Personally, I think the magic/physical armour mechanic is a brilliantly novel idea, with huge room for evolution. I even wouldn't mind if they split the the magic armour into fire/ice/electric armour etc, and bring in enemies with highly variable 'elemental HPs' that means you really need to diversify to meet the challenge - but I digress!
We're here to say that durability is effectively crap. It looks like mostly everyone agrees it serves no value, strategic or otherwise. It's just a gimmick from some bygone era of game design, when someone reckoned it would be 'realistic' to have the items degrade, and someone else just rolled with it, without giving it any further thought.
Since then, it's become a cliche in rpgs, something that had been done from way back when - so the philosophy becomes: we have to do it now too, right? Because we're making a game with swords and shields, and remember that last game where the shields and swords degraded? And the one before that?
Hopefully they ditch it. Nuisance as is, hopeless as anything else.
