Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Are mages a bit...weak?

There's only 1 fight in the entire game that allows you to use more than 1 3-source spell without doping on source potion. When you consider that, you are better off always using Meteor Shower or Hailstorm unless the enemies are immune because it's just way better in every way at doing its job, destroying your foes.

As long as Elemental Affinity exists, non-source spell will never be balanced properly.

Fire example is the easiest example with Fireball. You can't treat it like a 2 AP spell because it can be used at 1 AP cost, that's why they gutted its damage so heavily it doesn't deserve a place as a 2 AP spell anymore.

Another one is Hail strike. It used to be decent at 2 AP and now, it's 3 AP because you can always combo it with Rain and it becomes a 2 AP. Use that with Ice shard and you pretty much double your damage in a single turn but use it as a 3 AP = wasting ap.

As long as Elemental Affinity exists, they always have to assume the mage can end up shooting twice or thrice as much non-source spells in a single turn and have to balance all the popular spell around it. Outside Impalement with its slow field and physical cripple, the only other one I actually feel good using is Earthquake because it's a teamwide knock down. Else, I just stick to 1 AP cost because they didn't balance those around ElA.

So you basically do with 3 spells and a whole lot of AP wasted on movement, what a Ranger could do with 1 well-placed shot? I mean...good for you.

Not only that, but those spells are also on a cooldown, and you just used 3 of your arsenal. That greatly diminishes any offensive capabilities for the next few turns.

I don't appreciate snark when you clearly didn't even understand what I wrote.



A good mage always has lots of damage spells. The entire arsenal is not limited to those three abilities. By the time I ran out of spells, everything was dead. That rather serves its purpose, no?

Well, luckily I don't care if people on the internet don't appreciate what I say. However, point taken.

My point was, that in some fights, you can basically unload your whole arsenal and the enemy team isn't even halfway dead. What are you going to do then? Stand around uselessly and auto attack with your wand?

I may be a bit disgruntled. I wanted to enjoy my mage playthrough. But after running around 50+ hours as a Ranger..I just can't.

So who is better for solo? Warfare physical with some Aero (evades), Necro (shackled,bone armor,death wish etc. supporting spells only) plus Reactive Armor (I moded it to be pre-nerf still) and poly or Ranger with those?

I find physical warrior to be so strong its not a joke. How are Rangers?

Also which melee weapon is best? Two-handed ones?

Just do a team of four Rangers and you're settled for life.

Ranger is brokeop until they nerf gear scaling and Arrow storm. They already have to soft nerf Ranger by never giving them scaled gear in Act 3.

Best Melee is 2 handed, go with club or axe because they seem to have more stats, like how you always go Xbow instead of Bow for more damage even if it comes with -1 movement distance.

Rangers scaling gear in Act3 was nerfed?? When?

So if you were to solo tactician- ranger or warfare warrior (with his usual stuff)?

Rogues are also extremele strong end game with their backstab because you can put everything to Finesse. That damage SKYROCKETS later.

Looking for best tactician solo physcial build.

It's not a direct patch note nerfs. It's a game design limitation. You can barely find the ranger weapon in Act 3. I went into the final fight with an epic bow, not a legendary or Divine, because no one was selling it. Every other classes still get to use Unique and Divine weapons at level 20.

That's why I said it's a soft nerf, placing a bunch of a bunch limitation on the class just to keep them in line. I went all over Arx and ship as I work my way through act 3. Every ranger-gear npc suddenly stop selling divine/legenday xbow at level 20 and 21. Meanwhile, Warrior still get Divine weapon and even Anathema for the last fight.

That sounds very unlikely! I doubt Larian would do such design instead of just adjust damage of skills etc.

Still - for tactician solo- ranger or melee?

Ranger
Lonewolf
Stealth
Get some Ini to always go first.

Bonus point if you're an undead. Use act dead after Stealth is over to stall and then proceed to retreat on the next turn so you can return to the fight later with full skill roster again and just repeat the same strat.

Learn animation cancel to get 2-3 hits of your xbow in before the fight begins.

How to animation cancel? I have never heard about it.

Attack animation like crossbow has the following

Wind up time (Get into shooting position)
Shooting time (Bolt flies out)
Recovery time (Putting down the crossbow, can't do anything)

The recovery time is insanely long so you can only get 1 shot out most of the time before the combat begins. However, if you can remove that, you will be able to wind up and a second shot and send it flying as the fight begins, giving you another hit on the enemies as the bolt is already in motion, or even 3 if they take ages to find you.

Simply attack an enemy and the moment you hear and see the bolt fly out, going into sneak mode. The sneak mode can be used to delete the recovery animation and allow you to do issue another attack command while the first bolt is in motion.

It's extremely strong, even stronger than using Snipe with sneak or barrage. Only really needed if you want fights to be really easy or having issues keeping up with gears and need a bit of extra damage.

exploit ++;

Next: Ellezard creates a thread claiming that crossbows are horribly OP and need nerfing. :P

I talked about this exploit since EA and didn't even bother to use it in Act 2. The furthest I went with it was Fort joy because ranger is too op anyway.

And crossbow are actually buffed to the point Bow are currently worthless. You use bow, your damage drop. They still have the stat of a 3-ap cost weapon while only using 2 AP now.

Maybe

Since I RP though you'll never ever see me put a crossbow on Sebille or any other elf, -10% or even -20% damage be damned. Crossbows are for humans and dwarves. Inelegantclumsyweaponsgrumblegrumbleelvishgracefulnessmumblepfffft.

Sorry for derailing.

Thanks. For Huntsman skills to deal most damage- I should be leveling Ranged or Warfare? Because Range is 5% dmg with 1% Crit Chance and warfare is only 5% physical increase, so I guess Ranged is better?

The way the game damage work is

Weapon damage * (1+ 0.05*(Fin + Ranged level)) * (1+0.05*warfare level) * (Crit + highground bonus)

Ranged actually sucks. The only weapon talent worth taking is 2Handed because outside warfare, there's nothing boosting it.

Max Warfare and Huntsman for most damage. Warfare first.

Made me laugh. Thanks :P

It is stupid that those spells are Source related... i didn't thought that.

First game you could use those spells without "source", they really just wanted to nerf mages all the way it seems.

Source is a stupid mechanic anyway.