My stance on this remains that you'd still have your determinism and maybe the second later chance defense can be smaller than last time.
However, chance really really bothers you, save scumming is a thing? Under a combined system in fairly certain you'd be satisfied with your armor and you could ignore the defensive abilities and just use skills. If your argument is that once the enemy armor is gone you want a guaranteed CC than .... that's really a fundamental difference in opinion. Your saying you only want chess like matches and I'm saying I'd like it if it was chess with some elements of chance. Anyone play starcraft or Warcraft the board game? Where you'd move your pieces around but combat always had some surprises in store? That's what I'm getting at really.
I'm not a fan of RPGs and tactical games playing strictly like chess. If I wanted I'd play chess for that. In fact I love chess at times. I collect chess sets in fact.
Combat isn't a guaranteed thing. The fact that it is here just........really takes away from making it feel like combat for me
