There's been an update. Changes include options for allowing corpses or death's gate debuffs continuing after being healed from death's gate. Basically the two biggest complaints of gameplay mechanics have been made optional.
The provision limits aren't really noticeable to me, but I'm not in the late game with tons of gold yet. The new debuffs enemies can inflict don't seem that noticeable outside of really early game. The new enemy debuffs in general seem prone to being resisted.
So I've been playing around with the abomination. Seems hellaciously good. They can dish out crazy damage when buffed due to their high base weapon damage, human form has great utilities such as blight which lowers blight resist or a good damaging single target stun, and beast mode is
amazing. Having to balance stress seems a reasonable requirement to having an abomination beast on the team. A jester in the back works well for a party with an abomination if you expect to regularly transform. Jesters seem to be an abomination's best friend.
Just killed the Brigand 8-Pounder with a party of two abominations in front, a houndmaster behind them, and a jester in back.
Jester buffed the party's speed and crit chance each turn, occasionally healing stress, houndmaster occasionally healed stress and mostly kept pressuring the brigand matchman and other brigands with bleed, and the two abominations transformed asap and kept attacking the cannon -and usually the matchman right behind the cannon - with rake. Rake wound up buffing itself to +45% rake damage, on top of the +10% base damage each abomination got in beast form. A single rake - if it hit a brigand - dealt ~14 damage without crits and always one shot the matchman instantly, and usually dealt 3-4 damage to the cannon, which was always in range; that means up to 8 damage max on the cannon each turn if each abomination hit with rake.
The cannon never got a shot off.
Stress wasn't much of an issue, despite two abominations in the party. The two abominations syngergized by reducing each other's stress by transforming back to human after each battle. They regularly got kills or crits and lowered stress as well. The jester was only there to buff and reduce stress, so if I had enough speed to outpace the monsters I was fighting I'd lower stress. Occasionally houndmaster pitched in with lowering stress, although less reliably than the jester.