With the 1.5 Patch up and the patch notes stating that its harder now, how does this effect the current runs and future runs on here?

Difficult to say. Testing is required but with reduced healing on Acolyte in particular the Hero Difficulty run may need some tweaking. The general strategy should be unaffected for the most part though.

Pretty late on this, but the game is currently on patch 1.55. From what I can remember off the top of my head, the game is kinda harder but there's a few chapters that did get changed. On chapter 16 (on Deity mode at least) while it's lowish, there is a small chance that Fenton and Faust can die so you can miss on their promotion. Chapter 19 got some changes so it's a few houses and stuff instead of just a box, but it still plays the same (escaping is somewhat easier however). Chapter 25 is notably shorter, as you don't have to go through the beginning area of super jacked enemies plus the long hallway. Idk if this was a thing in past versions, but Varic actually attacks on enemy phase if you're at 2-range so if you can't tank a crit might wanna keep that in mind. Not sure but the ship in chapter 12 might be able to get destroyed quicker, though it may be a Deity mode specific thing. Also for classes I'm pretty sure the Acolyte/Conjuror healing was nerfed, and I think Champion was buffed. Also Elias got buffed so he tanks better in the early game.