Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks What should I invest points in? - newbie questions

Hello,

I've recently started playing Divinity - Original Sin 2, and I'm not sure whether I invest the points right. My team is kinda weak, whenever a difficult battle comes, at least one of my chars dies. Would you please suggest some changes to my builds or recommend some guide to base my chars on. Below, I uploaded an image of my team's stats. Thank you in advance! :D

[img]https://image.ibb.co/eoGY3w/team.png[/img]

Main :
- pump more points in memory ffs
- a staff is useless in compare to a wand+shield, never go with a staff
- hothead for a mage is meh, even more if you don't run a shield
- savage sortilege on aero/hydro mage ? why not I guess
--> By the look of it, it's a weak character : aero/hydro ? So you want to support your team ? Then why using dps talents like hothead and savage sortilege ? What is the meaning of this character ?

Red Prince :
- hothead again, meh. Don't take hothead early on, even more if you character doesn't have a shield for some reasons.
- constitution is shit, never put a point in it. Just grab a damn shield.
--> I guess it's the dps mage. So why did you build your aero/hydro mage with dps talents ?

Ifan :
- Don't ever use a shield on a melee, just go 2h and 3 shots enemies
- Constitution is shit even on a melee, you will wear heavy armors so physical armor is not a problem
- don't up 2h or 1h, just put points in warfare, max it before anything else
--> I guess it's your tank. Tanks are shit in this game. Shields on melee too. Just go with a fat 2h warmachine, destroy physical sheidls of your enemies and THEN stun them with ram/stromp. It's the best way to protect your team really, by destroying shields fast, stunning and killing.
1h+shield warrior is like playing 0.5 character.

Lohse :
- just put enough points in scoundrel for spells requirement, so 2 will be enough for act 1. Then go max warfare.
- guerilla is useless as a talent : sneaking in combat is too much costy to be viable right now.

Put more memory points, right now you have really few spells.

Some tips :
- if you want to discover the game first, just put it on classic or explorer, just to learn the mechanics.
- your team is a (bad) hybrid : 2physical/2magical, better go full physical+magesupp or full mage (you can finish the game with a dual team like yours, but you seem to have a hard time)
- if you really can't go any further, play only 2 characters with lone wolf talent.

I'm going to second most of what CollaSama said.


You have two mages both with base memory at level 7. That's a total of 6 Memory slots each. Most characters will want to invest at least a little into Memory, but ESPECIALLY mages, because their utility is dramatically tied to having enough spells to do something each turn until some come back off of cooldown.

I've even invested extra memory into my melee characters as well for the extra utility.

I will agree that Staff is not very useful for a caster compared to Wand + Shield.

Shields ARE a reason to put points into CON because better shields require more CON. Also, people call CON shit because, in theory, if you are so good at the game's combat that you never lose your armor and take health damage, the points into CON are not doing much good.

Hothead on a mage is a good pairing for Savage Sortilege, but Savage Sortilegeis indeed not a very good fit for a Hydro/Aero caster compared to a Pyro/Geo caster. Hydro in particular is pretty weak damage-wise. If you're a mage and not taking Savage Sortilege, Hothead does't really fit.


Red Prince
Why does your DPS mage only have 1 point into Geo? You should have at least a second by that time for access to higher tier Earth spells, to better combo with your fire ones.


Ifan
Going 1H + Shield is not that good in this game for a fighter because enemy AI ignores tank-type characters, and it cuts your damage output drastically. It's better to go 2H for better damage.


Lhose
Putting all your points into Scoundrel is a bit much. It can work, but there's better things you can do with it. Like Aero for controlling positioning, Polymorph for mobility and invisibility, Huntsman for Tactical Retreat and Duck Duck Goose, and Warfare for pure damage.

I am building my Rogue to put a bunch into Dual Wielding, BUT I am specifically going for a dodge-focused build instead of a damage-focused build.

Guerrilla is awful and useless. Never take it.

There is a lot of hate for shield, but there are some solid offensive options for it, like the shield toss, and reactive armor. I charge in a sword and board character, keeping all my squishies on the outer rims of the battle. Obviously 2 hander will do more damage. Unless you are super-cheesing the game though, there is something to be said for durability on tactician.

Shield toss is strong yeah. And that's it I guess. Meanwhile you can use Overpower as a 2h warrior.

The thing is : you can't keep your squishies "on the outer rims of the battle" realistically speaking, because enemies will just run past your s&b tank. He will try to *attack of opportunity* them, saying "please notice me senpai", he will even try to use his taunt.

But their armor will laugh at this taunt (because in this game, a taunt just bounce off physical armor, magic you know), and they will respond "nah, better focus your glass cannon over there"

Exemple : I'm playing dual lone wolf 2h+ranger. And if my warrior is near my ranger, they WILL focus the ranger. Other archers will shoot him, most of the time. Because AI can detect who has the weakest defense I guess. Fucking psychic AI.

In the end, except for bouncing shield, a shield is pretty shitty. Even more fun : bouncing shield will be as good on a poor sad warrior as on a support mage for exemple.

So just give shields on casters, make them use bouncing shield, and give to your warriors some big 2h GUN to amuse themselves. Be a nice guy, warriors want to have fun !

Shield toss is based on your armor, like reactive armor. So your mage will have to put points in strength to wear armor that will allow the shield toss to be useful. The enemy spending their entire turn moving isn't the bad thing you seem to think it is. By the time group advance to get to my dps, half of them are dead, and then they are all nice and surrounding my tank after they move, for him to nearly finish them with reactive armor.

Tank builds in this game are not classic versions of tanks. Picking up a shield doesn't magically turn you into a damage sink. It just changes what attacks you use. Polymorph also gives you tentacle whip, which has nothing to do with your weapon.

Nope.
http://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Bouncing+Shield
"Damage is based on the Physical Armour of your shield."

A bit different with Reactive armour :
http://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Reactive+Armour
"Damage is based on your current Physical Armour."

And I don't know why you are talking about stuff like "enemies are nearly dead with my ranges, my tank finish them when they are close" or "I have tentacle whip" --> a 2h can do and have the same. With more damages.

I use a staff wielding battlemage and a wand and shield cleric to draw out aggro from my enemies.
If I had decided to put shield and wand on my battlemage to make him the dedicated tank then itemization and stat management would have been a nightmare.

I would need 1,maybe 2 points in Polymorph to be mobile in combat,then 1 more in Warfare for Shield Toss but getting Batering Ram would be no good because you can't cast that with a wand equiped.On the other hand you can cast Bull Rush with a wand equiped and deal physical damage to apply that Bleeding debuff.

A custom character with points in Necro,Polymorph,Hydro and Geo can be a force to reckon if you get lucky with the items. Stats used wouble be Con for Shield equip, Str for armour equip and int to further increase the power of Necro,Geo and Hydro skills.

I'd like to share some of my personal guidelines when building characters. This has served me well for the past 4 playthroughs.

Attributes are fairly straightforward for most builds.
--Max out your main statistic such as strength, finesse or intelligence. Overcap with stuff you get from your gear
--Casters need 18 memory, including what you get from the Mnemonic talent. This should give you more then enough spells to memorize. If need... well you need to learn to prioritize which spells to memorize. You don't need all of them. For melee I usually have around 14-16 memory depending on what kind, theme, of a build I'm going for.
--Constitution for most builds is around 16 at most. Only a few exceptions in melee go higher, especially with bonusses from gear there is one that ended up with 22-24 constitution if I remember correctly.
--The rest goes into Wits. It isn't just about finding secrets and initiative. The critical% goes up quite nicely as well. So you can almost max this out by the end quite easily as well.


Skills you usually have around 20 points to spread around. Which isn't a lot, but you don't want to put too much in just one. In fact going to max level is rarely a good thing. I usually have two classes to 5, with maybe some extra from gear. You can get a few at 2-3 in order to get some usefull skills as well as the bonus from the class description. If you're a mage, and you find yourself on high ground a lot...then huntsman is not a bad investment for example. Plus you can learn Tactical Retreat which is helpful. Some classes give damage boost to all damage types making them more interesting then just specializing in that hydrosophist or something that only increases skills from that class. In short getting 5 points in 1-3 classes and spreading the rest around at 1-2, in order to get access to usefull skills, is a good thing to do. Which was awkward at first since I'm used to specializing in RPG's. But specializing in DoS2 is actually a waste of points.

As a mage you might want to go dual wand and put some points in dual wielding as well. Gives overall damage% and chance to dodge/evade. Staves rarely are interesting enough for what they give, other then looks of a traditional archetype.

Going tank in DoS2 is a waste of time and effort in my opinion. You can't taunt or provoke or do anything worth while due to the Armor mechanics. You need to take them down before your CC abilities actually do something. You want to do damage instead of trying to tank damage. Your better of just going offense with big physical damage output. That way you can take down opponent armor faster and actually start using your CC abilities. By the time you get to that point of combat encounters most fights are pretty much over anyway, making tanking useless for the short period of time it is somehwat used. And that also explains why sword/board builds are just...not worth any time investment at all. One handed weapons just don't do sufficient damage. Only time I used a shield was with my summoner. She was just super tanky and stood in the middle of everything buffing/debuffing everything while her minions rekt stuff. She did use shield toss whenever she didn't had anything else to do and still contribute to the party.

"Hybrid" teams work just fine. All you need is 1 person that does lots of physical damage, 1 that does massive magical damage and 2 that do whatever and you'll be fine. The whole thing about "hybrid" teams being bad is just bullshit. In fact, non-"hybrid" teams are much more limiting.

No idea how it works on lower difficulties. On Tactician you can't keep your "squishier" characters at the edges of the battle field. The AI always ignores the heavier armored ones and goes for the casters as soon as they can. Giving those characters mobility and ways to cope is important then. Flight from Polymorph helps, uncanny evasion helps, Tactical Retreat helps... Other then that focus on damaging and taking their armor down so you can use accordingly CC options.

So I arrived at Lady Vengeance :D You're right, all of you. Basically I chose aero and hydro build bc I thought that electrified water deals a lot of dmg. In order not to lose all the talents on my main character, maybe I'll turn him into some enchanter. Can you recommend some good build?

When I was creating my party I tried to make it as versatile as possible. As I can change party members' talents now, should I leave it as it is? Namely, enchanter, rogue, fighter and wizard or rather choose different configuration. Build recommendations are welcomed :)

This is my team now, what do you think?
https://image.ibb.co/dkzk86/Bez_tytu_u.png