You really can’t see a lot of stuff coming in SR because it fills the screen with enemies. So it’s not something exclusive to arcane enemies.
nice soundfx… and then you die! 
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It used to be different back in AoM.
You used to be able to get 2x Birds with just one item: https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/8986
but then that was moved to the Set bonus of Bysmiel’s Trinkets 
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With the controller, the only way to change direction is to spin the camera in order to move towards/attack an enemy. 
Movement automatically changes the camera, unless you continue to move on the same axis forever. Picture a typical controller first-person shooter.
Unless there is some controller setting that allows for no rotation (static view) and has a pointer-like mimic of the mouse? Am I missing some important game setting?
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no?, not even remotely? - you have manually rotate camera with right stick, while left stick handles movement, regardless of direction/character spin
i play the exact way with controller as kbm, camera is fixed and it’s the character that rotates xyz direction, but the camera is always in the same position. Heck i wouldn’t even be able to play if it was the camera that rotated around the char, it’s why i don’t do it when using kbm either unlike a lot of players
Hmm, you are correct. It seems I do the rotation by habit. Wow. Oh well, I guess it’s my problem.
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no worries, we all get accustomed to somethings to a point where we don’t even notice we are actually manually doing X 
I think if Arcane makes a return in a sequel, something I would definitely consider, I would have it act as a dispel for all temporary buffs and a disable for passive buffs for X seconds.
Coupled with that, I think it would also make sense for auras to be always active rather than requiring toggling them each session or after dying. Ideally they would also have some kind of active component associated with them (ex. Pneumatic Burst is always up but activating it gives you the heal).
I disagree with the sentiment regarding sets. There are a ton of examples on this forum alone of non-set builds and builds that use partial sets. Sets are just another piece of the puzzle and offer players a direction to build towards when the absolute openness of the rest of itemization can be downright intimidating to some.
Regarding extra pets, with the way pets are balanced in Grim Dawn, having access to additional pets (aka +100% damage), is simply too powerful of an effect on a single item. The Summon Familiar skill had this on a Necklace and it ended up getting moved to a set because it choked out any variety in that gear slot. It’s not possible to have + 1/3 summon limit, so we opted to put such powerful bonuses on sets.
The same goes for other powerful effects. When we know that certain gear slots are tied up in order to acquire X powerful modifier or skill, we can budget its bonuses accordingly to make something awesome that would otherwise have to be neutered in order to remain competitive with other options in that gear slot.
Taunt is a very powerful mechanic in MP and I would rate it as highly as standard CCs. If pets could hold aggro for the summoner 100% of the time, it would be extremely boring. Likewise if someone builds a super tank and holds aggro 100% of the time, the glass-cannon casters in the party will squeeze out max dps and sacrifice survivability.
That said, Grim Dawn’s threat system is by no means great. We worked with what we had. It was originally even worse because of how it applied threat from debuff effects on every tic, but a full redesign of that system simply fell beyond scope of GD development and wasn’t high-value enough to revisit post-release.
Similarly, the Crowd Control system, or lack thereof, is something I would absolutely want to revisit in a sequel. Something that employs diminishing returns would be much more fun in my opinion but was, as with the threat system, out of scope.
I could write a whole list of things we wish we had more time for of course, haha, but that is the nature of game development.
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If it’s too powerful for one item maybe you can add a reduced damage modifier on the item as well kind of like how spam skills get a damage penalty compared to cooldown based. The tech is already there since we have items like Zaria’s pendant and bloodsworn codex that already give damage modifiers to pets. So something like +1 summon limit with total damage modified by -40% = 2x60% damage pets. Not saying that you should do it for GD at this point, but it’s something to consider for the sequel.
That sort of starts to complicate things then. Having a extra pet is a big, notable damage increase but if you try to balance that out on a single item by introducing a damage penalty, why not just make it a damage increase to a single pet at that point? For example, “+50% total Briarthorn damage” is more straightforward than “+1 Briarthorn and -25% total Briarthorn damage”. Spammable and cooldown variants of skills like Primal Strike only doing it is for necessity sake to try and keep both playstyles balanced.
I see your point, but it’s not exactly the same as a damage increase. An extra pet still provides an extra body to soak damage/projectiles, and also counts as another source for dot damage. It also lets you spread out your damage more which is a problem that pet builds usually have in Crucible.
Most important to me though, it’s just more interesting than a flat damage modifier. Playing a summoner, I feel that you should be allowed to have an army of pets swarming around you, and that’s something that GD has been mostly lacking compared to other games.
Most of what I would argue seems to have already been said, so I’ll just chime in on point 1. I think dispell is pretty much as powerful as it should be in terms of its effect, where I think the issue lies is the cooldown.
Enemies are programmed to not unload their abilities on you immediately upon spotting you, so if you have the damage output to kill them before they get to cast, that’s a good strategy to employ. Works pretty reliably on someone like Loxmere. Whenever I tried kiting him away from enemies to handle him one on one, I got dispelled and took a crapton of damage. Whenever I just bumrush him right there and then, he’s dead before he gets a word in. Same goes for Arcane enemies…until you get to high SR. You can have your damage output severely gimped, enemies will be beefed up in all sorts of ways that prevent you from nuking them down in time, god forbid there’s a CRD modifier on the map.
You’ll eventually end up in situations where that Arcane projectile is gonna go off and you have to dodge it. And though it’s a big purple projectile that really stands out, that’s simply not enough when there’s hell raining down from above and procs and devos are going off all over the screen. Monster density, monster abilities, a Nemesis on your ass, all these things may cause you to not just miss the projectile, but to miss the fact the Arcane monster is even there and that you should be looking out for the dispell. Can’t exactly identify 3+ heroes at a glance in a mob of monsters with a Nemesis in there. That is where Arcane turns from a neat and clever curveball into a really frustrating mechanic.
If its cooldown were increased, not only would that widen the window for either noticing the Arcane enemy or nuking them down, it would also make high SR encounters with groups of heroes much more manageable. There can be times where there’s simply no way to engage Arcane enemies safely because there just isn’t enough of a window. I had a pack once with two tanky Arcane guys and I think an Unstoppable and Supporter on a CDR map and there simply is not a time when you can do any sort of lasting damage safely. Same can happen with just a single Arcane, a Supporter/Groble Shaman hero and one or two CC heroes (like Timewarped or Frozen). There’s no meaningful damage you can do that won’t be healed back before you have to run from the Arcane projectile. An increased cooldown would make the mechanic much easier to play around.
Alternatively, if a prominent sound effect were added NOT when you get dispelled but when the projectile is cast, it would be an excellent cue that you need to run. It would make it much easier to estimate the rhythm of the cast and figure out your damage window at least without gimping the dispell mechanic as a whole. It’s a good mechanic and a really neat way to put the player on the defensive, but not when it requires an eagle’s eye trained on one monster amidst a mob.
While this is not what the OP asked, how do you feel about where the cards have fallen regarding the power of individual set pieces vs nonset items? Originally, the theory (or so it seemed) behind set items was to make them individually less powerful than nonset items to encourage their cooperative use with other pieces of the set to get the more-powerful set bonuses. However, today set items seem to be more or less comparable in power to nonset items on their own. This has gone back and forth a bit and there’ve been exceptions over the years, with some extremes going both ways (e.g., Darkflame being underwhelming set items and Clairvoyant being overwhelmingly potent set items), but a lot of the initial complaints around set items being “less powerful” than nonset counterparts were due to it feeling required to utilize a full set in order to get any meaningful power out of the individual items in a vacuum.
Is partial set utilization a design goal, and if so, do you think where Grim Dawn stands today is a viable model for future endeavors in that area?
Does this mean to imply that debuffs only generate threat once when cast, or perhaps (less likely) not at all anymore?
Set pieces are absolutely still budgeted lower than non-set items.
Getting itemization to strike that ideal balance of sets and non-sets obviously took iteration, but I don’t see us diverging particularly from this philosophy in a sequel.
From the looks of it, no. Not if you consider balance changes that have happened in the past due to overperforming builds.
Targo’s helmet had it’s acid conversion changed because phys retal was abusing it.
Ulzuin’s Flamespreader got the cdr that the helmet lost simply because 4 piece with riftclaw weapon + off hand was overperforming. And even before that, Canister’s transmuter had pierce> lightning conversion which got transferred to full Barrelsmith set, not only to force the player to use the full set, but also to disable you from using Cyclone off-hand.
Valguur’s gloves had their proc transferred to full set cause some vit builds were using them for the stats while getting a nice sustain proc.
These are just some sets that I can remember from the top of my head that had their partial use nerfed.
Actually to the offhand. 
Oh true, for some reason I thought it was moved to the full set, my bad.
My point still stands though, nobody is using the off hand as a generic option since vit builds have that spot already occupied.
//2. Set items ruining build diversity and hindering creativity. I think personally, that MI’s is this game’s biggest strength. Not because you can target farm, but because they add unique stuff which you then again can combine with OTHER MI’s. This allows a huge variety of possible builds. Set bonuses in this game has the COMPLETE opposite effect. It strongly shoehorns a build into X abilities. And locking interesting build enabling items behind forced playstyles.//
I feel like this is a problem in ARPGs in general and not just Grim Dawn. (Of course this doesn’t make your criticism invalid by any stretch, just that games from Diablo III all the way to Chronicon have this same struggle.)
Unfortunately, the usual quick and dirty solution is to add a unique item that gives you damage or survivability (or both) boosts based on having few or no set items. It’s still a somewhat inelegant shoehorn answer, though.
But sets in this game are optional in contrast to Diablo 3. Btw imagine mentioning these two games in one paragraph.
Another 3 examples besides the ones I’ve already given are melee and ranged Lightning Primal Strike and Chaos Flames of Ignaffar. Crucible records are held by build variants without any pieces of Ultos / Voidsoul sets that are designed to aid these abilities.
If we were to introduce the unique item you described it would ruin the balance.
I wasn’t suggesting implementing such an item. And mentioning different games in the same genre in the same paragraph is pretty common actually.
//If we were to introduce the unique item you described it would ruin the balance.//
Who’s “we”? You’re not a developer.