Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Bandaid balance suggestions

Despite I appreciate all the works Larian put in DOS2 and having blast enjoying the combat and story. There are a lot of balance issues in the game.

I understand that the game is already released and it would be impossible to redesign the whole system. Therefore, I have some suggestions that would improve the experience without too much works.

On Magic/Physical balance.
The scaling of weapon damage and spells are similar. However, the following problems make full magic team pales compared to physical teams:
1. "Mage Type" Enemies has way more magic armors than "Warrior type" Enemies's physical armors. Bosses also tend to have more magical armor than physical armor so they have more efficient life (vitality+armor) for a mage team.
2. There is no physical resistance. But many enemies are resistant or even immune to certain element and these cant be removed due to lore reasons (e.g. It makes sense that fire elementals are immune to fire and undeads are immune to poison)
3. Weapon. Due to the long cooldown of skills in this game. You will spend more time doing auto attacks. It is not a big issue for physical characters since all melee weapons and bows/crossbows do physical damage. However, if you are a pyro mage using a wand doing air damage, you lost the bonus damage from pyro tree. The RNG of gearing means you are not guaranteed to find the right type of wand.
4. CC. It is boring to CC the entire enemy team in turn 1 like DoS:EE. However, the shield system is not the best solution. Hydro/Aero are CC focused and does inferior damage. They are out of favor in term of offensive and are mostly used for buff/heal/utilities.
5. Mobility. There are movements skills in Warfare/Scondriel/Huntsman but not at all in elemental skills. Mages are forced to spend at least 1 points elsewhere to get movement skills.

Improvements proposed:
1. Reduce magic armors of all enemies by 30%-50% (The number is somewhat arbitrary and need more testing)

2 & 3. Skills provide resistance penetration (e.g. 1 point in pyro gives +2% more fire damge and penetrate 2% fire resistance).
Runes provide resistance penetration and "100% of weapon damage converted to X damage" on weapon (e.g. Small flame rune, penetrate 6% enemy fire resistances , 100% of weapon damage converted to Fire damage; Small masterwork rune 7% damage as physical damage, 100% of weapon damage converted to physical damage). If certain weapon has more than 1 rune slots, only damage convertion in the first rune slot takes effect.

4. Add new CC non-source skills for aero/hydro that ignores armor. They may be balanced around cooldown (once per combat), range (touch) or AP (3AP for single target CC, no damage).

5. Add at least one movement skill in hydro/geo/pyro. Aero have netherswap but I can't seem to use it properly, can't swap with teammates within line of sight I'm not sure if It's a bug or I missed something.

On Scaling:
I'm totally fine with the scaling in DOS:EE and I have no idea why you guys make it this way where a level 13 charater has doubled life/shield/damage compared to a level 11 charater, four time of life/shield/damage compared to level 9 characters. This makes act 2 extremely linear and overleveling a problem. People also have to return to town updating gears every time they level up. Please be realized that it is a chore. Players want to spend more time outside fighting/exploring instead of restocking

Improvements proposed:
Please tune down the curve. If the scaling curve is more tamed like that in DOS:EE, people would have more freedom in exploring and there is no need to nerf experience for reaper's coast since overleveling would not give you a large advantage in "numbers".