I like some of your ideas. Others not so much.
For one, I don't buy into the notion that mixed damage parties are "gimped". Are they less efficient? A bit, yeah. But enemy encounters usually involve so many enemies that you can split your physical and magic damage between enemies without "wasting" any breaking through armor. Not to mention by going pure magic or pure physical, you lose the option to target enemy's lower armor for more efficient CC or exploit negative resistances (or lack thereof). At the end of the day, pure parties are a bit better, but I don't think it's the huge problem some players make it out to be.
Second, Terrain is weaker but I think it could just use a 50% damage boost or something. I don't think the Armor system makes it less dangerous, since it's eroding your defense against CC. I think the issue is tied to something else you brought up; Level scaling; which I also agree should really be toned back. It's why I think your health and armor greatly outscale the damage dealt by terrains by the mid-game, making them a nonissue.
Third, I strongly dislike your suggestion for the memory system. I don't see any problems with the current system personally, so I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to address by changing back to DOS1's system.
Fourth, I don't know that going back to DOSEE's AP system is a good thing. I personally prefer the streamlined system, I just think it needs more wrinkles; twists here and there to shake up the AP economy. Stuff like Flesh Sacrifice, The Pawn, Executioner, Elemental Affinity, and Adrenaline already accomplish this to some extent, but I think it could be taken further, perhaps as a reward for ability investment (i.e. at 10 hydrosophist, all heals cost 1 less AP). That's a bad example but it illustrates my point.
I really like the idea of separating out defensive abilities from combat abilities though.
-
If you ask me, what DOS2 needs is more armor piercing status (shackles, flaming crescendo, etc) so that everything doesn't need to compete with hard CC (and more defense against cc to compensate) and to ditch the round robin initiative system. I'd also strongly suggest placing the whole of Arx's content BEFORE the Nameless Isle.
So there you go, some thoughts you didn't ask for
