Snip; about QoL concerning shortcuts and UI of Journey
Concur'd; would prefer any mention or love towards shortcuts of any kind in standard Terraria play. Most people complain plenty on the UI and these things service to help with the freebase linear/mouse-centric control. Not sure if this is still in your jurisdiction, but if you're cleaning house, this is most definitely a good place to start to keep things fresh on the move-out.
As for more balance-centric stuff:
Conversation with Vanilla Rebalance Dude; talks concerning Razorblade
First things firsts: weapon usability/popularity shouldn't be too much a deciding factor in how you look towards "nerfing" something. I get that you're doing the best here to please the crowd, but the end result is that Duke's still got phenomenal stuff even on class set-ups that don't even properly multi-spec. The key note here is that you should focus on core balance towards any massive outliers, and considering your agreement and reservations, you know just as well that it's more an outlier than the likes of every other one of Duke's weapons. There's no discrediting his loot pool by a reassessment of something like Razor when everything else is similarly - if not just as - critical as it. Don't be afraid to make changes. Even if it homogenizes Duke's to single target prioritization, it's better than strictly adhering to the meta status quo.
Healing back-and-forth concerning Valhalla/Squire stuff.
It still has plenty capable regenerative abilities. The core behind the reservation is the fact that free-healing is a detriment to commitment principles already present in the game, which service to add complexity to the simple nature of an always-active hurtbox game. Notice "always-active hurtbox" and you get a clear picture as to why free-healing is already a problem: there's no incentive not to do it. Passive play is a part of the process and encouraged by the time-to-kill-centric nature of the enemy design, so the second you can play it safe is the second you're getting rewarded immensely and invalidating a lot of other compromises such as the dichotomy between Philosopher's/Accessory Availability, risk assessment vs future proofing, and even the most egregious of them: offensive versus defensive, which is already a weighed scale because "time-to-kill-centric" gameplay already heavily incentivizes active engagement to begin with. Occam's Razor comes into picture here, and let me tell you, it's not a pretty painting on Defenses' part. This is the problem behind the regeneration itself and why building around it is a lot more of a problem than the "heavy amount of regen" that was just an addendum/supplement to something that was already problematic to begin with.
That being said, I really wouldn't discredit the suggestion that health regeneration on part of getting struck would be a bad thing. It's a good upend on crisis assessment and keeping your cool and can help to build good habits on suppressing panic, not to mention even on Normal mode, getting hit by most anything is a disadvantageous state to begin with. The most I could think of in terms of it becoming a problem is players willingly hurting themselves on lower-end enemies to gain such a boost with a low net-cost, but that's already a core component of the Panic Necklace to begin with and is rewarding of a player who's able to use ingenuity, not to mention I doubt health regen off of honey could even be used in i-frame machines.
On that note, saying that Panic Necklace is "archaic" when it services a bridge of gap on distancing on hit is honestly extreme. I can see the statement applying fine to Star Cloak and its kin, but Panic Necklace is still perfectly serviceable and is only really held back by in-engine movement speed caps or the like in a context where versatility is usually a fair bit more important than damage. Even on essential three for Pre-Hardmode end-game (Obsidian Shield; Frostspark; Monster Tooth), you've still got more than enough reason to run Panic Necklace, especially in cases where overlapping hitbox = bad. Hardmode already gets a lead-in with a boss specifically built to test you on this and its sub-mechanics as a result, so even if you are running it into hardmode, it's a perfect case of taking off the the crutches, which a player deserves to get punished by. If you really wanted to stick to your guns on it being archaic as a result of the getting hit portion, the best case of rebalance would be per
@slendyproject's suggestion just a bit up (though rip the engineers using XNA).
Debuff-centric stuff; bringing up Ichor and the likes
Ichor's the backlash component because it services a direct point of defense-formula counterplay which every other debuff has to abide by - with static numbers on top of that no less. I'm not really sure if this has come up within balance discussions between you and the team (probably more times than I can count) but you could make things either centric towards max HP as to have things still be usable within later levels or you could just omit debuffs from the defense formula all-together in order to help them service better along on player component and while still having potential player-based scaling towards the 500 HP max. Practicality, it could be asking for a lot, and the Max HP suggestion is already more than enough an undertaking for not only the QA but engineers especially this late into cycle, but if anything, I'd recommend the distancing from defense to help service itself against the ichor norm.
As for the comments relative to the "shakeup" stuff, again: refer to my comments above on meta status quo. Don't be afraid of us, dude. You do your job, and we'll still love Re-Logic (and you!) even despite that.
Frost Armor; Boomerang; whatever's brought up below etc etc.
Frost Armor has got some solid crit/damage fine-tuners on Chest and Helmet (with helmet being one of the better hybrid damage-ups in the game, especially for full-generalist plays) but has a deadweight on the leggings that's better serviced by others with a set bonus that also doesn't help with commitment.
Boomerangs are wack, but they're servicable target select "get off me's" and if there were a thing to use for buffing them while not giving them Hatchet diversity, it'd probably just be a use speed buff for quicker swaps between weapons or make it so that you can swap inbetween uses of the boomerang to help with prioritization as well as individualized action. That's practically mostly their use already, and skimming the fat to make them more specialized in that facet probably wouldn't take too much - it's probably something to commit some thought into in terms of this cleaning-house balance stuff since the passive-melee stuff you guys did before is now more or less perfected by way of the yoyo.
Towards Crystal Assassin set: You really have to play careful with classless sets, since typically that's more of an ingenuity prospect rather than something of a strict doctrine. The crit/damage average is a hell of a thing to maintain, but the Assassin deal has to more or less give the practicality of a full on set (not to mention there really ISN'T a lot of ways to diversify at the moment in terms of when it's typically available progression-wise) for those that don't got a scope of this sort of thing, which means introducing damage elements instead of giving the identity of something that seems useless on paper but has more efficient usages. Even despite this, the armor itself is "okay" at this more than enough, but it at least services to introduce the concept that crit/damage averages together are usually a better picture than extremist cases on either or (unless you're doing pvp in which case, it's damage or nothing). Numbers wouldn't lie either; TtK would be shaved off a little bit, but it'd still be there (old: 27.5% shaved off avg; new: 23.4% or something like that; assuming comparison with set bonus on old) and that's even players giving it a shot to begin with.
tl;dr: it's better to give the introductory lesson of "crit and damage averages are best when grouped together" that the base armor in the game already give that gets taken for granted to let people bridge the gap and start diversifying themselves later on as a supplement of their experience. Even despite the fact that it's lacking in malleability on the later bends, it's still a serviceable generalist piece that can hold up up until you get a more structured hybrid/classed set going for whatever you're venturing towards, which gives it malleability on the frontend. I wouldn't call it a bad armor piece at all, especially when we're talking a 15%+ (which is kept towards emblems at this point) towards generalized damage on the start of hardmode when stuff like damage values start to really begin to be important.
I'd go on for more points, but at this point, I'm exhausted because I've no sleep, so take with what I've given what you will.
EDIT: as for the Zenith thing and putting in two cents: it's sincerely meant to be classless. The sword thing is more or less just a celebration of the Journey - it's a literal symbolic venture. I'm not really sure how else to put it. It's not a showcase of favoritism, it's a showcase of iconicism. It really shouldn't be such a big vocal point, and I'm honestly surprised that it's up there along with the likes of Torch luck, which is a much more sincere problem on the fundamentals of freedom towards Terraria's design.
