all of the advantages of each class in a hybrid it would be OP. The advantages of such hybrid imo are:

-Good synergy with mage oriented party cause they attack the same defence
-Potentially quite high single target magic damage from flurry
-Mobility skills that mages lack otherwise

This comes at a cost of having to invest in skills that have bit less synergy. You'll still be not that far behind and elevation bonuses are quite situational anyway. And I'm ok with it not being the most optimal thing as long as it doesn't suck entirely.

Well, tbh a lot of magic skills can be used by str/fin characters to full extent as any buffs/debuffs, healing, CC, environmental effects do not get anything from int either. As long as you're not doing elemental damage you don't need int. So imo it's only fair if weapon damage based skills would work the same with any weapon. This would actually make scoundrel/warfare and magic/warfare somewhat viable (using staves or daggers). And you'll still need str if you want to do a lot of physical damage with str weapons.

Quick update here:

I'm very positively impressed by the new patch.

Dual wield and 1h seem reasonably balanced atm now that offhand damage is halved and the new shield skill is fairly nice. 2 AP auto attack cost for 1h makes auto attack and skill cost equal across the board and easier to balance. Characters also seem to do a lot less damage at the beginning of the game, which is nice. Weapon damage skills also no longer benefit from the attribute twice it seems, so their scaling is a lot less crazy and staff or daggers + warfare is a lot more viable. New character presets also seem to encourage hybrid chars a lot more, and even though most people probably use custom anyway it's nice to know devs think about that.

Few things that imo still need work:

-Dualwield is in a good place imo, but 2h damage still seems tad too high (compared to let's say aforementioned dualwield). I do think that it should be higher, cause dualwield gives you more potential enchants, but not by much. Could use a slight nerf
-Default weapon abilities are cool, wands and bows can use some too (staves already have their ranged attack)
-1h + no shield seems to offer no benefits atm. Not the end of the world, since it's not a viable style in a lot of games anyway and you can always use a shield, but would be nice if no shield added some accuracy and/or dodge

Haven't played scoundrel too much, it compared pretty poorly to warfare before imo but I'm kinda interested to test it now, will report on that.

It grants you a 1 AP ability that knocks the target down.

Well, most weapon styles add some ability now. Shields add an ability that restores your armour. You might like knockdown more, but I like the idea that styles should all have an ability and some passive benefit that are balanced in regards to each other respectively.

It does seem like single handed got overall nerfed, and that it's hard to see sucker punch making up for a 50% damage reduction, especially since every melee weapon type got a new skill. Maybe sucker punch is the best of those skills, but I'll need to play with it. Maybe the single handed skill could grant a larger bonus when not using a shield, like 6% additional damage and 4% more accuracy per point instead of 4 and 2.

Probably could be a talent or two for single-handed/no shield users too. Like, chance to retaliate when attacked with a melee weapon, or a bonus when using inventory items (since you have a free hand).

DW also got a pretty severe nerf (50% damage on offhand), which makes it seem like two-handed will be pretty solidly superior with more range and damage, basically only losing out on some weapon stats.

One handed with no shield got hit the hardest indeed, but imo it was needed to make auto attack and skill AP costs consistent to balance stuff from there.

Dw seems to be nerfed enough for 1h + shield to become a viable option in comparison.

2h got touched the least, but it still did get a nerf/fix since it doesn't receive a squared stat damage bonus on weapon abilities anymore (that impacted the other styles too to be fair). It could probably use some slight damage nerf, although I have a feeling 2h weapon damage was already stealth nerfed a bit. It's also worth looking at specific weapon types, I remember 2h hammers doing pretty unbalanced damage, got to check if it's still a thing. Basic sword does 4-5 dmg and basic 2h sword does 6-7, that looks ok to me.

And 1h + empty hand can indeed receive 1.5x benefits from 1h skill or something like that.

EDIT: Seems the only starting dw setup just uses sucky 1h weapons, so 2h might be totally fine. Old saves are incompatible, so need to replay a bit to see varied/higher tier weapon balance. Maybe 2h does not need a nerf at all anymore.