I personally feel the new the armor / CC system is interesting, but has its flaws. I've also seen quite a few others who aren't sold on the idea.

As far as I can tell, the main point of the change was to remove the randomness from combat. The issue is that CC is still extremely strong - you just have to focus a little bit of hp down first, and then it's even better than in DOS1. It also forces the devs to just grant CC immunity to certain enemies (such as the worm in the final battle) in order to keep fights non-trivial.

In order to keep the main benefit (lack of RNG), but make CC more balanced, I propose a new system :

Degrees of CC. CC must be applied gradually, with increasing effects at each level.

For example, currently hitting an enemy with a stun spell (no magic armor), will stun them, preventing them from moving for ~2 turns. Under the new system, what would happen is

First application: Dazed! - 2 AP, -25% magic damage.
Second application: Shocked! - 4 AP, -1 AP recovery, -50% magic damage.
Third application: Stunned! Misses 2 turns.

Normal rules of cc interaction would still apply - each CC effect would include gradually increasing levels of the elemental bonus / malus associated with the existing cc for each element. If a hard CC is applied, all other CC effects would be removed (just as being frozen currently makes you immune to stunned).

This does several things : It makes it take longer and be more difficult to apply 'hard' cc. It allows the enemy to react to cc effects. It allows for more interesting effects than just total loss of turns. It allows different types of CC to be more effective in different situations. In particular, single shot - AP allows a dangerous enemy to be delayed, without being fully removed from the fight for several turns.

There are also quite a few more options with such a system. Here are a few different effects that could work:

Varying length of chain (2 to 4 applications to 'hard' cc)
Decrease magic/physical/other damage output
Decrease accuracy, crit chance
Decrease movespeed, initiative
Decrease healing received / given
Remove flat AP, reduce AP recovery
Increase AP costs
Prevent source gain / Prevent source use
Increase height penalties / reduce bonuses
Degrees of immunity - a boss may be immune to hard CC, but still vulnerable to weaker effects

Last edited by Wraith367; 23/09/16 12:38 AM.