Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition Mid/Endgame Mitigation Question

Hello, I've had D:OS for awhile now (EE now), but didn't get around to playing it until more recently. As such, I haven't gotten very far into it and wanted to see if I could get some feedback before my partner and I start up a co-op game.

The plan will likely be a dual Lone Wolf set-up on Tactician difficulty (deaths will be coming, I'm sure). One will be a pure mage character. The other is the one we are discussing. We're thinking one of the two following options:

2H Man-At-Arms/Aerothurge/Witch

or

Dual Wield Scoundrel/Aerothurge/Witch

Now, more specifically, we were curious about total damage mitigation differences between the two. As I understand at, the strength build will have a tremendous amount of armor, and given the increasing returns to armor at higher levels, the mitigation can be very high at mid/endgame.

The dexterity build will of course have a much lower armor level, so it would take bigger hits. However, the dexterity will reduce enemy chance to hit, and the dual wield will provide 10% blocking chance with Parry Master.

Basically, without knowing the magnitude of the effects, I would suspect that the strength build will be hit more often but for much less damage while the dexterity build will be hit less often, but for more damage. I'm just curious as to whether the dexterity build even remotely approaches the total mitigation that armor can provide. Thanks!

In tactician, it feels like enemies almost always hit. They have a 20% chance to hit boost, and it would take a ton (achievable amount, probably) of dexterity to overcome that boost and make any headway into reliably dodging at all, even with DW parry.

Honestly, there's little reason to play a rogue except to mix things up. You'll deal comparable if not more damage as a 2-hander warrior with way less effort and more tankiness. Throw a single point in Scoundrel, and you'll get some of the best rogue buffs anyway (invis, self-haste, and winged feet, literally all for 1 point, though winged feet will cost 4 AP with only 1 point in scoundrel).

Yeah, it is very hard to evade attacks. The strength build will actually hit harder. I did go dual wield daggers for fun as some daggers have some very nice status effects, but the low base damage doesn't really match up with a duel wield sword user.

The only advantage is if the enemy is weak against pierce. With proper buffing, the strength user can mitigate a tremendous amount of physical damage.