Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks I need a BattleMage Guide

The Stats, what i should skill, all the attributes basicly everything and weapons.

i statted str/int

To me it feels most useful to invest the attributes like that:

1st) As much as needed in memory. Bar compression is important, sort out skills you don't really need or which you only use every now and then and might even substitute with scrolls, grenades etc.; that allows you to invest more into attributes increasing your damage.
2nd) Everything else into your damage attribute.
3rd) If you hit the maximum investment for your damage attribute, put some points into Wits.

Whether you want to increase your strength or intelligence attribute depends on how you want to equip your battle mage, that is: How you want to design your whole team build. As far as I know most people try to avoid splitting their team's damage in both magic and physical damage as that means you'll have to either destroy both armor types on each foe or split your damage up in the first place, not focusing the same foe with all/most toons in your team. Battle mages are in a somewhat odd position as they're designed to combine both a magic and physical approach which will probably lead to ineffectivity. Some options are:

A) Wield a staff and put all attribute points into Intelligence. Staves deal elemental damage, so their damage is increased by Intelligence. Only use as many skill points on Warfare as you need. Usually Warfare is the best skill to invest points in for increasing your damage, but it does only count for physical damage. Therefore Increasing warfare will not increase your damage output while wielding a staff.
Equipping yourself like that will result in only damaging the opponent's magic armor with both skills and magic, which leads to a relatively quick possibility to apply status effects such as blind, shocked, stunned, burning. The downside is that your special weapon attacks performed with the staff won't be able to inflict physical based status effects such as crippled or knocked down, given you don't touch their physical armor which will make them resist the physical based status effects.
After you spent all points needed for your skills of desire start investing into polymorph and spend the additional attribute points into Intelligence. This will increase the damage of your staff attacks and spells from almost every school of magic.
This approach should combine well with a team featuring mostly mages.
B) Wield martial weapons and put points both in strength (finesse if using a spear or daggers) and intelligence. You will have to decrease both physical and magic armor on your foes in order to kill them or apply status effects. Sounds quite ineffective. Maybe if played with a mixed physical and magic team usally focusing the same target ... :s
C) Wield martial weapons and put points in strength (or finesse if using a spear or daggers) only. In this case, don't understand a battle mage as a person which uses its magic to directly damage foes – your magic damage output will be really low. You would go for warfare + any magic elemental skill and use that skill pool for support and utility skills only. Else, try the Inquisitor preset combining the physical damage and support based necromancy skill pool.
This approach combines best with a full physical team.

I hope this might be helpful for you. You should wait for some more people replying as they'll probably add and correct some info.

Thanks to the armor system, playing battle mage is pretty pointless. Going for Str and Int won't do you any good.

While this is more or less an "issue" with this game, don't let that stop you from role-playing the game. This is after all an RPG. At least on Classic difficulty, this game is not a "hard" one. There isn't really a reason to "try hard" and go with the meta builds - doing what everyone else does. Just do whatever that makes the game exciting for you.

Not to mention, unless you're Lone-Wolfing, otherwise, you are still but one guy in a team of four. There are three others to support you.

- Technically, a Necromancer/Fighter is also a battlemage, and Necromancer deals physical damage as well, so this combo is very straightforward. You will deal mostly physical damage, while life-stealing at the same time. This combo also eliminates the issue with "divided damage output" when you're a physical/magical hybrid kind of char.
- But if by battlemage you mean the typical sword-wielding caster who deals physical damage with melee attacks and magic damage with spells (so mostly a dps char), then it means you are going for physical weapons,and you'd need Warfare. So one option is something like Warfare + Polymorph + Hydro/Air/Pyro/Geo. Or Warfare + two elemental skills - up to you. Keep an eye out from items that boost the skills you're investing in.
- Pick a combat style you fancy. Pick an element you want to specialize in. AfaIk, Aerothurge skills seem to have the highest damage output, overall. With bonus skills points from items, you can invest on three skills at the same time without much trouble.
- Polymorph will be useful, since it gives you more Attribute points to invest on two stats at the same time.
- Dual-wield if you want to be a dps. If you want to be more of a tank, then the classic sword-and-board style is fine. Skills like Supernova or Closed Circuit will be nice since you be entering melee most of the time, and they have very high base damage.
- Reactive Armor and Bouncing Shieldare good on a Warfare tank kind of char, since their damage scale with your max physical armor.
- As for hybrid skills, Sparking Swings (Pyro+Warfare) is good on a dps char, while Oily Carapace is good on a tank char (Geo+Warfare). Cleanse Wounds (Hydro+Warfare) comes in handy when you need healing.
- You probably want to take Savage Sortilege. It's not very hard to get your critical chance to 20-25%, especially with buffs. This way you can crit with both physical and magical attacks. Hothead, Opportunist, and Executioner are nice on a bruiser build. Hothead is more effective when you're a bit tanky, since enemies will try to target other members, and you will be staying at 100% HP more often. Picture of Health is good on a tank. Stench is supposed to cause enemies to avoid focusing you, but I never used it, so I have no idea how good it is.
- As for support skills, it doesn't hurt to spend 1 or 2 point in Geo or Hydro (or just get them from items) so you can cast Fortify and/or Armor of Frost, since they are THE protection skills in this game. Otherwise, stock up on scrolls of these skills; they are abundant enough. Bone Cage comes in handy often enough, and is very powerful too.

There are many other things that can be said about this, but this is what I can come up with for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SakhF0xqTks&t=461s
here is an interesting two handed close combat build combined with Hydrosophist. It doesn't require any intelligence, thus you will deal MOSTLY physical damage, plus some Hydro skills that don't scale with Intelligence which deals Magic damage.

I also recommend trying a dual-dagger witch build. You'll again deal Physical Damage, but from far ahead, with your skills. Necro spells are so good in later levels in regard of both status effect and damage.

https://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/133 Here is a mod if you are interested. This makes Necro very fun and reliable without breaking the game, not overpowered.
The goal is using your powerful necro skills from range ( Blood storm, Infect, Grasp of the Starved... ) and keep blood surfaces around - apply bleeding. While waiting for their cooldowns, using Scoundrel to deal considerable amounts of damage via backstabbing. This build gave me the most fun among all.
Note : Sorry for my bad English.