Winter's Tale combat updates

[Henroid]

Let me point out that I fully understand this is day one feedback for an update to an ongoing beta. But it's precisely that - feedback.

On paper the changes to combat in the Winter's Tale update (armor degradation and damage output being halved) sounded alright. But in practice it seems like things aren't working out very well at all. If combat being too easy was one side of the pendulum, as it stands now in this update it has swung fully to the other side - combat may be too difficult now. That's a big claim to make, but let me illustrate what made me realize that the balancing act needs more work and why I'm here:

I tapped a killer bee hive, explicitly for seeing how it would work out. My armor degrading faster, the enemies hit and running leaving me more vulnerable to attack, and my damage output being halved made the fight neigh impossible to win.

Damage output being halved seems to make sense in some cases and absolutely no sense in others.

--- Fighting tall birds and beefalo, it makes sense. The neutral animals in the game are fodder for food, so making them harder to engage makes sense.

--- Spiders are in a middleground. If the spawn habits from nests remained as they were prior to WT, having to put twice the effort into taking down a level 1 nest (or just any roaming spiders) makes sense. However, tapping a nest now produces a warrior spider even at level 1, and suddenly the danger is more extreme. But still a middleground.

--- Hounds I haven't decided yet. But I can see them being a colossal problem as the packs that arrive get larger. The strategy of killing them as they arrive one by one is easily out the window, because they arrive faster than you can (safely) take them down (based on the combat strategy of running up to hit them and step back when they bite).

--- Bees this makes zero sense.

An alternative solution I would recommend is to alter the health of enemies. Retain what the damage was (or is now), but adjust enemy health. Instead of spiders dying in 2 hits (old) or 4 hits (new) with the spear, maybe 3 is about right for them. (Killer) Bees should die in 2 hits no matter what, because killer bees aren't something you fight one on one ever, not unless you killed the rest of them.

Armor degradation happening faster doesn't bother me necessarily, as long as hit and run is a viable means of combat. But when enemies do it too, it pushes on the boundary of too difficult. And when packs / swarms of enemies enter the mix, it means having to carry extra armor to immediately equip in any given encounter.