Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition Wands need debuff?

Hi all, played DoS for about 170 hrs and just started EE (about 8 hrs in). I have to say, is it just me or are dual wielding wands a bit overpowered? To the point that right now there's really no reason to use direct fire like flare and blitz bolt from a damage perspective, it also has no cooldown, AP is relatively low, and grants free spells.

IMHO, either they need to have a miss chance or something that counters the current scenario where there's no real downside to wands?

If they need a debuff, how about a range limit?

For example, with 0 points into the Wand skill, the Wands range is 5.0 meters. Each point into Wands increases the range by 2.0 meters, so at 5 Wand skill, the wands range is up to 15.0 meters.

If that were done, Wands would trade power for range, and thus providing a niche role for Staves as a longer-range weapon.


It would also provide a trade-off between single and dual-wielding wands. If you want maximum range with dual-wielding, you'd need to invest a lot of points into wands. But alternatively you could stick just a single point in and put the others into Dual-wield, thus giving you 7.0 meters range but a lot of power up close.

Wands effectively already have a lower range than spell, because they don't get affected by the +2 m spell range talent. They also don't get boosted by your Int, have a much lower chance to inflict negative status effects and you might have to spend AP to switch to another elemental type vs groups with mixed elemental resistances.

Actually right now wands are HORRIBLE in the greater scheme of things. Their damage is pathetic compared to (cross)bows or melee and even Staves do more in a single shot (though they are limited to the one shot). That they compare favorably with spell damage only shows how far the nuker-mage has fallen.

Actually the entire mage class needs buffs. They are basically overshadowed in every way by warriors and rangers. Their damage is horrible across the board. Their CCs are too expensive AP-wise with too long a cooldown and too high a level requirement, their buffs and utilities are too easily replicated by a single skill point dip into the right class.

I think you have not learnt any Master skill yet... Because mages don't need a buff. Spells like Earthquake, Meteor Shower, Blizzard, are overpowered. MS and Blizz can kill almost anything and wipe foes in a large area, and EQ can knock down the whole battlefield and do massive damage. And there are more than these.

Mages are weak at the beginning because they lack Intelligence, but once you get high intel they do good damage even with their basic spells, and they can freeze, stun, etc. Oh, and they can heal and dispel.

Earthquake and Storm are decent for their mass CC, but once-per-battle and require an obscene amount of AP.

If you think meteorstrike and hail attack are impressive, or that spells like flare and blitz bolt do "good damage", you haven't properly leveled a ranger or warrior. 1500 damage crits at level 15 are not uncommon. They don't lack for AoE options either, between Whirlwind, Battering Ram (aoe knockdown), Ricochet, and poison cloud arrows (so cheap and common to make they may as well be free)

Magic wands are nice, i like that idea. However mages and spells generally are too strong already. In fact EVERY my class now is a caster of a sort. So the wands distributes evens more spells to more classes.

I find myself in a position where my Archer cast Hydro, Fighter cast Earth, Rogue casts Witch more over all of these has wands in their bag for an backup spell and of course mage uses dual wands.
Hilarious

I like many things which are better, engine, craft, a bit more balanced talents.
But this over-spelling and over-wanding is sick.

Definitely not want to see dual wield wands in DOS2 that is over the top.
Some sort of spell nerf and wand nerf will be very nice ina patch.
Current game is quite a mess.

Right, wand might be a short range attack with a bonus spell. I would say base 5m then +5% damage and 1m range per skill.
Also apply smoke hindrance to the wand targeting.
Also apply Staff of magus cooldown on the Wands.

The "bonus spell" on wands is pretty worthless too. Unless you have the appropriate level in the spell school it costs too many AP to use effectively. If you do have the right level, why haven't you just learned the spell? Unless it happens to be a spell you want and you just happen to be capped for learned spells of that level, it's useless. Even if it IS a useful spell, you only get 3 casts from it.

At the very least, Wand spells should be treated like spell-scrolls. Always 4 AP no matter the spell. That's basically what they are anyway, 3-use scrolls.

Anyway, as I've already said Wand damage is so hilariously bad that any further nerfs are irrelevant. Not just unnecessary, but completely irrelevent. If you are using Wands for damage you are an idiot. Wands are stat-sticks. That's ALL they are good for; giving a mage a way to have 2 weapons with +int/con/speed. Even staves do more damage.

A good crossbow at lvl 15 (huge disparity between weapons depending on the fact they have a hidden +dmg bonus or not, and if it's a small bonus or a big one), improved by crafting does
162-253 damage (average 207.5)
+ 16-25 elemental (native, avg 20.5)
+ 24-38 elemental (craft, avg 31, for a total of 259)
(and you can add tormented souls on it to give additionnal stats on top of it, but it's irrelevant).
(I pick crossbows because they are improved more by their ability than bows).

A crafted wand at lvl 15 with the basic mats (they do the most) does 68-114 damage.

Both have a 10% bonus damage from leadership. But Crossbows usually benefits from the 20% powerstance (and the bully aswell but I will ignore that).

At 40% crit and 5/5 crossbows, a ranger autoattacks for 259 * 1.3 (leadership and powerstance) * (0.4 * 3 + 0.6) = 606 damage on average (337 normal, 1010 crit) for 5 AP. Which means 121 damage per AP.

The dual-wield wand does 91 * 2 * 1.1 damages (I don't even count crit) for 3 AP. That's 66.7 damage per AP.

So, half as much as a ranger, despite being a better option than most long-range damage spells.
In other words, it seems true that mages are simply not sustained damage dealers (you'd have to look at ennemies resistances aswell to be sure).