For some background info, I’m on maybe my 7th character, I play each one until they beat the Crucible. I’ve been experimenting with a ton of builds, stat allocations, and so on. Based on my 70-ish hours of experience so far, it seems like you’re not trying to avoid characters becoming OP because some of these builds I’ve managed to put together are insane. My archer/assassin gets more focus with each arrow than he spends, allowing him to plow through all the enemies and stun lock the boss. Similar story for my ice mage, though he’s missing some gem drops (seriously I’m struggling on gems now that you can’t buy them, I get maybe 1 per hour and usually not the one I want).
That being said, heavy boys really struggle compared to their lighter, focus based counterparts. Poise seems to cap at 50 which means the lovely shields you’ve added in patch 5 are kind of pointless. When you’re wearing heavy armor and a big ass spikey shield, and you get knocked over by any basic attack, even just a spear dude with a single jab, you definitely don’t stand a chance against 3 knights, a giant with a hammer, and a mage throwing fireballs your way. You just get ragdolled around.
It seems like you’re shooting for build diversity as the shields being introduced implied, but unless you significantly raise the poise cap (and probably give stamina some love past 19) then it feels like heavy armor and shields are completely inferior. Maybe I’m missing something, but I digress. (Love the game, love the rate of the patches, just throwing in my thoughts on build diversity)