Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Full Necromancy

Is it possible to go full necromancy in this game on higher difficulty? Also, how to build a good shadowblade in D: OS 2?

Necromancy in general just give you a way to sustain yourself through innate life steal from leveling it up, along with blood + drain and Mosquitoes swarm.

Atm, for playing any knife-related character, just go dual knife, vault and backstab people to death. Necromancy will help you sustain while you deal massive damage per turn if your weapon isn't bad. Sadly, atm, Perma CC > Sustain. It doesn't matter if you have 999 health. If your armor/magic armor is depleted, you can perma CC someone with stun and knock.

The current ability set for Necromancy kinda sucks. The passive isn't that bad. Yeah, perma CC is a thing that exists, but outside of Arena it probably won't happen to you very much, as most enemies in the campaign so far don't have much in the way of CC (except Aeromancers; always kill those guys first if they're around). Overall, Necromancy's probably not worth investing in.

I've tried it before before the new patch and I have to say it is true that going full necromancy is not good unlike in the previous game where you can summon skeleton and cast debuff and buff spells. And also there is death punch which I hope will make a return to this game.

There are a few good skills in necromancy right now... and a few bad ones... >_>. So I wouldn't write it out entirely (heck the Chains move is still amazing! and Decaying touch is absolutely deadly if you know what your doing)

But currently Necromancy has 0-ability to stand up on its own. It has only one damaging move (now that blood rain doesn't cause bleed) and it does low damage and combos somewhat poorly into contamination, a move you will often not do.

It is only useful in combination with other moves and abilities... and frankly not TOO TOO useful for Wizards... Comboed with Scoundrels is the way to go.

It's almost useless unless your character is full go over physic DPS.
Combo damage is poor.
Hardly any good CC.
Absolutely hard to break average level magic armor except for using source skills, and even it's source skill is a single target damage/aoe effect, which is usually very bad to start a fight with it (look at air skill tree, one of it's source skill can singlehandedly win the fight with 2 turns stun and massive damage on multiple targets).
If your magic amour is break, don't hope much to be alive to suck some blood via physic attack on tactical level, you will be CCed to death.

Well you know... If you ignore how it has the most damaging combo in the game by leagues... So much so I bet it will be nerfed.

Maybe they still can have blood rain causing bleed but only on a small area.

Even then, I give up on full necro. My first 2 tries were with Seville necro but man, did it take forever for the battles to end. Some of the skills were too powerful while the others barely did anything.

I'm really sad necro is so lame. Of course it should be less powerful than DOS witch where I simply walked up to Braccus Rex and used drain willpower, followed by Soulsap(I'd Crafting 4).

Necro isn't lame... You are just trying to get something out of it that isn't there.

It would be like expecting Fire to do healing.

Necromancy is clearly not designed to be a solo skill, it is there to compliment other skills (and Leech).

Oops, I wasn't using completely full necro but with 1 pt in geomancy. However, I was seeking to specialise mainly in necro and spend time debuffing characters.

Of course you're supposed to use skills in conjunction with one another. And I understand 'cos primary witch in DOS1, was always debuffing and then secondary skills for attacking or healing and so on.

As it is:

Things are too rigid atm: you can't mix it with another class freely. It has to be scoundrel or some other specific class.

'Cos it's supposed to be classless system(unless Larian wants to nuke it), so they may want to tinker the effects so that other classes or talents can take advantage of it. Like people mixing necro with lvl 7 fighter(1 to 2 points in, just for minor debuffing on their own) and so on.

And if people want to play main necro, let them take it on if they're willing to accept the handicaps/limitations. Didn't people play what? Witch mixed with scoundrel or geomancer mixed with fighter(they just didn't take on leech or Picture of Health or some other talent).


Larian, please keep the true spirit of the classless system. :P

I will admit that the new system doesn't synergize as much with each other as much as it could.

I mean what synergy there is is... LEAGUES better than the first game and the cross classing ability is amazing!

A Necromancer who isn't also a physical attacker relies on other physical attackers to get their way... AND they still lose out on many of the skills (Chains is better for a front liner, and Touch of Decay is up close)

This is caused by the Armor/Magic Armor split. Currently Earth is the only skill type that truly goes between both (Rupture is magic armor damage, but physical armor status effect).

But yes, individual skills currently (whether by design or because it is barely into the game) do not hold up a character on their own. You NEED to field multiple skills and you are rewarded for building your base wide instead of tall... You are far better putting one point in five skills then you are maxing out three.

While Witchcraft in DOS1 really didn't hold itself on its own in the first game... at the start... But around the time you get the first summon it starts to become amazing.
-I actually miss Witchcraft...

I don't know if design wise Larian wants to make the individual skills hold up on their own... All the preset characters delve into magic and multiple skills.

Then again some of the "classes" for lack of a better term definitely have single skill types (though, likely because you only start with 2 points)... So the game is telling you that single skills are viable.

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Ultimately... I think it is perfectly fine that you don't have to be single skill.

But if you want to make it easier on the player... How about general descriptions of the skill types, their strengths, and weaknesses?

That way someone who takes Necromancy as a mage won't suddenly be floored by the fact that it is largely a physical magic system.

Shackles of Pain should really be changed to tie together ANY two targets, not just the caster and a target. It should also split the damage evenly between the two targets, so you could target two allies and cut the damage each receives in half, or target two enemies and do a little damage to two enemies at the same time, or one ally and one enemy to cut the damage the ally receives in half while damaging the enemy at the same time.

I should make a up a skill write-up.



It was never a very good idea to be a single-class specialist in D:OS 1, and it still isn't in D:OS 2, because you need multiple damage types to handle highly resistant or immune enemies. Bleeding is not going to be effective against the undead (i.e. HALF THE ENEMIES ON THE ISLAND).

I am worried that changing shackles in that way would make it too powerful. It already is arguably the best Necromancy skill (Though Touch of Decay... is... also amazing)

Then again I guess it could also cost a AP to balance it out with that change... or appear much later.

Well good points you make, Neonivek. I just look forward to seeing whatever changes they make, hopefully for the better. I just do think if they can manage to synergise further and also maintain the current skill flow state, they'd have a massive game winner.

Also a quick suggestion for Blood Rain skill:

Casting this will not cause bleeding. Instead, it will enhance the status effects(and maybe damage caused by those) on 2 to 3 enemies by a default of 5% and 1% every 2 levels, for a cap of 15% to 20%. That or it could be a flat percentage: 8% or some figure not higher than 10%.

Or it has a chance of causing mild insanity(they hear voices, hallucinate a bit and become worse at their skills by 5%) on 2 to 3 targets.

Or simply, be a bit corrosive: eats away at their armour by a small %.

I've no idea what the max level will be: probably around level 20?

Oh Stabbey, you're right, man. I forgot that it's encouraged to take on many different skills in case they're immune.

The main problem remains:
If the have armor, they are immune. If the armor got shred, the are already on the way of dieing, so debuffing them hardly matters anymore. As soon armors are gone, you can finally start hard-cc them.

Max Level was said to be 30 if I remember correctly.

Yeah you're totally right, you know.

Hmmm, I wish there were ways to make the armour more dynamic: environment, terrain, school system, mental state, physical condition, etc. affect amount of armour you can have.

I hope there will be more seasoned players will offer more opinions on how to change this problem 'cos it's kinda very restricted. Still, I've got good faith things will work out.

There are different suggestions so far:
- Readding Willpower and Body Building. Armor would mainly protect against damage and perhaps enviromental effects I guess. It surely bears some logic, how armor could prevent you from losing your balance.
- Make armor only reduce the chance depending on intactness, the more damage, the more likely the effect will still trigger.
- Give skills a treshold/armorpenetratation. If Armor is lower than XX the effect will still take place. Threshold couled depend skill level and skill class level. Penetration could either work for the effect or pure damage. So far I think only the scoundrel has skills to penetrate/ignore armor.
- Split armor up into different kinds of elements and/or body parts. If you want to cripple for example, only leg armor would get accounted for. Would make battles more complicated, but could add more importance to loremaster. (Splitting up into different body parts is my addition.)

Some stuff could be only used in higher difficulties, to keep the game less complicated for Explorer for example. It could make mainly tactician mode more fresh and challenging, because it would be more than just some slight differences like more enemies, different enemies and skills.

Hi to add onto your suggestion about making loremaster more important, maybe they can add more stories or some interesting details outside of battle.

Also: special attacks for really cracking the armour could be limited to 1 / 2 usages per battle and only to certain schools.

Ooh as for attacking specific body parts, I saw something like that in Age of Decadence demo(fun with very hardcore combat, might get it later on). Like you stab the fighter in the arm to slow him down. Or attack their leg, in hopes of slowing them down. But then how about magic attacks? Would those also apply to specific body parts or just overall(random body part + environment)?

Regarding the fact, how many enemies you can have in a fight, one or two times will be hardly enough. Anyway a higher cooldown could limit the amount of uses anyway.

I understand magic armor more like a shield, that surrounds you, so I guess, body parts would not fit there. The idea there was to split the shield into different elements: fire, air, earth, etc

But that would be perhaps to complicated. On the other hand you could just mixed two of the suggestion, for example: body parts for physical armor and penetration/treshold against magical.