A good amount to unpack here. 
Game Loop
I think taking some notes from weapon sharpness in Monster Hunter isn’t a bad idea. There’s already traps in the game, as well as “corrosive smoke” that some enemies like to drop onto the ground. It would be interesting if health wasn’t the only resource that is hit but your durability as well.
Of course this still is impacted on death. I think something that could assist players in feeling like durability isn’t becoming a chore with this is either:
- Making repair powders a known recipe immediately,
- Or giving a weapon a Repair rune.
I just have a gut feeling durability will be frowned upon regardless.
Combat & Builds
I don’t know how I feel about introducing Critical Strikes. Every ARPG has them and it’s interesting we don’t have them in this. They can sometimes also lead to weird power creep (although we have a lot of this already). It could be another balance lever though so it’s pros and cons as usual.
I think we can avoid cooldowns and just increase the Stamina cost. Cooldowns usually don’t feel too great for players and increasing the Stamina cost can achieve a similar result.
Agree wholeheartedly here. I think it was said there will be a review of the stat requirements on weapons but don’t quote me on this, haha.
Still, I’m on the fence about giving additional bonuses to the attributes until we see future enchantments.
Gear & Loot
Yes. 100%. Gems need power to incentivize the control of whites over the RNG nature of rare and plagued items. I don’t know about the examples, simply because I don’t know what would be balanced or not with this but I do believe gems are the key to make white items competitive.
Enchantments
If we were to give attributes additional bonuses, I don’t think we’d need enchantments that are affected by them. Too much of this and we leave the territory of freedom that Moon is targeting. That being said, those are some cool enchants you’ve drafted up.
Charge attack shoots a shockwave blast in a cone in front of you when swinging your weapon dealing damage equal to half of your STR stat.
This in particular sounds like it could be a fun gimmick.
Correct me if I am wrong but the goal of Primary and Secondary enchantments is Primary has gameplay altering effects and Secondary is similar to what we have now. If I am correct in my understanding then I have mixed thoughts, mostly because I don’t want us to gain too much power and enter the big number territory of other ARPGs.
As for Curses, I am always up for any that alter gameplay rather than purely stat based (i.e. Healing Reduction). They can be much more interactive and as a result, actually fun to try and work around.