Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Scoundrel play is extremely limitied

-scoundrel:
90% of the skills are based on using daggers. There are no different choices for weapons if you play this build. One handed swords and any other weapon type is simply discouraged.
The backstab mechanic really isnt that exciting. Just stand behind the target and crit. No situational skills, no interesting mechanics, just physical damage from behind.

If you want to make a hybrid character, you can combine it with warfare skills. But then you will realize you're just playing a warrior with two daggers and you won't bother to backstab or use scoundrel skills, because its simply better to stun and aoe eveything.

You could say the same thing about rangers regarding weapon choice (bows and xbows are basically reskins of each other). But it would be nice to get some spear skills for scoundrel, or let certain existing skills be used with spears (minus backstabs).

I'd say scoundrel is still pretty dynamic. It involves plenty of decision making and smart positioning (yes, you stand in more places than just behind enemies if the fight is challenging.) You can mix things up with grenades if you want. Warfare/Scoundrel hybrid is pretty tough, but battle stomp and battering ram can still be useful on a rogue for some extra cc, given rogues can bring down physical armor faster than anyone besides a raged warrior.

Of course, there's plenty more skills and mechanics to add to scoundrel to increase the variety. Mid-combat stealth could be a bit more useful (if Guerilla had some kind of unique mechanic, like piercing armor with status effects, that would be awesome). Would be nice to be able to pickpocket in combat or poison enemy potions. The mod in my signature lets you chain up attacks and use those chain stacks on finisher skills. It's a pretty common way to make rogues more interesting in many games, but it's still pretty effective and satisfying.

Another big problem with the Scoundrel build is the Backstab Talent Tax. In D:OS 2, you got 2 Talents on char creation and a third one at level 2 or 3. In D:OS 2, you have only one Talent total until level 4. This turns the Talent Tax from minor irritation into a notable detriment.

I think Backstab should be made an inherent part of knives and daggers. Now okay, Backstab does put daggers in the middle of the same damage range regular swords do, which means that they never go as low as the lowest Sword damage (but they also don't go as high as when swords crit). That makes them a relatively steady reliable source of damage, but I still dislike the Talent Tax. I'd like the damage or critical modifier of dagger damage altered to make them better balanced once they can Backstab without a Talent.

SOME of this is just how early in the game we get to play.

Scoundrel is at least wayyy better than the rogues were in DOS1. DOS1 rogue was garbage IMHO.

Depends if we are talking about EE or not.

They definitely had issues. For example the game was OVERWHELMINGLY biased against Rogues as not only are almost ALL of the legendary gear not melee dex weapons but because of their limited gear you would gen it very infrequently.

I hear you could get them to broken levels of damage, but I've never been able to pull it off.

Now, if you could get your Rogue to a high enough level BEFORE EE... They became a dreaded CC machine! (and get them a point in Marksmen so they can have two charm attacks).

Though EE actually kind of took that away... Losing most of their utility as many of their best moves were removed AND the number of skills they could learn became much more limited (and they NEEDED every skill they got because of how excessive their cooldowns were). The best thing to come out of EE though is their Airwalk ability being a 0AP skill.