Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks Warriors SUCK in this game

I am co-oping with a friend who is a Wizard, while I am a Warrior. He does most of the damage and at times obliterates areas to Kingdom Come! I, on the other hand, am just cannon-meat. I take damage, but I do very little damage myself. I also TRIP AND FALL all the damn time! What is up with that? Madora also sucks.

Warriors are supposed to be able to take more damage than wizards, but they BARELY handle more. I am only level 4 I think and I've been putting skills into Constiturion and Strength. I also found some decent +20 and even a +31 armor, +8 shield, a helmet, etc. Yet, I still do less damage with my awesome single-handed axe that takes 3 action points to do something like 47-60 damage. I mean when I hit, I do good damage, but wizards cause WAY more damage with their spells and over great distances. Warrior are seriously under-powered in this game. They die really fast, much faster than they should be to be.

I've played many games as a tank, and a tank is supposed to be just that - a TANK, taking on many opponents at once without dying too fast. I know this game is different, but with all its creativity and use of environment, intelligence, etc. is made Warriors a useless class.

Then there is the whole thing of tripping and falling over ANYTHING at any time! WTF is that?

It also creates a big problem when my friend casts Wizard AOE spells that damage me as well, almost as bad as enemies. That makes Warrior + Wizard a really bad combination because Warriors only fight up close, where they are vulnerable to friendly AOE spells.

Anyway, I think this game needed a few more months to iron out the bugs and re-balance all the classes. From what I saw in the beta release notes, a TON of features were only recently added. How do developer just manage to add something that affects the whole game without going through it and re-balancing it?

I couldn't disagree more. My battlemage and Madora do tons of damage. Avoiding environmental issues, including (especially?) the ones you create with your caster(s), is part of the skill required by the game. As you level up, you also get the Featherfall spell which lets you move melee characters around without damaging them (unlike Teleport), so that helps some. But the real trick is in properly managing your environment.

Edit: I agree with the post below about using two handers. Much more damage (obviously) than one handers.

Solutions to your problem/s:

A. Find and use a Legendary Two-Hander. One-Handed is not going to do a ton of damage unless its a dagger with backstab. Melee damage is insane, if you do it right.

B. Craft Snow Shoes (Nine Inch Nails + Any shoes) Crafting 5 OR get the Stand your Ground talent

C. Get rid of the idea of tanking, this game does not have taunt which means you cannot control aggro. If you want to make sure you are the only one taking damage then you should spec a str character with a lot of CC skills and get attack of opportunity.

This game is not a holy-trinity type of game. It's been designed so that you build a hybrid character and take care of yourself.

Well the one handed is good as a meat-shield since it can block; and the blocking is not that unreasonable. Having said that I think if I started over I woudl dump my 1 handed warrior.

Btw how does backstab work ?

Also make sure you really buff your warriors up before they go.
I quite enjoy using my Knight, Madora does do good damage with her two-handed sword and my guy backs her up pretty well with his mace and shield.
You can always use Teleport to move enemies into their range without endangering them too much too.

Backstab is insanely insane. Think of every batman villain and multiply that by 10 kind of insane. At level 7, I can do 1K damage to a single mob.

You're confusing this with WoW.

I spent many an hour tanking in WoW on my bear (a few world number one world of log entries) or in other game, often as a dex-based tank with quarterstaves and double-bladed lightsabers. Because in those games, they had a role designated as tank... but D:OS does not.

There is no aggro management, there is no threat, there are only 2 things in combat you need to concern yourself with in D:OS - Damage, and Control.

Characters can spend their turn performing one of those two actions - either they dish out some damage, or they control the board. Tanking, were it present, would be a form of control... but it's not. Str-based characters have the worst levels of board control and are compensated with a couple of things:

1. 2h str characters dish out the highest levels of consistant damage. Spellcasters often claim to be higher and sometimes it's true, but really a Str char will put out more damage themselves. What they won't do is put out the damage while also stunning six mobs or setting eight mobs on fire, not unless their weapon is really amazing ha!
2. Man-at-arms users get access to some pretty awesome talents, most notably Weather the Storm. Weather the Storm grants 10%*Arms level to all resistances, making it possible to stack 100% resists on them so they're immune to that kind of damage (105% and they actually gain health from it!).
They also have Picture of Health for 5%*Arms as bonus health.
3. Str users only need to invest in 1 skill to get access to their skills, unlike Dex who need 2 and Int who can have up to 5. This saves them points for places such as 2h skill adding 50% more damage. So they can use their skill points for other uses, like resisting stun. Something a caster would struggle with.
4. Finally, there exists weaponry and armor designed for lower strength players such as 1h weapons/shields or scale armor instead of plate. With this in mind ,you can take your Str guy and mix in some int magic like witchcraft to give 50% more damage, or pyro to take a haste buff. But what you can't do is make a tank char like in MMOs, because there is no threat generation/taunt function.

Good luck shifting your perspectives because you wont enjoy the game until you do, you'll just get frustrated you can't make a prot warrior like you can in games which are nothing like this in the slightest but have RPG in their description confusing you into believing they are.

Melee is a bit underperforming in the early stages of the game, but it's silly to judge them when you've only hit level 4.

Look in to talents, specifically: Weather the Storm (50% in all magic resistances), Leech (healing from blood which is often in the front lines) and Picture of Health (extra health which scales according to man at arms level).

Have a character skilled in blacksmithing and crafting. Start improving weapons by using the whetstone, improving armors with the anvil, adding elemental damage to weapons with essences and many other crafting/blacksmithing creations).

Invest in more skills. Skills such as battering ram, flurry, whirlwind, power stance and rage are all great. Combine that with oath of desecration + power stance + rage + haste and you won't be complaining about them sucking.

Also, put a few points in Body Building and Willpower, it won't give you a 100% reduction to CC, but it certainly helps, don't rely on it though (focus on the enemies which actually dish out the CC, disable them first).

I meant how do you backstab; is it an active skill you apply; or is it a passive skill everytime you hit someone with a dagge?

Warriors are literally invincible and the highest damage class when specced properly, you just need to learn to spec them.

Rule of thumb seems to have emerged.



In Original Sin only the players suck. (no offense meant but some people just need to try)

(barring smaller issues and few bugs still remaining or popping up)

I have to agree with those who disagree with the original poster. I find warriors to be the most powerful when have a good two handed weapon, good armour and enough constitution. Man-at-war warrior style skills are extremely powerful plus some talent attributes/skills make warriors amazing.

Please don't make new threads about already discussed topics all the time.

Use the forum search, for God's sake.

Melee is NOT underpowered. I would even go as far as to say it is slightly overpowered compared to magic. The simple fact is, that magic users have nothing in terms of actual 'DPT' (I suppose the best way to reshape DPS into a turnbased alternative :D). Mages can burst, buff, debuff and manipulate but they are hardly ever enough to single-handedly tear down a big HP pool - after a couple of turns their cooldowns are in the way and all you do is fire off overly costly single shots.

Melee is extremely powerful starting from level 1, gets ridiculous at level 7 and stays that way until cap. Man-At-Arms is one of the most useful skill lines in the game. So lets compare Man-At-Arms with your average magic user.

- Cure Wounds is unsurpassed as a level 1 spotheal, which becomes available through magic only through Water of Life and very expensive/demanding (statwise) spothealing at higher levels.

- Dust Devil is utter and total destruction in a 360 degree radius on a well designed and buffed Warrior. Add a slow effect, Bully, and Oath and you have a walking nuke. A Pyrokinetic mage has Explode as its AoE nuke, but this also damages allies and the mage itself making it far less useful apart from the significantly lower damage.

- Whirlwind builds upon Dust Devil with a higher damage cap and radius, while being on a separate cooldown. This allows for two AoE nukes in a single turn if planned correctly.

- Battering Ram is unsurpassed as an AoE knockdown. Knockdowns combined with Bully add 50% damage. Add in Oath and Melee Power Stance and you have a solid 125% damage increase for at least 1 full turn. It also serves as an escape and a 'taunt' of sorts through the knockdown. Magic users... have nothing that compares.

Should we really continue into the skillset offered past level 7? I will just mention Flurry to close this meaningless discussion, which is one of the highest single-target damagers in the game.

Oh, and did I mention the Bully talent? It's a musthave in my book.

Apart from the skill line itself, if you want something tanky pick up 1h/shield, if you want max damage go two-handed, but that would be pretty obvious stuff to me.

Early on melee has a huge slew of problems, and later on it can get huge resists so it starts healing from stuff. Mages however just kind of wreck things with some cooldown problems here and there early, and late have so many offensive spells and such low cooldowns that it's never a problem.

Battering Ram is garbage as an AoE knockdown, as it only works about 1/5 of the time (so you usually only knockdown one person hit) and only lasts for 1 turn. Boulder Smash is far superior for AoE knockdown, and it's a low level skill, that leaves poison for a massive damage fire combo that's better than bully and doesn't even require the talent.

Cure Wounds is the worst heal early. Because cure wounds scales better than hydrosophist heals it becomes worth its higher AP cost, but still isn't better because of its limited range and massive cooldown.

Bully only works on a handful of disables and because of the massive damage scaling compared to enemy survivability scaling it's only helpful in the early levels.

Whirlwind, Flurry, and Rage are all amazing skills. Flurry mostly because it has an AP cost that seems balanced for onehanders that isn't changed on twohanders. You only ever get one whirlwind in the entire game though, so only one of your melees will ever have it.

Of course oath of desecration gives the same bonus as rage without the drawbacks... but you can stack them.

However if enemy survivability scaled well enough for man-at-arms guys to not burst them down then mages would still be better later. Early on regular attacks with no cooldown are good, but they're garbage when the mage spells have 1-3 turn cooldowns. Man-at-Arms skills are only good later because their damage scales through the roof.

Melee overpowered compared to magic? Well, not in my opinion.

For healing? Nope, Cure Wounds is a good single nuke heal, but it has a lengthy cooldown. Water heals beat the pants off it.

AoE damage? Oh please, you mention one of the only AoE spells I never even had on my quickbar. Mages have Small Fireball, Chain Lightning, Acid Breath, Winter Blast, Infectious Flame, Earthquake, Storm, Meteor Shower, Hail Attack, Boulder Bash, Deadly Spores, Lightning Strike and Explode. Most of those can be done from up to 17 metres away, not much worry about damaging allies from there. Cooldowns? Who cares, I have a different spell to throw from the ridiculously large pool of available abilities.

Single target damage? Here you almost certainly are right, a warrior or rogue can lay on a huge amount of pain to one enemy. However this is not to say wizards are lacking, they can put out a lot of pain from long range, inflicting debuffs without compromising their damage in the slightest.

Buffing. The best buffs either come from talents or from mages. Oath of Desecration, Absorb the Elements, various elemental shield spells, Wildfire.

Crowd control. Nope, melee loses here again. Ice spells all freeze, air spells almost all stun (and the one that doesn't can throw an enemy 15 metres away anyway), some earth spells knockdown. That and a mage can easily summon creatures and create terrain effects to control the battlefield.

Having said all that, I don't see the melee as underpowered at all, but trying to say it's overpowered relative to magic is burying your head in the sand.

It's debatable to say melee is better at higher levels. Getting 120% resists means you can get healed even from your own mage's attacks. Combining that with a high armor rating and leech means physical attacks hardly scratch you. Then when all this comes in, the battering ram > whirlwind > dust devil combo with rage on is absurd, or just using flurry to take out bosses. A mage buffing a warrior that can do that with wildfire and oath of desecration creates a ridiculous powerhouse.

But melee is definitely weaker early where if they don't take zombie then they will have a really, really bad time. It's not as simple as setting fire to the zombies either as zombies on fire explode for even more damage to you since they explode both in poison and fire. Zombie however is extremely meh after Cyseal and I'd rather be able to use the heals.

Honestly, it's pretty silly to compare both, since both of them together are better than sticking with only one type in your whole party. That said, if you did want to compare, you could do a much more in-depth analysis on survivability.


Cure Wounds is a trash skill after level 10 to 15, why? Because you don't even need it as a warrior for survivability, by that time you could easily achieve 100%+ in the four magic resistances. You'll heal up so much from enemy elemental attacks, physical and tenebrium attacks become almost meaningless with the resistance healing and also leech, which is more effective for front line units since they can tank easily with 6+ enemies surrounding them.

Those levels are actually when I started using cure wounds. My "paladin" and my friend's rogue are taking massive physical damage that simply has to be healed back quickly sometimes. Sure the much lower cooldown hydro regenerate would heal a decent chunk, but sometimes I take more damage than that in a single turn even with 100+ resistances, ~110 armor rating, and 44% block.

There's also some bug that causes cure wounds to heal the next turn as well, but I haven't figured out how to reproduce it yet, just had it happen a couple of times.

Woah, who said anything about sucking? We've made excellent progress ever since we found out where to get Level 3 enemies outside of Cyseal. Playing on EASY was pathetically easy, but on Normal, it gets tedious at times, but so far there hasn't been an area where we'd get stuck. No need to talk about sucking! I grew up on games like BG 1/2, IceWind Dale 1/2, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout 2.

I sort of did say that my melee damage is fine, but its very local, while AOE spells and generally-speaking spells damage more enemies and just seem far more useful for environment-based attacks, like creating rain and then freezing enemies or cooling down burning skeletons or exploding acid. Those environmental aspects don't go too well with Warriors, who TRIP and FALL when its raining. Warriors can't attack those barrels without taking a ton of damage. That makes them somewhat useless because if there are poison barrels near-by the enemies, then the best course of action for a Warrior is just stand back and let the Wizard do all the work or else Warrior will get in the way and likely die from an acid burning explosion. Even without barrels, making it rain and then freezing enemies works great, but your warrior better be nowhere close or he/she will also freeze. Again, best course of action - stand back and let the Wizard do all the work. That is not fun for a Warrior to just stand back!

What I also stressed is that I die fast RELATIVE to the Wizard, even though I have great armor, shield, etc. I've been putting points into Constitution and Strength, but as soon as we play on Normal, I end up taking about the same amount of damage as my buddy's Wizard. That is plain wrong - I am supposed to be at least 2x-3x harder to kill with melee weapons. Magic spells is a different story, but dying as if I had no armor and wasn't even a warrior makes no sense.

With all that said, we're still making progress, but I mostly just stay out of the way or else I die from explosions or some kind of from all the enemies piling up on me and kicking my ass quickly. I wanted to see how much damage I would take without armor and no surprise there because I took only a bit more damage than with a +31 armor!

It could be a game glitch because at times I would see my buddy's Wizard just DRIFT into nothingness, go through walls, and disappear into the void. Another time all the party members were 100% naked on my screen, while they looked fine on my mate's screen. I don't know, but my Warrior doesn't seem right...