First want to start off by saying I enjoyed my playthrough and am looking forward to 1.0. Going to try to break out my feedback into sections to make it easier to digest.
Weapons
I’m only going to speak on the weapons that I personally tried, and the feedback that my friends have about their weapon selection.
Staff:
This weapon felt above average in both it’s rune customization (works with both Two handed runes and Staff/Wand runes) and it’s actual power threshold. As you’re learning the game being in melee range can be rather punishing. Staff gave the ability to fight at range while simultaneously having significant AoE damage. Early game I cycled chain lightning, lightning sweep, Armageddon, and honing frost to extreme success. Early game there was little that couldn’t be handled with chain lightning spam, especially in a group. The other runes were just extra flavor.
Late game. This weapon is a powerhouse.
Honing frost becomes a “cheese” ability where you can freeze an enemy complete a full charge and hit them as they release from the freeze. From what I can tell enemies don’t have a stagger cooldown which should absolutely be added. Being able to chain stagger a boss doesn’t make for a fun experience.
Armageddon/lightning bolt just instantly kills everything late game. I’m sure the scaling will be adjusted for 1.0 but the power threshold of players is extremely too high even against the highest difficulty.
But you’re and to one shot enemies from range without ever having to actually fight the enemies. Adjust this please (higher difficulty tiers or however).
Two-Hander (Greatsword):
Early game - It’s slow, it doesn’t hit substantially harder on basic attacks, focus generation is difficult early game, and it leaves a lot of room for counter attacks from your opponent between swings. This might all be by design but early game its rough (more reason to use range).
Late game - I tried a lot of runes. A lot. They all felt useless compared to lightning assault. And there felt like there was several version of virtually the same skill. Lightning assault was a 100 cost - gap closer, knock down, AoE skill. So it basically did everything you could ask of a skill. Fire spin (50 cost) was lackluster compared to Staffs lightning sweep (25 cost). Inferno (150 cost) was a melee version of Armageddon that was slower and had additional risk.
Base damage - while this was more than double that of my staff (150 versus 350) the damage didn’t seem to represent this difference. My staff still hit as hard or harder despite the base damage difference meaning the % damage of staff/wand runes is overtuned.
One handed - I didn’t personally experience these weapons but my friend always seemed to be at a disadvantage in combat. They expressed disatisfaction with the runes that were available and their power thresholds.
Runes: I can’t really say there is anything I like about the current rune system. Experimenting with new runes requires you to destroy weapons / older runes. You need copies of extra runes to have variable weapon choice. Upgrading to a new weapon means losing all of your old runes. And there is no great way to “beta” test a rune to see if you like it without committing to it fully.
In late game there is little to no reason to use lower cost runes as focus generation can get extremely high.
Rune variety seems to be present but there are clear winners for usage across all content (which hurts the fun factor of variety).
Melee runes feel lackluster compared to ranged runes. Lightning assault being the exception (over powered melee rune).
Looking forward to see how the class system handles the “rune” choices going forward.
Uniques:
I think I’ve heard this is already being addressed, but I can’t really name a single Unique that I can’t across and wanted to use. The one handed knife that fills your focus bar on parry would be fun if Parry felt more consistent (maybe this is a skill issue on my part but parrying felt AWFUL).
End game:
As a player that favors endgame content, the endgame content is currently, well non-existent.
I like theorycrafting setups and putting them through the test of repeatable challenging and rewarding content.
I think the crucible is suppose to be that but the 1-9 Arenas aren’t fun or challenging and while the level 10 Boss is fun and challenging it being the only version does get old quickly. I’ve beaten him on max difficulty with no echoes used, solo. Currently you can build your character to the point where nothing in the game is a challenge.
My opinion of fun endgame content is akin to Infinite Archive from Elder Scrolls online. A virtually infinitely difficulty increasing arena that offers zone variety, enemy variety (and quantity), and customizable buffs (just like echoes) that has a boss right after every couple floors. It’s content that can be repeated and you have a different experience each time.
Pestillence was fun once or twice. But having to kill 80-90% of the spawns in that area before the Boss spawns got tiresome quickly. But also still insanely easy when endgame geared so isn’t a challenge.
That’s all I have currently. Enjoyed the game and will play it again on 1.0 release. Hopefully balance changes and new endgame content gets added. Thanks for reading!