Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Help/Tips/Tricks Character Optimization

I've been playing the game for a week now, and wanted to start a thread to share character optimization tips for this awesome game.

A few disclaimers: you might find some spoilers in there, english is not my native language so please forgive the mistakes you are bound to find, and finally I haven't finished the game yet so I might be missing some end-game insights.

Here we go:

Stats

• Vitality:
  
  Each points raises your hps by 7. Since you also get hp each time you get a new level this stat is important at early on, but has diminishing returns later, even more so because you can find equipments that boosts your hps by large amounts.
• Spirit:
  
  Same mechanism as Vitality, but for mana.
• Strength:
  
  Each points boosts your melee damage by 0.5%, Strong Body by 1, Melee Resistance by 1, hp regen by 0.006%.
  
  Strong Body is used to resist dots (poison, bleed, etc..) but they do low damage anyway, and resist polymorphism which is kinda useless since it wears off as soon as you get it (that means very quickly :P).
  
  All in all, this is the least useful stat (see note about damage types), I use it only to meet equipment requirements.
• Dexterity:
  
  Each points boosts your ranged damage by 0.5%, Heightened Reflexes by 1, Ranged Resistance by 1.
  
  Could be useful for ranged-only characters, but I'm reserving my judgement till I do some testing on how Heightened Reflexes works.
  
  For others just put points there to meet equipment requirement.
• Intelligence:
  
  Each points boosts your magic damage by 1%, Indomitable Will by 1, Magic Resistance by 1, mana regen by 0.006%.
  
  Indomitable Will helps you resist stun, fear, etc... quite important since if one of those lands while you're low on hp, that means a quick trip to the savegame loading screen :P

Note about damage types:
Melee damage means the non-magical portion of damage of a melee weapon. Same for ranged.
Magical damage is the damage inflicted by spells, *and* the magical damage of weapons.
You can find a lot of weapons that have 90% of their damage as magical, so in my opinion that makes intelligence the superior stat for offense: it has double the effect (+1%/point vs +0.5%/point), and raises melee, ranged and spell dps, while dex/str only raise one.

Resistances

The resistance points from your stats and equipment are converted into a reduction % of incoming damage.
I haven't figured out what the formula is, but I'm interested if anyone knows

Personally I ended up focusing on ranged/magic resistance. Melee damage can also be mitigated using evade, and I find melee types easy to deal with using smart pulling, kiting, and the dps you can dish out at close range.

Skills

Dragon Slayer

• Expert XXX:
  
  A must for melee fighters, since it increase both physical and magical damage, and also increase all skill damage linked to that weapon (ex: it boosts thousand cuts).
  
  Unarmed, One Armed, Sword and Shield: useless.
  Two Handed: +10% damage/point.
  Dual Wield: starts out well with some hefty +25% on the off hand, but once you spend enough for your off hand to reach the damage of the main hand, it averages out at a disappointing +3%/point.
  
  Note on weapons:
  After doing some averages, it appears a two hander does about 1.65 times more damage than a one hander of the same level.
  By factoring in the expert skill, we get:
  - at rank 1:
  +5%/-50% for dual wield, +5% for 2h
  = x1.55 damage for dual wield, and x1.73 for 2h
  - at rank 10:
  +34%/+34% for dual wield, +95% for 2h
  = x2.68 for dual wield, x3.22 for 2h
  
  Conclusion: if you don't want to invest into melee, you may go for dual wield since 1h have lower stat requirements, gives you twice the enchantment/charm slots, and dps that is only slightly lower than 2h (at rank 1). If you're focusing on melee, go 2h, no questions asked :P
• Mind Reading/Wisdom:
  
  You're basically exchanging skill points for more exp. In the case of mind reading it's not really worth it unless you're trying to mind read everything that moves.
  For wisdom I'd say definitely one point... but you can find a necklace early on that boosts wisdom by 2, so...
• Open locks:
  
  Skill points for more loot.
  You'll have to keep investing in this skill for it to be useful, as the level of locks go up.
  I ended up regretting the single point I put there, but if you can't stand the sight of an unlockable chest, go for it :P
• Stowing: without it you may struggle a bit early on with your inventory management, but it becomes useless when you get your battle tower.

Ranger Skills:

• Poison/Exploding arrow: low damage, that is not increased by either dexterity or intelligence. I'd avoid it (go for splitting arrows if you need AE).
• Evil Surpise: nice for boss fights, though I always forget to use it :P
• Ranger Strength: +5% ranged damage/points. Note that it only increases physical damage unlike Expert XXX that works on both physical and magical. So good only for dex rangers.
• Ranger Stealth:
  
  With 2 points in there, you can get into bow range of a mob without being detected. But the thing is: even after you fire, only the mob you fired upon will aggro.
  That means you're assured to single pull all mobs in the game, even if they're in a pack of 10 or more; well unless they're dropped on top of you like in a boss fight.
  With more than 2 points, you extends your range of invisibility so that you can single pull mobs beyond the enemy's front line, like that pesky healer hiding behind his friends..
  All in all a very powerful skill, to the point of making the game a bit too easy.
• Stunning Arrows: with enough points in there you can lockup a mob during most of the fight while you tear it down. Too bad most bosses are immune.
• Potion use: for the moment potions restore enough hp/mana as it is, may be useful later on.
• Splitting Arrows:
  
  Now we have a winner!
  Its intended use as an AE tool works well and scales, unlike exploding arrow.
  What makes it awesome is that at point blank range your target will be hit by all of your arrows! Since you get 1 additional arrow per point it's awesome dps.
  And to top it off, it's only on a 5s cooldown..
  Well worth it even for a pure melee, that will use it when thousand cuts is on cooldown :p
• Evade: a point there is required since you immediately get +10%; after that it's only +2%/point. Note that it only works on melee hits.
• Way of the ranger:
  
  The bonus only applies to physical damage, so it's good only for a dex ranger. To boost magic ranged damage, invest in Way of the Battlemage.
  The melee damage penalty applies only to physical damage too, so if your main source of damage is magical (ranged or melee) you can get a +50 heightened reflexes boost for a single point (if you're willing to say goodbye to your melee resistance).

Warrior skills

• Whirlwind:
  
  Only melee AE tool known to slayers, and it does its job. More that one point is not advised here as the added damage is pathetic, and the knockdown chance is only +3%/point.
  This skill is also incredibly useful to break crates/jar stacked together. It's really a pain to select each one to check its content, but a whirlwind later you don't have to worry about it anymore, and look! there was a chest hidden behind :P
• Charge Attack:
  
  Very useful strategical tool.
  Lets you quickly move around the battlefield to clean up the lone mage/archer, while escaping the few melees that surrounded you a few moments ago.
  A point is a must.
• Jump attack: the damage is weak. With enough points could be used to do some (manaless) crowd control with the knockdown effect, but it's not very efficient.
• Death Attack: handy on bosses, but useless on regular mobs.
• Defense: nice resistance boosts, also with enough points you won't get any melee penalty.
• Battle Rage: only boosts your physical damage, so only good if you are a str warrior.
• Life Leech: starts out too low to be usefull, but at rank 13 you get 34% chance to leech 46% of your damage. On average you're healing 15% of the damage you deal.. not bad.
• Bleeding cut: the added damage is too low to be useful.
• Regenerate: if you have low str, a single point here will get you a decent regeneration rate. If you need more, go for the heal spell (or ghost) instead.
• Thousands cuts:
  
  The bread and butter of the warrior.
  Launches 6 very fast strikes, for massive damage. Plus it seems that your target is unable to retaliate while the strikes are landing.
  The only downside is the 15 seconds cooldown. A point is a must, the more the merrier..
• Death Blow: increases your crit strike change, what's not to like?
• Reflect Damage:
  
  Passive skill, works even on ranged attacks... sounds awesome on paper.
  But the problem is that your opponents have low dps but high hp compared to you. Meaning that even with some heavy points investment in this skill the reflected damage stays low.
  Might be useful for a character specialised on damage shield (through equipment), and high survivability.

Mage skills:

• Direct damage spells:
  
  All in all I'm not a big fan of those spells.
  You'll have to keep investing points for the damage to scale, and you become very dependent on mana.
  Only magic missile is usable as a main weapon (1s cooldown), but the damage is only on par with a bow (that does not require a such heavy investment). The others are on a 15s cooldown and the damage is not even remotly close to what you get from thousand cuts or splitting arrows.
• Mana Usage: can help you solve your mana problems if mana drain is not enough.
• Mana Drain: very very useful if you melee a lot. But usually a point is enough.
• Confusion:
  
  Very nice if you sling spells a lot. It 'procs' on each individual projectile of a spell, so it occurs more than the percentage may indicate.
  Also a nice combo even if you don't use spells: the magic damage shield enchantment (the one that launches a white ball when you get hit) is considered a spell, so it works with Confusion and your opponents may get stunned just by attacking you :P
• Polymorphism: only true crowd control spell that works on all mobs independently of their level. So a single point is nice if you don't want to invest heavily in another CC (who said charm?)
• Heal: very useful spell, a point here really cuts back on downtime/potion use, but also comes with a high mana cost.
• Way of the Battlemage: raise your magic damage by a large amount, and it applies to your weapon. Awesome.

Priest Skills

• Raise Ghost:
  
  Summons are powerful, and stay useful even after you get your creature. This one comes with a very handy healing spell.
  The downside is you'll have to keep investing skill points if you want to keep using it. Also you'll sometime find yourself unable to upgrade your pet: from level 14 to the moment you get your battle tower, so it'll be harder if you depend heavily on it.
• Raise Zombie: more dps than the ghost, but no healing (which makes it worse in my opinion)
• Master Summoner: nice if you use summon spells, but does not applies to your creature.
• Fear: very powerful crowd control spell, two bad the cooldown is so long. Can be a good complement to charm.
• Embrace the shadows:
  
  Need 10s to drink a potion in peace during a long fight, while positioning yourself in the best position to wreak havoc when it wears of? Skip past a group of nasties you don't want to fight?
  You get all that for only 1 point, more is not that useful.
  It also makes snatching a scale from an angry dragon a breeze... (*hint hint*).
• Charm:
  
  The best crowd control in my opinion: usable during the whole fight duration once you invest a few points, distract quite a few opponents and with lucks even kill some.
  Like most others, you must keep investing in it for it to stays usable.
  Too bad there's a xp penalty for mobs you kill with this spell, or it would be all powerful.
• Blind: can take out a mob for quite a while, but the cooldown is way too long.
• Curse: useful for boss fights, not much more.
• Life sacrifice: handy for pure mages, but for others mana drain/efficiency and potions are usually enough.
• Summon Demon: nice little tank, give it a try if your creature is feeling lonely.
• Way of the wise Wizard: boosts your magic defenses at the cost of less magic damage. At rank 5 the offense penalty disappears, making it quite nice but 5 skill points is a bit too costly for my taste.

Tips/Tricks:

• Damage bonuses stacks geometrically. For example if you get +50% damage from two different sources, you wont end up with +100% but +125% (1.5*1.5)! So try have has many damage boosting skills/stats as possible, instead of focusing heavily on only one.
• Kiting is extremely easy, in particular using the back jump you get after becoming a dragon knight.
• Don't forget to bind the quick save/load keys in the option menu, it makes your life really easier :P
• Go for the warrior class at the beginning, since it gets you whirlwind (nice for breaking crates!), and the str points are always useful for equipment requirements. The other skills you can get (poison arrows/fireball), are not that nice.
• Useful mindreads cost a lot of exp, you can safely skip the low cost ones.

Your turn now! :P

Edit: enhanced the presentation, fixed an incorrect dual wield skill value, added a missing 0 in the regen numbers