Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback The Physical/Magical armor system

So, after playing through this game iv'e noticed that the armor system has adopted a more "point-for-point" view on things.
While I agree with changes from one game to the next, wouldn't this system result in trying to burn one character's armor quickly all at once in order to open up options for status effects later on? Not claiming to be an expert or anything, but I just got to thinking... Is there another way to make this system work? and I have thought of something, what if there was a kind of secondary pool in addition to the current one? this secondary pool would be a sort of "padding armor" which could work differently to how the standard one works. It could work with a set number of charges, ie chestpiece gives X armor and Y charges to block status effects.
this could give more options to think about: do i want more survivability with armor A or less chance of stunning on armor B?
It could also be another way to change the thought process on shield users, or this "pad" system could of course circumvent shields entirely.
Just food for thought, someone else could probably build on this far better than I could, figured I'd throw it out there

"wouldn't this system result in trying to burn one character's armor quickly all at once in order to open up options for status effects later on?"

There are a few ways to go about it, but yes that is one strategy.

I was thinking that if it were a bit different, then combat wont devolve into "how do I burn all of his armor away" and instead "do I go for the kill now or try to stun"... or something like that. just kinda worried for later game content, thinking ahead and all. Again I'm just throwing ideas out there, worst case scenario is it gets ignored/swept under right?

At later levels (after 5 perhaps, I'm not exactly sure) you can sometimes find purple armour that gives immunity to certain status. So you may find gloves that give you immunity to stunned or a helmet that gives you immunity to terrified and petrified for example.

They are quite rare but seem to get more common as your level advances. You are much more likely to find someone selling them when you are at level 8 than 5 for example. Apart from random drops the skeleton by the bridge and Gareth are the best places.

It isn't exactly what you are suggesting but often it is worth taking an armour with lower rating because of these immunity effects (or boosts to stats) over one with a higher rating without.

If you are playing the Glass Cannon trait (which removes the resistance magic armour gives to status effects) finding armour that gives immunity can change the game completely in your favour.

Well, the reason it works like it does now is because in the original, every battle was just you keeping all of the enemies permanently CC'd from the get-go. The current system definitely helps to stagger that out. I do find that it adds to the strategy quite a bit.

It creates a niche for "breaker" type characters. Wizard, for example, is very much a MA breaker. They do a lot of widespread damage that can help burn through MA fast. The original game emphasized the "controller" role too much, and you could win nearly anything by chain CCing indefinitely...or just shocking a pool of blood.

Perseverance, I think, is a huge step in the right direction. In theory, at last. Currently, I've struggled to find it very useful...damage is just way overtuned in general, especially with AI 2.0. They'll be using PA breakers on your mages with low PA, and MA breakers on your melee with low MA. You'll be armor broken in one or two hits, even with 10 points in Perseverance, you won't escape the next hit.

I really like the direction of the Armour and magic Armour system.

It really forces you to constantly upgrade your gear and scrap for every bit of Armour you can find.

The strategy is still to chain CC everything though, now its just preceded by armor breaking. Where im standing it just limits party composition more because it makes it easier to focus on either a hardcore mage nuking party or a physical one. If you have a single physical character and 3 mages, they better be able to solo kill things. Likewise if you brought along a support mage in a 3 physical party, you may as well not even bother attacking with its wand, you arent stripping anythings MA with support spells. Equip a bow or something.

Teleport and aoe. You can magic aoe or physical aoe, and then freeze/stun or knockdown stuff. Meh. Id rather CC be more sparse and not have to break through any shields, where you carefully select what and when you CC and then just have to fight it out with the rest of the enemy.

Maybe give damage bonuses for attacking things which are CCd, but this breaks the CC. So you have to choose to use your CC as a damage-add or as actual crowd control. That would make things more dynamic and interesting.

Good thing about mages is that they can strip physical armor too. Mosquito swarm is a great spell for that.

^ This. The fights proceed like this:
Focus enemy > Break armour type > CC target > kill target > change target and repeat.

If your physical character targets a specific enemy, there's no point in using a magic character, because the magic user gets no benefit from breaking the physical armour and vise versa.

The DOS1 stats worked okay because CCs could last X number of turns but you had a chance to roll out of them, and a warrior class was obviously going to have higher body-building and therefore be harder to charge etc... A team that can use CC effectively SHOULD be strong, so I like the idea of making it harder to use CC effectively, but I don't think the current system is a very good way of doing that.

Thinking about it further. Maybe the best approach would be to just reduce the number of abilities that can CC.

So for instance the lightning bolt could reduce a stat or have a knock back (like someone flying across the room from putting a form in a socket), but lighting water or lighting on wet target stuns. Hitting a wet target with hail could reduce a stat (the ice on the ground still can cause you to trip). Hitting someone with an earth spell might "unbalance" them making them easier to charge, etc...

Force players to come up with combinations to increase or augment the effect their skills have, so that cleverness and optimization is rewarded (so brute strength isn't the best tactic). And reduce the number of skills that CC - rather than just keeping the same amount of skills that CC and trying to build a system around that (which will always have the problem that there's too much cc).