Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Endgame spells underwhelming

Yea. My weapons are embarrassing..
Edit: let me resize it lol

That's considerably less than 700-800 damage, dude.
Your sword user is ~583
Your spear user is ~554
Still, both of your weapons are better than any legendaries/uniques I found for my 2-handed warrior. Maybe I just got really unlucky.

Aye. I mean the range of max damage. There is no weapon in this with min-max range of ~100.
I am gimping myself a lot there as you can see. I didn't put tormented soul on either. Both toons are using mail armors instead of full plates (coz full plates look like poop). And I am using no sneaking. Str is maxed out on both. So I can only put more into INT.

My toons are as pure melee as it can be.

And I unlocked the secret sellers at lvl 8. So.. I am not that OP.
On the next playthrough will have it at lvl 3. (just discovered that bartering is the most OP ability in game haha)

You really, really don't need to find weapons for melee characters, ever. Blacksmithing gives you more than enough. I don't expect to find decent melee weapons at any point; I think Madora used a grand total of one found weapon throughout the entire game.

I actually lol'd at "your source of damage can break." Um, no, it can't. Not really.

Also, Man-at-Arms has some hard CC, ranged options, AoE options, etc. It's not quite as one-dimensional as "just normal attack this guy." Don't get me wrong, normal attacks are your bread and butter as a melee character, but it's not all you're capable of.

If you've ever played Magic: the Gathering on any sort of competitive level, the best way I can explain it is: melee characters are your win condition for a control deck. The spellcasters in your party are the actual control, but they're not good at closing the game out; they're good at not losing, which is different from being good at winning. The spellcasters set everything up so your melee can quickly and brutally end the battle. This works better than just having more spellcasters, because it means you only need to have control of the battlefield for a turn or two in order to ensure victory. A party without a good melee is like a control deck which hopes to deck the opponent out instead of sticking a threat and ending things then and there.

That's the point - melee characters either need to rely on blacksmithing/crafting, or they need to hope they get good drops. Mages don't need either.
Yeah, your source of damage can break. I've actually had it happen in a fight, simply because I didn't notice the durability was getting low. Had to switch to a (far inferior) backup weapon.
Man-At-Arms has 2 hard cc abilities, both of which can be countered by high Bodybuilding, not to mention that there are a fair number of enemies who are immune to knockdown. It has one aoe ability (2, counting phoenix dive, though PD's damage never impressed me). And unlike magic, you cannot reduce the cooldown on MaA abilities.

I'm not saying that warriors are valueless. Just that they have lower value. You can replace a warrior with a rogue or a ranger, and still have high single target damage. You cannot remove a mage without losing a TON of utility.

Imagine a party of 4 people.
One pure warrior
One pure ranger
One pure rogue
One pure mage

Now lets say you have to lose one of them. Which one is most expendable?
My answer would be "anyone but the mage".

Well, in order of importance.
1. Mage. Far too much is lost if you have zero spellcasters.
2. Warrior. Deals huge damage, surprisingly versatile.
3. Ranger. Bows are pretty good and you'll need at least one high-Perception character.
4. Rogue. Not necessarily horrible, but worse than the others.

Hybridization can kind of alter the situation, however. For example, I ranked Warrior where I did because having access to Man-at-Arms is a good thing, but you can make a Rogue-ish Str/Dex hybrid with those and use daggers instead of a two-hander, and that could work.

Generally, though, I think the best thing is to ditch Rogue, then for your fourth character hybridize the first two. This gives you some resilience if either of your two most important characters -- the mage or the warrior -- fall.

I mean, I haven't been trying to say that spellcasters are horrible. Far from it. It just seems might weird to me for you to be constantly going on about how the second most powerful character type in the game seems underpowered to you. If I did a double Lone Wolf playthrough, it would be a mage and a (Perceptive) warrior; I actually can't imagine going through the game without one.

Man at Arms Divine Light skill is infinitely useful.
With High STR - they will lower all WILL/BODY resist even on bosses.
When that happens, Wizards spell effects are hard to resist.

On crowd: Rain > Lightning Bolt
On Bosses: Shocking Grasp, fail? Go Freezing Touch. Fail? Go Paralyzing Touch. Fail? Blind.

These moves range between 3-4 AP and disables a character totally, giving them 0% chance to dodge.
Warrior switch to power stance and slam after getting Oath'ed.
Nothing in the rogue/ranger arsenal can match that kind of combination.

Do take note that none of them are even level 10+ skills to use - making the thread title very fitting.

I've played about halfway through Cyseal with a double lone wolf mage/ranger + mage/rogue, to test a concept build. It was fine. Fairly challenging, given that I was fighting fucking skeletons, and relying mostly on piercing damage, but it actually worked okay.
I cannot even comprehend trying to do that without having invested points in magic.

It's not that I think Warriors are worth less than Rangers or Rogues. It's that I think Mages are worth more than any of them. Essentially it boils down to the fact that I think Intelligence is overused.
Intelligence improves damage & cc chance, and reduces the cooldown, on more than half the abilities in the game.
A character with no intelligence is very limited, compared to a character with (at least some) intelligence. The more intelligence you have, the more effective you become with most abilities in the game.

How does that compare with Dexterity and Strength?
Strength only improves 1/8th the abilities in the game.
Dex only improves 1/4th.
Neither reduce cooldown.
Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but I don't notice that either increases damage, either. If they do, they don't seem to increase it much.

I suggested, at one point, that Geomancy scale off of Strength and Aerothurge scale off of Dex. This would increase the value of those stats - giving pure Str characters and pure Dex characters more flexibility (and synergy), while making it hard to be a master of all elements for any character.
Int would improve 3/8 the abilities in the game, as would Dex, and Str would improve the other 2/8.

I know a lot of people don't like that idea, for reasons of lore, but I think it would improve the balance of the game and essentially fix any problems I have with mages.

Retards never get far in life.
I have no complaints.

Forest Gump did.

A magic school should never scale off anything but Int.

Anyway, the only spells in Witchcraft you need are: Blind, Oath of Desecration, Summon Undead Decapitator. Well, and Bloodletting to exploit Leech. Everything else... meh... touch range, single target, why weaken them when you can just kill them.

Deathpunch? Soul Sap? Elemental Absorption? Vampiric Touch? Horrific Scream?
Witchcraft has a lot of very good spells.


Right, I know people are opposed to this for lore purposes, but gameplay-wise I think it would fix a lot of stuff. It personally wouldn't bother me much. I've played rpg systems in which magic can be based off of everything from charisma to dexterity to constitution, depending on the spell. A lot of fantasy has magic be based, at least partially, on physical attributes.

I'd add Absorb the Elements and Drain Willpower to that list. Having played with them a little, I'm not a fan of Death Punch (aka really bad Flurry), Vampiric Touch, or Soulsap (just too much AP cost for the effect). Horrific Scream is alright, but I wouldn't go Witchcraft 4 for it alone; I'd just stick with Mass Weakness (aka Horrific Scream's Little Brother). Witchcraft 3 is amazing, though.

Strength is plenty strong already. The Strength-based armours are the best in the game, hands down. Shields are also great for hybrids.

Dexterity is also very strong. Defense rating isn't a joke, and can give you a surprisingly high chance of not being hit by attacks.

My opposition to the Geomancy/Aerotheurge suggestion has nothing to do with lore. The hybrids associated with those attributes would be grossly overpowered.

Why would they be grossly overpowered?
Rogues and Rangers would gain access to some teleportation abilities.
Warriors would get another knockdown ability, an armor buff, and a bless.
Besides that, they would both get a handful of ranged damage abilities.

It would add synergy, but I don't see how it would be grossly overpowered.

Blocking doesn't really scale off of Strength, and while Defense isn't worthless, there are plenty of more effective ways to mitigate damage. Strength WOULD let you wear the best armor, which would make up for the fact that it would only improve 2 of the 8 skills.

Pure-Strength characters are already so powerful that they are in direct competition with pure-Int for the best in the game. You could even make an argument that pure-Strength is better currently, although I believe that argument would be slightly flawed. Still, very close in power. You give them anything at all, and they're better than pure-Int, hands down. What you're talking about goes beyond giving pure-Str something; you'd also be taking away from pure-Int. It wouldn't even be close anymore. The Geomancer idea is totally out of the question.

The Dexterity part of your suggestion is the slightly less crazy half. The Expert Marksman and Scoundrel skillsets are both surprisingly shallow with just a handful of options each, many of which are either dagger-dependent or extremely narrow (ex: Doctor). Spellcasters are admittedly top of the heap, and Dexterity-based classes are at the bottom; your suggestion would bump the bottom up, but hinder spellcasters slightly so that Strength-based would be the current top of the heap (but not by all that much). So although that half of the suggestion isn't crazy, I think we could find a better way to skin this particular cat: specifically, adding more Marksman and Scoundrel skills, as well as freeing a few of the Scoundrel skills from dagger dependency and/or shifting them over to Marksman (ex: Trip, which could be interesting for archers to have when things get close-range).

And sure, fine, I'll admit the Dex-based part actually is a little bit lore-based. But the Str-based part of my argument really isn't; that's just a straight-up bad idea.

I feel like pure Str is only as powerful as it currently is because of a lot of broken mechanics.
Resistance needs to be nerfed - this would affect warriors more than anyone else
Blocking can be pretty overpowered - nerfing this would affect str more than anything else
Leech works best for Man-At-Arms users - nerfing Leech would hit warriors hardest

Several of the talents you want would nerf warriors even more. The removal of Weather the Storm (making it scale off of magic abilities!), and Fashion Plate (which would allow anyone to wear plate armor) would hugely reduce the advantages of warriors.

What I'd propose is actually giving replacement skills for Marksman/Scoundrels because they're unimaginative as hell.

However, Marksman skill set definitely includes their Special Arrows so perhaps people who think they're so limited need to understand that having SPECIAL arrows is part of the kit's arsenal and not just spam active skills. These arrows have no cooldown either, a fine tradeoff for its limited quantity.

Scoundrel on the other hands seem to stop gaining new skill at end game. Kinda disappointing - I was looking forward to more trickery, but it seems possible the rogue class is meant to be a hybrid and not just a one stat end all type.

Mentioning another thread. Interesting...

The best plate armours would still require 13 Strength (actually more than that for higher Armour values, but for 20% to all resists you'd need at least that much). Even with Fashion Plate that would be 10 Strength, not exactly a small investment. If it's really a problem, perhaps 2 instead of 3 for Fashion Plate would be a better idea; 11 Strength is more investment than 10.

If you check the thread I've essentially replaced Weather the Storm with Headstrong (currently a Scoundrel talent). So it's not like I'd be leaving Str-based completely in the lurch. Scoundrel gets its own buffs in return. It would also be very difficult for a spellcaster to capitalize on more than one or two of the elemental resistance talents I've suggested simultaneously; even if they did, it would cost multiple talent points for them to do it.

I actually didn't give my characters Leech during my playthrough. I tried it out later, though, just to confirm that it's as good as people say it is. Warriors are still plenty powerful without Leech.

I don't think blocking should be nerfed at all. Two-handers are already pretty dominant.

Well, first of all, I think Expert Marksman should be renamed "Scout." There are plenty of "Expert Marksman" skills which work fine on rogue-type characters, but it seems a little counterintuitive to level an ability named Marksman on a character who will never touch a bow. A name change would dispel some confusion.

I definitely agree about the special arrows, though. Marksman (or Scout, or whatever) doesn't really need a huge skillset in order for range-type characters to have decent versatility. Scoundrel, on the other hand, definitely needs more tricks, including more which aren't dagger-based. I feel the rangers just need barely enough to actually have to make choices (ex: can't use all available skills unless 5 ranks in ability), and not a whole lot more than that; Scoundrel, on the other hand, needs a lot more than it has now.

According to your "my dream mod" thread, you're replacing Weather the Storm with Amphibian, Dirt Magnet, Heatseeker, and Lightning Rod (all of which scale off of magic talents). You'd also be removing Thick Skin.
This would leave warriors with lower resistances and armor (though your new Headstrong would increase their resistance to cc).

Blocking is perfectly fine at lower levels, but gets ridiculous the farther you go in it. My sword and board warrior has a 73% chance to completely ignore any physical attack (using a shield 7 levels lower than him). For all intents and purposes, he is immune to physical damage. Given how many enemies rely on physical damage, and the fact that block chance cannot be countered in any way, that seems overpowered to me.

Did a test - my 2-handed warrior kills my mage in 3 hits. I don't know how many hits it takes for her to kill my shield warrior, because her weapon broke 40-something hits in. She didn't get him below 30% hp.

Essentially my point here is that the changes you want would nerf warriors. The changes I want would nerf mages, and give buffs to warriors, rogues, and rangers.
Given that we agree that
Mages>Warriors>Rogues&Rangers
our combined changes should theoretically make everyone closer to equal.