Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Tactician mode feels busted

I had to restart because you apparently cannot change difficulty once changing to tactician mode. To be clear, there was no warning beforehand that it would lock me into it.

This is subjective I suppose, but this time around it feels very much like tactician mode was not thoroughly tested. I beat tactician mode in the first Original Sin, and it was rather difficult and rewarding to go through.

This time around It seems very unfun and challenging for all the wrong reasons, namely massively bloated stats against equipment and skills that are not anywhere near up to the task. I'm talking 10 or so damage weapons against 100+ health enemies at level 3 that two to three shot your poorly equipped early game characters.

The original Tactician mode in D:OS 1 was good because it changed enemy encounters to different ones so the same old tactics wouldn't work. Is it only just buffs to stats now? Stat bloat is a pretty uninteresting and unfun way of increasing difficulty.

Could be because you are trying to fight magisters in the prison, which is not something you should be doing at lvl 3... because you are in prison mate.

Yeah you should not engage magisters before level 3 and having level 3 weapons on everyone.

IIRC in the previous game you couldn't change to or from tactician (or honour) either. You only swap between explorer and classic. Perhaps it should warn you...

I've not got far enough to know if monsters are different yet.

I looked at Camp Boss Griff and various others across classic and tactician difficulty via loremaster/examine, main difference is that Vitality, Physical defense, Magic Defense, and damage of all NPCs get a passive 50% increase via difficulty setting buff. No other stats, talents, or traits appear to be different. Straight up 50%, so with stronger enemies that increase is bound to be massive.

Yeah tactician mode is not tactician at all.

+50% damage
+5 Ini
Extra health and armor.

Even at low level, the easiest way to defeat the enemies is the same cheesy method because the AIs were still horrible.

For example, I had an enemy ran across the map just to use recovery on my Fane because somehow he knows that guy is an undead.

Or if you set up an oil field on them and apply the slow (which goes through cc immune), they either

1) try to run through it and never get to act if they don't have a way to just jump right on you with a warfare skill

or

2) Try to run around it and run out of AP before doing anything.

The +5 ini is really ridiculous though and it forces me to recalculate how much Wit I need just to always go first. It's best you just start saving up level up points to use on demand after a quick reload.

Well, its not that they get a 50% increase of basic stats in tactician, but that in explorer mode (or whatever thats called) they get a 50% nerf, you see.

The glass is half full.

But it would be much nicer if they added something more to higher difficulties, rather then just that shitty nerf to the lowest.

Except some such obvious hiccups, the Ai did hold fairly well in ea version i played last. Not when compared to best imaginable but certainly when compared to any other RPG ever made. So im willing to cut a decent amount of slack there.

Classic mode had the default stat where if your wits is higher, chance is, you do have higher initive and will go first. Tactician is really just slapping +50% on them (you can see it says right there if you right click examine them) and it's really lame the 10 wit zombie can go before my 14 wit red prince.

If that's the case I might switch back to classic, as I want the best AI but not unnecessary slowing myself down.

Tactician is not only beefed up stats. The mobs also have more skills and perhaps more ap in some cases (?) and some idiosyncrasies. The turtles for example explode in fire if killed in Tactician. Cost me three of my party.

By and large I don't find it very balanced. Classic is a bit on the easy side while Tactician should be renamed "Burden and Fear". I restarted on Classic after some time because while Tactician can be fun in many fights, in some I can imagine it as extremely frustrating.

My only wish were a mod which allows you to change between Classic and Tactician. You can change to Tactician from Classic during campaign but you cannot go back of course.

Hoo boy, the bloated stat is real. I tried to go after Knilles at level 4 before I leave the place.

I had 37 physical armor + 97 health

The dude did 145 damage on the first turn and just 100-0 me.

First thought that comes to mind, "I need more wits so I can just perma knock down him. I will come back a level later"

The extra damage is so bad the game punishes you for dumping your stat on anything outside Wit. The forced "You Enemy You Enemy You" doesn't help much either.

I agree that I find Tactician not well balanced. The enemies get a huge boost to Initiative that you cannot overcome, and it seems like they just get a flat boost to HP / armor with no other real changes.

It maybe would have been possible if Scoundrel wasn't completely buried, but I think the mode is completely busted compared to DOSEE.

I'm going to reroll for the 3rd time and take my min-maxing even further too. From some more experiment, even if you do spec into Wit, the game now forces you to act in rotation so even if your wits are insanely high, your enemies will also get to act.

This means you now only need one char with a seriously high wit for the first strike. The rest just needs their wits to be above certain point to get them to act in order and you can spec into pure damage right after that.

Tactician mode is more like Cheese mode now. You have to savescum before opening any chest just to make sure you get the right magical loot you can use or you're going to have a very difficult time with cheap overbloated fights.

Thank you for the hints. Makes my decision yesterday to reroll on Classic feel a lot less bitter.

I am going to put my two cents in and say this is the exact last way I wanted tactition mode to function.

Yeah I didn't want tactition mode to pull the same cheap shots it did in the first game like spawn enemies right behind or right beside you... or those lightning zombies that had wonky stun mechanics.

Yet I didn't want this sort of bloating and slight adjustments.

What made some of the fights in tactition mode interesting was that they often changed how you approached a fight. An enemy might have a immunity aura, a new enemy that can teleport in a choke point, Enemies who lose their ability to be easily countered (Raincoat bombs).

Yet so far I feel like tactition mode is the exact same game but everything was given a buff... but not in a way that makes me really change the way I've been playing.

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Ultimately the most DAMNING thing about the New Tactition mode is that Divinity Origin Sin had a near perfect Tactition mode, at least in concept.

So this "Serviceable" version (for the first chapter, maybe it gets better later) would have been a fine addition had the first game not shown everyone how great a tactition mode can be.

I will still try to complete the game on Tactician mode though, just gonna have to take time and multiple rerolls to figure out all the changes for proper min/maxing.

If the enemy actually has no extra ini and the turn is always forced no matter how low your wits are now, I will just take it that Wits have been nerfed to oblivion to just +1% crit chance and just load on my damage stat so I can kill them before they kill me.

And I will just do everything to cheese them back because the game is trying to cheese me with exploding turtle anyway. Did you know you can sneak attack with a bow from high ground and if they don't see you, you can keep going and shoot up to 3 or even 4 shots before they even react? I did this to destroy the enemy at the gate with 4 magisters and just retreat after I get a kill when they spot me.

There was a post somewhere pre-release about the OPness of elves because of their ap abuse and free skills. And you know what? 4 elfs timewrap tactician incoming =_=

-1) They nerfed Corpse eater it no longer gives you "free skills", it is more like a free book
-2) Only Fane gets Timewarp and he is a undead human.

I notice the timewarp is a Fane-only thing which is great because it shouldn't be a skill given to anyone.

Elves also had their racial nerfed which was necessary.

The game is still a big "Who gets knocked down first" though.