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

Well, tbh a lot of magic skills can be used by str/fin characters to full extent as any buffs/debuffs, healing, CC, environmental effects do not get anything from int either. As long as you're not doing elemental damage you don't need int. So imo it's only fair if weapon damage based skills would work the same with any weapon. This would actually make scoundrel/warfare and magic/warfare somewhat viable (using staves or daggers). And you'll still need str if you want to do a lot of physical damage with str weapons.

Quick update here:

I'm very positively impressed by the new patch.

Dual wield and 1h seem reasonably balanced atm now that offhand damage is halved and the new shield skill is fairly nice. 2 AP auto attack cost for 1h makes auto attack and skill cost equal across the board and easier to balance. Characters also seem to do a lot less damage at the beginning of the game, which is nice. Weapon damage skills also no longer benefit from the attribute twice it seems, so their scaling is a lot less crazy and staff or daggers + warfare is a lot more viable. New character presets also seem to encourage hybrid chars a lot more, and even though most people probably use custom anyway it's nice to know devs think about that.

Few things that imo still need work:

-Dualwield is in a good place imo, but 2h damage still seems tad too high (compared to let's say aforementioned dualwield). I do think that it should be higher, cause dualwield gives you more potential enchants, but not by much. Could use a slight nerf
-Default weapon abilities are cool, wands and bows can use some too (staves already have their ranged attack)
-1h + no shield seems to offer no benefits atm. Not the end of the world, since it's not a viable style in a lot of games anyway and you can always use a shield, but would be nice if no shield added some accuracy and/or dodge

Haven't played scoundrel too much, it compared pretty poorly to warfare before imo but I'm kinda interested to test it now, will report on that.

It grants you a 1 AP ability that knocks the target down.

Well, most weapon styles add some ability now. Shields add an ability that restores your armour. You might like knockdown more, but I like the idea that styles should all have an ability and some passive benefit that are balanced in regards to each other respectively.

It does seem like single handed got overall nerfed, and that it's hard to see sucker punch making up for a 50% damage reduction, especially since every melee weapon type got a new skill. Maybe sucker punch is the best of those skills, but I'll need to play with it. Maybe the single handed skill could grant a larger bonus when not using a shield, like 6% additional damage and 4% more accuracy per point instead of 4 and 2.

Probably could be a talent or two for single-handed/no shield users too. Like, chance to retaliate when attacked with a melee weapon, or a bonus when using inventory items (since you have a free hand).

DW also got a pretty severe nerf (50% damage on offhand), which makes it seem like two-handed will be pretty solidly superior with more range and damage, basically only losing out on some weapon stats.

One handed with no shield got hit the hardest indeed, but imo it was needed to make auto attack and skill AP costs consistent to balance stuff from there.

Dw seems to be nerfed enough for 1h + shield to become a viable option in comparison.

2h got touched the least, but it still did get a nerf/fix since it doesn't receive a squared stat damage bonus on weapon abilities anymore (that impacted the other styles too to be fair). It could probably use some slight damage nerf, although I have a feeling 2h weapon damage was already stealth nerfed a bit. It's also worth looking at specific weapon types, I remember 2h hammers doing pretty unbalanced damage, got to check if it's still a thing. Basic sword does 4-5 dmg and basic 2h sword does 6-7, that looks ok to me.

And 1h + empty hand can indeed receive 1.5x benefits from 1h skill or something like that.

EDIT: Seems the only starting dw setup just uses sucky 1h weapons, so 2h might be totally fine. Old saves are incompatible, so need to replay a bit to see varied/higher tier weapon balance. Maybe 2h does not need a nerf at all anymore.