This is the perfect time for character reworks imo and they’re trying at least. As long as they keep the original design intent in mind this is the most efficient time from a dev standpoint to tweak unbalanced and broken characters.
I agree that releasing a live service sequel is tough though. I don’t think I’ve seen one try that didn’t receive an astronomical amount of hate for it.
I think a lot of the community pushback is for that exact reason. People expect a different game when a 2 is attached, not a shinier version of the same game. I really don’t know if any IP that’s done this well from a marketing standpoint. Maybe OW2, but that’s also been a trainwreck.
I don’t know that I agree necessarily with your second point though. A big selling point for a lot of the live service games going through this process is a changeover to a newer game engine. You’d be surprised how limiting in terms of features, graphics, and performance it is to be on an engine that’s over a decade old.