You have to account for the reality that the party would be tricked out in better gear in the release version. In POE the party would be swimming in uniques by level 6.
That's not really the problem. I mean, yeah, sure, you'll do a bit more damage, but he has such a gigantic health pool that it will only shave off 30 seconds at best. I also have a party where only 2 characters rely on gear - Skaen Priest/Devoted (in which I am disappointed), Goldpact Knight/Berserker, the mercenary Wizard (I didn't have enough money to recruit a custom one, the money console command doesn't work), Lifegiver Druid and Beckoner Chanter. I wanted to recreate my really shitty party from before to see if it will be better. I gave all the best gear I had to the Priest and Paladin, so they are decked out as much as possible. The boss penetrates plate + Gilded Enmity + Barb passive for extra armor like it's nothing, a thing I warned about happening, so wearing any kind of armor is a waste in this fight, and can two-shot my Paladin if I don't spam heals.
The defenses of enemies seem really overtuned for this level, they sometimes have double the Accuracy of the Wizard with no easy way to debuff them because the debuffs also have to land against defenses. This is especially true with the titan, where he has two to three times more defenses than we have Accuracy, so only the various Minoletta's missiles can hit him, but you only have 3 casts of those. I have to test this fight with a more melee-heavy party, but that wasn't the point, the point was to see if spellcaster-heavy parties can keep up with melee, which seems to not be the case. You can kill him, as I did it, but I had to kite around the whole map and cheese the Beckoner summons because it's almost impossible (the stars have to align) to defeat him like it was designed.
Some characters feel really limited and one-trick ponies, like Lifegiver and Beckoner, they are great at what they do, but they feel like hogging space that can be filled with better and more varied characters. What I think is that the grand, overwhelming issues haven't really been fixed and only minor quibbles have been addressed, like the Wizard doing more damage and more reliably (which is still not enough on PotD). Penetration is exactly like I warned it's going to be - either ridiculously good or pointless to wear any armor depending on the fight. Empower is still pointless in 99% of the fights, I only used it because the titan fight lasted like 15 minutes and I had to reset my abilities or Empower Minoletta's to finish him off. They've given only 1 way to increase Penetration of spells - the passive Secrets of Rime, Scion of Flame etc.
So, yeah, the big issues are still there and still as nonsensical as ever, they just addressed some issues with the micro design, like Wizards, which I still think are not good enough for PotD. Subclasses really only work with multi-classing, they are
too focused at what they do, so they need the boost.
!!
