Agreed. Without knowing about the combat changes I thought I thought combat had straight broken. Turns out the changes were intentional I guess.
After understanding the changes now combat seems completely impossible without spamming slime fights. Even if you manage to beat Torgar, The Bind, or the imp they rapidly out scale your own growth which forces you right back to the slime. I'm assuming this is to make combat perks more valuable but my previous Arousal healing build is utterly pointless in the new system instead. Torgar and the imp had quickly scaled to 50+ damage per attack by level 5 for me which utterly negated any and all healing I could possibly do. It seems like you literally just have to max out berserker and hope you can one shot anything with first strike before it gets a turn.
Edit: That's not to say the new system is bad, I'm fine with an ATB system, but the current numbers feel nearly unplayable without just stacking basic combat perks instead of any other category.