You don't have to agree, you can feel completely differently and that's fine and dandy. To be fair the bees, panthers and plant creatures are complete pushovers... the fae didn't seem all that deadly either besides the Lethargy Puck who can 2 shot ( we did kill him though, but plenty of party members got 2 shotted by him.. his rage could be a potential one-shot I'd imagine although offhand I can't remember if his rage is even an attack or not, but I didn't test that ).

Let me know how it goes vs 3-5 bears or trolls though, or any elite.. yea, your group will most likely defeat the elite but someone is going to die unless you are running with the 5-10 most competent players in the game. Also if you are grouping for non-elites with said people of course it's going to be easy, I generally don't group for outdoor zones/non-elites unless it's just for socialization or to help someone else that is struggling.

Also the point isn't that it's impossible to defeat them, it's entirely possible.. it just isn't much fun. It's like fighting manticores, I can kill them solo but it isn't fun because the time to kill is 5 seconds vs 45 seconds ( as in if I let them, they will kill me in under 5 seconds, but if I don't let them I can kill them in 45). When you group for manticores you can kill them in 7 or 8 seconds but some random person can and will still die in 5 unless they are chain stunned or rooted / feared etc. I guess they are still fun as a "lets see if I can do this" but that wears out pretty quick.

The skillsets I played around with there though were bard/chemistry ( 95-100% optimized), fire/chem ( 90%ish optimized), fire/shield ( fire is 90% or so, shield 50-60% but you don't use shield solo with optimal mods generally ), bard/shield ( bard 100% shield 50-60% again) and then archery/chem ( 100% optimized). I'll admit I only played for maybe 4-6 hours because the combat wasn't much fun for me, and also the wall of councils I was looking at needing was just too daunting to give a crap about actually putting in the effort. It also doesn't help that I'm unsure what skills I actually want to stick with and level ( after a long break), and just to try one is going to be a million councils... except I can't just vendor everything either because I also will need several thousand phlogs.

For a more complete rundown of my experiences: bard song of discord does less damage even at max stacks then most basic attacks ( combat refresh attacks) do for other skillsets vs a single target and the ae aspect was severely nerfed. ( if you are in a group and not being hit constantly forget about doing decent damage with that whatsoever... which would be completely acceptable if the support role was strong, but it isn't except for group rez and moment of resolve ) also it is impossible to kill a troll ( just ONE non-elite troll) using either of those skill combs aka bard/shield or bard/chem, unless you also modified your chembombs to ignite ( P.S "fire shield" didn't seem to effect trolls regeneration capabilities whatsoever). Fire was fine until I ran into things that were 100% immune to fire damage. Obviously archery/chem was fine in a fully optimized gearset... you can mesmerize problematic or ranged mobs, and ae root melee mobs. I personally hate playing archery even though it is still a strong skill, because it's such a pain in the ass. I also turned mob health bars to "always show" because otherwise you can't see potential adds through the foliage ( previously I had it set to show the bars for my target only).

At the end of the day I gave away all my jellies and logged out. I will check back if combat gets some sort of rework that will make it enjoyable again, and I'll still read the forums because I still care about the game even though I don't really feel like playing it as is.

I am curious what you and others think about all the other examples I gave where you are either killed instantly or unable to act for so long you might as well have been killed instantly, though. For example a 5 second ae disable is completely nuts when you can potentially die from 3 hits. I don't want things to be easier btw, I just want to have time to actually react, if I wanted to play an "avoid the red circles or die instantly" game, I'd play one. In fact I actually want it to be a lot harder but less stupid, as in mobs with much larger health pools, but not 10 at once, and them not being able to kill you in 1-4 hits.

There is no solution that will please everyone though, and never has been.. so I don't know what to say at this point.