Creative progression system combat wise?
What exactly do you mean by that? There is nothing creative about attribute and skill trees. D:OS1 was creative, but D:OS2 is 0815 or even worse. Summoner is the only skill with a level 10 'benefit' and even the highest tier of skills is learnable with only 3 points in, if I read correctly.
Everything in this game is focused in giving you more damage, not on creative ways but totally basic and linear. Classic mixed composition are pretty much killed by the armor system, because you can't really focus the same target without pretty much doubling the necessary.
You have to realize this game is made for people with far less tactical RPG experiences, not just us die hard fans of the genre. Also, the creativity doesn't come in forms of baseline status, but spell design. The developer really did try to move away from monotone skill system compared to DOS1, this is but another iteration.
The mixture of schools actually work for most part, and have their own perks and drawbacks. The increase in viable combat styles is astonishing, this by no means a small feat and it's far more difficult to do than most imagined.
Yes I agree individual combat schools feel lackluster, that was also one of the points mentioned above. Though, we also don't know if Larian is planning more contents in these regards. The game just got released after all, there are plenty of opportunities to patch these up in an expansion.
Playing tank is no legit tactic, because AI will just ignore you, if you don't bait them with taking something like Glass cannon. Also the AI is pretty much always the same, just with a different costume and different skills. A zombie is as smart as a elite assassine.
Well, pure tanks are indeed useless, that's why the most viable tank builds currently are hybrids, between support/debuff/CC, there is a mixture in there not as weak as a pure warfare tank. In terms of how to improve the pure tank's viability, my personal take would give these tanks some perks where your CCs bypass armor checks in the future (Maybe perk comes from 1-handed 10?). With an overall health increase, the tanks would act as a main disrupt role compared to dps, that would make them alot more dangerous than what they are right now.
