I'll add my thoughts to the discussion. Sorry for the huge post, I just figured I'd say everything in the same post:

I just finished the game with the same party composition I usually use, to get a feel for the changes and I mostly agree with OP regarding some of the changes this patch. While I like the boost to enemy AI, I can hardly say I like the rest.

1- Surfaces change.

I don't understand the idea behind making most of them be permanent. It is quite annoying having to manually clear the residual effects after a fight (if you even can), especially cursed surfaces early game because you don't have access to Bless yet, and blessed surfaces because you can't do anything about them. I have almost the entire map covered in blessed fire on the stairs leading to the end battle and it's staying that way forever now..

I do appreciate the change to poison not contaminating water now though.

2- Durability.

So glad durability is gone from gear. Even with a proper repair mechanic it would be more of an annoyance than anything else. Seems weapons still have durability but even using CTRL on chests and doors don't use up durability, I recommend just removing it entirely. (By the way, you can spam attacks on chests and the like with a bow since the animation restarts every time you ctrl + click)

3- AI.

I quite like the new AI. It feels much smarter regarding it's position before using it's skills in order to hit multiple characters at the same time. It does seem like they also use a LOT more cc skills, source spells and consumables than before; That's not smarter AI, that's just harder difficulty. Even then, the game is still a breeze using basic delay turn tactics.

They do however perform some seriously stupid actions now. Sometimes enraging my tank twice on the same turn with 2 different characters, and not attack him with either because they both probably run out of AP. (That happened on 2 different occasions, one of them were the Meat Golems, I don't remember who was the second). Or the Decomposing Markswoman, north of the undead vendor, using Clear Minded on my tank which has absolutely no downside if I'm not mistaken, so that's not even AP mismanagement.

4- Loot found.

I did notice looting less gear. I personally don't enjoy going shopping for gear in any game tho' so I don't particularly like this change either; I'd much rather gear up from looting, and buy skill books with the gold I save up. With the current system, early on you have to save up for skills, so you don't even go shopping for gear anyway. Not sure if it's intentional but even level 3 thievery you can't even pickpocket a single level 4 skill book now that prices have gone so high. So I ended up gearing up with all the random unique items scattered around the world (there are quite a few now), without purchasing a single item from vendors, and completed the game without any problem so the change didn't bother me much, but the direction the devs want to go scares me a little.

I do enjoy the buff to rare items very much by the way. They now have interesting stats early on like memory. Getting a rare feels much more impactful than before.

5- AOE size.

Another change I really don't like is the AOE size reduction on all mage spells. Especially already small ones like Magical Poison Dart, which I felt had the perfect size. Now it's basically the same as Searing Daggers, which I never use because of how small the aoe is (basically single target). I could understand wanting to reduce the size of impalement and fireball for example, as they were quite huge.. but Magical Poison Dart is now just as useless as Searing Daggers. It hasn't made the game harder, I just had to replace it with another skill that's still actually useful, I'm just sad I don't have a good poison spell anymore.

By the way, Rage now lasts 2 turns, because of a bug i'm guessing, which makes it quite OP because of the existence of Delay Turn.

6- Requirements on gear.

Concerning the attributes requirement on gear.. Please get rid of it. I understand wanting to have players invest in other stats. But all it does is either make us be unable to even use the gear we find, or force us to "waste" attributes on our next level up, just to equip an item we might replace soon anyway.

Just to give an example, the last ring I got had a 13 strength requirement and gives +2 intelligence and +1 bartering. We're not gonna waste points in strength just to get some intelligence, it's counter productive. (Even if you say it's a ring for a Battlemage build, that means you're saying that a ring you randomly found is completely useless for every character you have, because it's for a very specific build you're not using).

Same for shields. Don't lock them behind constitution, which is the most useless stat in the game, with the added cherry on top, in that it makes it so every time you use Flesh Sacrifice with a shield equipped, your elf will unequip the shield because of the temporary constitution loss.

Even if the stats given and required match, that means you can't equip that item on other characters for the physical/magic armor it provides just because of the restrictive requirements it now has. Leading you to have 3 pair of pants for your mage, and not a single one for your other characters.

Similarly... Why is Warfare required for the Warlord talent now? All it does is make you waste a point in Warfare to get the talent. It doesn't do anything else. You finish the act with 5 Pyrokinetic and 1 Warfare on your mage, instead of 6 Pyrokinetic and 0 Warfare. What's the point in making us invest 1 point there? If it's just for lore, that's a pretty lame reason.

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TLDR. I still love the game even in it's current state and had just as much fun playing as before, I just find last patch to be a better version of the game, besides the AI upgrade. I hope most of these changes are just tests to see what works, which is why I want to give my honest feedback.

PS. I love how the 3 respawning undead are now level 7 using source spells right off the bat... I went in with a single character thinking I was going to solo them like last patch... It didn't end well for that character. It was a nice surprise!