Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback New Skills Are Broken

Yes the base idea of the elementals ("incarnate", still think the naming and visuals are misplaced, tbh) is indeed interesting.
Especially with its interactions through the fiels combined with other gameplay elements like other skill sets.
But then there is stuff like dimensional bolt... totally screwing all this up, as it alone on the same school offers all you need in one go, terminating all the nice interactions that could creatively fuse together the skillsets instead of just generically add stuff on top of everything like adrenaline does for example (and so on).
So to enhance this IMHO this skill should be removed entirely, so not everything is served to the player, but a bit of creativity remains. There are enough ways to spawn specific surfaces, bombs, arrows, certain spells...
That's imho much more how skills schools should work together. Not like adrenaline, rage or whatnot.

Also, if it is true, that summoning points increase the totem cap, it's even more useless as they only live for about 4-5 turns (says 3 but seems to be bugged), so you can't have more than 5 per character.

I REALLY hope they remove totems alltogether and maybe fill that gap with a 0 turn cooldown on the by "farsight infusion" granted skill (underwhelming how it is right now), plus what they once talked about: a perk or two to increase "normal" summon limits to 2 or 3.
Maybe +1 summon from a perk and +1 summon from a skill-buff? Perk unlocks with summoner and fewer additional drawbacks, skill unlocks with necromancer and makes the player loose HP (maybe stats?) each round while active? (like the stances in DOS1 toggle on/off)
Just some ideas.

I do admit there is a genuine argument you can make that dimension bolt in many ways weakens the synergy Summoners have because they can supply all the elements they want (albeit randomly).

Mind you they can't really chose the element dimension bolt uses... so that could be the balancing factor. It wouldn't be advantagous to create poison floor when against the undead.

I like the dimensional bolt concept. You'll still have to work with other skill trees/characters to get more reliable surfaces and elemental interaction you want, but summoners should have some way to create a basic surface, even if it's random. Like Neonivek says, it could mean hitting undead with a poison attack. Or perhaps dousing and burning of an enemy with a water attack, or starting a stun chain reaction when you didn't want to.

I don't think I agree with removing totems although I think they should tone down the early limit of totems but that would increase based on Summoner level (and be more noticeable if it does already)

I do think that Dimension Bolt needs a change though, maybe instead of dealing random elemental damage and creating that surface it will deal elemental damage depending on the surface the target (or the user, which could potentially give a use to Elemental Affinity) is standing on. Would work with how Incarnate and Totem summoning on a surface works.

That would kind of be against the entire purpose of Dimension bolt Swedley.

It exists almost purely as a way to get surfaces onto the field and the damage it does is minor.

Yeah that is true. Maybe another spell could have that sort of effect though.

So far, in my experience, dimensional bolt makes it so eventually everything is just fire, it all eventually blows up, and its kind of annoying playing WITH someone that is a summoner when you are not.

There is no scenario in which this skill is a necessary part of the Summoning tree.

You have 3 other characters, grenades, barrels, arrows, enemies and the almost excessive prevalence of environmental surfaced, to rely on for surfaces already.

On it's own it's a skill that could be interesting, but as part of that specific kit it's just superfluous and misplaced.

You can play without other characters, or depart from the party to go do competitive questing. Grenades, barrels, arrows and enemies make surfaces which are MUCH bigger, and aren't people already complaining about the entire screen already blowing up in every big fight?

I think Dimensional Bolt is fine as a part of the Summoner's Kit. The surface it produces is about as small as surfaces get. If you don't want it to make everything blow up, you can find an empty space out of the way with no existing surface.

If you don't like the surface you get (i.e. fire), them's the breaks, try again next turn. You can always summon wood for physical damage.

I simply think DB streamlines things too much. Overly handholding in my book, and with that, imho, a bit too boring.

As for the totems... their design actually has even another problem. It's again something that actually tightens the extremes instead of mitigating it.
You need several rounds to build up a notable amount of them, unless you exploit the games AI routines by delaying conversation before fights for example. And even then you can't use that to full extend, as the engine doesn't allow for simultaneous casting of multiple player characters.
So you don't have them when you need them (beginning) and have them when you don't need them anymore (end of battle).
And all that doesn't even count in the fact that they mostly are killed by collateral damage not even offering real protection, as a lot of, especially indoor, areas are smaller than the AoE offered by skills.
Or that new summoned entities only act one round later, delaying their use even further. Multiplying these issues with the collateral damage aspect, as they often are destroyed before they can act at all.
I also don't want to even start talkin about dynamic fights, that shift into different rooms by fleeing enemies for example... so all of this starts twice.. or even more.

So far I played both a 1/4 summoner party and a 4/4 summoner one. And in the "balanced" party my summoner almost offered nothing notable. Enemies mostly prefer player characters to attack and the damage the summoner can dish out after 1-2 rounds when especially melee characters often kill the first enemies is prettymuch negligible.
(maybe 2-3 x 15 dmg (+ about 25 dmg from their skill) from lvl6 incarnate in the first round where a single whirlwind attack of my fighter easily dealt up to 150+ dmg, often more. Let's even add in a precast totem for ~25 dmg a round at that level. So we are looking at ~90-95 dmg single target, against 150 AoE... and that was just 1! attack of the fighter)
Similar scene compared to rangers and mages, just slightly less drastic.

So to make the summoner contribute something notable at least, the time he needs to unfold it's potential needs to be shortened while capping it. The best way to do that would be to lower their numbers and increase the values (damage and so on). More class instead of time consuming mass.
And with that we are already there ("normal summons" with, as said, a tad more adaptability).
So why burning down the forest if there is farmland left?

An issue with the Totems is that they... Destroy the action economy of the enemy.

Their low HP is kind of deceptive and could better be thought of as "One hit" with only Revenge skills taking them down a peg.

For 1 ap you waste 1-3ap of the opponent.

So the fact that they only fire the round after, isn't really a point against them. I'd consider using a move that destroys the AP of my opponent.

Well, totems are 2 AP for me. Also IF it would be that way then MAYBE. But, a battering ram hits 2 pc or 2 pc and additional 3 totems... where exactly does this make the enemy waste any additional AP? Doesn't in my book.
Enemies only seem to (directly) attack summons if there is no pc within 2-3 screens (which is, no doubt, a clever move of the AI actually). That on the other hand means all these player characters are OOR and cannot act either, so you are hindering yourself too for several AP. Otherwise you would need to be in range, which brings it back to point one.
And all the other shortcomings still stand, like the dynamic or "warm up" time etc, or the fact that there is no need for an enemy to waste AP if he's already half dead and CCed by the fighter.

Also forgot to mention: an enemy can easily destroy multiple totems with for example a single battle stomp or whatever. Cost? 2 AP for the enemy. Summoner cost? 5 totems for example: 10 AP.

It will be for testing. Alpha of the previous had, what became on release higher level skills, available in lower levels for testing in the last game.

Now in terms of the skill I SERIOUSLY have issues with...

It would probably be Wings.

It is a skill that gives you unlimited teleportations for a generous period of time... AND gives you immunity to surfaces.

I don't mind there being a best teleport (Heck, the Ranger's version is flat out better than the Warrior's version)... But there is no close contender... not by a long shot.

I can't get over how stupid strong this skill is. I mean, even if the jump cost 2 AP or it had a 1 turn cooldown it'd be vaguely reasonable. It either needs toning down or some serious downside attached to it. I could see an elemental resist penalty, especially for fire and air. Maybe cloud effects deal extra damage to you? I'm not sure anything besides a straight up nerf, perhaps in addition to a downside, can make this not gamebreaking.

Although I'm not sure what you mean by the ranger's teleport being better than the warrior's one. You mean phoenix dive? One's offensive and the other is defensive. Do you mean the rogue teleport? That one at least doesn't break sneak/invisibility, but the ranger one is probably overall more versatile and useful. I don't think there needs to be an overall best teleport or mobility skill, just better teleports for certain situations.

The Warrior's teleport creates a fire surface but the damage is so low that using it as an attack is silly. (If anything it is a tiny bit of a liability)
-In fact this is the major reason why the AI kind of completely fails in using this teleport. They use it as an attack.

While the Ranger's teleports AND gives Haste... Meaning not only do you get a teleport but also a powerful buff.

And the Rogue teleports and gives invisibility.

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Yet even those pale in comparison to the ability to teleport for 1ap for a few turns AND immunity to surfaces for the entire length.

Actually it is kind of funny because the fire immunity warriors get is so short lived that it is, as I said, a liability.

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Kind of funny that Air... the skill tree BASED around manipulating movement and space... doesn't have a pure teleport.

Though its enemy teleport... and Netherswap... are REALLY powerful in exchange so I can't REALLY complain.

Phoenix Dive is a strong offensive teleport, but only in combination with oil/poison surface. In the Arena is it kind of the basic opening as a warrior: Impale + Phoenix = Boom!

For itself of course it is weak, similar like the racial skill of lizards and only works to setting stuff ablaze, but with good preparation it mattersless than the weakness of the lizards racial.

Perhaps those teleports should be give longer buffs now, to compete with the 'new' skilltree.

But we would really need infos if skill restrictions will be planned. Now you can learn at least 4 kinds of selfteleportation without hardly any skillpoint investmentm that is kind of insane?

i think all skills in early access have low skill invenstment requierment because we are suppose to test them,like in D:OS 1 when pheonix dive was cheap at first and then in the full release was more of a mid-late game skill.

i just assumed that was the case for all skills since they want us to test them.

Probably but for a more accurate feedback it would be essentiel to know what they are planing regarding skill Tiers. It would also allow for a more realistic test of the balance in the first act, because players could chose to follow those restrictions for the purpose of testing.

Many of the balancing issues are caused by the fact, that there are no restrictions at the current state.

For some bizarre reason Chameleon Cloak and Skin Graft simply don't work for me. In and out of combat, after using the skill and selecting myself as target there is 0 effect. Has this happened to anyone? I have 3 points into Poly.

Edit: this randomly stopped happening. Hopefully the data got uploaded to Larian and somehow they notice this bug.