Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Skill synergy

What I have learned from playing Guild Wars is that skill synergy can take a game to a whole new level of fun and interest. It still keeps me hugely interested in the game for after two and a half years now. And then I'm only talking about the "skills"-topic and not yet about the "story" etc.

What I mean with skill synergy is that different skills in the game work together and that you can make different combinations that can become very efficient. For example a few good melee-weapon combo's. Or necromancy skills that can raise skeletons/any other minions supported by skills that can heal them, support them and enhanche their damage.
Or team synergy if you are able to take companions with you in any sort of way, and you are able to chose their skills in any sort of way. You can make everyone a "jack of all trades-master of nothing", or you can find out your own combination of skills, weapons and companions that owns the **** out of your enemies. Also, that could imply that if you found a great combination of skills for a certain area, it sucks for another area. And that's good, because that means you will have to change the way you play from time to time.


I know this has very much similarties with Guild Wars and in DD for example you had a large list of skills you could choose from anytime.
But I find it a nice idea to implement. Because besides from the story (which I trust you on, Larian, make it great ), the skills and everything you can do with them will also keep you interested in the game for a long time.


P.S.: Let me give you a very simple example that could be placed in DD. You use Freeze on a monster so it becomes frozen. Then you use my modified version of lightning: it does damage, but it also gives extra damage if there's water involved (electricity+water). So Freeze+Lightning could be a simple but fine combination of two skills. Skills could also counteract because of this. For example, if you use Freeze and then a spell that has fire involved, the Freeze wears off because of the ice+warmth=melting thing

Thats not a synergy but a combo i believe, but i like the idea of synergies if implemented well.

Although I love the GW skill system, this can lead to some very overpowered builds. Even now, a few years after the release of the original Guild Wars, they have to do regular updates to keep people from using this 'Invincibility-builds'(first thing that pops to mind is the 55-build, which still works atm, but isn't really effective anymore 'cause of the AI update)
So thumbs up for skill synergy, but same story as always: it should be balanced.

Why would it be a combo. You can use those two skills apart from eachother perfectly, but when you use them together they give a larger benefit. Or am I not using the right definition of synergy and combo in game terms?

And about Guild Wars, the consant updates are part of every MMORPG (although Guild Wars is referred to as "CO-RPG"). Overpowered combinations can be a problem for a single player game, that's true.

(I'm not going to give my thoughts on what you said about the 55-build to keep this thread clean from in-depth discussion about other games )

My understanding is this:

A combo would be two skills that work well together. Using one with the other enhances your attack. A very basic example in DD, for example: you can use Curse to lower resists and then Elemental Strike to do more damage. It's not quite like lightning + water damage in your example, but I think it's the same idea.

Synergy would mean that simply enhancing a skill also enhances another skill. It's a passive system. I've never played Guild Wars, but look to Diablo II LOD post-1.10 patch to see what I'm talking about. +1 to blizzard enhances that attack, but also increases damage of your frost orb. (I think I made up that example, but that's how it works).

Feel free to correct me if I'm off the mark.

Isn't a combo just the use of two or more skills in synergy?

synergy [sin-er-jee]–noun, plural ~gies.
1. combined action or functioning; synergism.
2. the cooperative action of two or more muscles, nerves, or the like.
3. the cooperative action of two or more stimuli or drugs.

Let's take flixerflax's Cusre plus Elemental Strike example. Curse and Elemental Strike do not work together. Curse prepares the target making it more suseptible to Elemental Strike. It does nothing to improve Elemental Strike. Similarly, the Elemental Strike probably never even realises there's a Curse in place.

With flixerflax's Blizard plus Frost Orb example, the training from the two skills can be combined as they are on a similar topic. When casting Frost Orb, your training in Frost Orb and Blizard cooperate to provide additional benefits.

And to bring it to the real world, imagine two surgeons performing breast surgury. THey might decide that one works on the left and the other on the right. This is good time management, not synergy. If they combine their skills and work together on each breast, the whole operation may take longer, but the overall result is likely to be better. That's synergy. (And I only chose breast surgury because I can't think what else would commonly be performed on the left and right simultaneously.)

Knee surgery


My view of synergy is using skills that can act perfectly on their own, together so they enhanche eachother. And my view of a combo is having to use a number of skills directly after eachother in order to gain an effect.

A perfect example of synergy is the Curse + Elemental Strike thing. You can use Curse perfectly on its own and then hack away with a sword for example. And you can use Elemental Strike for multiple times to kill someone too. But you can use Curse to enhance the effect of Elemental Strike, so you will need less Elemental Strikes to kill your enemy.

An example of a simple combo would someone with dual wielding weapons: you start with a lead attack (which is skill 1), you continue with an attack from the weapon in your other hand (skill 2), you block a counterattack with both your weapons (skill 3) and then comes the finishing move with also both your weapons (skill 4).


This means that when one skill in the combo fails, the whole combo will fail (the blocking skill 3 fails, so you get hit and can't use your finishing move). So skill synergy gives you a lot more freedom on how you want to play the game, what skills you want to use and how you want to use them. A combo gives you a smaller range of things you can do with certain skills. Also, a combo makes me think more of hack&slash games.

This is getting down to semantics, but for lack of ED info to discuss.....

The survivor's Curse skill is pretty much designed to be part of a combo. You can use it on its own, but there is no point in doing so unless you are going to follow up with an elemental or poison attack.
I'm using 'combo' here as short for combination, not the specific series of timed attacks used in some combat systems that result in some type of bonus damage, or other forms of stringing individual offensive or defensive moves together.

IMO synergy between skills means inherent connections, not simply skills which have effects that go well together. For example, paralyzing or blinding an opponent and then casting fireballs may be much more effective than simply casting fireballs, but the skills themselves are not interacting, so it is just a combo. If the character learns a firewall spell and this greater understanding means the fireball spell gets an extra damage or range boost, then that would be synergy.

Going by one of the definitions of synergy ('combined action' rather than 'cooperative action') it could technically include combos (or hit and run tactics, etc), but at least to me if it is used in that way it just sounds like 'management speak' trying to make something sound more impressive than it is.

uhhh freezing + lighting does extra damage sounds stupid (plus im not exactly sure if crystallized water is a good medium for electricity) , elemental weakness + elemental attack makes more sense to me . That would go back to good old diablo with necro hexing people and then shooting them with magic

On the combo sides ,i really like the idea from Dragon age and NWN when wizard can cast grease spell that can cause enemies to slip and then fire ball to make enemy burn longer or cast blizzard to take out flaming area .

The entire idea behind having a classless skill system is to acutally provide both skill combos and synergy. The philosophy behind all of this goes actually one step further - by allowing equipment/stats/items and skills to affect each other, you allow for a great variety of character builds, increasing the depth of your character development system.

Sounds great! I'm really looking forward to this increased "depth of your character development system"

The open skill system was one of the best aspects of Divine Divinity. Encouraging a character build by providing a synergy bonus here and there is much better than forcing a character build by locking most other skills. However, the overall bonus shouldn't become so huge that playing any other way must be deemed ineffective, so there's probably a lot of fine-tuning necessary ...

Yes I know, but I was too lazy to bother with correcting it.