It seems that the biggest problem so far is how CC is handled that makes the combat hard to enjoy. Even the complaints about RNG is CC related.

Currently with the Armor and and Magic Armor system we have in place turns the game into a resource system where you break a threshold health kinda like ME2/3 and then you chain CC relevant to the armor you break. This encourages a team and playstyle where its more effective to stack one damage type, chain CC, and ignore the other half of damage.

People also disliked the system we had in D:OS EE because combat felt like it was too focused on chain CCing and if you missed a CC then the fight was practically over. People disliked that a fight was more or less determined by a dice roll and how game deciding CC was.

So what do we need to fix CC?

In my opinion we need to first separate CC by severity:

1) Hard CC that causes loss of control of character which has the most impact in combat.
This includes: Charm, Knocked Down, Frozen, Stunned, Petrified, Transformed, Sleep, and others that I missed.

2) Soft CC that provide breathing room, generally has a spell that can dispel it, and/or still allow actions.
This includes: Blinded, Slowed, Crippled, Marked, Chilled, Infected, Shackle of Pain, and others.

3)DoTs that is more focused on keeping consistent damage to whittle down opponents and reduce the effectiveness of single heals.
This includes: Burning, Poison, and Bleeding.

Secondly we need to find a way to implement a system that allows all CC to be relevant and balanced by their severity. So hard CC should occur less often then soft CC and the same for soft CC to DoTs.

My Suggestion:

We change the functionality of Armor and Magic Armor in three different way.

1) Armor and Magic Armor is not a threshold health that is affected by damage but instead a resource that is only affected by CC. So each CC has a numerical value that affects Armor or Magic Armor dependent on their damage type. For example Crippling Blow will have two values, one for health and one for Armor. We will make DoTs unique in their functionality in that they will shred Armor and Magic Armor more effectively but cannot damage health until they are gone and soft CC will deal more damage to health but reduced chance of happening.

2)Armor and Magic Armor is affected by each type of CC differently. We will introduce some RNG because I believe RNG is not inherently bad but is often implemented poorly, adds complexity to decision making, and make combat less scripted. DoTs will activate in 3 different ways. At 100%-50% Armor they will have a normal chance of being activated(say like 30%-50%), 49%-1% increased chance, and at 0% it will always activate. soft CC will activate in 2 different way. 100%-50% it will have a reduced rate of happening(10%-30%) and at 49% and lower it will have a normal chance of being activated. Hard CC is only activated in one way and that is at 0% Armor or Magic Armor.

3)When Armor and Magic Armor reaches zero and a character is hard CCed, Armor or Magic Armor is immediately replenished to full depending on the type of cc used. This should prevent chain CCing of hard CC to 1-3 on one person and even less on multiple enemies.

With this type of system in place it should reduce the amount of hard CC and increase the usage of other CC by giving all CC a functionality in that all of them reduce Armor and Magic Armor with their normal effect. It also encourages both magical and physical sources of damage because you can target both Armor and Magic Armor to chain CC a physical effect and then a magical effect.

There are a lot of problems that I can foresee in implementing this system. Values of health, damage, Armor, and Magic Armor will have to be changed because it will not be a easy fit. Programming this system will most likely take a large amount of time and depending on their budget may not be feasible. Lastly it may still lead to chaining a different type of CC like DoTs becoming more important or soft CC.

Also change the name of Armor and Magic Armor to Bodybuilding and Willpower to somewhat connect to the previous game and reflect its functionality better.