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Right, I think I'm nearing the end of it but I can't proceed with the last quest because of some bug. I think however I've seen enough combat to comment on it.

Firstly, I will say no battle has felt zomghard. I've almost never restarted, and when I did it was because of some facepalm move of mine. I haven't saved midfight. Nothing has compared to the buffed Yeldin. Many new monsters have felt really unrewarding to use melee attacks on, whereas when you brought in old monsters but buffed their levels, it felt a bit better. Note though that since I didn't really struggle, nerfing defense wouldn't really be the right move...

Now, character by character.

Ranger
Didn't do much in the damage department. Many monsters had too high defense for him to be meaningful, and given that it was (and maybe still is) really difficult to stagger monsters, he couldn't Cross Cut much. But heals and Guard still made him useful. If nothing changes, I will build my next ranger as a tank.

Druid
All heals were put to good use. I didn't use many surgical nukes, perhaps because enemy casters were so scarce that there was no need to take out anything OMGFAST. Eagle's Grace on Jariel and Rowinda felt awesome.

Vaelis
Suffered from the high defense problems too, but his bleeds did some nice damage, and Rally is generally appreciated. Protect was a nice addition for him.

Riley
Was still mostly spamming Energize. I didn't regen dance hardcore much though. The lack of really important targets made me not use Slumber much either.

Krimm
High defenses were a problem and she had no answer to it. I benched her quite fast. With Wreak Havoc she might have been useful though, but I didn't have that and thought of getting it too late.

Chalassa
Could dish out more damage than Krimm, and might have compared well enough to Vaelis. I suppose I could have used her just as well as I could have used him, but I chose Vaelis most of the time. The confusion from No Chances didn't noticeably buff my nukes, else I might have preferred her. Bleeding Strike would have made her better but I didn't have it.

Jariel
This huge delay guy was certainly a valued member, but he rarely got to act. Usually his first action was Static Lullaby, which ensured my whole party got the first wave of actions. It was followed by Vigorous Sonata. I tried to keep speed buffs on him. Later on I tried to use two offensive songs but the delay rarely made that meaningful. Still though, the damage of his songs is not to be underestimated. More about that later.

Rowinda
You can't spell damage without mage, etc. Rowinda brought the pain. With easily sustained mana (especially with the ring later) and powerful row nukes she was the queen of the party. Anathema was also great on single targets. Eagle's Grace worked really well for her, not only cutting the large delays on her row nukes, but also offsetting the health she traded for her mana. But now to talk about...

The DoT problem
I brought this up before. Given that DoT's cap at a certain % of the target's health per tick, and that they seemingly very easily hit this cap, DoT's become more and more powerful the more health the target has. I noticed early in the act that this was the way to pwnage: The 600+ health snakes lost as much health from a melee attack as they did from a tick of a DoT. Go Anathema. Go bleeds. Go druid nukes. Hell go Static Lullaby even. DoT's were my answer to every high health opponent. This is why I contend that DoT's should have static damage, not based on the health of their target. Else you'll always be struggling to balance between useless against low health and overpowered against high health.

I'll be back way later to post some real feedback, but I wanted to quickly say that I spell damage with Vaelis*) and Hunter.

*)Dirty Tricks. <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3 I was spamming that together with Rally and Throwing Axes

Hunter is obviously Hiding in Shadows, Critical Hit, sometimes Take Aim included.

The thing with DoT is that they can be resisted (lowering their duration, except for bleeding), so I wanted to balance that a bit basing them on % of the target. Maybe I can just put a cap instead of fixed values ? I obviously mean cap to DAMAGE, not on the % which is already there. Like the amount of HP from a DoT can't be higher than 10-15hp (I am not sure which values you're getting).

I think melee=useless depends on party builds though. I was using fabula setup, and with Vaelis Rally on, the fighters were doing good damage, Krimm, Hunter and Vaelis in particular (Ranger not much).

Of course I can still lower the overall defense of enemies, and make them hit harder to compensate, or something else. I guess already reducing the DoT somehow should make battles more difficult

An idea I had which might solve the DoT problem is: the damage decreases turn by turn. So for example if the first turn is 25 dmg, second is 20dmg, third 15dmg, etc. This way should reduce the effectiveness a lot. But maybe I'm just overcomplicating things and the simplest solution is to use fixed damage. Fixed damage would mean they're much more effective at lower level (early in the game) and much less later (like this act). That is why I'm more oriented towards a damage cap or some other solution.

The upfront damage is the same regardless of the target's maximum health. Why is it wrong for the DoT to be the same. Why can't it be based on the same stats as the nuke itself.

Same stats calculations no since early in the game would be too small (like 3-4hp / turn ). Well maybe I can put a minimum damage of 5/turn and for the rest use the same calculations dividing the damage for turns. So a 5 turn DoT could do 10dmg turn if the equivalent nuke would do 50dm at once. Will make some tests tomorrow, since I need also to tweak the enemies difficulty!

Actually the damage I do with a druid nuke at level 2 and at level 20 only increases by 50% or so. From ~60 to ~90. Yet the DoT's I can pull off increase according to monster health. On those 600+ HP snakes I had DoT's doing over 40 damage per tick.

Seeing how well fabulaparva fared with physical attacks, DoT's might in the long run be the only way to keep mages on the damage meter, meaning "maybe everything's fine". I'm guessing that with Finesse + Dirty Tricks + Rally, Vaelis can get the 2x attack multiplier even on the toughest mobs. And once you're at the 2x multiplier, more attack/magic isn't what excites you but flat % increases like Study Opponent. This however does not help Krimm or a ranger, though as mentioned on lower defense values Vaelis should be less godlike, mostly the single target hard hitter who would lose to Krimm and Chalassa for row nukes.

Also for my next playthrough I'm considering very few songs on Jariel and just a lot of traits. I am not sure what to do about it, but the problem is this. Each of his songs, both offensive and defensive, are generally powerful enough to merit their huge delays. Yet since it seems pretty hopeless to try to keep up two offensive songs (though that would be devastating for the enemy) and you can only have one buff song at a time, getting more than say Static Lullaby + Vigorous Sonata feels a bit wasted. I could see myself taking one more buff song for when I'm looking to overwhelm an opponent.

Okay anyway, given their massive delays it's pretty rare for Jariel to get to act. So if I need a dispel, is Jariel gonna come around to do it? Not likely. If I need a rez, will it come from Jariel? Not likely - and if it did I would have to recast his old song too. Jariel only acts often when I melee with him to regen a bit, else his turns are few and far between. You could lower delays and increase mana costs perhaps, but just pointing it out for now.

Hypothetically, would you feel you could have more build flexibility if Jariel's song power and delay were reduced (say, cut in half or so)?

If by power you mean strength, then I think his songs would become too weak - maybe not the offensive ones. If by power you mean duration, perhaps it could be something, at least for the buff songs. Since they're mutually exclusive it could be nice if they had a shorter duration+delay so you could choose between refreshing the current one or changing to a more desirable one every second Jariel turn. And then his turn would certainly come up more often for a timely dispel.

Though I do wish his dispel were a full dispel on a single target, not a weaker Purification.

Observation: It's really funny to imagine how the hell Guard can work against Jariel's songs :D the warriors of Aravorn can simultaneously protect three of their back row comrades from arrows, leap attacks, fireballs, blizzards and even cover their ears when bad songs play, all of this at no expense to their own combat performance.

OK for now I won't touch the DoT then, beside the small change I already did (lowering the cap to 0,05% of max HP). I'm going to make all enemies tougher though since is really too easy in NM now As for Jariel songs I could just reduce the delay on the buffs. On the offensive songs I don't want to because you can stack multiple songs on enemies, while the buffs clear each other so even if you can act sooner you don't really gain any benefit, except being able to heal/clear/resurrect a fallen ally.