I've had similar experiences as OP and there's a lot of good ideas here. My thoughts on this are that the Finesse builds seem balanced until you get access to Flenser's daggers. Getting daggers that I've used @ level 8 when I'm level 3-4 seems out of balance. Your mage build could have been diluted as you had points in 6 different areas (aero, scoundrel, geo, necro, pyro, poly) whereas you only mentioned having scoundrel/poly/warfare on your finesse build. From personal viewpoint I'm fine with dagger builds being able to gib an enemy (especially mage) on a turn, however they have to get close to do their dmg and therefore are more at risk of being killed themselves. I've expecting nerfs to some of the Poly classes personally, and I'm also expecting tactician mode to give enemies more tools to expose invisible players so we can't hide turn after turn waiting for cds.
Also if your Finesse build was your second time through it would definitely be easier and quicker with the prior knowledge of all the fights you were coming up. I'm happy to read this, I enjoy solo builds/stories a lot.
