There is one easy "modification" that can make combat brutally easy. And its low cost to make.
There are a whole bunch of ways to make combat easy, without the need to increase the cost of your moves too.
I go with 2-handed melee weapon as the primary element for my build.
I convert it to fire element and boost fire and melee damage.
Right now i got scythe, a gift from my first battle with Meraxis. <3
I converted it to fire and have 40% melee damage atm thanks to my aristocrat perk and some leveling perks, and the scythe already does 200-300+ damage.
In the future if there will be a way to sneak more melee damage in, i expect it will increase to 400-500+
And i can make 2 hits with it during a single turn, since third ap is reserved for teleport which makes me pretty much invulnerable during the entire fight. But since teleport with upgrades lasts 2 turns i could slip third hit in if i wanted to.
I only use a tiny amount of my aura for teleport, which keeps most of my aura intact for defense.
Teleport Scythe build i guess you could call it.