PoE2 is a lot easier and I believe this is more because of the new Armor Rating system. Currently, the bonus is so crazy. A few points of pen and you deal twice the usual damage. A few points below the armor rating and you deal absolutely no damage.
You heavily suffer from this in the early game gets shot death for absolutely no effort by 30 damage a hit because of their low armor. You deal decent damage with spell because it pens just about right.
Then 10 levels later.
Every spells deals twice its stated damage because of the overpen from level scaling, more with empowered. Enemy can barely scratch anyone with 12 or 13 armor rating. Even if you upscales all enemies, they don't change their gears resulting in low armor rating and penetration.
The bonus gonna need to be rescaled and that will fix A LOT of balance issues. I will miss my 2k damage Salvo and 700 AoE damage Maelstorm though when this gets mixed.