Thanks for the writeup! I just finished fixing some of what you mentioned in your previous post (no more duplicating items!)
I think the major issue at hand now is a numbers issue: melee is tough because you WILL get surrounded and you WILL take damage, no matter what. Meanwhile, a bow can deal only one damage per shot but a skilled player will shoot-move-shoot and kill everything before taking any damage, since most enemies are slow and cannot deal in any way with a ranged player. A crap bow will be better than the best melee weapon. I think the first step should be creating a scenario where using a bow is NOT the optimal solution. I think I already have something like that with the Unseen enemies, who have a Evasion, which gives arrows a high chance to simply phase through them. Problem is, they're also tough for melee users due to their high dodge values.
Meanwhile, most of the other enemies are slow and heavy-damage-dealers, which is a counter to melee users. I think tweaking some values to make some enemies be countered by melee and others by bow would be a good step forward before adding any other tools.
Using the newest level (Halls Of Pain) as an example:
Goat: best dealt with by ranged, good against melee
Hammer man: best dealt with by ranged, very strong against melee
Red man: usually has fireshield which damages you if you hit them in melee, not particularly strong against anything
I think the first step here is to mix and match: I'll try and make the Skinless Red boys be much faster at chasing the player and giving them faster attack speed at the expense of damage.
So ideally you'll at least have a situation where a melee weapon or spell dispatches them quickly and having a shield would prevent their damage, but a bow is weak since you can't easily shoot-run-shoot. This should change the dynamic where some enemies are best dealt with different equipment
Your Combat Art and skills suggestions are all very good but I will need to first try and somewhat balance the situation as mentioned above. After that, I already have your cleave idea in mind - since two handed weapons are on average slower, they should have some AOE ability. Same with shields - using an item meant to mitigate damage and increase survivability does the opposite since it puts you in harm's way, and there isn't a good CA to assist in this (block doesn't really count, it's meant for 1 on 1 encounters). If number changes alone don't solve any issue, it'll be time to change the design of things. I personally wouldn't like having automatic/natural regeneration, since I believe then the optimal move would be "kill something -> wait to heal automatically -> kill something -> ..."
Either way, I have a lot of work ahead of me balance-wise.
Thanks for your detailed ideas!
Also, I forgot to mention this previously: be on the lookout for a Unique Spear in your future playthroughs. A small token of my appreciation for you and your valuable feedback through the developments of our games
