Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Opinions and suggestions after first playthrough

Hi folks. I'm a semi-active person on DOS subreddit, but decided to post this here for the visibility. After completing almost everything about DOS:EE, and the beta of the second game, I decided to give some feedback on my experience with DOS 2. Keep in mind that I always play with a duo partner and exclusively on the highest difficulty offered, and I will talk mostly about combat balance.

I overall liked the new mechanics. Height is a nice way to balance melees and ranges, now a ranged character will actually be weaker while in the face of someone. I'm not exactly sure if ranges are weaker than melees in melee range tho. Bless and curse gives a lot more options to the players, I hope enemies will utilize it too. I could only gain access to bless with my main characters, which was weird.

Skills are still straigth up better than auto attacks, which is more ok than DOS:EE with the addition of memory. I still hope that autos wont be irrelevant by mid game, and spells wont one shot people like in the previous title. Loved cooldowns not being reduced and cc's being almost entirely one turn. I liked that there are more damaging abilities for each tree, but some of them are just weaker versions of others. I guess that is because skills dont really have any requirements yet, but I still often find myself opening each fight with the same spells. Also there are some abilities that I would like to adress specifically,

Hail Strike: Way too valuable for 1 cost. Offers aoe, good damage and cc.

Spontaneous Combustion: Almost deals the same damage with fireball for 2 cost less. Maybe the aoe factor can be tied to the target already being burned.

Vault: Cheaper aa, gets you over terrain and behind the enemy. Has a weird interaction with opportunist like other dashes.

Battering Ram: Too cheap for all that it offers.

Rage: The existence of this ability is a nerf to scoundrel. Has almost no downside and offers incredible strength, a must for every character other than scoundrel. Maybe making the boost auto only, or increasing the penalty will fix it.

Arrow Storm: Other rain spells seem more balanced in DOS 2, this one is also better with the rng factor added, but would deal too much damage vs bigger foes and still costs less than others. Is much better than spray because of height mech and higher potential damage. I can see this one shotting a lot of enemies with the use of rage.

Mortal Blow: An actually useful Coup De Grace. Thanks Larian!

For talents, a particular one, warlord, is too good and should be nerfed or removed. Liked the fact that int spells can crit too. Opportunist indicators are kinda off, and some dash abilities make you eat a hefty amount of attack of opportunities.

One of the major problems of balance in DOS:EE is crafting. It heavily favors certain builds and makes most weapon choices irrelevant. Why one handed swords are all the way worse than axes anyway? The most crucial thing is mage does not benefit from crafting as much as others. The reasons behind this is wands not being buffable, staffs being weak and int spells not scaling off of weapons. I believe each pure build should be at a similar power level while using all crafted gear, and hope that it will be the case when it is introduced to DOS 2.

Races are pretty balanced imo. 2 stats are almost irrelevant after a few levels, but are nice to have for the sake of diversity. Racial abilities scales with level, which is awesome, but it should be clarified because elvish one seems too decent at creation screen.

I hope this game won't have the inverse difficulty curve of DOS:EE in tactician/honor. Highest difficulty was a breeze with correct itemization and builds, even without "cheesing". Maybe introducing a new difficulty which takes into account that you are powerbuilding, or decreasing the strength difference between a regular build and a powerbuild will help.

As for the cosmetics, I loved the models of humans and lizards. Leather armors on humans look too much like heavy armors and robes are maybe better off being full body than separated into slots. I just couldn't get myself to like the elves. Males could be ok with more face features and a slightly shorter neck, but females are not even close to the beauty that the game describes them to have, could certainly use an improvement. New skill animations are particularly wonderful.

Edit: I also believe enemies which are slain with source abilities should not offer source points.