Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks Picture of Health is a trash talent

According to other posts on this forum, the formula for the relationship between constitution and vitality is:

HP = (Level + 1)/2) x (0,0088 x CON^3 + 0,1772 x CON^2 + 6,8279 x CON + 13,08)

(credit to Jasper1983)

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=532817

I've plugged this formula into a spreadsheet and under no circumstances does Picture of Health confer more HP than the 2 points in Constitution that can be obtained by trading an unused talent point to the demon. With the added bonus to Action Points that you get from Constitution, there is no reason to take Picture of Health as a talent unless you have constitution maxed and want even more HP (but that stat allocation makes for a rather useless meat shield character). It seems to me that taking +2 Constitution is the clear winner.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something?

I think it gives a % bonus to the result of the formula above. For my build I did use Picture of Health with Weather the Storm and Thick Skin, so that just by upgrading Man-at-Arms I received a bonus to armor, resistance, and hp. So in my opinion, the talent is only useful if used in conjunction with the other 2, or if like you said creating a meat shield character.

Thick Skin is an even bigger waste of talent point as it give 15 armour for 1 talent point... and that is with rank 5 MAA. After the patch WTS is not as good as it was as you can easily get 80% without having WTS.

That being sad, having that demon ingame means that 90% of the talents are just not worth it. Either talents are just pure **** or they are totally insane. It's not that black and white but there is a very very small grey area.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

I find these small additions to your heroes stats to be quite useful in those longer battles (the more hits you take, the more the benefit from these small additions become realised). Also, it means that you can focus the remainder of your build into damage focus.

Well trading the talent for 2 attribute points is strictly better. Then those small additions become major assets.

picture of health versus +2 con for example... more health, 2 more max ap. From small benefit to major asset.

And that goes for most talents, 15 armour from thick skin versus 2 str. for example... more str is more damage, it scales with MAA abilities and increases % of success, it increases your to hit rating. Making battles last shorter because you deal more damage and your battering ram and crushing fist will have a +10% increase to succesfully CC.

I wish there were more talents that were actually good, but aslong as that demon offers these trades the vast majority of talents will be lacking in quality.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

how far in the game would I meet this demon ? currently I havent leveled any talents for my 2 main chars (and still rekt everything)

Well level 10-11.



With kind regards,

Rashar.

On second thought, Picture of Health is not completely useless - it can be useful on companions/mercenaries, since they're not eligible to trade in unused talent points to the demon.

Thanks for the above input.

picture of health is good for hard difficulty. So with glass cannon you will have 50% hp reduction instead of 75%.

On normal it isnt that good, yes.