Bunch of random feedback: About build diversity/control, Armor, difficulty scaling and rewards etc.

[cloud barn]

Hi, my first post here, after playing a bit on the new update i've decided to gather my thoughts on a several aspects of the game that i had in the back of my head for a while and share them. It's a mixed bag of what could be changed and some wishes for stuff to be added, so here goes.

• Affixes and rerolls: would be nice to have a way to "lock" an affix before rolling, sometimes you find a piece of gear with one amazing affix but everything else is meh, it feels bad to throw away something like Blitz Blade just because it has Hack status (messes with parry timing) or just other affixes having no synergy with other equipment. Maybe limit it to one affix per item to keep it balanced, of course it would come with an additional fee/special resource, could be also gated behind additional vendor affinity tier. Also, could we have a way to upgrade and reroll Armors? Feels weird that they have item levels but no way to upgrade them. And separate the status and affixes for rerolls maybe? Dunno how that would work with status-specific affixes like Shock+Ion Surge though.
• Equipment switching: would be nice to have a sort of "backpack" to store a piece of gear that I'd like to upgrade/reroll first before using it, without forcing me to immediately extract just to modify it (also I could find it at a moment when I have no resources to do so). Not saying we should bring back the big storage, just one backup piece per equipment type would be fine. Might as well add option to use the previous gear to transfer some of its affixes into the new one. Would be great way to encourage switching weapons instead of holding on to that one that has some essential affix.

• Loot pool: I see i'm not the only one dissatisfied with the current implementation of the loot system. The general idea of characters having gear preferences is not as bad as some people here make it sound, but right now it's way too restrictive. Just make several broad categories (actually they are kinda there already) and have each Breaker stick to 2-3 of them. This point is inspired by not being able to use Soulburn on Gravenheart, like really? Parry-focused character not being able to use the parry-focused sword?

• Armor stat: right now armor feels like just a bit of additional health that's restored in a different way, it doesn't feel like you're any "tanky" if a single hit can obliterate 4 armor pips + a half of your health bar. Maybe do something like 1 Armor=full block 1 hit, and have it not proc on minor stuff like environmental hazards and DoT ticks. Or at least make it so that a single hit can't go through Armor and health at once. Another alternative: Taking damage that would exceed 10% of current health consumes 1 armor to greatly reduce the DMG (like 75% maybe?) and prevent death (stopping at 1HP) - this opens up an option to add a holobyte or armor affix that improves the dmg reduction or changes it to full block.

• Difficulty scaling and Glitch bar: i like having a way to make runs harder, with maxed out EXEs the base difficulty becomes somewhat trivial at times but right now there's no incentive to go beyond like 3 levels of Glitch other than wanting more challenge. Please add more rewards for filling out that bar, like even more Golden Rations/Abyssal Stones, higher loot rarity, more resource drops etc. Also maybe add the option to increase the World Tier cap, the faster scaling modifier is not that scary if it plateaus at 20.