Honestly, the problem is not the bars themselves but the strength of the effects that they prevent. Enemies have high armor because devs know that once that bar is gone, you win. It becomes a stun-lock sh!tfest. Even heavy melee-focused enemies have a ton of magic armor because they realized that once you break it, you win.
Try playing the game on the basis of stun-locking. It just ruins everything.
The easiest way to win DoS2? Build a team of DPS and high-initiative classes, bring a bunch of stun, get a few hits off and then get bored of the game.
They need to reign-in the amount of "lose one turn" you (and mobs) can put out in a fight. Then they can tone armor down a bit on mobs...or even (here's a novel thought) make a few enemies specifically weak in one sense, physical or magical, and strong in another.
So less hard CC and more soft CC and more armor specialization? Could work, but requires them testing things again -_- I'm slowly coming to the opinion this is too integral to their design and don't plan to change anything
Well they already realized their system is broken...problem is they invented a way to counter it by investing your stats in an even more broken attribute "Perseverance" which, unless heavily invested in, grants you a small amount of armor back that can be easily dispatched by the next hit anyway.
The easiest way of getting around this problem is to add another bar (please don't vomit on the spot) for CC. A "CCResist Armor" if you will, that only kicks in after your first bar is depleted and it works for all effects.
Something like this:
.5(
Physical Armor)+.5(
Magic Armor) = "
CCResist Armor"
Key mechanics:
- Half of both armors so that neither physical nor magical armor is better at resisting effects
- Has no effect on incoming damage
- Only activates after first effect lands
- Once activated, all damage effects the bar
- Bar must reach 0 before another effect lands
- Bar replenishes 100% after each successful effect
- Armor restoration skills do not effect bar
Basically, you're adding a 'cooldown' on how often you can get stunned/blinded/rooted/etc without breaking the armor system and without making one armor better than another. The more armor you have, regardless of which type, the better your chances of surviving a fight where you 'lose one turn'.
Then you can turn Perseverance into something more useful...like each point giving you 5% more CC resist.
