@BowUser thanks for the novel 
, it was a great read. I agree with 90% of it. The part I disagree most is this:
As I see it, top end builds push the design to its breacking point and sometimes even further beyound. Thus they have to be adressed first, ideally without causing damage to less optimised strategies players use.
My understand of balance is that you hammer down all outliers first, at the top as well as at the bottom. You work at the bottom to ensure great variety in available strategies; you work at the top to ensure said variety actually matters.
Just a small insert to cross-check our findings on elemental effects.
From my observations elemental effects trigger when an enemey takes ~45% of its total HP as elemental damage. I could never freeze EK more than twice. This means outside of pure elemental weapons or elemental runes status effects are unattractive.
I did not test the effect of mixing several elements on an enemy and how it influences the individual status threshold. I also did not test the new “Elemental potency” enchantment.
Well said.
Neither do I want to see a pure auto attack (AA) playstyle. Yet I also think being able to use a rune after only 2 AAs is too much. While being able to chain spam runes is borderline ARPG teritorry. I see runes as tactical maneuvers, as special moves. There is just nothing tactical or special if players can use them frequently.
This does not mean cheap & spamable runes should not exist; runes that build the baseline and anchor the mechanic should not be spamable though. My baseline is 100 Focus cost.
As far as I know:
- “Focus Regeneration” grants ~1,5 Focus per second per regen source
- “Increased Focus gain” improves the innate Focus generation on AA based on the stats listet in weapon UI. It used to influence other Focus sources but it was patched out.
- “Focus % gain on damage dealt” scales only from the number of damage instances as well as max Focus pool. It used to work differently but it was changed at that time
Patch Notes - Early Access Patch 1
Patch notes only mention “nerfed”, but with this patch the % was lowered and scaling from “Focus gain increased” was removed.
I even tested it again to varify: I died to 0 my Focus. Equiped gear with as much “Focus gain inceased” as I could ( 170%) and weapon +torch with “Focus on damage dealt” (7%). Drunk a potion to execute a rune. Killed a crab. Marked Focus gained from the enchantment. Died to 0 Focus again. Removed armor except the ring to maintain the same Focus pool and killed a crab again. Focus gained from the hit was the same.
This part is not correct. We have a different footing for this discussion and talk past each other.
The absolut brain dead thing in the game is, that innate Focus gain on weapons can vary between 5 and 10. For all weapon types except Dual Daggers, those vary beween 3 and 5 but just hit twice. That’s why Dual Daggers and some faster 1H weapons can generate Focus like crazy, while most 2H weapons feel so slow in this regard.
This is one of the complaints OP had and I support this view.