Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Game Balance : Melee is terrible

I do? Which one? Virtually everything I mentioned is doable by turn one, and then on every subsequent turn.



I don't deny that two-handed weapons generally win the DPR war, at least for the 1-2 turns of nova they can manage with mage buffs, but that's not really relevant. People expect warriors to be able to tank, which they cannot. Mages can, as well as fulfill every other role. They are a swiss army hammer.



Spells scale with Int, +2 Int bonuses can be guaranteed on your gear through crafting, and mages never run out of spells due to Int also reducing Cooldowns, so ... no.



First, which difficulty mode are we talking about, here? I haven't actually played much on Normal, and that doesn't correspond to my experience on Hard. Second, if that's true, then it's as much true of mages as it is of warriors, which brings us back full circle.

Playing on hard, and I rarely use defensive buffs. Teleport, hard crowd control (stun, freeze), soft crowd control (terrain effects, blind, curse), disposable summoned tanks, and just generally being out of striking distance (haste + glass cannon makes you uncatchable) are usually enough to get through anything without taking many hits.

edit: Part of that is the AI, which seems to always prioritize targets by distance and doesn't seem to understand elemental resistances. Fighting a group with a pyromancer? Why shield up when you can drop a fire elemental and let him tank everything while the enemy heals him for you.

Pre-summon? Lol. I am talking about about running head first into any fight without any prep whatsoever. If I prep the battle field before hand I will kill everything even before using up all AP on the first 2hander lol.

"Tank"?? Tank what? You are implying that something can pose any danger to any toon in your party?

And there is no skill more OP than nullify resistance.

Enemies don't priorise the closest foe, they prioritise summons... hence seeing what you see.

Also I strongly suggest against adding stupid MMO "taunt" stuff to the game.

Okie dokie. Pre-summon saves a handful of AP but isn't really necessary. You'll still have disposable permatanks up soaking everything after the first turn.



Right, because only MMO's have such mechanics and not real RPG's, like Planescape Torment.

Waaaat..... but tenebrium plus nullify resistances plus flurry plus whirlwind plus dust devil?

What this post really says is this:

"I can't figure out how to play my class."

Tanks rock, so figure out how to play.

What are you smoking m8?
Warriors can't tank? What? Subsequent turns? Lmao hahahahaha.

If you can't kill everything in one single turn with that much prep, you fail. Simple as that.

Of coz, I am talking about the hard difficulty. Why did it even occur to you I was talking about anything else? And int has a cap in damage, can't scale. And without nullify resistance you can kiss your damage output goodbye.

Thanks for the learn2play dude! Totally adds to the conversation.

How about this: post video of your kill everything on hard difficulty in one turn melee pro skillz


VVV yeah that's what I thought.

Can give you screenshots of the toons. Not gonna go through troubles posting a vid, I don't have a recording program and I wont install anything just to show you something so obvious.

yep, it's a l2p issue when people come up with this nonsense of melee being terrible. L2P

Summons are very overpowered in this game right now. With just 1 point in Geo you get a spider that automatically scales in power regardless of Int and soaks up thousands of damage every fight. Any character can get that.

Then there are the focused high Int casters with their reduced cooldowns who can spam endless amounts of summons on the field.

And the AI is terrible with this - you can have an elemental tank enemies with pure elemental damage that will continue to gang up on your summon and heal it for its entire duration. After which you just drop another one on them.

It's a fun game but it is actually full of overpowered stuff like that. Heal spells are another example of overpowered stuff. Can't really do anything without them, and with them vitality loss becomes rather meaningless.

Hybrid builds are also impossible to pull off at the moment. Attribute scores need a curve in their cost like abilities so you can have a more even spread for a hybrid build at the same cost of focusing on your main attribute. Right now the only viable build is to focus on one or two attributes.

But as far as the topic goes, the summons make any kind of tank PC obsolete.

[/quote]
Yea. I agree. Hybrid is impossible!!!!!!

And in case you are wondering. Most of the stats came from gears

You are doing it wrong. My Knight is a monster. 2 mages and a rogue/ranger, all 3 do amazing damage and crazy crowd control, this and that.

But when the knight is put down or out, they crumble in an instant. His damage is phenomenal, 2h, and the right utility (haste/oath/fort) makes him a 1 man wrecking crew. Currently my knight has 1,314 HP. The next highest is Jahan with 620.

Men at arms skills are perfect for a tank, sadly I went too much hybrid, but I think with pure STR the cooldown would be much quicker.

So yah, 1h and shield is probably much more about being a meatshield, but 2h build is outrageously good. Sorry.

2-handed melee and daggers both shine pretty bright late game. Huge potential for damage in the right circumstances.

The only melee that seems like it sucks is 1-handed (not daggers), which is pure dogshit. Totally worthless - the only reason you would ever do it is to hold a shield.

That said, I agree with some of grit's suggestions.
Spells and ranged attacks should trigger attacks of opportunity
Shouldn't be limited to 1 AoO
Make AoO a free attribute you get from using melee weapons, not have to waste a talent point on it.
Give AoO a chance to interrupt spell casting.

HOWEVER, to balance it out, I would actually reduce the endgame mobility of warriors. I had 5.00+ movement on my madora at endgame, meaning she was essentially the Flash, running around in full plate with a 2-handed mace.
Armor should reduce your movement by a percentage, not a flat value.
Plate Armor -60% movement
Scale Armor -40%
Robes -20%
Leather Armor -0%
Or something like that. Armor Specialist ability reduces the penalty by (4/8/12/16/20)%
No movement bonus from improving armor.

This would make plate wearers noticeably slower, throughout the entire game BUT with the changes to AoO it would let them control the battlefield more. You'd be legitimately screwed, as a mage, when a dude with a sword gets within striking distance of you. Currently it's no big deal, since you can just throw lightning bolts in his face at point blank and he just has to watch you do it.

Yea. Make gear choices more meaningful. Currently the only reason to wear scale armors (and I do) is because plates look like shit. The latter outclasses scale armors in every other way.

And finally, someone see the OPness of movement speed :p My rouge on first playthrough had like 7 just from items and talents (I don't believe haste or wildfire can make you move any faster at that point). It was so ridiculous that whenever I missed a backstab I could casually move to the other side of my target and used 0 AP, killed him then moved to the next one still 0 AP for movement hahaha

Tbh at the current state of the game pretty much any build works mostly because of how crazily overpowered gear/crafting is. Mages definetely have it easier at the beginning, at mid levels warriors start to outperform mages damage wise because of gear, lategame its kinda even (I don't get all the fuzz about late game warrior aoe dps, WW can maybe deal 1.5 - 2k aoe when buffed, whereas meteor storm can deal 2k+ per meteor, in a much larger area, with ~3 meteors hitting each target on average. Single target will damage potential probably go to the warrior, or more likely rogue, unless the target is super heavily armored, in which case death punch mage will win).

With proper build you can probably solo any encounter mid game forward, be it mage, rogue, ranger or warrior, not using any stupid immortality setups as well. I'm sure soloing the whole game is also possible, although I haven't tried it, and it might require some of the more optimal builds.

You also don't need to stay "pure", since there's a lot to gain from abilities of other classes, and you don't need more than 15 STR with gear (+6 is quite easy to get on items/enchants which don't overlap with any other potentially useful stat bonuses). The only use for more STR is to carry 1000 pound chest and drop it on enemies which is broken too to be fair.

The biggest problem I see as melee is early game, where it takes most of your AP to even get to enemy lines. Rushing blacksmithing 2 to remove movement penalty on armor might help. Melee is also kinda boring because you only get a few abilities and you don't get to use them very often.

Overall I would say that melee is not terrible and discussing which broken build is more broken right now is kinda pointless (Although the most broken build atm is probably a TK build ).

I just wanted to chime in and say that people saying Rangers are king or Rangers are good are blowing smoke Rangers are actually the worst class in the entire game.

The following information came from in the game actually playing a ranger so the perspective is accurate.

They're way too restrictive and almost always miss their targets even when standing directly next to them. The ammunition is limited and a waste when missed. Regular arrows always seem to do more damage than elemental arrows which is complete crap considering elemental arrows are supposed to do more damage because it has damage plus the elemental damage which means 2 damage types instead of just one so that doesn't make any form of sense.

I can deal significant damage in battles with any class EXCEPT a Ranger. I have never been able to get a ranger to do anything people say here they can do. People say they get good hits in with a Ranger but never bother to outline how when asked. And what things people do say doesn't even work. There is no one that will convince me rangers are any good and I refuse to use that class until it's fixed.

7 pages of people outlining how to "get good hits" as you put it, and you ignoring every bit of it.

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=537492&page=1

At its core, this game is taken straight from old school pen and paper RPG's where your basic party was a Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard. The 'classes' in this game are not balanced, but they're also not nearly as unbalanced as the OP in these types of threads would have you believe. We're talking about a party/turn based strategy game with incentives for making some of your party good at non-combat stuff like crafting or loremaster at the expense of combat effectiveness. Where is it written that every character in your game should be able to put out the same amount of damage. Now the game does have balance issues, but this comes from a poor AI and insanely overpowered talents, or combinations of them and not because you haven't figured out how to make a ranger not miss.

No that's nothing but 7 pages of BULLSHIT opinions. So of course I'm going to ignore it. I only follow factual advice that works and not opinions being forced as a fact. nothing in that topic disproves anything I brought up.

tx3000 never actually listens to reason, but for the benefit of anyone else who may read this:

Dexterity increases chance to hit with bows
However there is a penalty to chance to hit if your target is too far
Perception increases the range on how far is too far

So with low Dex and high Per you won't be very accurate at any range, but your accuracy wont change much with range.
With high Dex and low Per you will be very accurate at point blank, and very inaccurate at range.

Special arrows never miss, though enemies can resist their effects.