The current "best setup" is to rely almost entirely on a single attack (with overkill), and then die quickly once that single attack is no longer able to kill the entire enemy group. This makes it almost universally recognized that 1 warrior, 5 paladins is by far the best party makeup, and the game devolves into a single good strategy. Once you get Heirloom of Legends, you will of course be able to trade out the warrior for a ranger, and have one ranger, 5 paladins instead of the usually 1 warrior 5 paladins, but that's really just a slight variation of the same strategy. Other than that, I am doubting any of the other new options will really be of much use, and the best strategy will continue to be the only good one. I would even caution against buying the Heirloom of Champions at all, since you will find yourself with a great deal of armor (and therefore very slow progress at the end of each prestige). The armory changes are a step in the right direction, but I don't think they go far enough. It seems to me that the same problem still exists. A balanced strategy always ends up with a slow crawl and long fights in which it takes forever for your party to die, long after your progression speed has declined to one or two floors per long fight. I'd like to suggest adding the following purchaseable options: 1) the ability to have all party members fight at the same time. Actions would still be resolved in the same order, it would just be that the entire party takes the amount of time that a single action currently takes. Alternately, perhaps make this something you can buy and upgrade (up to a 100% discount). Example: if you have a 50% discount, the first action takes normal time and the last 5 actions only take half normal time. Playtesting and balancing would likely be required to determine how powerul to make this (though I suspect that even a 100% discount wouldn't be overpowered). 2) the ability to have all enemies atack at once, all enemy actions taking the same time as a single action currently takes, or a purchaseable discount as alternatively suggested for #1. 3) the ability automatically flee once it is no longer possible to kill any additional enemies (fleeing could trigger a prestige just like dying...it just automatically ends the fight without having to wait for you party to slowly die). Note that ranger crits are unknown variables, so the test would be "is it possible to kill another enemy", not "will the party kill another enemy." I hate watching my party waste time attacking an enemy they can't kill, only to watch them waste more time not dying for possibly many rounds. This was especially true when I was tinkering around with having a warrior with a shield up front. I mean, he takes a really, really long time to die, while progression virtually stopped a long time ago. I quickly learned to abandon all armor and stop buying shield levels completely, and I doubt the changes have done enough to alter that reality. Armor bad, damage good...even if it's the enemy doing the damage! The great advantage of the proposed options is that they would not speed up a single attack enemy wipe, so they would hardly enhance the current best setup at all (just a bit at the end of each run, but not much). However, they would GREATLY speed up balanced or defensive strategies, maybe enough to make them worthwhile.

Won't do a whole lot, tbh. Only real way to make other strategies viable is a bonus multiplier to progress, perhaps as an unlockable. If you think it's bad at an early stage, the game eventually hits a point where progress is best done in minute intervals.

Thank you for taking the time to write such detailed feedback! You make a valid point about defensive team compositions getting too slow, too soon. Your suggestions to resolve that provided me with some new idea's to play around with, which I intend to do over the weekend! I think having all units attack at once will get a bit hectic when you're trying to follow what's going on, but increasing speed of units after the first may improve early game team compositions quite a bit while having virtually no effect on late game, which I think is at a good state now. It needs some testing before I can make any claims on what will make it to live, but what I can say is that I'll playing around with some options in testing! It will be in the patch notes when I've found a solution that I like. @FroggerbobT I know that you are already aware of this, but for those that aren't. Endgame getting to a quicker point than in intended, resulting in meta almost becoming about clicking, has been adjusted with yesterdays patch.