For bugs especially you need to bump the difficulty up to AT LEAST Impossible now for things to even feel threatening with a moderately high leveled team. A group of four of us around level 80 went through hard and Suicide with almost 0 deaths on our first attempts after these “patches.” We did a run through one set for bots too and it definitely feels different.
I’m not sure this is a good thing.
In general I think it’s a good thing. There’s still higher levels and if those are reached too easily, they could churn out even higher levels. I believe the point is not “make it easy” but make more builds viable and fun. You don’t need the absolute perfect load out to barely make it out of a mission, you can try new (wild) things and still make the run worth it at difficulty 6-7.
Around April I was doing difficulty 7 in a two squad regularly but then after each patch it was harder and harder and we could sometimes barely pass 6 and always running with the same S tier weapons. I think undoing the nerfs all at once made it very noticeable.
I feel the game resonates better with “we’re an unfairly powerful squad” rather than “this is space dark souls”.