Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General stat priorities in 3.0.15

OK, before the last patch you had to spend all your points into a single stat or else your bonus got smaller and smaller. Leadership was extremely powerful and you could learn all spells without spending points, just by equipping some items.

I think that the new system is a huge improvement. But I also have the feeling that the game is much harder now. So where should I put my stats?

str, dex, int: give 5% damage+ and some accurancy+ per point for attacks or skills based on that stat. More damage is always nice, equipment and spells get better as you level up and +20% of a big number is more than +20% of a small number. I think this means the higher your level, the more usefull they are

con: More vitality is nice, but there is one problem: If your vilality is attacked then you do not have armor which means enemies can CC you. If they CC you, your vitality does not matter much because they have all the time in the world to kill you while you can do nothing. So I think con is not extremely importent.

memory: With one slot per point it looks much more powerful than before. CC is king and it is nice when you always have a skill ready (not on cooldown) to stop the enemy. Especially when you want an ability that attacks physical armor, another for magical armor and some buffs and healing. So I think it looks very importent.

wits: Often combat starts with a massive attack that tries to destroy armor and keeps the enemy CCed if they survive. So acting first seems to be very importent.

I have played only a little bit with the new patch so this is my theoretical guess.: In the beginning memory comes first, then wits, then your primary stat (one of the 3) and con comes last.
Once you have enough memory to use all the skills you want, keep your wits up to act first and if you are fast enough, spend your points in your primary stat.

This is my theory. Now I want to hear the opinion on some people who actually finished the game with the new system.

I think the current system is much better than the old one. Do you think it can stay so (with some balancing regarding the numbers of what each skill or item does) or do you have some suggestions to make it better?

I've played through most of the game on the current build (Lv7 party atm), and I'd say your guess is more or less correct.

I like the balance in the current version, it's much better than in the previous builds. There are reasons to invest in every stat, and it'll probably take you a while to find out how much you're comfortable with on each character.

For the first few levels, Memory is by far the most useful because you have so few skills, and getting your first key skills like Teleport, Adrenaline and Rage will make a huge difference. After that, it really depends on your build. It's always useful to have more skills, but whether it's more useful than the other stats is up to you. I find that mages tend to want a fairly large amount of skills, whereas melee work pretty well with fewer skills.

Wits is useful mostly for the initiative. There's no benefit being any more than 1 initiative above the fastest enemy though, so a just few points can make a huge difference. Enemy initiative goes up as they increase in levels, so you'll periodically want to invest in this, but it's usually not something you'll want to focus on unless you happen to be making a (non-Rage) crit build.

In addition to that, while being fast is helpful, it's actually not super necessary to go first in most fights thanks to the armor mechanics. You usually start far enough away from enemies to not be in any real danger. I've been playing with 2 mages & 2 warriors: one mage is very fast (just in case something nasty spawns near my party), one has moderate speed and both warriors are very slow. In most situations, I end up just delaying everyone's turns until all enemies have moved so I can group them up more easily. Going first is useful, but it's definitely not mandatory.

Primary stats are very strong, but only once you've invested a large amount of points in them. They start becoming more of a priority once you have enough Memory and Wits to do what you need to do.

I haven't found myself needing CON at all yet. Between good positioning, proper use of CC, the vastly improved new shields and the frequency of +HP rings, I rarely find myself losing health at all, and when I do I usually have enough HP to stay alive without any investment (or +CON gear). I imagine it will be far more important at higher difficulty levels. Right now, it's usually not necessary.

Con needs to be better. Health doesn't matter if you can be perma cc'd.

Wit is ridiculously strong at the moment and you must start the game with 15 wits to get Bracchus pant to make THe Red Prince life extremely easy. THe extra crit made it also a very strong offensive stat in a game where WEapon damage is way more noticeable than a mere +1 damage per stat point.

At least 16 wits on Archer/Ifan wins game at the moment. You start off with Stealth + snipe. If it crits, the archer alone can 100-0 most mage character, or leave them dead after a knife throw. Ifran backstabbing also melt armor with Finesse + wit build.

With a slow Red prince, he always go after Lohse.

Lohse has Int + mem because you need so many magic skill to be useful else, you're weaker than archer because 3 physical damage dealer burn armor and kill faster than 2 mages trying to burn through armor together and go on CD.

Red prince going last mean I can teleport people into each other with Lohse and with their burned armor thanks to Ifan + archer, start the AoE CC chance with Rage -> Crippling Whirwind for massive damage.

There is no accuracy increase for main stat anymore. Attacks will have a 5% base chance to miss increased by opponent's dodge chance. There are very few ways to increase hit chance. I felt like this almost obligatory miss chance (that only affects weapon sills and attacks) was unfun. I'd like a stat to help offset this.

I've found Con to be worth taking on a tank. The 7% per point is pretty reasonable, and with the new pain reflection skill being stacked the tank can be a great reflect sponge.
Necromancy has strong synergy with the new pain reflection as well (every reflection also heals).

For my DPS characters I still feel stacking the mainstat is the way to go. I found memory to mostly be plentiful enough from the slots gained from levelups (and the new talent). Putting all stats and combat points into damage felt necessary to get the numbers to actually put dents into the tougher opponents.
For wits, I didn't feel like the investment was worthwhile. The amount of damage lost for 1 extra action at the start of combat wasn't appealing to me, and with a tanky lead it isn't necessary either.

The breadth of opinions is a good sign. I do think focusing on memory at the beginning is usually a good idea for everyone, and then primary stats after that, maybe some wits, maybe con. The issue I have with wits is that I find it hard to tell how valuable a single point of initiative is. I get a general idea from seeing who tends to go first in battle, but I dunno, the worthiness of initiative feels a bit opaque.

Constitution also does seem kind of weak. At 10 points in CON, you'd get 70 extra health if you had 100 (about the average health with no con at level 6-7, maybe?) That's one or two extra hits. Maybe I'm underestimating CON, and getting my numbers wrong, but I do wonder if it could even go up to 10% vitality gain, or perhaps offer some other benefits. It could potentially be an avenue to offer a chance to resist statuses with no armor, at 1 or 2% resist chance per point. This would make CON feel more special when only your con-invested tank had a chance to resist statuses, instead of just being able to eat an extra hit or two.

I kind of like accuracy being disassociated from the stat system, though I do think there could be more ways to increase it. I think all weapon abilities should grant some hit chance, for one, even just 1% per point, though single handed should grant the most.

Balance aside, there's definitely something strange going on with the dodge chances. I've had attacks that were reported as 100% hit rate miss multiple times. I've also seen 85% hit rate AOE melee skills miss 4 targets at the same time - which statistically should happen <1% of the time - and I've seen it happen multiple times (maybe it's only making a single hit check and applying it to all targets...? ).

Honestly I found Wits to be fairly unimportant all things considered. You really can only afford it if your going down a single tree and that tree isn't magic.

Though Con's only issue is that it raises Vitality in a game where armor values exceed it greatly and where losing your armor is a HUGE no-no and where having an enemy get a free round of attack on a person without armor USUALLY spells instant death regardless of constitution.

If Con had a minor effect on armor and magic armor it would be better. It doesn't need to be greater than Strength and Intelligence... But if it was 1.5% or 2% per point than good.

Hmm but that would probably kill cross classes the ONE think this game does WAAAAY better than the first game... So like 1%?

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As for "Being without armor means you get CC'd to death."

Depends on the round. If you can survive the first round and maybe the second... enemies usually get their worst CC attacks on cooldown. Plus some enemies have no strong CC (Pyromancers for example) OR have CC that ignores armor (Cryomancers for example :P)

I've had cases where using Mark Target onto some enemies, bringing the chance to hit up to 88 or 89%, shots fail two out of three times*.


*By that I mean three enemies. One 88 and two 89%, and I have a 100% chance to miss the 88 and an 89, and a 100% chance to hit the last 89%.

I should state that with ranged weapons you HAVE to look at where you are firing.

The game has a bad tendency to tell you that you have a shot when you don't...

If you shoot through an ally body, for example, it will miss. If you hit an object... you will miss.

Even IF it tells you that you can hit.

Unless you're going for the for-fun creative route, since Early Access will only go up to level 8 unless you massacre everything and everyone, it is far stronger to focus on a single tree with 1 or 2 buffs like Haste. Most Source Skill are also quite lacking at the moment like Arrow Spray being a joke compared to Stealth-Snipe.

Archer buff haste and everything before a fight begins to a stealth snipe -> goes first -> Adrenaline -> Shoot -> if you have Aero+Teleport or Teleport glove on that character, bring them down to Ifan. Use Tactical Retreat to get into a new position if needed to abuse the massive range increase.

Ifan then kill whoever you have been shooting and teleporting to him right away.

It's ridiculous how op this is because this mean anyfight with something like a Cryo mage, you immediately kill them before their turns even begin and remove one of the few magical CC the enemies will have. With so many armor giving huge Physical armor, you will just block all the BAttering ram and Crippling blow CC. This is why the Chain Lightning Void Woken is probably the most difficult fight. It abuses the best spell to deal with your team.

Memory is really only needed on Mages and there are tons of level 5+ gears with memory you will find later that you can add random skill to your physical char and not lose out in actual combat.

Seriously depends on how far you are doing the split.

If are just a necromancy + Whatever mix... then yeah.

CON should give some armor, less than STR give phys armor, and less than INT gives mage armor, but give BOTH armors a bit (smth like 1%). It would then be beneficial for tanks and as a stat boost on gear.

Outside the source spells, the amount of useful in-combat spells are quite limited if you don't grab some int for more damage. I can see going Pyro for Haste and Aero for Teleport on physical characters but that's pretty much all you need because at the moment, you need a double mage team to be able to break magic armor fast enough to be able to inflict magical CC.

And most source spells on physical character aren't even that great either. I thought Split arrow massive amount of hits was going to be great from the description. Boy, was I disappointed.

You can get 4 Mems from Belt, Necklace and 2 rings and that's enough to last until the end of Act 1 until more Level 3 skills like Chain lightning are released but by then, our current save will no longer be compatiable.

That isn't the case anymore. While high intelligence is nice... Even someone with a 10 in intelligence and land a scathing hit with Fossil Strike or Rupture especially if you already have a source of fire (or are going to have one). Which can double the damage or MORE even without intelligence.

It couples VERY well with a wizard on the team.

As well Fortitude, Frost Armor, Restoration are nice for emergency support.

Decaying Touch, chains, and mosquitto Swarm are excellent Necromancy skills for a warrior.

In fact you really don't need two wizards either. YES it is very tough for a single wizard to strip the magic armor off of a high magic armor target, especially one that has buffed themselves... Yet that is what your warriors and archers are for.

Scoundrel's Chloroform helps a lot!

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Then again, I built my wizard with all four elements.
-We have a Scoundrel with Necromancy and I believe Geology
-We have a pure Archer who knows fortitude
-We have a Warrior with Geology

I relied on comboing with the Scoundrel to strip off magic armor. Yet now my Mage can do that solo.

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Finally remember that these are the skills we are getting right now... Later on you are going to need to learn 2, 3, 4, and 5 slotted skills for normal skills. Heck the summon is already a 3 memory skill.