Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Lone wolf--nerfed too hard?

Lone Wolf's description hasn't been changed from last patch's, but its bonuses have been reduced...

Some players and I were discussing in chat that it's clearly better now to have another character than to invest in Lone Wolf.

I realize that before, its bonuses didn't quite stack up to make one of your guys equal two people. It was close-ish, but now...

+80% HP has been reduced to +60% HP. Very significant.
+2 max and recovery AP is now +2 max and +1 recovery.
Extra ability point per level presumably the same.

A player said a Lone Wolf will get an additional 19 ability points by max level 20. A separate character, however, will receive 44 by level 20 (levels 2-5: 1 point; levels 6-10: 2 points; 3 points thereafter). That's far more specialized in other areas your Lone Wolf isn't investing in.

Thoughts? I saw it as a not bad pick before that opened up interesting build possibilities. Actually, a big thing I got out of it was just managing 1 less character. But now, I don't think the trade-off is worth it at all.

Definitely overnerf. It was borderline bad talent before but now it's just garbage.

/agreed.

playing with 2 lone wolf chars is like playing hardcore

How does Lone Wolf stack with Glass Cannon?

Is it +60% -50% aka 110%, or 50% of 160% aka 80% health? I always looked at lone wolf as a way to take Glass Cannon safely.

I have to agree it's been overnerfed. I find the -1 AP on turn recovery to be particularly galling. There's really little reason to take this trait now considering what you're giving up to do so.

EDIT: This is on Hard Difficulty, with its inherent -25% Vitality penalty.

The description still says +80% health. I created two Rogues, one with Lone Wolf, one without. The LW one had 70 HP, the other had 39. If the bonus was +60% health, then the LW rogue's health should have been 62. The 70 health shows that the bonus is still +80%.

The description does still say +2 turn AP, even though it is only +1.

I haven't really played Lone Wolf much myself, so I'm not that qualified to comment, but I do agree that the nerf to turn AP does not seem necessary. If it was about the AP doubling from Raistlin/Glass Cannon, they could simply not have counted the extra Lone Wolf AP towards that.

I finished the Beta with 2 Lone wolf characters and it was fairly challenging - reducing recovery AP by 1 does seem a bit harsh and the HP nerf as well; although I don't think dropping the HP from 80% to 60% would make a huge difference seeing as the +HP items have supposedly been improved (haven't played since the fix). I'll have to try this out during release as I had a blast with 2 LW characters and my plan is to play co-op with each of us going LW.

Disappointing, I thought having fewer characters was a big enough innate penalty due to how much more punishing it is to get hit with any kind of disabling effect.

I also think 2 person co-op is way more fun w/lone wolf characters since there's less delay between each person's turn.


The only issue IMO was how well the health scaled with certain talents, and you could take just one lone wolf tanky character for a very solid 3 person party.

I'd say reducing health bonus or just a net %damage reduction, and then maybe even buff the AP rather than nerf it would balance it more.

Joining the chorus here to say they definitely went too far in nerfing Lone Wolf. They had already toned down the overpowered LW/Raistlin combo from the alpha days, but this is too much. Fix please!

It depends on the point of Lone Wolf. When Swen talks about going without companions, I usually get the impression that he looks at that particular choice as a voluntary means of making the game a lot more challenging for yourself. If that is true, and people are taking Lone Wolf thinking "I can play without companions and be just as effective (or more)", they're probably going to be disappointed.

Just speculating, though.

That's true, Gyson. I'd assumed LW wasn't meant to be more challenging on balance than non-LW gameplay, but who knows. I'm personally really disappointed in the changes, since I was enjoying using just the two main characters with LW (partially because I don't want to equip/micromanage a party of four), and am not looking for a challenge beyond the standard of normal difficulty; now that no longer seems viable. I hope Larian considers this feedback, or at least clarifies what their intention is with the "new" LW.

Ah, okay--the +60% I got was from mousing over your HP. It tells you how much from constitution, gear, etc, and now it incorrectly says +60% from Lone Wolf. I'd assumed it wasn't lying to me!

Now that I've tried it a little more, I have to agree that the 1 less AP recovery is big. Obviously, it all adds up over a few turns, and at least to a rogue, the 2 AP meant a full attack.

I too think this is seemingly a far too large nerf. The only thing they should've touched was the Vitality boost. The additional recovery AP is necessary mainly due to missing out on having 1 additional party member(or 6 AP at the very least per round) and the vitality boost helps out a little because of the way there's less targets for the enemies to focus on. I think reducing the vitality to +40% or +50% would do and perhaps they could be kind enough to give the Lone Wolf characters a scaling ability point increase instead of being a static +1. Such as, it's +1 till "normal" people get 3 per level and then they start gaining +2 so the difference wouldn't end up quite as large.

I'm mostly looking forward to playing this with a friend and both going Lone Wolf so we can get the same feeling we did as when played through Baldur's Gate and the likes. Also, equipping/skilling 4 people in this game is not cheap.

I would hope the savings on not needing to prepare two more party members is something that would be taken into account when balancing the benefits of Lone Wolf though, as the ability to divert those funds/equipment to your mains instead of sharing them amongst 4+ characters is a nice perk of choosing that talent.

Very true. This is why a Lone Wolf character shouldn't be equal to 2x characters but it shouldn't be far less either. I'd say anywhere between 1.4-1.7 ish should be fine. With how flanking works going Lone Wolf actually hurts quite a bit if you're not armor focused(since as far as I know, flanking reduces def rating and not armor rating)

Edit: Forgot to mention the fact that if I understand things correctly exp isn't split in Divinity whereas in Baldur's it was which made "solo" or low amount of party members much more viable due to the increase in experience.

First the thing about the missing new companions and missing AI personality and now they nerfed Lone Wolf, which I was dead set on using on my "main character" for a Party of 3 (with a Ranger companion, which isn't now possible either). Once the editor hits, I'll manually patch that back in... it's practically USELESS now. You give up ONE COMPANION for 60% increased BASE vitality +2 start AP and +1 recovery?! Don't make me laugh.


edit:
I've just checked in game, it says base vitality +70%, +2 max AP and +2 AP per turn. Seems it got nerfed by reducing the vitality bonus by flat 10% and removed the additional starting AP.

I would like to mention that this seems to have been changed again in that quick fix patch following the editor patch.


You now get 70% HP instead of the original 80% and the AP seems to be +2 max AP and +2 turn AP.


Much more reasonable in my opinion.

Sort of related question- do characters in smaller parties gain more exp? Is it divided by how many party members you got?

No, a monster or event is worth X amount of XP and everyone in the party gets X. The only time you get less than X is if NPC guards assist in the killing.

Oh well, that's a shame. I generally prefer smaller parties (or even solo if possible) so the main characters with Lone Wolf are perfect for me. I guess more hp, ap and skill points will have to do.