Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Some thoughts on the skill Rage and melee

Currently the warfare skill Rage offers 100% crit chance and lowers dodge chance/resistance. I personally feels like it's a bit out of place.

The 100% crit chance is so good that almost every character, ranged or melee can spare some resources to learn the skill, as even spells can crit now I think? It's probably also one of the reasons why warriors are so strong atm.

The dodge penalty doesn't really apply to warrior if he chooses to avoid dodge gear, but this dodge penalty disencourage relatively squishier "rogue" characters in the frontline with finesse stat adding dodge from using rage, making warriors even superior in terms of choice, don't have to worry about positioning backstab whatsoever.

Crit chance don't seem to be easily obtained in the game, 100% crit chance kinda makes crit stacking a bit pointless.

So I was thinking, if it'd be a good idea to change Rage so it's restricted to melee only, and gives like a 40% more damage bonus like in DOS and at the cost of like, taking 40% more damage for the duration. So there is a pretty huge penalty even for warriors, and warriors would actually have to think about when to use the skill, instead of having it as a no brainer when elemental damage isn't present, kinda fits the berserker style of the skill anyway.

I haven't spent too long playing the new game, but I've had a lot of experience with the previous game, I really like the memory and armor changes, but not currently a big fan of the way how rage works. As for melee, shields don't look that useful overall, It seems like there are no reason to use spears currently either, I would like to hear people's opinions on this.

I think changing the crit chance to a % damage boost is a very elegant solution to much of what is wrong with Rage.

The restriction of the ability to only work on melee abilities would also prevent ranged users from getting the bonus of extra damage with low risk, since they are far away.

Great ideas, hope these are taken up!

I don't have a lot of ideas for balancing Rage, I actually didn't bother with it on my warrior. One suggestion I have, which is not good enough on its own is that when you are Enraged, you are unable to use any skills, just basic attacks only.

Also, just a comment, but Rogues don't have much use for Rage not only because they lose dodge, but mostly because backstabs already have a 100% crit chance.

That's assuming that you took the Backstab talent, and that you have the luxury of getting behind your target. I personally think it's better to just pick up Rage and a different talent, in the current system.

I was reading a reddit post earlier, and someone was saying that rage actually currently stacks with backstab, so I thought maybe they reworked how "backstab" is defined, maybe instead of 100% crit, it's now "x2 damage", sort of like how sneak attack works in skyrim, gets a damage multiplier but not actually crits.

I feels like this approach is better than the plain backstab = 100% crit, as rogues naturally gets crit chance from wits and other sources, and the crit chance would be useless if backstab functions in such a way.

I cannot confirm this at the moment, but others may feel free to try it when they have free time.

I just tested as a sanity check, and I can confirm this is 100% false. You cannot also crit on a Backstab.

I agree that the system you describe would be better. I'd love it if they changed it to something like that.

Edit: The following link details my comprehensive tests showing that Backstab and Crit do not stack: http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=593437#Post593437

The default weapon crit damage multplier is 150% damage right? so backstab without any further effects is just 50% more damage for attacking from the back despite lower weapon base damage? Feels like it might need a buff if that's really the case, even if + crit multplier talents and items exist in the game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin2/comments/54y4hp/are_rogues_any_good/

This is the thread I was talking about.

And I'll throw another thread I posted earlier about racials,
https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOr...ts_on_the_game_racialsarmorsourcememory/

That is correct, and I agree with your assessment.

Of note, the best crit damage multiplier increase is the 2-handed skill, which doesn't even affect scoundrels. It would make more sense as-is for the dual wield skill to give extra crit damage instead of chance.

Edit: I checked the thread. The post claimed that Vault (which always causes a Backstab) was positively affected by Rage. For me, it was the same damage with and without.

Thanks for confirming, and by the way, what's the difference currently between dual wield and 1hand + shield atm anyway, without the influence of the talents. In DOS the dual wield talent reduced ap cost, but I doubt that's gonna be the case in this game, so I'm assuming dual wield is attacking with 2 weapons for 2 ap while 1h + shield is attacking twice for 1 ap each, sounds like the same damage, unless there is something I'm missing of course.

What you're missing is that having a shield equipped increases the cost of your basic attacks by an extra AP.
It costs 2 AP to attack with anything in your offhand.
The shield user will do essentially half of the damage of the dual wielder, but will have a small initial armor boost.
Most feel that shields are very underwhelming at the moment because of this.

One trick to using a shield that can sometimes make them worthwhile is to initially wear a shield and then unequip it after losing the armor or when you're ready to attack. Unequiping the shield in combat does not cost an action point and will reduce your attack cost back down to 1.

Even without a shield, Weapon ability costs are unaffected by whatever you have equipped, but their damage will be based on all equipped weapons summed. This means a 1-hand user will always lose out on damage to cost ratios vs a 2-handed or dual wield user.

Interesting, thanks for the info, I guess if they don't do changes to backstab, holding a single melee weapon might be better than dualwield for the accuracy bonus on the talent, since the crit chance on dual wield talent is useless.

The offhand weapon does provide a movement speed bonus and possibly other goodies though, maybe like a powerful enchant later on.

Edit: Oh I see, I forgot about weapon skills.

This is true for basic attacks, but not for weapon spells.
You would lose out on half of the damage from any weapon abilities you use, and their costs would not decrease. Weapon skills offer a large enough bonus that mono wielding is generally undesirable.

I'm hoping we get some changes to address these issues in the next update.

Glad to help!

Rage is totaly OP, once I had this skill, every encounter was trivialized.

Well, Rage supposedly stacks with backstabs and guerilla for extra damage

Also, I've noticed some suggesting crit multiplier on dual wield.....keep in mind that we shouldn't have two weapon skills with the same types of bonuses. If you chane dual wield, you gotta change two handed....though changing it to crit multiplier and crit chance seems like a fair trade off to me. Or hell, just crit chance and damage so dual wield is crit mult and damage

I should have fact checked Stabbey and co., I feel so fraudulent that I didn't bother and ignored historical inaccuracy.

Rage really need just needs to be a one shot (or one round tops) with massive penalties - ideally, it should force the player to consume resources or the consideration of such when used though proliferation on NPCs needs to be guarded otherwise it might seem unfair.

Too bad Clear Mind (or whatever) isn't as competitive as Rage.

Literally posted in this very thread:




Also, just a reminder that Guerrilla is AP-inefficient. Sneak costs 1 AP to use during combat, so the +50% damage modifier Guerrilla adds is only worth using over a regular attack (costing 1 or 2 AP) if you're entering a fight with a sneak attack, or are using a skill like Snipe or Mortal Blow which already have inherent massive bonuses to damage when sneaking.

Efficiency, when considered alone or devoid of context, is meaningless.

Have a meaning-bomb, son. (With math!)

AP-inefficient means that you are getting less than or equal value per AP when using Guerrilla to do a Sneak + Attack than you would be attacking regularly. Therefore, you might as well just use normal attacks instead.

This is threatening to become another tangent to the thread, so this is the last I'll say on the subject here.

The poor guy missed the part where I said 'alone or devoid of context' ... oh well, kinda' expected.

Stop. Being. A. Fucking. Smarmy. Arrogant. Prick.