Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why hybrid doesn't work

Hybrids work just fine. Ran through again with these two characters and spread their combat skills out even harder this time and it worked even better. Having a larger array of skills available is quite beneficial for utility characters.

@Triumph, I like the idea of utility and having lots of options - it plays to the heart and spirit of DOS for me - the strategy. Seeing the lay of the land and baking up a delicious answer to the problem with the spices in your pantry.

But your examples don't look all that "hybrid" to me, or maybe I'm defining it differently. You still look heavily invested in reducing magic armor and attacking their health pool that way. I'm relatively new to the game, so feel free to explain it to me. I see a sword/shield, dual wands, and a whole lot of intelligence across the board. Lots of magic skill investment ... nothing in scoundrel/huntsman ... Warfare, I assume for the superb mobility it offers ... how are you reducing physical armor? Am I underestimating retaliation that much?

Again, I totally agree utility is fun and viable, but the heart of the problem for my first playthrough was physical/magic armor's penalties against hybrids. Levels 1-4, you can analyze and say "oh, he has no/weak XTYPE armor, I have an answer for that!" But by 5-8, it was like "I need to recommit my cards to either physical or magical" and that worked out much better. Which eventually led to relatively one-trick pony strategies as less and less options became available and I became more invested in the road I picked.

To me, you went magic. You reduce magic armor, you CC/buff/survive the enemy until you've overcome them. Not in a glass cannon way for sure, but certainly in a magic way. If that's hybrid, well I can't tell you how to define it, only that I think of hybrid as "I can adapt to physical or magic" not "I have utility abilities." Utility is something I think physical or magical both have (knock downs/mobility for physical, endless CC for magical).

Overall, I agree with many of the points here. You shouldn't any more be forced to hybrid than punished for it. A classic warrior or wizard can be a lot of fun, and it is after all an RPG. While I already posted on why I think the attribute system is incredibly flawed, I'll say I think the crux of the hybrid issue will still remain due to how magic/physical armor currently work.

The answer is you make the hybrid characters go last. Red and Iffan are paired with 2 Rogues, so if they need to attack something through physical armour they wait for the rogues to go first and strip the armour off targets before following up with abilities like Stomp, Charge, and their physical attacks.

If Red wants to combo attack spells you make him go after Iffan, as with Aero 3 and explosive wand combo he shreds magic armour pretty quickly.

Red in this picture is also built as a tank rather than DPS, if I wanted to adjust his build for more raw attack DPS he'd be equipped with a two handed weapon and the 3 points in Retribution would be moved to Two Handed weapons.

Ahhhh ok, I thought you were two manning it (sorry, with so many people trying to solo act 1, two-manning it seemed reasonable). That makes a lot more sense now. Two rogues would completely answer the physical, and you have two strong magic (and utility) to flex and follow up, or go the magic route.

I'm willing to try it again. I will say it didn't work for me the first play through, but now I have a much better idea of how the system works. That being said, I wish there was an option to respec a bit of the ways into Act 1. I tried experimenting and ended up with a sub-par tank/warrior, a sub-par mage/buffer, a murderous rogue, and a sub-par summoner-turned-archer when summoning just felt useless (around level 6). Maybe it was the poor specing that forced me to fully commit to one type of damage or the other, as anythign resembling a balanced party had already gone out the window by that point.

So I just completed a run through act 1 trying the builds almost exactly like you suggested. It was crazy effective. Exactly how I wanted to play, where I felt I had creative solutions to each fight.

Problem is that while it can be made to work, it's just not as effective as overspecialization

That is literally true in every video game, except in some hybrid builds straight up DO NOT work.
They work here. They're maybe 'sub optimal', but they WORK.

It is true that it's in all games, but there's a problem when the difference feels so very very large.

Edit:
To give a comparable, if skewed example -> You can beat Dark Souls with a basic dagger, but this is heavily frowned upon because it's so woefully inefficient compared to any other weapon that you might as well be doing 1 damage for every 100 of theirs.

Something being viable and something being balanced are two very different things. The difference in specialization and hybrids shouldn't be nearly as wide as it is and specialization should have some kind of trade off, but it doesn't really feel that way.

Hybrid builds aren't mean to work. You can only acquire so many stats and you're meant to specialize in certain trees and abilities that have synergy with eachother.

There's a reason you have a party of 4. Instead of having every member be a hybrid, you specialize roles so that your party itself is hybrid and versatile. I'm completely fine with that.

From a fantasy perspective I love the idea of a battlemage, but from a gameplay perspective it makes complete sense why it's not a powerful option in a game like this. Though, for the record, it CAN work, it's just far from optimal.