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.
This argument against player sided balancing does not apply to mechanics that are the ONLY way of achieving something. For example, lets say that Drain Willpower were the only way to accomplish the draining of willpower. In such a case, the developers should try to achieve balance. GC and maxed immunities, however, do not fall into this category since there are other (less overpowered) methods for achieving more AP recovery/minimizing vitality, and increasing your resists, respectively.
Best,
Arma
