I have been fine with this patch from the beginning.
I always play on the hardest difficulty I can manage, so I'm used to hard, and I enjoyed it when it got harder.
2x the equip quantity x 1/2 the sell price equals no change in cash flow, at least from those two changes.
2x the equip quantity and 1/2 the shop cost means you'll get better gear eventually.
Less artifacts? The wiki guesses .02 for base_equip_drop and .002 for base_artifact_drop.
If correct, the chance of artifacts before was .98 * .002 = 0.196%
Double base_equip_drop: .96 * .002 = 0.192%.
Random PABs? Fine. I wanted light and heavy armor with +int and +wis instead of pluses to physical combat stats, and now it can possibly drop. More variety of equipment equals more possibilities for play styles. See also
this post.
People were wondering if the monsters have gotten worse for lowbies. My monsters are under PL 110, and they can get at most +10% Fortitude, Brutality and Accuracy, and at most 1 point each of the rest of the upgrades. That's not causing me any problems.
Anti-block didn't look good enough for me to bother getting it yet. Since it's supposed to be 1%/point of the target's evade/block, if the target has 16% evade, they lose 0.16%, not 1%.
Mace nerf? They still leave all the monsters standing there unable to attack, so it's still better than throwing poop.
I didn't use Focus/Defense before, and I still don't now, so no change there, and my rate of level gain has been at least as good as it was pre-patch.