A very thorough post. I generally agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I disagree on a few points.
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I partly agree about the RNG loot, but I disagree about critical hits. I don't actually pay attention to random % effects on items, those are unreliable, so my eyes don't register that information as important.
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I mostly disagree with this point. Cooldown reduction in D:OS 1 contributed to wild imbalances in the game, especially when it came to mages, who could stack points into INT and vastly outclass physical characters spamming a ton of varied attacks. I celebrated the removal of cooldown reduction, which merely made it more difficult to properly balance the game.
I'm quite sure that D:OS 2's EA did not have cooldown reduction as a mechanic.
That said, cooldown reduction under specific circumstances might be interesting. I even suggested a Talent which reduces cooldowns by 1 turn to a minumum of 0 if Warm, Burning, or Necrofire at the start of the turn, and increases cooldowns by 1 turn if Chilled or Frozen at the start of the turn.
My gripe with Critical Hits under the RNG point is less about critical hits themselves, but more how out-of-place they are after they've gone through so much effort to remove RNG and savescum elements. I only mention it because exactly that happened to me in a co-op game (the host ate a crit that he would have otherwise survived in the Houndmaster fight, if I remember correctly.)
I'm also not solely reminiscing about D:OS1's cooldown system, simply observing that there was no real attempt to replace it, alter it to better fit these new systems, or otherwise account for it's removal. Spellcasters in D:OS1 could become ridiculous spell-slinging archmages with a few pieces of INT gear and as much fun as that was, it didn't need to reoccur; but I still would have liked something to fill that void.
