Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Sup, dagger users! A couple of questions.

To start with i might say that me and my friend spent some time playing that awesome game and we have not experienced such fun for a long time. Great job, Larian!

Also I'm sorry for any mistakes ive made in this post, englando is not my common language.

So what i wanted to ask is: dont you guys think that dagger-based hero is a bit underpowered? We are playing HARD difficulty, keep doing pretty smooth. I'm playing as a scoundrel/witchcraft (mostly scoundrel, got witchcraft for some buffs/debuffs and a skeleton which does almost the same damage as me sometimes, lol) while my friend is playing some elemental based mage. I made a comparison between him and me, so:

While having more CC than me he is able to output more dps also, as well as its aoe and ranged while i have to be in the heart of battle and taking damage aswell.
Most of my gears are of orange quality and perfect for my stat/skillbuild (like one-handed masteries/dexterity/perception etc)as well as daggers are improved by grindstone and i have a couple of them to counter the enemys element, while he got no good drops at all and dont even need staff damage. Now ive got 5 in one handed mastery (2 + 3 from gear) which is +50% one handed damage. So if the enemy is not a skeleton type which are highly resistant to daggers - the highest damage roll i could do (w/o 50% dmg buff from witchcraft) is 70x2 with critical strike and backstab (not sure how it works but seems like about~25% more damage and some critical strike chance from the rear) to a single target. While (not sure how these skills are called) poison spill and fire blast could do the same damage or even more to a big group of enemies, not the single target).

The moment weve encountered Twins-by-fire-joined ive had that ring that grants me an ice shard spell which dealt 160-200 damage to any enemy there from 15 meters, while dagger did about 20-30 damage to these skeletons, which were 2 shotting me with their claymores (about 150-200 damage with each hit, while the damage is fire, not physical, so my friends armor buff didnt work).

Another thing is my invisibility have 10 TURNS cooldown, while mage have 2 turns cooldown invisibility. WHAT? theres no logic here as scoundrel have to be that sneaky asshole, not the mage

Also ive been using bow/xbow from level 5 cuz elemental arrows are easy to get/craft and they have more profit than a singletarget dagger crap. Arrows have AOE CC, free elemental damage of your choice which can be either aoe or single target. And i feel like playing with bow having no passives for it than using my dagger with lots of gear and skills for it. I wonder how much damage 2-handed based hero and native bow users can dish out. =_=

Yeah, i know the thingie that daggers are 2ap/turn, but still lets see - first town is mostly skeletons/well armored mobs, so the average 10 ap dagger turn us: 2ap to get to the rear, 8 ap are roughly 4x(20x2)= 160 damage (to some kind of armored archer with load of defence, which CANT be reduced by dagger but CAN be reduced by bow =_=)while i can use poison cloud + explosive arrow which is 5+5 AP and deal ~200 AOE dmg.

Not sayin that smth is overpowered or underpowered, but i just wonder if i'm doing smth wrong. I feel squishy with 20-50 elemental resistances (w/o res potions which i have), improved orange armor/orange helmet/bracers/shoulders/boots/leech perk. while having less damage then ranged classess and my pet skeleton. maybe i'm supposed to do smth else? crowd controlling with 2 single target stuns so far, or what?

Yet again sorry for that unreadable cryrage (which is not as i'm enjoying that game more and more), but answer me if you feel the same or not, i'm up to listen to any opinion, ty ALOT!

You can't really compare the Twins, because it is a specialized boss that is weak to ice. Not all enemies will be like that... in fact some will be healed by your ice/water spells.

The rogue does need some buffs to do well, e.g. desecration, wildfire, but benefits more from the buffs than most other classes since their base attack is only 2AP.

In the beginning it's a struggle (like any hybrid character) but I find rogue/magic hybrids more efficient than pure caster classes.

I'm playing a rogue/archer (started early game as rogue and branched out - by the Twins I was almost pure rogue). For this specific fight mage is much more useful for dealing damage, and rogue can be used for crowd control (stun, trip) the few stragglers. I recall using a stun dagger to backstab and get guaranteed hits on the enemies to stun as many as possible and using tactical retreat to jump to the idol and backstab it to death.

As for talents, consider investing in Bully - you get +50% damage to enemies with certain debuffs which is gravy when you find a dagger that causes said status effect.

For twins, mage + Ice elem was king - soon enough you'll be fighting non skellies and your rogue will really start to shine.

I hope it will do fine later, we killed twins from the first try, it was just a comparison example, but yeah, if there wont be any specific monsters like this one the game would be boring :>

My friend plays the rogue in my game and she is able to take out one priority target (as in kill them) as well as CC one other on the 2nd turn.

It gets better

Btw, what do you think about invisibility cooldowns 10 for scoundrel and 2 for mage?

I think Rogue cooldown is fine, but Inivisbility needs to be 5 or 6 at least - seems slightly overpowered

not really i think its pretty much like a rogue should be, lethal on light armored enemies like mages/archers, subtle and sneaky

ofc you cant send a rogue in the middle of the fight too early but its kit is ok i think, he isnt a power fighter but instead can pick the targets better than any other class


yeah but your attack cost 2... also you can have good procs like stun or other debuffs to combo with other stuff (Chill etc)

Daggers themselves are very, very strong. One attack is 1 AP, so take the list dagger damage and multiply it by 3/4/6, and then compare it to other weapons; even as far as attacks of opportunity go, you need to multiply by 2. Good weapons.

Backstab? Not nearly as good. The main problem is monsters changing their facing during your turn. This is the only talent in the game suffers from things changing between the start of one's own turn and the end of it; until they run out of AP, everyone else is free to wreak as much havoc as possible with all enemies remaining static.

If they simply disable enemy facing changes outside of their own turns, and maybe a little UI indicator of the appropriate backstab zone, I don't think there would be any problems.

i don't have this problem with enough movement you can re-position for free if you miss and they change direction.

About dagger skills...

Rogue: Dagger's Drawn
Deal four times your weapon damage.

Skill : Scoundrel
Requirement: Dagger
Action Point : 8
Cooldown : 12
Spell Level : 11
Dexterity : 9
Range : 1m


So this skill cost 8 ap and has pretty much the same damage and AP cost as 4 attacks with the negative effect of only proccing your status effects 4 times instead of 8. You also lose out on guerilla bonuses. Am I missing something or is this skill literally worse than useless?

you miss that normal attacks can miss, the skills cant

also skills usually scale with dex, while normal attacks dont, didnt try if this does scale or not though

Daggers Drawn attacks can miss.

I was also thinking that the skill is worthless, but it benefit from your dext, and deal WAY better damages than 4 normal attack when your dexterity hit 12+.

When you miss a hit, your target will turn to face you ONLY the FIRST time.
I didn't find that to be an issue when:
-your hit chance are really high if you have the corresponding trait (+20% hit chance on backstab)
-you can't miss on stunned/tripped enemies

I coupled my low level rogue with ranger. And he usually starts combat firing of his ricochet arrow. Then special arrows if need be. But if not, the rangers skill jump out of danger is a teleport that you can use to jump right behind a mob and backstab.

It almost feels like a superhero move

I usually fire arrow, then move forward with the rest of my AP, so he is a slowly advancing char till I decide he should join in the fray.

I have a rogue, and from what I have seen on the way to his current level of 15 I have to say that they excel at not being hit, and are able to maneuver around the battlefield to priority targets.

A high Sneak level is vital for a rogue, as are the talents Speedcreeper, Backstabber and Geurilla. With a higher Sneak level it costs less to enter sneak mode mid-combat, which is useful for increasing DPS and preventing enemies from knowing where you are. You can position yourself behind the enemy while the mage (or other party members) occupy their attention at the front, and the enemies will never turn around to uncover your sneaking since (from their perspective) there is nothing behind them to target.

Smoke clouds are also beneficial to sneaking, since it blocks Line of Sight. If your rogue is in the middle of a Smoke Cloud he can be right next to the enemy looking the enemy in the eye and still be able to enter Sneak mode (and not be targeted by the enemy).

Basically, the key to being a good rogue is having a good Sneak skill. You don't have to worry about them being squishy (or a Glass Cannon) if the enemy can't target them.

Btw are there any orange quality daggers? Cuz we found ~10-15 swords/axes/scythes but no daggers.