Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Best character builds - for you (spoilers)

After reading quite a few posts about how some builds are supposedly bad or how some are "not as good" as others i think we could all use a thread where everyone will post what character builds they are using and whats good about them.

Ive seen posts by other players that use builds i haven't tried and they report those perform awesomely too, so im interested to hear what other people found out in this sense.

I tend to spread the skills a lot and play hybrids and i find all of them great.

But, for starters a few simple ones.



1. Warrior-ish skills (Man at arms) + Air magic
Rogue-ish skills + Air magic

- or a combination of all these three skills.

I find both of these melee type of skills have great synergy with Air magic. It gives you a few long range spells to use from distance if you need to, and a very handy Teleport spell, but also a lot of protection like turn to Air and spells like Lightning strike for direct offense. Perfect for close and personal combat.

Throw in one level of Witchcraft and its a beaut.



2. Marksman skill + Earth magic

Marksman has several healing and status effect removing spells to help your melee characters, great offense with special arrows and the Earth magic compliments such long range character perfectly. Youre able to buff your frontliners even more and strike enemies with a few handy long range spells - while you also get a great spider summon early.

btw, i really liked the Boulder-dash spell... which has now been turned into Boulder-bash. Why cant we have both?



.......



As you see all these synargize perfectly and then compliment and enhance each other even more.


What good builds the rest of you are using?



Write what actual builds you are using and are good, for you - here.
Not what you think might be good or what you think might not be.

REAL IN-GAME BUILDS YOU ARE ACTUALLY USING AND ARE SATISFIED WITH. Then explain why.

The Marksman skill + Earth magic sounds like an interesting build

I started out with the party of 2 casters(hydro+Pyro and aero+geo+witch for the combos during first round), a ranger (pure marksman) and a tank (MAA, 2h and crafting/BS), but after a while I found that the ranger felt both too boring to play, and quite unreliable outside of the special arrows. Since I play on hard my normal shots have too high miss-percentage at mid-max range (I think I hit lvl 8 and even had 10 perception at that time).

I've ended up rerolling the ranger into a pure melee rogue, who actually just carries a bow around just for special arrow usage at pulls. I haven't gotten that far yet with this setup, but it certainly feels much more fun to play, and the dps of a properly built/played meleerogue is insane. I'm still uncertain how she will fare in the eventual cluster****s that I know will happen later on, but it will definitely be fun!

At the moment my biggest question is whether I will sink any points at all into weaponry, or if I should wait for tenebrium on both rogue and tank.

When I actually get my copy, I was thinking of doing a Dark Ranger for Scarlett and a Spellsword for Roderick.

Dark Ranger is more or less something along the lines of Sylvanas from World of Warcraft. Heavy use of bows and special arrows and sometimes a dagger, with some Expert Marksman and Scoundrel skills but mix in a bit of Witchcraft. She'd also be the main one I'd control for speaking to NPC's, thievery and so on.

Spellsword is more or less similar to the idea in Dungeons & Dragons where he's a sword and shield user with heavy armour and some Man-at-Arms skills, but spice it up with some Pyrokinetic and Geomancer skills and he'd mostly be my loremaster, craftsman and blacksmith.

The idea was to cover what the two main companions won't and work with them in different playstyles without being too generic. I'm not a fan of Henchmen myself as hirelings tend to deter from the story and are typically devoid of life.

I've yet to test it in the release version though, so I'm not sure how these builds will go...but they seemed reasonable, if not challenging enough on hard in the beta.

There's really no point to limiting yourself to only one or two types of magic, if you're putting the attribute points in intelligent you may as well put at least one ability point in each school so you can cherry pick all the best.

Also, using magic damage and archery/melee is often just waste of AP. You will do better stacking one stat for damage. Getting the base 8 int needed for all the nice magic buffs is certainly a potentially good idea for any build, but your damage should usually be focused on whatever stat you stack highest (dex for daggers/bow, str for general melee, int for magic damage). Especially since those stats will also boost relevant skill's CC potential and CDs as well.

You do not want to spread yourself thin. Focus on one main damage stat and deal damage primarily with the abilities it affects, but you can dip into other abilities for buffs and utility.

I'd say either dex or int are worth putting 8 points in solely for utility like haste and invisibility. A mage with rogue/ranger utility is nice, and a rogue or range with mage utility is also. Str however, isn't worth dipping into, you either go full melee warrior or you don't bother with it. You can dip into dex or int w/a strength build, but you should never dip into str with a dex or int build.

Keep in mind that it takes 15 points to max a school, and you get 49 total, so if you intend to actually cast max level spells from each school with no AP-penalty you can max 3 schools at most. A lot of (important) spells are also very situational, and having 3 spell slots can leave you unable to cope with unforeseen situations.

This also leaves you with rank 1 in 4 other abilities, or one rank 1 ability and one rank 2 ability.

There's also more to game than pure damage output. I know this might be hard to believe, but sometimes purposely gimping yourself for a better challenge is more enjoyable than steamrolling everything in your path just because you can.

In my case at least, I don't need to pick more than two schools...because I will be carrying companions with me and have zero interest in silly Glass Cannon or Lone Wolf at the cost of potentially interesting characters and story that comes with them.

Hybrid builds do work, and can work very well. Just because they don't destroy everything in their wake it at first glance it doesn't make them any less fun or good either. Some of the perfect examples of how good hybrids can be are littered throughout pencil and paper RPG's and the video games based off them, if you take the extra time to understand everything you need to know.

It seems i wasnt clear enough...

Write what actual builds you are using and are good, for you - here.

Not what you think might be good or what you think might not be.


REAL IN-GAME BUILDS YOU ARE ACTUALLY USING AND ARE SATISFIED WITH. Then explain why.

mkay?




thanks to anesthetise for a single relevant post.

You were clear enough, but obviously blind to the subtle detail in each of the replies.

If we want to get picky, yours weren't even builds themselves. A build would display typical point allocation of attributes and abilities, chosen talents, preferred skill usage and the basic tactics it employs under normal circumstances along with extra strategy for situational moments.

I explained the same level of basic structure for my "intended" characters and a simple reason as to why based on beta gameplay, because I don't have my release copy yet, as did Fellgnome.

You did put this in GENERAL forum section. If you wanted hard-lined detail of people's builds without them going off the tracks slightly, then you should've put it in the Help/Tips/Tricks section where it belongs.

Mkay?

There is no "best" character build in my opinion.

It seems common that people build chars that compliment themselves. Like air/water and fire/earth wizards. But when they do so it takes 2 turns to get the effect you want, and the enemy moves around. So better to have one char be able to setup, and another to unleash. Like this you can do it in one turn, a wizard chasts oil, and a ranger uses a fire arrow for example.

Its the same thing with a buff like Oath of desecration, if your warrior or rogue is casting it on himself, that is a whole turn out of 3 or so that is spend. If another char casts the buff the damage dealer can get full use of it. Same with haste, you will often want someone else to cast it to be able to use it in the same turn.

From what I;ve read D:OS hit another homer in character builds. I've read so many successes with so many different types of builds, some very clever. This was one of the big strengths of DnD and I feel D:OS has matched and perhaps exceeded that and powers in D:OS are more fun that the standard DnD fare.

I apologize to the OP if this doesn't fit the structure of answer he was looking for and is another wasted post. But to say best... I think there are so many good ones and I'm not sure many of us know the best one's are yet. We have seen a few this or that sucks threads, but have all been dismissed. It seems everything is pretty viable and feel that was the goal. Perhaps that is a sign the game is too easy? Maybe. But I'm sure it is appreciated by the general gaming community.

I prefer hybrid characters... which by the way were deemed terrible in a post a week or two back. They're not.

What I'm playing now:

1) 5-school spellcaster, who's the face character and item identifier
2) Melee fighter/tank, dabbling in witchcraft and scoundrel, who's the crafter

Both have Lone Wolf and Leech. Nobody has Dex.

How it works:

Tank: if I could retrain, I would drop witchcraft and scoundrel. The latter doesn't do much for a Strength-based fighter, and bloodletting doesn't heal my caster enough to justify it. Instead I would probably take a single point of geomancy or aeromancy, maybe both, because spiders and telekinesis are 1-point wonders. Overall this character is quite tough and hits very hard. Bloodletting cast on this character heals ridiculously well (it's probably a bug). Crafting seems good mostly for making arrows, which I don't even use but sell; it's rarely paid off otherwise.


Caster: I like having an enormous variety of spells on hand. I find it difficult to choose a spell school I would drop. I think with the extra points from Lone Wolf, taking all 5 schools is the way to go. I don't think I would change a thing.


That said, without Lone Wolf I would probably want casters to specialize more, and I probably wouldn't choose a melee tank as one of my two main characters since whats-her-name is quite capable.

It only takes two turns if you don't have the AP do do it in one.

This is admittedly the case for most characters unless they have high speed, but if you are willing to run a glass cannon mage on the back line, and I really don't know why you wouldn't do that if you are running four characters, he'll easily be able to make both effects in one turn in any turn but the first one from early in the game.

(If you are running hard difficulty, Glass Cannon hurts a lot due to the additive stacking of health modifiers, but if you have four characters and the mage has rudimentary defensive spells, you can hack it.)


While I agree that it is very practical to have somebody else in the role of buffing a frontline warrior, Oath of Desecration is only 3 AP and can easily be fitted into a warrior's AP budget.

If you are going to have your warrior being a warrior-mage with 8 int (for 100% cast on the lowlevel buffs), it would be silly not to spend a single point on witchcraft to pick up Oath of Desecration.

Consider carefully whether you gain all that much from skill 5 over skill 4 for each school. You almost certainly don't need to know all spells from all schools (though I guess it might be fun just to say you did it), so you don't need 5 for knowledge (in some schools, even 2 or 3 might be enough depending on your focus), so all that matters is which spells you are okay with paying a small surcharge in AP for and whether you are interested in any of the skill 5 talents.

For only 15 points you can pick up man-at-arms and get the Picture of Health and Weather the Storm traits, which will make your caster considerably more durable, something of some importance when running two characters rather than four, where your caster will more frequently come under attack.

(Also Opportunist and Sidewinder, but the first doesn't help your defence and the second is marginal).

If we open that can of worms up, every build is fine and there's no sense discussing what's "good", really.

If a build is in the bottom, say, ~75% relative power wise, it's a mediocre or bad build. You can say it's a fun build, but that's far more subject to individual preference and it's likely fewer people will have fun playing bad builds than good ones.

Hybrids working well in other character building systems is irrelevant. There are games where hybrids are clearly the most powerful, there are rare games where it's balanced, and there are games where you're discouraged from hybridization heavily.

Divinity: Original Sin is somewhere between the latter two. You can certainly pull off certain hybrids but a 50/50 split will just be plain bad. It's a matter of action points.

To simplify it: If you can have four options that cost 6 AP and deal 20 damage, or two options that cost 6 AP and deal 30 damage, but only 12 AP per turn anyway, guess what? The latter is obviously better, and that's in a nutshell why hybrids suck. The game further penalizes hybrids in other was as well but that's the main factor I'd say.

You can afford to dip 3 points into one extra dmg attribute but you're almost never going to be better off splitting between two evenly. To even further emphasize that we have the secondary attributes that encourage focus in one dmg attribute even more. So in the above example, the hybrid may even have less AP than the pure due to less points to spend on speed.

And just to add even more to the downsides, we have CDs and AP costs being reduced by your dmg stat (str/dex/int) which means a hybrid is getting less effective skills for more total skills that they can use less often. After a certain point, you simply need stronger skills and lower CDs more than you need more skills.

Your whole post was good, not saying I totally agree. But the last sentence is sort of the Cliff Notes version wrapped up in a sentence.

All or most powers scale, so the first Flare you get, gets stronger as you go, correct?

So that makes hybrids totaly more viable, if they didn't scale, it would kill hybrids mostly.

But the big point is, yes you need to figure out what skills you want to cover the bases, more than that isn't needed and then you are best getting AP up and CD down.

The game is pretty darn good in combat, you can stay focused on a few and really max the ability in terms of power, AP usage and CD. Or you can sacrifice some of that for having many more tricks in the bag. Since the game imo, once understood isn't terribly difficult, you can easily go with the more "tricks in the bag" approach for diversity/perhaps fun if you like and still have a great time.

Here are my builds:

One guy maxing int/speed/perception with points in every single spell school.

One guy maxing int/speed/perception with points in every single spell school.

They buff each other and summon armored skeletons at the start of every battle.

The only problem has been badly designed enemies immune to literally all elements, forcing me to kill them with only my summons and the few spells that deal physical damage.

After a while I capped out on int and gave my guys enough strength to use heavy armor and shields; they both had 50%+ block (one had 76%, he found a really nice shield) and 150+ armor along with 80%+ all resists, and immunity to tons of status effects like knockdown, stunned, and frozen (and they took no poison or fire damage, so I literally just stood there casting all my aoe spells on top of my guys). Literally nothing even touched them.

Battles got real boring, though. I guess spellcasters don't scale well, because it would take me forever to kill some of the enemies, while they never did any damage to me.

I think the only time anyone died was to some of those super lame traps that would instantly kill you with 60,000+ damage. Oh, a mound! Let's dig it up! Do I want to lower the game's difficulty? Pretty shit game design that, man.

Gee... it seems my words are too goddamn complicated. Even when written in extra large letters in COLORS.

You are not to decide which are the "best builds".
You are to say which ones are BEST FOR YOU. THE BUILDS YOU ARE PLAYING WITH. THATS ALL!


No need to go technical either. -

Just bloody write what builds you are finding good! For yourself!

Are you not capable of reading something?

This is not a thread for you to argue is the game good or not or what specific things to do or not! Want to talk about that? Go -fly- off into one of hundred such threads around.


-
Simulacrum, Youve found a way to make the game horrible and boring for yourself! Congratulations!
But do complain about yourself someplace else! ("after a while" - phah!)





Good.

More just like this. Its really simple.



- edited rude language although it was all actually correct thing to say -

The Zombie Battlemage - Man at arms (Cure Wounds great early game spell for near 1 shotting Zombies) Airmagic (for teleport and chilling) and Earthmagic (poisons for self heals and Boulderdash provides a good knockdown early game) get some points in telekinesis and carry around poison barrels (Make sure there is no enemy in the fight that can cast fire on the poison field before placing down your barrel) with your team mates healing you with bloodletting you are basically immortal.

Main Talents:
Zombie
Leech

Your Secondary hero is pretty much whatever you want. (main hero does most of the work anyway)

You will need a background mage for waters spells / witchcraft / fire spells optional (scrolls do just as well but you want to avoid fire untill you have decent fire resist on your Zombie hero)
This character will also be used as a healer for your other characters that don't have Zombie.


I usually give each henchman / companaion 1 in witchcraft for Bloodletting so i can heal to 100% for 2 turns each time its required, and since a lot of enemies use poison Zombie becomes valuable. I start stacking Fire Resist ASAP (over 100% is desired) that way fire / poison combos heal me and they are fairly common combos from the enemy AI.


That is what i currently play, i am on Normal difficulty and the only character who has died is Madora (Numerous times lol)