Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Sneak and guerilla need more benefits.

So looking at the guerilla talent I see that it provides a 25% buff to damage. The problem here is that sneak in battle costs 1 ap, so using sneak in battle to use guerilla still doesnt make sense.

Example: A bow user with 2 ap cost could sneak and then attack once for 3 ap, but only do 1.25 damage. It would be much more beneficial to just fire 2 shots for 4 ap that would also give you 2 critical chance rolls.

Even buffing guerilla to 50%, it still doesnt become worth it, as you would do equivalent damage for the ap cost while only getting 1 critical chance roll.

Sneak would have to be free to use in combat to make guerilla worth taking right now. But doing that would just add the necessity to hit the C key before every attack to maximize damage, making it tedious to get the benefit from.

Currently the ONLY benefit I can see to geurilla is IF that character opens up battle with the attack. But even then that means that the talent is at best a once per battle very minor buff. Some battles are sprung on you after dialogue too, making this worthless for that situation. And if you happen to be in stealth and combat starts the enemy will be taking turns while you are stuck in real time, meaning you dont have the luxury of even starting the battle off with that character.

Increasing stealth for use with geurilla doesnt even seem to matter. The only point to stealth appears to be pickpocketing. The only point to geurilla seems to be a once per battle opening 25% boost to 1 attack, which feels like the talent is basically a dead talent and steal feels like a dead ability if you choose not to steal.

I enjoy the game, but certain things like this just dont make sense and dont feel like viable uses of precious points. By the time you find out they are worthless, you may have already wasted the talent/abililty point.

So essentially there needs to be some changes to make these feel worth taking. Even buffing the guerilla damage bonus is iffy, it would feel like putting your eggs in one basket to go for 1 big attack you might miss anyway. Using AP for stand alone standard attacks would most often be the more reliable source of damage.

Wait, hold on a second... +25%? I thought it was +50% in the last patch... *checks*

WOW. Guerrilla was already an extremely situational talent and borderline useless. What idiot thought Guerrilla needed a nerf?

Guerrilla used to give 3 AP worth of damage for 3 AP when using a 2 AP normal attack. Now it gives what, 2.5 AP worth of damage for 3 AP. This makes it now literally completely useless. That is no good.


Okay, new suggestion to rework that talent:

Guerrilla gives +25% damage bonus to normal attacks made when sneaking, including backstabs and other criticals. Normal attacks do not break sneak. Skills, grenades, special arrows all break Sneaking and do not get the bonus damage. Sneak AP cost increased to 2.

On the one hand, sneak is a civil ability that can help you steal and complete quests, but it also can be used in combat. So it's a bit of a weird hybrid ability that kind of seems like it shouldn't necessarily be the most amazing combat ability, but it does still feel kind of lackluster.



I dunno, this just sounds kind of awkward and unintuitive. You stab someone in the back, I think they'll realize you're there. Basically, it lets you single out isolated enemies with no one watching their back better than before. Some kind of scan behavior by enemies would be even more necessary than it is already. Moreover, I dislike how this pigeonholes sneak into being good for auto-attacks and nothing else.

I actually think it could be more interesting if Guerilla granted 25% damage bonus and also let you bypass armor with single target skills, including statuses effects (perhaps with only a 50% chance they will apply, or something). So sawtooth attack would cause bleeding on fully armored warrior, chloroform could sleep a mage with full magic armor, rangers could knockdown enemies or set them on fire with their arrows, or you could even use decaying touch or chains on a mage. Perhaps difficult to implement and balance right, but I think it would make it much more interesting and cool. Probably would need to let you sneak only once per turn or something to prevent you from applying to many status effects in one turn, but may not be necessary.

Giving Guerilla utility rather than just a damage bonus would solve the issue of either sneak-attacking is worse than just auto-attacking without stealth or its better. In this case, it would sometimes be better to apply statuses, and sometimes you'd just want to the most damage.

They will, but when their turn comes up.



Well yes, I rather do think that the point of taking a Talent is to provide a useful benefit.

(As opposed to 3.0.16.252 Guerrilla, whose point is to trick you into losing literally half of your possible Talent points in the Alpha.)




The reason I suggested that only normal attacks get the bonus is because I'm about 90% sure that the ENTIRE reason for the nerf was because of Snipe, Mortal Blow and other +maassive damage when sneaking skills. (And there are no auto-attacks in this game, so that term is wrong.)




It's not that I'm against the idea, but my gut says that it probably won't fly with Larian since that buffs Snipe and Mortal Blow by a lot, and I suspect those skills are the cause of the Guerrilla nerf.




Sorry? I'm not exactly sure what the problem is with a TALENT you have to spend a precious TALENT POINT on making Sneak-attacking better than regular attacking? (Do note that I suggested increasing the AP cost of Sneak to 2 to add a downside, instead of making it a flat-up upgrade.)

Well it seems like the issue to me is Snipe and Mortal Blow then, particularly Snipe because at least Mortal Blow requires a source point. 500% damage bonus is pretty ridiculous though. Maybe Guerilla could make only statuses bypass armor if those really are the concern since those skills don't apply statuses.

My point is making a talent that just provides a flat increase to sneak-attacks isn't very interesting. And I want to avoid a situation where you ought to only do sneak attacks, since that encourages the awkward behavior of sneaking when you're already right behind an enemy for the backstab bonus. Talents ought not be just stat increases, nor should the tactics they encourage be overly simple (encouraging only basic attacks on static targets).

Moreover, a 2 AP sneak with a 25% damage bonus even if regular attacks don't kill sneak still sounds really weak, if not almost worse than it is now. You'd break even with non-guerilla damage after, what, 4 consecutive sneak attacks? It'd be better from initiating with sneak on the first turn, but again, this has the awkward effect of basically requiring enemies to be dumb and not turn around for it to be any good except on the first turn of combat.

I don't think my solution of adding status piercing on sneak attacks is necessarily the best. That also encourages situations where you'd sneak while already standing right behind someone just to get the status effect on them. Perhaps you could do something like requiring you to start your turn while sneaking to get the status pierce.

I guess I should explain how I imagine sneak should work. I think it should be used to initiate combat, and during combat as a mix of defensive and offensive tool that lets you re position in a safer but also deadlier position. Ideally you'd have to be smart about where you hid, rather than just standing in the wide open but outside vision cones, but that would involve a lot of work making "stealth zones" or something. I dunno if they could do something where standing next to bushes or barrels would give you a sneak bonus? Basically give certain objects a "sneak" aura? Or standing in smoke would grant a sneak bonus (though enemies can't see you in smoke half the time anyway.) But I digress. My point is, making sneaking fun and interesting is probably one of the most difficult things in games where AI is really dumb.

Fair enough, I did dash off that idea in a minute or so.

I can't fathom the logic which goes "The +500% damage on a skill if Sneaking is okay. It's that extra +50% from the Talent which makes it broken. Let's nerf the Talent!"

I think we can all agree that Guerrilla as it is now is pointless and needs to be changed.

Agreed, Guerilla is now too poor of a talent to be worth picking.

Mortal Blow never seemed a problem to me because it was so darned inconvenient, only worked with the weakest melee weapon, and required a source point. If you aren't in combat yet it's a nightmare trying to Mortal Blow a moving target with a Backstab. I often would get sighted during the animation of the skill and it wouldn't even give me the 500% bonus.

Snipe on the other hand is really useful. It was easy to pre-buff (Rage and Flesh Sacrifice) and 1-shot enemies before a fight, especially with the old 50% Guerilla talent. Snipe is now even stronger as an opener when using a Crossbow.

Personally... I'd rather just have an inherant damage increase for attacking out of cover and not relegate it to a talent.

Absolutely.
Daggers are in a similar situation as they are only balanced around the assumption that one can Backstab with them.
1H Strength weapons have about 30% more damage than level-equivalent daggers, but using them doesn't require investing a talent in Backstab or getting behind the target to get that bonus.

Guerilla should work from sneak OR "Shadow Walk". Hope that this skill will no require Surce point again.

If any skill requires a source point then Levitate, its incredibly strong, I would say it breaks the game.

The ShadowWalk is a sneak for combat. It has cool-down. And Ignores facing enemies. As long as DOS has no cost for turning, classic sneak cant work. Can you imagine a PvP fight where you turn around for free to find a rogue ? That is totally poison play. Current rules are so twisted already, do not add another nonsense.

Agree that Guerilla should apply to invisibility. Levitate is really good, but don't think it needs to be source point. Maybe cut it down to 2 turns if it's too much.

I don't think players can turn around with spending AP to move or using an ability unless you have The Pawn, but AI might. As far as sneak in PVP goes, it does seem like it might be hard to make useful. If you sneak and make it obvious you're right behind someone, you should be discovered easily, but if you're moving around the periphery of the combat in an unpredictable way, it should be hard to find you.

The sneak cone obviously needs to be tuned to be small enough to make it viable, but more importantly, there needs to be a minimum amount of time that a character is in a view cone for them to appear. Otherwise it doesn't matter how small the cone is, you just turn around in a wide arc and you'll probably find the rogue no matter where they are, even if you're view cone lands on them for a tenth of a second. More points in sneak should grant extra time you can be within view cones before being discovered.

Could be as small as .2 seconds per point in sneak, so enemies would have to look at you for a full second with sneak 5. Would help in single player some too without being too significant of an advantage I think. Would let you run through view cones or avoid being spotted by the guard who does a 180 in half a second. And other players in PVP would have to make a good guess about looking exactly where you are or spend multiple points of AP looking in different spots instead of just scanning to find you. There's still the issue of The Pawn letting you look all over for 0 AP though. Not sure what to do about that. I dunno, maybe The Pawn further reduces the range/width of your vision cone? Kind of to signify that a Pawn only sees what's right in front of it, dunno.

I've actually found that the Sneak cones do grant a little leeway for entering the edge of them (at least with Sneak 1, not sure if it's still the case at Sneak 0). You can sometimes sneak through a narrow area which looks like it is mostly covered by a sight cone without getting spotted.

When you aim a spell/skill you could freely turn around. That is a way how a rogue will come to a cone of vision for free. More over skills like Vault, Whirlwind, Teleport wildly changes with cone of vision, so it is not possible (in current combat where everyone casts skill/spells every turn) predict where could be a cone of vision for a next turn. More over wildly spread floor elements damage you and kick out of sneak. Trying to polish sneak for wild unpredictable magic-based combat is waste time. There is no way to make it work. Or you have to overhaul whole combat from scratch.

I would rather see combine Thievery (lockpicking, pickpocketing, disarm trap, sneaking) in one skill. Such a skill is focused out of combat. Then make Shadow walk proper combat sneak.