Just a brief background of my experience: Finished DOSEE tactician and never played DOS2 EA.
I dove straight into tactician considering that my first DOSEE play through was tactician as well. My approach in DOSEE was to play a diverse party which could react to many different situations. This worked pretty well, although it was harder early on than later on. Later it became a little easy.
I thought I'd take a similar approach in DOS2 tactician and I am struggling big time. I can beat a lot of the fights but they are draining resources like crazy and I have to do some crazy positioning before fights. The reason for this struggle is simply armor. In DOSEE you could mostly just CC anyone with a relatively small chance of it failing. In DOS2 tactical you have to get rid of armor first. With my diverse party, I struggle to do any one kind of specific damage well. Just to give an idea, here is my party setup:
Red Prince (Warfare + poly) (ME) Sebille (Ranger) Lohse (Enchanter) Fane (Conjurer)
I can actually use all except Lohse to do physical damage, but the problem is that if you've stripped physical armor you need to have good physical CC to follow up with. Currently only Red Prince has physical CC. Sebille can use knockdown arrows, but she only has so many.
All in all I think summoning is pretty awesome, but it lacks CC. What it lacks in CC it makes up for with totems and incarnate wailing on your enemies constantly. I'm not sure if lacking CC is forgivable in DOS games though. I'll give it a better try in a later play through.
Another learning curve I think is to learn to replenish your own armors.
So I'll be rerolling to something like this:
Red Prince (WAR, POL, maybe GEO) - Melee tank Soak up damage as much as possible and deal as much damage as what can be done with a single 1H weapon.
Lohse (Enchanter with AER, GEO, HYD, WIT) - Support Just heal and buff as much as possible. Maybe switch out for magic oriented offence for fights when required. I like the WIT/GEO combo spells for removing armor which I think will work well in this group. She will most likely be my grenadier as well.
Sebille/Ifane (MAR, AER, some other things maybe) - Ranged damage Basically as much ranged damage as possible. Ellezard mentioned that evasion aura is good so I'll add AER. Also having an extra char with teleport is never a bad thing. I'm leaning towards Sebille because of her having that whole cannibalism thing going. Quite a laugh with her in the party as Red Prince so far though. Good times.
Fane/Beast (WAR, HYD, GEO) - Melee damage slightly support I just want a few points in HYD and GEO for cleanse wounds and of course more armor regen. Otherwise it'll be focusing on 2H dps. I like Fane, but not sure if I want him around considering that regen kills him.
Strategy will be very physical approach and outlast my enemies. Anyone with high phys armor can maybe be dealt with using special arrows and my Lohse. I think once I've done a first play through, then I can get a little more creative on subsequent ones.
On a general note, I think it is an unrealistic expectation to think you can oneshot tactician on your first play through playing whatever comp you want to. Being able to play any comp will come with time and much game knowledge. I oneshotted DOSEE tactician and it left me feeling a little cheated.
As for increasing difficulty by bloating stats, I don't think that's the only thing they did. In developer updates they mentioned the improved AI and extra abilities. I don't have a point of reference given that I don't play classic, but I trust them that the AI is smarter in tactician than classic if they say it is. Bloating the stats just adds an endurance dynamic to it. For WoW players, nailing the tactic one or twice isn't enough to beat that raid boss. You have to consistently do everything well over time in order to beat the boss. The way I see it, it's the same here. I can see how people are frustrated by it though. If Larian come up with some novel way to make it harder I will be surprised and impressed. AI can only be so smart without going down a very deep rabbit hole with incredibly specialized skillsets. They've done a decent job so far and I think with updates it will only improve.
