Great review, thank you for posting it.
Oh, and in other news, I just realized that you can stack Essences on gear to give pretty much everything you're wearing 25% resist-all. Or use a Ruby for 20% resist-all. This means two things:
1) For a properly built endgame character, even without Weather the Storm of full plate armour, you're going to be immune to every element. This is hideously overpowered and needs to be fixed.
2) Having every character functionally immune to everything but physical and Tenebrium damage makes Glass Cannon even more powerful than I first imagined. I imagine its power could be tuned down slightly by making it harder to stack resist-all, but the point is that it's an even bigger problem than stated in the OP.
I'd like to argue against all but the most minute balance changes to what players can currently do, to include removing talents or what have you. In other words, if something is OP (e.g. GC and stacking resists) or UP, leave it. The reason being: since there is no metagame with which players must conform, players have the option of not using overpowered mechanics. This mindset, for the most part, applies to underpowered mechanics as well. What IS useful, is the reputation for something being overpowered or underpowered, but I don't think development changes should result from that information.
I think it all boils down to accessibility. The more options you give a player, the more they can customize their D:OS experience to their enjoyment or skills level (beyond simple difficulty settings).
Instead, I'd prefer the developers spend their time adding more and more content (and fixing bugs, of course). New monsters, new quests, new bosses, new talents, new spells.
First off, thank you.
In regards to balancing, I agree with options. A lot of the problem with resistances, however, fall into a category other than options. By this I mean that they don't really have costs, or at least not sufficient costs, and thus instead of options they are more like methods.
When it comes to resistances, Weather the Storm is very powerful, but it is nowhere near as overpowered as crafting. By having a single character invest in Crafting and keeping an eye out at vendors over the course of the game, you can add +20% to ALL resistances on virtually EVERY piece of defensive gear for EVERY character. The Crafting character doesn't even need to be a permanent member of your party; you can hire them at the Hall of Heroes at the End of Time, then dismiss them after the item modifications are complete.
Now that is making a mockery of the elemental damage mechanics of the game. It's a mockery because it isn't really an option, because it doesn't really have a cost (outside of affordable ingredients, which wouldn't provide much benefit if used in another manner).
In terms of Weather the Storm, it's a far smaller balance concern in comparison. However, it's still a risk, and the reason is that it covers many bases simultaneously. For example, a talent with the same prerequisites which granted +100% to Fire resistance would be less of a concern in comparison; even though you'd have a fairly awesome heals-from-Fire character, that character would still have weaknesses. "Resist-all" mechanics in general tend to be problematic because they remove all weaknesses with their generality, not because they grant power through specificity. I agree with your general premise that players should be able to do "overpowered" things, but the game is most fun when these things are active and specific and "build-around-me," rather than methods to systematically prevent enemies from doing anything to you in retaliation.
