More observations:
Skeletal enemies are immune to piercing damage, making my Priest almost useless. The enemy AI is dumber than in P1, if I send my Paladin alone in an enemy group, they congregate around her, while she is a walking fortress complete with death cannons. Seriously, she is dual-wielding and does insane damage, but also has yuuuuge defenses because Paladin, there's no need for a shield, making Goldpact Knight/Berserker the best tank, instead of Shieldbearer/Berserker. I think my party isn't good, it's essentially made up of one-trick ponies apart from my Priest and the Paladin. The damage is there, but in very specific circumstances.
The one-trick ponies is a good thing to talk about. Lifegiver Druid is obvious, at this point in time he can only heal and very occasionally cast an Insect Swarm, maybe it will be better if it's multi-classed with something else, but you do slow down the access to some major heals. The Beckoner summons stuff, duh, but it's more than that, you can essentially focus around 1 or 2 summon spells because they are pretty strong. He has a very useful cone paralyze thing, which is tremendously more powerful than the Cipher's Mental Binding because it's instant and AoE. If you focus only on summons it's not so good. The Wizard plays exactly like low-level spellcasters in the IE games, you cast 2-3 spells and then cower somewhere. The point is that subclasses generally funnel you to one-trick pony states.
I get mixed messages regarding the Skaen Priest, it's mentioned everywhere that they do get a Sneak Attack, but it's not shown in the combat log, which makes me think it's outdated information. It also makes me think they should bring it back because the damage is too low compared to other melee. The deity weapon summon is too powerful if it's not bugged. It can one-shot shitty mobs and two-shot the more powerful ones. I am going to compare total damage done with my previous Druid and the Priest to see how much of a difference there is. To give some more perspective on the damage between melee and spellcasters - Skaen Priest 8900, Evoker 1400, Paladin Tank which I just now realized would be better off dual-wielding 3000. I empty my entire repertoire with the Evoker every combat.
And, like I said before, I get what their intention for the Empower mechanic is and I'd say it's not bad, but it needs refinement. Atm, it's essentially an excuse to not make spellcasters powerful, but melee shoot up because they don't have these limitations. It's a good system in the context of spellcasters, but a shitty one in the context of melee. I still haven't rested once in this playthrough of PotD as well, even though it's a spellcaster-heavy group. If the spells are stronger, like A LOOOOOOOT stronger, then this system would make more sense. Few casts, but powerful ones, with the occasional Empower in "oh, shit!" moments.
