Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Proposed New Skill Groups Discussion

Update #2 - Stretch Goals! New tiers! Behind the scenes of a PR tour!

Larian announced a bunch of new skill group ideas in their recent kickstarter update. I think a thread to serve as a focus for discussion isn't a bad idea.

I'll just quote the update, and afterwards post my own opinions.




There, those are the skill groups listed on the Update page. Now for my opinions on some of them.


Trap Master - I'm not so sure about this skill group. Trap classes tend to be tricky. Traps seem to be a lot better suited to a game with real-time combat. I'm not sure how well they'll work in turn-based, "Trapper's Taunt" skill not withstanding. They also only mention mines and pockpocketable bombs, which seems to be a very limited scope.

In Diablo 2: LoD, I took a Trapsassin through Hell difficulty and had a blast (this was before 1.10 came out). That game didn't have mines, but it did have a few varieties of ranged trap - a Flamethrower for high damage at short range, a lightning trap for piercing damage in a straight line, and Wake of Fire, a weaker trap which sent waves of flame in a wide area. If there is to be a Trap-focused class in D:OS2, it should have more tools than just planting mines and hoping the AI will wander over them.


Juggernaut and Guardian - These two classes seem to really heavily overlap with the basic fighter, in opposite directions.

Let's say that they both win the top two spots for new trees. (Unlikely, I know, but theoretically possible.) What will the basic Man-At-Arms warrior class have left to do? Will some Man-At-Arms skills move to the other two trees? Will a fighter have to take both trees? Will the other two trees duplicate some of the functionality of the Man-At-Arms ones?

to be honest, trap master and alchemist do not sound very cool to me. jauggernaut, unarmed combatant and guardian sound rather boring.

my favourites list goes as follows:
polymorpher
summoning master
bard

I'd go with:
Polymorpher
Unarmed Combatant
Summoning Master

Bard, Trap Master and Alchemist could have some decent secondary skills, but they wouldn't be trees I'd focus on first. I collected trap material in Beyond Divinity thinking I'd try them out at some point, but never did.
Juggernaut and Guardian don't sound particularly compelling (not generally playing barbarian or tank builds), at least not without actually comparing the skills to the normal warrior skills. For me, they'd be an option for a third platthrough (so good thing the replayability should be high).

I agree that the juggernaught and guardian doesn't have that much appeal, as I think that's what you should be able to build a fighter to do. But hey, that's why we get to vote

I'd vote
Polymorpher
then Polymorpher
and if i had to chose one more, I'd go polymorpher

Yeah, I think that Juggernaut and Guardian would fit better as parts of the fighter tree with some additional Talents.

Personally, I'd probably pick Polymorpher and Master Summoner as those seem like they'd be the most interesting playstyles.

I did try traps in Beyond Divinity. It did kinda work, although you really have to make sure to load up on trap components as soon as you can, because even though Battlefield dungeons drop a ton of components onto you, you'll still need more than what those dungeons can give you.

As we got about 50% of the ideas so far (8 of the 16) I withold my vote at the moment.

Except to say I love summoning.

Hmm? What do you mean half? I thought that the 16 number was in reference to "16 skills in this school". Did I miss something?

I think he's expecting them to reach the 1.35 million mark when the Pick a Skill Tree II goal would be reached. I'm not sure that means they're going to introduce another 8 though, it could very well mean we get 2 of 8 of the original proposed.

It may just be I fail at reading as it indeed seems 16 skills per school rather than 16 schools to pick 0_o

With Undead being one of the possible origins (if we get that goal), there's no reason why anyone's list shouldn't start with Summoning Master.

- I'd say the trapmaster is a great idea in a turn based game, where you can actually use traps strategically.
I never find it working well enough in real time games like Path of Exile or ( if I remember correctly ) Torchlight 2. I mean, in the end, even if the trap does good damage or gives good survvivability, it's not 'plan ahead and setup a trap' rather than another AoE damage or Aoe / single snare in the heat of the moment.

Issues I could see with a trap master, and after having played DoS1, lies with how you get traps. During my first playthrough, I played an archer that I reconverted to melee assassin later, mostly because the special arrows were annoying me. I barely used them, because crafting them was tedious and I barely had need for them. I think I also remember things like lockpicks being scarce, unless that was only during the beta. God forsake that terrible memory of mine !
Anyway what I'm trying to tell is that if traps are a pain to get, it's just not gonna work. If they do not offer special effects or aren't supported by skills, they probably won't cut it. Traps are an archer best friend most of the time. Kinda like a sniper setuping claymore mines in strategic places before laying down.

So yeah I feel it's a great idea to add traps to the arsenal. More variety is cool.

- Alchemist : Okay, after my love letter to traps, it's not really a surprise I'd love alchemist. At heart, I'm an "engineer", you know, that steampunk class you can find in some games like Torchlight 2. The contraptions, tools, gadgets guy. So traps, 'nade, potions, it's the closest to tinkering we could get in a Divinity game. Although I'd argue that a steampunk engineer/inventor wouldn't be completely out of place. We did, after all, fight a freaking giant robot in D:OS1, and it was the oldest story told so far.

However the same care should be put into an Alchemist and how he sustain his grenades and potions stock. It can quickly become overwhelming and a pain if we spend half our time looking for reagents and rebuilding our stocks in town. It can be annoying in SP, but downright unnerving for the other players in MP. I hated mixing my potions in the Witcher. Hell, I hated The Witcher 1 and 2 and can't bring myself to play the 3. And here I am saying I love tinkering and stuff, but my point is I guess it's really important to not make this necessary task boring and/or nonpractical.

Also I guess potions could help create elemental lingering zones for elemental combos. Yay !

- Unarmed Combattant : Yup. Go. Yup. It's very hard to balance though. Very, very hard. I love my unarmed monk in PoE, but I haven't play enough that I reach that moment where everyone seems to agree you should definitely switch to dual wield.
So unarmed combattant are special, they need either a slightly different gameplay maybe made out of combos ( not combo points ala World of Warcrarft, just regular, chaining attacks that you could fail if you can't stand your ground ).

- Polymorphers are a classic. I never cared for them, but it's a classic.

- Bard : I like the idea it may be a "social fighter". The smooth talker you want to start conversations. I also always loved pure support classes. I like that. And, heh, maybe that could give a REAL utility to all those music instruments we saw in D:OS1?

- Juggernaut / Guardian : have to agree too. It seems less of a game changer than the other ideas, "just"' boosting something a Warrior could already do.

- Summoner master : I guess I'll skip that one : I never liked summoning things. Except my trusty 'Questgiver', the magical Deer, in D:OS1, to distract foes before being horribly murdered in two strikes. Aptly named after a Co-optional podcast with Total Biscuit, Jessie Cox, and Dodger.

Can anyone explain to me if all of those 8 schools of magic will be added to the game upon reaching the stretch goal 850K$ or just only the one?

One skill tree will be added, and a second at $1.35M. No further stretch goal have been announced yet, but there could be a third skill tree added at some point.

Polymorph has lots of opportunities to synergize well with competitive questing and roleplaying. Imagine disguising yourself as a chicken or something to see what your buddy is up to, and then ambushing him at the right moment. Of course, once people become familiar with the skills, it'll be less sneaky, but it'd be useful on the first playthrough at least.

Fan of the bard tree (obviously :P). Then alchemist and summoner, and most of the other trees sound meh. Everything has potential, but the likes of unarmed and guardian sound quite difficult to balance/keep interesting.

No, john, I will NOT go there to post. There is NOTHING wrong with posting discussions on the forums, that is what they are here for.

User voice is a terrible place for discussions, it's only a popularity gauge and not a very good one at that.

It is quite a raw material to judge any skill tree. Anyone can imagine a couple of "new" classes and make several phrases to describe them.

Interesting to know, if there was any consideration about new skill trees among developer before kickstarter company.

My dull thoughts about some of listed skill groups:


I think, developers shouldn't spread skills on new skill trees, but include in existing one. It will bring more variety to the one, very first, walkthroug of the game.
Do you want sharp-as-swords horns? You should become fire magic master and burn out small village. By the way, I've made such suggestion about character appearance

And i want to play with somethink like inventor from Arcanum of Magic Obscure. Ranger depends on crafted arrows, May be evolve this skill tree and allow it to craft some unique staff, like automaton =)

What's more, these here skills are official ideas from the Larian team, which make them quite difficult to discuss via the website dedocated to community ideas.

And I tend to agree : I've been put off quite quickly by User Voice. There are a few good ideas but mostly it's rubbish - and yeah, I'm being not very nice here but let's face it. When you see "adult mode - extra gore, nudity, profanity" at the top of the voted suggestions, all is left for you is to lament.
Fortunately, it doesn't mean Larian will take those things into account. A few very nice suggestions are even hidden here and there. It's just that... It's kind of heartbreaking to see people asking for things that goes entirely against what Larian's games are.

So yeah, "official" matters, or at the very least "officially adopted" suggestions, should be discussed here on the forums. IMHO, of course.

I wonder if Larian plans on changing how skills or the 菟reset class system in D:OS 2 works. Because I知 looking at some of the proposed new possible skill groups and have noticed some things which don稚 quite seem to mesh.

For instance, the Juggernaut has 堵et stronger as your health drops as a feature. But in D:OS 1痴 system, that kind of thing wasn稚 done with skill-granting abilities, only Talents.

If, as we presume you can build your character the same way as D:OS 1 any way you want, then what does that mean for that feature? Would it be a Talent, forcing you to spend a Talent point on that class feature? Would it be tied into the Juggernaut ability, changing how skill-granting abilities work? Or would it be part of a preset 笛uggernaut class, and tied to that preset no matter how you alter its stats?

Other class groups have similar things. Trap Master mentions being able to craft bombs. Bards can do things outside of combat, Alchemists can get bonuses from potions.

It is hard to judge on this topic without more concrete information.
I think that in multiplayer, supportive specs (which I don't remember in detail) will be considered even less desirable (4 single not even competetive players). This can make some choices more strategic for the first playthrough. You need to cooperate for more resources and time to craft, have more team-value out of it...at the cost of less fighting/solo ability for yourself. To prevent this, Larian might merge crafting with trap master/alchemist or make them add-on trees (with little cost in return) or give free points across similiar skills on every levelup.
Then you gain some "obviously unique and irreplacable reward" for skilling that way.(On the other handside your friends will want to use your crafting skills and might cooperate then via contracts so its actually not underpowered in any way).