My friends and I have gone over the changes and we think there were some good moves in the right direction.
1. Reduced damage of the 3sp skills. I'm not sure how much they lowered it by, but you might as well have stopped playing the game once you hit level 16 in vanilla, or even lower if you picked up Blood Storm. We were happy to see these were pulled back.
2. Reduced damage bonuses on non-unique weapons. If we are understanding it correctly this means many of the weapons we would normally have used will be a bit weaker making for a more challenging fights. Even if it is small - the cumulative effects should be noticeable.
3. Lone wolf MIGHT be playable. We aren't holding our breaths on this one but reducing the stat caps to normal levels will hopefully have a large impact on the ridiculous power of Lone wolf. We played lone wolf once when the game first came out and decided that unlike the first game lone wolf was completely overpowered and as a result not fun in the least. Our first campaign will be a double lone wolf party in 2 days.
4. Slower stat growth will definitely help a lot. They really missed the mark on scaling and they are pulling back in a significant way (35%). I really think this was a great move on their part and should really make the game feel a lot better especially later.
5. Various nerfs (overpower/flay skin/grasp of the starved) I'd have liked to have seen Teleport/Skin Graft/Living on the Edge/Bouncing Shield/Death Wish/Spider Form/Netherswap take some hits but any progress is progress. Grasp was definitely overtuned and that double nerf is very well received.
------------------------------------------------------
My guess is that with so many tweaks to content they didn't want to be too heavy handed with nerfs/buffs until they get a good sample size of feedback. Our group intends to do a big review after 3-4 playthroughs. We are looking forward to working the summoner into our ideal setups in some capacity and maybe a tiny bit more emphasis on necro for mosquitos and infect.
Last comment - I still feel experience is way too high and it stops us from enjoying more of the game because we constantly feel compelled to skip content in order to keep our levels reasonable and preserve the challenge. We've left the 2nd island at level 18 before and it is just silly. This never feels good and I think about a 20% reduction in exp across the board (starting at 2nd island) would be very warranted. The first island is perfect though - we do absolutely everything and still don't feel overleveled. Just our opinion!
