This summarises suggestions I've made elsewhere to evolve the magical/physical armour of D:OS2. I feel this is the best addition to the franchise, with the greatest potential for increasing combat creativity, and a solid solution to one of D:OS's biggest problems – overpowered CC – without removing or altering how CC currently works.

The core idea is to split magical armour into several 'magical armours', as it's too easy to destroy a universal magical armour.

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Main Points:

1) The lowdown: split magical and physical armour into several coloured categories of armour, with each colour representing different protection before your main health bar depletes. For example, there are 5 types of armour: a) grey (physical HP); b) red (pyro HP); c) blue (hydro HP); d) green (geo HP); e) purple (necro HP). Doesn't need to be 5 (could be 3), but preferably more than the current 2.

2) Increase armour HP through points & gear: Currently, there are tabs for 'attributes', 'combat abilities', 'civil abilities' and 'talents'. Coloured armour gets a 5th tab, 'armour enhancement', where you invest points to increase the HP of armours per level.

3) 1 main health bar, 5 armour health bars: to cause damage to the main health bar or to CC an enemy with a pyro spell, you must have reduced all of the the enemy's red pyro armour HP. Likewise for hydro, necro, etc.

4) Less cheese: no need to remove CC. But now you must 'win' your chance to CC by reducing the related armour type. It's too easy to reduce magical armour when it acts as a catch-all armour for every spell: splitting it out makes this more difficult.

5) More strategy: increases creativity in battle, without having to create new rules (this idea uses an existing rule, magical armour, and just splits it out). Enemies have different 'coloured' weaknesses, before you can crack their main health bar: which do you take out first before you can damage their main health?

6) More diversity: you invest in armour points per level, and can focus in one armour or spread your points. Do you have a hydro blue armour 'tank' with average purple and grey armour, but no red armour whatsoever?

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The Details:

1) Coloured Armour Enhancements at level up: you have 8 points to spend in 'armour enhancement' per level. This is a rough figure. I haven't worked out math that would be reasonable – but this shouldn't be hard with full information on the leveling system: how much damage enemies deal at later levels etc.

2) UI changes: a) an additional tab for a dedicated 'armour enhancement' section; b) 5 small coloured armour bars that sit in one row under the main health bar

3) Removes dependence on gear to give you these much-needed additional defences against elements and elemental CC

4) Potential for racial coloured armour bonuses

5) Solves the CC problem, not by removing it - but by making it less readily available: you must whittle down the coloured armour of the enemy before you can freeze, electrify, petrify or knockdown etc

6) Hopefully it's clear how this is different to resistances, since magical armour is already a working concept in the game that's different to the resistance mechanic

7) Removes lottery/dice-roll solutions to the CC problem. Now it's something you plan strategically. In chess, a castle can either move vertically or horizontally - simple, right? No rules, no dice rolls. But much creative thinking. That's why I feel the magical armour is such a great concept: very simple, but provides great strategic depth