MMH5.5 - Heroes of Might and Magic 5.5

I really don't understand why you consider Combat weak. Yes, it may not seem like a good pick early game, just like Sorcery and Occultism are bad without any school proficiency. But this is why Combat offers the "Hero melee" perks, which do very well on their own.

It's incorrect to compare it to Sorcery, which boosts spells, roughly up to 1.6 times (although mana consumption also increases proportionally)! This is a +60% bonus versus +5%. To make the +60% bonus work well, relatively little effort is required (just level up the magic school that receives this +60%). But to make the +5% bonus relative to magic work well, you need to level up your troops many times over – until magic no longer deals any significant damage (i.e., until the balance stops working).

Regarding Occultism, it's a perfectly ordinary average skill, providing about +2 to magic per skill level, and it looks great at the start when you have little magic. It's a standard +2 bonus, which gives many more advantages than Combat (a skill, not abilities).
Actually, I can only praise the implementation of Occultism: +1 to magic and standard magic penetration when playing Destructive Magic, and +2 to magic when playing any other magic where magic penetration doesn't work. This is very flexible!
But you could go even further: give a +1 bonus for each leveled magic school (from +0*3 to +4*3 = +12). This would motivate players to play multiple magic schools.

Modifiers are as follows:
Expert attack = 0.2
Retribution (with leadership) = 0.125
Expert luck with critical strike ~ 0.25
Expert Combat ~ 0.25

Without Expert Combat: 157% damage for all attacks/ranged attacks.
With Expert Combat: a total of 182% damage for retaliatory attacks, 157% damage for direct attacks/ranged attacks.
So, out of 5 attacks, it would be approximately:
- 3 direct attacks, 157%
- 1 retaliatory attack, 182%
- 1 ranged attack, 157%
Total average damage: 162%.
Investing 3 level-up points (!) into a 5% increase in overall damage is ridiculous. And it doesn't matter that +62% looks "impressive," because +57% of it is due to other, useful perks.
If you only look at the "big picture" and don't analyze what exactly this ability added (before and after), then you can justify any, no matter how small, ability, even +0.1% to damage (and, in the extreme, +0% to damage).

I admit that the abilities from the Combat skill may be quite strong (if you compare them to weak abilities with +2). But the point is that the basic skill itself is weak and is just a stepping stone to its abilities (an additional cost for obtaining tasty abilities), and hence the complaints about the mediocre +1/+1 ability, which is not tasty enough to justify leveling up the mediocre skill.

But if the goal is to strengthen the skill itself, so that it is not just a stepping stone with almost zero value, then there are 2 options:
1) +33/67/100% to retaliatory damage – this looks generally good, but specifically when playing with Readiness, it may be too risky.
2) bonuses as they are now (up to +25%), but additionally +1/+1 to attack/defense for each skill level