Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Skill Tiers?

I've been searching for a list of D:OS2 Skills ranked or tiered to differentiate "must have" skills from "niche" skills or skills than are less useful. For example, I regard Adrenaline and Tactical Retreat as skills every player should get, while I dislike skills like Pressure Spike because they're only useful in very particular situations. The list I've found that I like best is this one:

Dvinity Original Sins 2 Best Skills Tier List

Personally I think Medusa Head, Fan of Knives and Overpower should all be ranked higher, while Nether Swap, First Aid and Thunderstorm should be ranked lower. I'm on my first run through the game, playing with a Lone Wolf tandem of a custom Elven Summoner/Polymorph character and Sebille as a Scoundrel/Warcraft specialist. The skills I use most and/or like best are Adrenaline, Flesh Sacrifice, Battle Stomp, Overpower, Backlash, Sawtooth Knife, Rupture Tendons, Chicken Claw, Medusa Head, Tentacle Lash, Skin Graft, Conjure Incarnate/Farsight Infusion/Power Infusion, Raise Bone Widow, Elemental Totem, and Supercharger. As you can see, I tend to pile on the Physical Attacks. I don't use Chain Lightning, Pyroclastic Eruption, or Grasp of the Starved as often because I usually don't have to but man, oh man are they fun spells to cast! If I had to choose one favorite skill, I think I'd have to choose Chicken Claw

While I agree with a lot of the rankings, there are several I disagree with for one reason or another and I'm sure that's the case with many other players. So it strikes me that this would be a perfect topic for our forum. What skills do you always / never end up using? Do you have a favorite or least favorite skill? Do you agree with the tiers as they are or are there any changes you would make?

You can find my survey asking the community to rank all the skills of the game here.
It is interesting to look at if you want to better grasp the best tier skills.

If you take the survey yourself, you will have access to an even more detailed list.
I hope it helps

Actually pressure spike does pretty high damage for a 1ap skill. It is not shown in the tooltip but you will be surprised when you try it

First off, such a tierlist is heavily dependant on your playstyle. While some skills are without a doubt objectively better than others, some skills are seemingly "niche", but can abuse the games mechanics to such a degree that it can be argued that under the right circumstances, they are god-tier (an example of this would be transmute terrain, that allows you to one-shot just about everything with lava or deathfog IF you have the patience for it). Skills like Reactive armor are not very good without a shield, but with a shield+fortify+bone cage+heart of steel etc, it certainly is above average.
Also, which difficulty? Some skills either gain or lose effectiveness depending on whether you play on the lowest or highest difficulty. Are we playing 4-man party, or 2-man party? That is relevant for skills that buff your whole team, as those lose value with fewer party members. Physical or magical party? Thick of the fight is indeed a poor skill for melee characters, but decent enough for a tanky mage (since, for some reason the damage bonus is additive for physical damage, but multiplicative for magical). Venom Coating and Fire Brand are good skills for a hybrid party, but is otherwise terrible. And finally, some skills are very good early game (or the opposite), but fall short later on due to poor scaling (such as the soothing and mending armor restoration effects).

There are a few outliers in the list that, during MY playthrough, should be much higher/lower up on the list:

Clear mind, for instance, is one of the best buff spells in the game (especially lategame) and clears one of the most detrimental CC's in the game (charmed)? B-tier --> SS-tier imo.

Bone Cage can easily add such vast amounts of physical armor during prolonged encounters that it trivializes almost any encounter, but is also B-tier? B-tier--> S-tier

Overpower is easily the best warfare skill in the entire game if you're able to ensure that you generally have more armor than the enemy, and play on tactician. And yes, I think it's even better than its closest contender, Battle Stomp. C-tier-->SS-tier

Chicken Claw is in the same tier as the "... Skin" skills? What? That skill is broken. C-tier-->SS-tier

Assassinate does significantly less dmg pr. AP than normal attack, except when you open a fight with it under stealth and have picked the otherwise useless "Guerilla" talent, but is the same tier as Overpower? C-tier-->F-tier.

.... and I could go on. I agree with the majority of them, but some of them make me wonder if we are playing the same game. But like I said, there are a lot of contingencies. Whoever made this list might have played the game on a different difficulty, using a different playstyle and team composition, that makes it impossible for us to agree under a common ruleset, and a list like this is tentative at best.

@N0x - Thanks for the link; that's really helpful. More or less exactly what I was looking for - to gather opinions from other players about which skills they feel are best/worst and to open a dialogue about the merits of skills in general. Great post!

@Cavemandiary - Lots of good and relevant points. Absolutely the party makeup and difficulty will change the effectiveness of various skills. That's why I included some information about my own party before I gave my opinions (and for my first run I'm playing Classic difficulty)

To be honest I hadn't even used the respec mirror until after I put up the OP so my experience with playstyles other than my own is scanty at best. That's partly why I wanted to see what skills other players like or dislike - if I know which skills to target/avoid, I can save myself some time testing builds. Just yesterday I changed my INT-based, wand and shield wielding Elven Summoner/Poly support magic character into a STR-based, two-handed sword wielding Warcraft/Poly melee character and my skill priorities changed drastically. With Sebille's Scoundrel build, both my Lone Wolves are now committed to Physical attacks, so physical burst damage skills are elevated because the goal in every fight will be to destroy physical armor and then kill or CC targets. Additionally, low-AP cost skills from 'magic' groups like Hydro, Geo, Aero etc will be more important since I'll want to invest at little as possible in those skill groups and invest more in Warcraft/Scoundrel/STR/FIN/WITS/Dual Wield/2-Handed. Infinite Free Respecs FTW!