Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Angry Review

Hello everyone.

I played 300h to DOS, I loved it and it was obvious that I was buying DOS2. But I'm rather disappointed on several points. Feel free to argue with me, maybe I misunderstood some game mechanics and that I'm wrong.

I tested a character summoner & polymorph. Oh my God, what is this useless and annoying shit?
- Special mention for Bull Rush that does 5 poison damage for 2 action points while the enemy has a hundred life and armor.
- Elemental Totem, One-shotted by ennemy with only 5 health points it becomes the priority target of enemies. So as I'm smart, I buff him with Armor of Frost & Fortify. Estimated life: 1sec ... for 4 action points!
- Conjure Incarnate, it is the same thing, nil lifetime. 5 melee damage without forgetting that you have to move to the target with only 3 action points per turn.

And next to my shit magician, I have a rogue completely overpower with Haste, Adrenaline, Skin Graft, Enrage, Flesh Sacrifice, with some other spells for mobility like Teleport, Tactical Retreat, etc.
The winning imba combo that you have to play if you want to beat the game. You take all the spells I quoted, you put them on a rogue or caster and you can solo all the early access of the game.
No doubt you will be obliged to play this way when the superior difficulties come out.
In fact we are given the choice to specialize but there is only one viable specialization. It is to put 1 point in each school of magic to go take the best spells of each school. It's great fun!
Same for the talents, some will never be used and others are must-have like Executioner, The pawn, Mnemonic etc ...
The difference is too big between your RP character who has 4 points shares, and your character overpower with his 10 action points per turn.

I also have a problem with theft in the game. I do not want to steal anyone. But the game makes you steal if you want to stuff or learn skills. Why buy this book of spell when it is so easy to steal it from the merchant?
This stuff is horribly expensive and you never have enough money. So if you want to steal nobody, you have to go and steal those paintings and sell them to the merchant ... Oh wait! I stole them!
In the same way, the game will encourage you to play an elf for his talent Corpse Eater that gives you free spells.

To finish because I have written a lot, I would like to talk about the fights when you have melee characters. I often encounter a problem that I did not have in DOS. My melee character hits an electrified or burned target and he finds himself to undergo electrical or fire damage. Either way the battlefield is always full of oil, fire or other shits, so how can my Knight be useful if he can not move? 2 choices available to me: I use Battering Ram to cross the wall of flames and approach my enemy but I die burned. Or I use Battle Stomp but I clear the fire zone that my mage created the previous round. Really, to survive Knight with Weapon 2 hands and his spellEnrage is nonexistent.
I noticed that wearing a shield is almost a must-have as it improves survival.

To finish here is an example of the character that we all have to create in 4 copies during the release to beat the game in Tactician or higher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTLk6Wx-Mow
Take care with attention Dallis got one shotted but no one can explain what happened really. Because of the illegible stupids flying numbers. Is it 125215 damage or 125 + 215? ... Ridiculous. Especially as the mage has 15 action points in the turn. Remember my Summoner & polymorph had only 4!

Thank you for reading me, let's debate!

At low character/summoning levels, positioning is important in placing totems. At the very least, an attack destroying a totem is an attack not directed at a party member, and if you place them out of view or range of a mage or archer, an opponent will be forced to move to attack them, using up AP.
Some people have argued totems are over powered (pick up skills to apply surfaces of your choice; oil is quite effective), especially with more than one summoner in a party.

Damage is not the primary purpose of Bull Rush.

Don't conjure an incarnate somewhere opponents can attack it immediately but it has to move to reach a target. Summoned before combat, if you see or suspect opponents ahead, there isn't an AP cost during combat, and even if they are targeted immediately, that is an attack directed away from a party member.

In D:OS every character could put a point or two into every skill school to get the majority of the most useful skills, as well.

The only point I can agree with is that the skills that give you AP are too strong. But that doesn't mean "the rogue is OP" any character can learn any skill if you put a point to its school, so you can have the same amount of AP on any "class". Problem there is, having to find those books, spending the point, and learning them with all your toons, which, of course, you don't want to do.

Otherwise, I have played Act I now 5 times, and I have not encountered any of your problems.
- I could buy all the skillbooks for all 4 characters, never needed to steal.
- I actually quite like the summoner, even though it needs at least 1 other school of magic or skillset to really be useful. But clever positioning and using different grounds to summon stuff on works really well. You just have to know your enemies.
- I also made a fun run with sub-optimal heroes, all having the Zombie talent and not being OP as hell, and I finished without any difficulty, so I would really not say you "will be obliged to play" some way even on higher difficulties. If the difficulty will be around the same as in D:OS, I am not afraid for sure.
- I haven't had a problem with my melee characters, if you position them right and use magic to counter effects when necessary, you won't get burnt/poisoned/shocked to death or stunned all the time.

I agree with sunlightthief, never had these problems apart from the 'OP' rogue. And thanks for your work Larian, we don't tell you that enough.

I think we should keep in mind that we still only have access to Act 1, and only Classic mode. I don't think we're meant to experience hardcore levels of challenge quite yet.

With that said, here's some feedback:

Summoning:



Did you put points into your Summoning skill? Summons scale according to that and your character's level.

In my experience, incarnates are actually pretty strong. Depending on what surface you summon them on, their damage type changes, so you can stack that with your other party members to deplete armor quickly. I wouldn't buff them with Fortify/Frost Armour by the way. They have infusion spells intended for that, which gives them new attack abilities.


Bull rush is a cheap re-positioning ability you can use every turn you're polymorphed. It's not meant to be strong enough to kill people.

Rogues are really powerful right now, yes. Mainly because throwing knife counts damage twice, and enemies ignore invisibility. That doesn't mean they have to be used, though! Plenty of other builds are viable.

The issue of lack of gold may just be a symptom of being stuck on a prison island, unfortunately. Personally, I end up stealing my skill books as well, but that's mainly because I like to get utility spells from various skills. There are some skill books you can find.


Electricity can electrify blood, so that may be why your knight is getting hit by it when he attacks an electrified target.
You have a few options for dealing with surfaces:



That mage probably had the "Glass Cannon" talent, stacked with Adrenaline. That gives you 8 AP, but your armor/magic armor do not protect you from status effects. So you can be stunlocked very easily.

As for the damage, they stacked oil with what I believe is the "[color:#FF6600]Infection Flame[/color]" spell, which is a source Pyrokinetic spell. That spell requires a source point (which you get very few of in Act 1), so it's intended to be pretty strong. It bounced between enemies and set off the oil, which triggered explosions, and created cursed fire.

Polymorph (in EA) is all about utility. Need to reposition and attack - Bull Rush. Need mobility, avoid surfaces, AND gain height advantage - Wings. Need to attack at a distance and weaken an enemy - Tentacle Lash. And the mother of all abilities refresh all your cool downs FOR 0 FUCKING AP - Skin graft.

No, just no. Polymorph is overpowered because of the amount of utility it provides for 1(!) skill point. All most all of the skills gained from polymorph are either 0 or 1 AP. In any of my runs it is almost mandatory to get this skill set.

I have not spent much time with the summoner other than just a trial with the totems. What I can say is that it has a lot of potential, but I haven't spent much time with it to really gauge its viability. However, if you have a melee heavy group the earth totem is great for chunking out physical armor.

Mages IMO are more powerful than rogues. Because they can bust out a done of damage from distance, bring in great utility, and they can still have access to other schools power utility spells like AR. An Elf Mage with AR is probably the most powerful combo in the game currently.

To your point with melee in general - no player character should be entirely devoted to one skill set. Yes surfaces in this game are much more involved than they were in DOS (EE). I think someone counted and I believe it was 32, or 64 (something like that). For new and experienced players this is a lot to think about and to understand. I have 150 hours in EA and I still cant remember all the interactions between surfaces. However, DOS 2 has significantly more utility and movement than DOS 1 ever head. AND each character has access to that mobility by level 4. A knight can use phoenix dive (one of the best mobility/utility spells in the game) to jump to safety or to get next to a group of mobs, do damage. Then run away with bull rush, or equip a shield and refresh your armor. Also remember you can delay your turn to know how to position your party with greater effectiveness. This is particularly potent because then you can get two full turns in a row (3 if you use the source ability) which would devastate any enemy party.

Theft is a game mechanic that is not perfect IMO, but it is not overpowered nor is it completely useless. I think it sits right in the middle which is where it should be. I do not agree with the one pickpocket per NPC. I think it should be like one pickpocket per player character, or maybe once every level or something that limits the frequency to more than just 1 time. However, I understand the reason behind the choice because if you just had free reign to pickpocket everyone that would be absolutely game breaking.

Also early game gold is a bit difficult to find. But you can still develop a crafting economy like you could in DOS, each merchant refreshes their inventory either every 1-2 hours and also every time you level. so each time you level or you have been playing for awhile go visit your merchants buy all the crafting stuff. Sell everything you crafted but wont use and make your profits.

This game is much more complex in terms of positioning, surfaces, and fights in general (we asked for that) but party composition is much more forgiving because of the ease of skill access ability. Mnemonic is not mandatory a lot of gear past level 3 has +1-3 memory on it.

I am rambling so much i am going to stop.

I agree with most everything said in the responses. The only thing I wanted to emphasize was the setting - a prison island. I felt the penny pinch on the gold too, and yes I resorted to thievery, but both of those things felt organic considering the setting ... a prison island. I can't repeat that enough lol. Everything from "the setting is glum!" "Everyone is out for themselves" "It's hard to find gear" "This is hard" comes back to the RPG element that we're playing in - a PRISON ISLAND. The odds are stacked against you, and for me, that feels rewarding when I overcome them.

That's not directed at gameplay mechanics though, those should be balanced, but as far as gold/gear go, I think it's a valid point.

WRT Summoning, I was also disappointed with this, but I feel like I was using it wrong. I would often summon totems where enemies could easily get to them - eventually I would summon them way in the high ground. That's bonus damage, and a HUGE field of fire. I would also start summoning based on terrain - at first, I always went for water/fire elementals because I thought that'd be the strongest, right? Eventually, I summoned them based on the enemies weaker armor. Likewise with incarnates - a fire incarnate isn't as useful as a regular one when the enemy is weak on armor. So you get to adjust to the terrain/situation. It can still feel lackluster in comparison to giant wizard combos or rogue/ranger burst, but if you're a man of chess, you may enjoy the long-game summoner brings to the table. And at WORST, you spent 2AP to block 2 of their AP (assuming they attacked to kill it). Not great, but not terrible either. AP is a chief resource in these battles and trading 2 for 2 is a wash, not a loss.

Bullrush is insanely useful though. Battering Ram is nice for positioning and knockdown, but they need their armor down. Blitz is nice for gap closing/positioning, but can be less predictable, and costs more. Pheonix Drop is great for positioning and fire immunity. And all 3 get you to move 1 time each, for 3 memory slots, and a situational secondary.

Bullrush, meanwhile, gets you 4 uses for 1 memory slot, scales off your primary stat, and is dirt cheap. Whether you're a kiting wizard/ranger, positioning rogue, or warrior trying to get people in range of WW or Cripling Blow, that's just great return on the money.

To address some of your points:


Polymorph has access to some of the best skills available. Spread Your Wings, Tentacle Lash, Iron Heart, these are all excellent. Let alone the (extremely) powerful Skin Graft.



Don't put it somewhere that it's easy to hit (this is possible). Totems can be high Damage-per-AP casts if they are given a few turns. That being said, there is more reliable damage.



Clearly the additional armor you've given the totem is not going to allow it to tank. How silly would it be if those spells were indeed this powerful? You may need to rethink your positioning.



It is true that Adrenaline + Flesh Sacrifice + Skin Graft is overpowered. Enrage does nothing for a rogue who is already backstabbing, though. Still, this combo is absolutely not required to dominate the content.



If you approach the game with this attitude, probably.



Pawn is far too powerful, I agree. Mnemonic is nice, but is a low-priority talent compared to others.


This is awkward, I agree; mostly with electricity. However you can avoid this problem with Spread Your Wings or Winged Feet. Or simply Magic Armor. Surfaces very rarely pose a large threat to a prepared player.



That player skips the first round. The AP/round on the character is 5, one is from haste. Again, it is clear that Adrenaline/Flesh Sacrifice/Skin Graft needs tuning, but this should be expected in an early access.

The game is currently too easy once the mechanics are abused.
My level 5 group bores me.
I created my 4 companions with Haste + Burn my eyes + Adrenaline. I went to get some polymorph spells for support. They are all focus on melee damage to make useless the physical armor and magic armor separation. Once the merchant meets, we get a powerful crossbow and ax. Same for the 2 daggers on the hangman. I do not even need heal because enemies die in the first round.
The game becomes ridiculously easy.

I criticize the armor system that separates physical & magical. It makes the mixed groups weaker than a full magic or full physical group.
Then the fact that any character can use / abuse all spell specializations without undergoing any malus as in DOS 1.
I expect real change on these points from Larian, otherwise the game is going to be really annoying even in high difficulty.

Raze I really respect you for being one of if not the only Larian guy that ever reacts to people, but... sry, that is, sadly, not true.
Maybe it's intended to be that way, but doesn't workout.

In 90% of the battles enemies have a way larger range than the party by starting on elevated ground. They almost NEVER attack summons, which makes sense because they don't need to as pets are so weak it's actually no problem to ignore them.
They offer almost no protection and only die when hit by collateral damage targeted at party members. Same goes for totems.
Mostly the zones you fight in are so small you can cover most of it with a single attack. And the end of act 1 actually put that to even more extreme dimensions...
So enemies can easily blow up MULTIPLE TOTEMS (and often the incarnate as well) WITH ONE ATTACK with simply COLLATERAL DAMAGE sacrificing nothing at all! With skills like infectious flame that create multiple AOE zones according to the targets hit by it it even gets worse as it increases damage for NO BENEFICIAL aspect at all!
Without any way to do anything against it! Except... not skilling into summoning at all ofc...
And that doesn't even count the fact that most areas have serious LOS problems... making totems terribly bad by offering counters against them that are so easy it feels surreal...
And the compensation for all these drawbacks...? 1 attack with roughly 1/4 of the damage a single enemy deals with just one strike... and the incarnate deals even less damage.
At the final battle with all points into summoning my incarnates dealt at max less than 30 damage (about 20 to 28) while enemies hit for 5x that damage, critting for almost 10x said amount!

Now prettymuch the only somewhat useful thing summons can pull of is the KD with power infusion. Now that's 3+1 AP for one attack to 1 turn of KD. Almost no damage but KD. Ok.
Now the fighter can do that aswell, but with battlestomp for example deal considerable amounts of damage too and attack at least a second time dealing about 150 dmg at that time, with mediocre equip. Now let's say the incarnate doesn't die by some knoxed up whirlwinds (or whatever) aimed at the party and lives for 5 rounds, he barely can deal even the amount of damage the fighter dealt in round 1 throughout its whole lifetime...

Right now for me the only way to have a bit of fun with the game and live with summoning is to ignore that skill and pretend it doesn't exist.

Regarding the skills in D:OS1, yes but with way higher drawbacks at least!

@mikefury
Brofist! I also can't understand how they can keep that system and all it's problems, that a lot of people have brought up.
But I fear it will be the same as it was for more than a decade now with the RNG of loot in the Larian games... people complain about it for various logical reasons, but still Larian always cramps it in...

Huh, from my experience summoning as it currently stands is a bit over tuned for a variety of reasons:

Totems do get attacked and thus can be used as a sort of psuedo mitigation, this isn't a bad thing and you can intentionally place totems in a manner where this happens. For example in a door or sometimes at the top of a ladder. In the case of the door example the opponent is forced to use resources to get past the entry way, think of this as less damage dealt to allies.

Summoners are also, in my opinion, the best source of hybrid damage due to being able to provide physical or magical damage depending on the terrain the summons were placed on. In the same vein they get access to a good number of utility abilities based on where they summoned the incarnate allowing them to respond to unexpected events that may arise over the course of a fight.

Hydrosophist and Summoning both benefit from scaling only off of themselves which means you have so much more freedom with stat distribution effectively allowing you to do something like pure Con with a shield. I had a buddy do this starting with elf allowing him to have a free first aid. He ended up playing in a manner where he was the tank for his totems.

The summoner is one of the few classes that benefits from set up prior to a fight starting. Note things like buffing up a snipe doesn't count here, those are more like fight openers. Summoner actually gets to earn themselves turns worth of efficiency by pre-placing totems.

If the enemies blow resources to kill the totems it's a win.
If the enemies don't kill the totems they get continual damage out its a win.
If the enemies hit the totems with "Collateral damage" it's not the totems fault that they were placed to close to an ally.

Do summoners pull the highest numbers? No, but their damage values are quite nice if the totems do avoid the gaze of opponents. The perk of the archetype is that each point of ap spent on a well placed summon is immediately worth it regardless of what happens to it. Couple this with the extra utility provided through built in hybrid damage and their incarnates abilities make me feel them to be a bit too strong.

I don't know what you guys were doing for money, I literally had over 6k at one point (without ever stealing).

Ability wise I like Polymorph a lot, and use it in conjunction with my mixed-class builds. Frontline character, usually the Red Prince, I grab Steel Skin, Wings (repositioning), in addition to keeping the Geomancer build set for fortify, oil boulders, poison dart, along with using his racial to ignite surfaces.

I typically take Polymorph for the steel skin (free armor) on pretty much anything, grants a ton of armor (it regenerates over time).

An interesting build is the 'Enraged Spellcaster', taking a ton of spells, high memory, enrage, adrenaline, flesh sacrifice, skin graft, and chameleon. Use Adrenaline + Sacrifice turn 1, spam spells, chameleon, turn 2 spam spells, skin graft reset all cds, adrenaline, sacrifice, spells, chameleon, and then play it off from there. With the 1/2 of crit given to spells due to that talent, you can get some ridiculous levels of damage off with the reset build. Requires a ton of memory, and two of the talents to be considered viable, namely glass cannon and savage fortilage I think it is. You can rotate this over a much longer period of time if you have spells that can cc (water + air wands work too), you'll shred through their magic armor quickly, and can essentially perma stun a target without issue.

It's my worry, that in the end pretty much everyone will be built this way in a min-max-built ^^

No need for it, while this with the rogue counterpart, might still be the best build it won't be nearly as strong as it is right now.

Realistically speaking, why would it matter? We're not playing an MMORPG or an eSports title. Let's take it back hard to some basic DnD. There are some pretty insane min/max builds out there for DnD but most players will do what they went even if not directly through RP (I want to be a "death knight" even if they don't literally RP as one) and a good GM will capitalized on that.

The default campaign here is basically the same thing with Larian as the "GM". It's your choice what difficulty to play on, it's your choice what to build your team (or your group's, I guess).

So your worry is kind of silly. It's also horribly wrong, anyway, as casual players rarely ever min max and even I rather enjoy the challenge of off builds so me and my crew definitely won't be.

It worries me, because it would prove, that there is no real diversity in effective builds.

That's what I feared would happen with all relentless campaign by some to nerf and "balance" everything: it's like being handed a many-sided dice with the same number on every face. I preferred it when things were inconsistent, and if I picked a bad build, too bad: I'm more interested in roleplaying than numbers anyway.

Yeah, but not balancing is the problem. Normally balancing open up opportunity, because it would make less appealing tactics more appealing done right. Because balancing should not mean only nerfing, but also improving.

Still, what ever they did, was not always balancing anyway. At current mages seem to have gotten even worse as it sounds so far. But guess will see in about 9 days.11

there have ALWAYS been multiple viable builds. Optimal builds aren't what you always use, and optimal changes based on your goal.