I recently finished my first playthrough of D:OS 2. I played using a mixed team:
Beast (Rogue): Scoundrel / Aerothurge / Polymorph (with a splash into two other schools for buffs)
Red Prince (Knight): Warfare / Summoner / Hydrosophist (Hydro for heals and buffs)
Lhose (Enchanter): Aerothurge / Hydrosophist / Necromancer
Sebille (Wizard): Pyrokinetic / Geomancer

I have a good deal of feedback, complete with suggestions for changes. I have tried to justify my opinions with sensible reasons why the current item has an issue, and what I think a reasonable change is. I am open to discussion and changing my mind on many of these, if you have an argument of your own.

These are presented roughly in order of when I thought of them, not based on priority of the change. I may think of more things to add later.


Stabbey's Feedback, Part 1: Skills

Abilities and Attributes

Warfare should not be One Ability to Rule Them All
Why? - Right now, Warfare is THE single skill to go to for all physical damage, including daggers, bows, and necromancy. Additionally, it works multiplicatively, whereas all other abilities are additive. This inevitably leads towards cookie-cutter builds where if you're not pumping Warfare, you're objectively doing it wrong.
Suggested Change: Warfare only boosts Physical damage for Warfare skills (including Bouncing Shield), two-handed weapons, and one-handed weapons (daggers excepted). If this change is made, also add to Necromacer a bonus of +5% damage for Necromancer skills per level to compensate for the loss of the Warfare bonus.


Boost the amount of damage reflected by Retribution
Why? - Enemies by definition have a LOT more HP and Armor than player characters. Retribution just does so little damage that it's a very poor use of Combat Ability points.
Suggested Change: Boost the amount of damage reflected by Retribution from 5% per point to 15-20% damage reflected per point, so that at level 10, Retribution reflects 150-200% of the damage the enemy deals. This seems like a lot, but keep in mind that getting Retribution up to that level will require a hefty investment of ability points which you aren't going to be spending elsewhere. If free points into Retribution from equipment would be too powerful, then remove that from the bonus on equipment.

There might be a problem with that, though. If the same change applies to enemies as well as allies, enemies who have Retribution will now be dealing a lot of extra damage to players. Something would need to be adjusted so that maybe Retribution on enemies is the same amount as it is now and the changes only apply to player characters.


Perseverance is too narrow to be attractive to players
Why? - It only affects Knocked Down, Petrified, Stunned, and Frozen, and it only returns a slight amount of armor. There are so many other, more beneficial places to put the ability points.
Suggested Change: I'm not sure, really. There are obvious ideas - boost the amount of armor returned per point, or change it to restore some amount per point per turn... but then that could lead to "Immortal" builds which pump Perseverance and effectively become nearly impossible to kill.

And there's also a caveat that those night be too powerful if the same values applied to enemies.


Additional Benefit for Pyrokinetic and Aerothurge abilities
Why? - Right now, Pyrokinetic and Aerothurge abilities only gain 5% damage to skills of that specific school. That immediately makes them less attractive than putting points which would go into there into Polymorph instead and using the attribute point for INT which boosts ALL magic damage by the same amount.
Suggested Change: Hmmm... not sure, but the existence of the Torturer Talent suggests that you can track ownership/creators of surfaces, so perhaps boost the damage that fire and electric surfaces and clouds do by 5% per point in the respective skill.


Wits and Initiative not that great
Why? - Larian decided, sometime after May 2017, that they could not balance the game around players being able to stack initiative and act before the enemies. So they changed it to a Round-Robin system. One consequence of that is that it rendered Initiative as nearly worthless, because the game always has an enemy-ally-enemy-ally turn order, or the other way around, regardless of the difference in initiative.

Wits's contributions were to Initiative, spotting things, and critical chance. Spotting things is nice, but it could probably also be done in another way. Critical Chance is boosted by 1% per point of WIT, and is less efficient than putting that point into your primary damage attribute.

You can stack Initiative on one character, but since even if you don't only one enemy will move before the player, it's not that critical. Plus, certain bosses have super-high initiative and they always go first regardless of player initiative (and they usually also do 5-7 actions on their turn).

Some people argue that Wits is the second-best place to put an attribute because it boosts critical chance, and technically they may be right, but it's second place by default, which is unimpressive. I finished the game at level 21, without ever getting to the point where I maxed out one of my attributes at 40 base points and had nowhere better to put the points except Wits. That is because I instead used most of the extra points into Memory. Also, even min-maxing and ignoring Memory, a player will have only 5 levels/10 points to invest into Wits by the time they finish the game at level 21.

Suggested Change: Bluntly, I'm not sure.

I would suggest removing Initiative as an affix which can appear on items, because Initiative is not especially meaningful, and I'd also suggest removing Initiative as a bonus for the Human Talent for the same reason, although I'm not sure what to replace it with.

The fact that Wits is still the second or third most important attribute (after Memory) also suggests the entire attribute system as a whole needs a closer examination. I don't think I know enough to be confident in any suggestion for changing the attributes, because changing them can affect everything in the game. I do actually have ideas for a lot of other attributes, but I'd feel pretty stupid posting those when I don't have good ideas for the one attribute which I consider to be the problem one.


Memory works fine! It's good!
Why? - For once, a completely positive feedback! Memory provides a useful tool for players to choose between boosting their primary attributes, and boosting their damage/power. Memory does not appear on randomly-generated items, and in fact only appears on one item at all that I've seen all game. Skills are powerful, and keeping Memory as only something you get by investment removes the potential imbalance of people getting a lot of Memory for free, while others get little to none.

The addition of an extra slot every two levels helps some players keep up even if they don't want to invest a lot. Without investment at all, players will end up with 13 memory slots by the game's end. With a moderate amount of investment, they can have over 20 slots. Most skills only take up one slot, but more powerful ones take up 2 or 3 slots, which is significant enough so that you aren't going to load up on 3-slot skills and crush everything, but not so expensive that you'll never feel like you're crippling yourself if you take them.
Suggested Change: None, I think this works fine.


Hard to justify investing points into Telekinesis and Sneaking
Why? - You only get a total of six Civil Ability points over the course of the game, and one is the character creation one. All the other civil abilities have much more utility than Telekinesis and Sneaking.

Sneaking isn't terrible, but investing points into Sneakit also doesn't serve a very useful function. Generally it's either possible to sneak around an area with 0 Sneak, or else you could invest 2 into Scoundrel and use Cloak and Dagger to pass areas which you can't. (A variation would be for only the Scoundrel character to use Cloak and Dagger while carrying one Teleporter Pyramid, and other party members to Sneak and then use the other pyramid to get to the Scoundrel.)

Telekinesis is an okay thing to have when you get the bonuses from items. It only is worth investing in for the "TK Crusher" build, smashing enemies with chests full of thousands of kg of stuff.

Suggested Change: No idea what to do for Sneak. Well... okay two ideas:

Larian probably wouldn't like the first idea, if only because it changes a civil ability into a combat ability.
Sneak Idea #1: +5% damage per point only for attacks made while Sneaking. This is not enough to be useful on its own, but it would have synergy with Guerrilla.
Sneak Idea #2: +5% increased health and armor restoration per point on all healing and armor restoration used while sneaking. But Fortify and Frost Armor break Sneak and Invisibility, don't they? Changing that could be more of a problem than it's worth.

...Yeah, I don't really have any GOOD ideas for Sneak.

Telekinesis needs more utility, though. Maybe something like this: A base of one point into TK (as in one assigned point, not counting bonuses from items) should grant players the 0 Memory skill Telekinesis Hand. This can be used to interact with things at [Telekinesis Range], such as levers, doors, and traps (you can trigger them from a distance to blow them up). Telekinesis Hand probably shouldn't be allowed to steal items or pickpocket, though, just to cut off the obvious exploit.