Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Two handers and Warfare are overpowered like hell

Mage skills don't depend on wand/staff damage. Their damage increased by level mainly. Same goes for some of the non magical skills.

Tbh this part of my suggestion would be easier to reason about if there were known numbers for all weapons of all tiers.

So far I've seen 2h hammers do about 2.5x damage of any 1h weapon I've seen. Maybe just my luck. But even with +1AP to weapon damage skills 2.5x more damage looks like too much of an advantage. In general, I think about ~2x more damage would be ok for this option. Maybe it's specific to certain weapon types and just 2h hammers need the nerf.


Actually quite a few skills in mage and ranger trees would do same or even less damage than bow, staff or dw wand attack if they have aoe or high utility. Plus crippling strike has insanely high damage modifier anyway even compared to other warfare skills. Both of these skills have AoE, CC and battering ram is a mobility skill which is also quite cheap. They don't deserve high damage modifiers. Exact numbers are debatable.

1h = 1ap, 2h=2ap, 2h=2x1h dmg, which makes autoattacks balanced.

Now the problem is this warfare, ap cost is the same whenever you wear 2H, dual or 1h, dmg is not.
So they need to change warfare, and not the weapon's dmg.

If they don't deserve damage modifiers they don't deserve increased AP costs. If two handed skills cost +1 AP like you suggested AND these skills didn't have damage modifiers I would only use basic attacks, because it would be more efficient.

Battering ram would still be 2 AP + knockdown + teleport + AoE damage. Compared to 2 AP single target auto attack I'd say it dealing bit less single target damage would be totally fine.

Crippling strike is AoE + AoE debuff, at 3 AP it would still be very beneficial to use if you can hit more than 1 target (which should be the case with most AoE skills, they should not be good for single target damage). Maybe it can have bit higher damage modifier than battering ram cause no mobility and not as good at CC.

High damage skills should be the ones that have little utility, and AoE skills should not outdamage single target ones (like it happens with crippling strike compared to many other skills).



Anyway, after some thinking, I'm inclined than the best approach would be to reduce 2h damage across the board to 1.3-1.5 1h damage and likewise nerf offhand damage to the same 30%-50%, while leaving skill AP costs as is. This would be easier from balancing standpoint.

Plus nerf rage/crippling strike/battering ram.

No, as I said, this would make 2h and dualwield useless. Because right now, 2h/dual = 2 attacks of 1h.

Here's my opinion - there should be single-target skills and AoE skills, and obviously single target should deal more damage, however I believe that ALL skills should always be better than a simple auto attack in EVERY way. Skills require memory and have a CD you use them only once in a few turns and some also require more AP, so it's justified.

I'm generally not a fan of broad nerfs. It would probably serve better if they figured a way of making 1 hand, and 1 hand + shield more attractive with a specialty or mechanic unique to them that dual wield and 2 hand lacks so that it can serve a niche or other desirable function outside just dealing damage.

Right now, they are all essentially competing for the same job at the moment, with nothing to differentiate besides damage output and ap cost.

Personally, I hope that if they do a nerf to dual wield/two hand it is not too severe. I have played way too many games where those two styles are incredibly lackluster or not worth using over sword and board.

Yeah, they would be bad for basic attacks, but good for skills. A fair tradeoff imo.



Fair enough - that's one way to balance it. Still, the aforementioned skills are disproportionately good compared to many others, so some adjustments are imo needed either way.



Well, in terms of role, 1h shield is more tanky, however the damage advantage of 2h/dw is too big compared to what a shield offers. If AP costs are adjusted 1h would also have more utility with cheaper skills so more CC/mobility.

As for the nerfs - current 2h makes the game ridiculously easy, so imo nerfs are what needs to happen. If the game was too hard for 1h I'd argue for 1h buffs, but it's not. D:OS has potential for tactical depth with a lot of various statuses and combos but it's not going to happen if you can simply hulk smash through everything.

All styles should be equally useful without being powerful enough to trivialise the game. Current 2h power level calls for pretty serious nerfs.

The mainproblem regarding damage difference between weaponbased Warfare and Ranger skills and magic skills is: Finding a good highlevel weapon is sufficient to increase your damage largly. While the damage of mage skills depends mainly on your level. At the beginning also from your int, but the higher your level is, the worse the benefit from int gets. So a mage can hardly increase his damage just with finding good equipment.

^ this. Sundering cleaver, anyone?

But seriously, I don't think that increasing the ap cost for 2h skills will balance things out. The main problem seems to lie in good measure with skills; for example, everybody seems to agree that the uberpowered crippling strike could use a hit from the 'ole nerfhammer. But raising the AP costs? This means that 1 handers will be able to use uberpowered skills with more frequence.

Edit: perhaps there could be another way of balancing things out, and that is modding warfare in order to boost the shield parry chance with each point. Since the shield parry negates damage, that'd definitely improve the survivability of 1H + shield users. Of course, this would have to be coupled with some small nerfs to other departments.

I wonder what Warrior will look like if some or all these of the suggestions purposed go through (these are various suggestions from different posts).

- Scale back the damage output
- Lower the effectiveness certain Warfare skills
- Raise Cooldowns
- Lower the AP given by Warlord
- Take away The Pawn
- Increase AP costs
- Limit access to skills like adrenaline, tactical retreat, and teleport by moving them to higher tiers

Warfare is the one and only strength-based school that we have. I just hope that when the dust settles the play styles offered by Warfare are still competitive with the other schools.

#WarriorLivesMatter

You, good sir, have officially cracked me up

I aim to please.

It's not about which class has the biggest manhood, it's just that the game is being dumbed down by having stuff like that in it. You could always argue that you can avoid using it, but character building is a large part of fun from games like this for a lot of people (including me), plus you don't even have to cheese, pretty much the stock Knight is already OP.

Divinity 1 suffered from similar syndrome btw, 1st act was quite fun but then characters became too strong and any semblance of tactical combat disappeared, even though the base system showed a lot of potential. At least the 1st act was pretty fun to play. Here, you get to be OP from level 1. I really hope the second instalment avoids the flaws of the first one.

100% agreement with the original post on this one.

The combination of the weapon scaling AND the Strength scaling for 2H weapon users makes using them in conjunction with Strong, AoE, and undercosted Warfare skills too strong. In particular, Battering Ram, Crippling Strike, and Rage are all very overwhelming for this archetype, are much better than the options other weapons (wands/bows/spears, etc.) have, and are available right from the start! These combined with Warlord means the warrior can finish the entire fight once it reaches his turn. They are literally that strong.
Compared to a standard attack, Battering Ram does more damage, at half the cost, to multiple enemies, and knocks them down! So powerful. The opponents aren't strong enough to pose a challenge, and other playstyles aren't close to on par.
That being said, I think extra combat points spent in the Warfare skill itself are directly inferior to the strength of the 2H weapon skill, only the abilities themselves are too strong. In fact, the Warfare passive only boosts damage to armor, by less (in most cases) than the weapon skill boosts ALL damage, making points spent in Warfare very underwhelming.

TL/DR, Warfare abilities are too strong, right from the start, when used with a 2-hander especially.

Call me a doomsayer, but this is what I expect on launch.

Have to agree that melee in genereal is imho too op, with 2h being quite extreme. Was that way in EE already, sadly.
Especially compared to ranged fighting, as positioning on the field isn't hard at all, thanks to a lot of movement skills and low AP cost for walking. And as the AI backs up a lot when coming close, it's actually even a plus, as they often run through environmental fields and additionally damage/debuff themselves.

Probably because they assume you need the AP to actually walk up to the target. Having a 3ap Fireball isn't as punishing since you're at range already.

Agreement: 2h Warfare too strong.
Solution: Make 2h warfare weaker.
How? Who knows.

Also. Fix rage.

Next topic? is 1h warfare OP even a very little bit?
My guess is no. So I think making 2h skills cost 1.5-2AP (in carefully applied areas) of 1 hand is perfectly acceptable.
2AP bullrush for 2h bullrush - Fair and balanced.
1AP for 2h bullrush - WTFBBQ?

That or decouple grey weapon damage from on weapon skills and scale them like wizards. You could still get a few bonus damage from an elemental or buffed weapon but legenday 2h no longer scales so well with crippling blow that auto attacks become meaningless.