Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Ranged is more effective than melee?

When playing DOS1 I noticed that many encounters (f.e. Pontius the Pirate or Diederik) are much easier if I stay away from the battlefield, let them attack, and just kill everyone with ranged abilities. But it was pretty boring, so I was trying to avoid doing that as much as possible. Now that I finished DOS2 EA I feel that it is the same, but the difference is even bigger (because ranger can stand on elevated surface, so they will be able to reach enemy faster than the enemy would reach them). For example at the last Alexander encounter I was expecting some really hard fight, so I just left the archer and the caster on the staircase, and pulled the enemy with one of the melee. The rangers were easily able to kill everyone, they turned the gate to hell. Melee barely did anything, they were just waiting most of the time. It was a pretty disappointing and boring fight. Does anyone else feel the same?

Uh yeah you are right, but that is just how it is supposed to be, think back in time. A sword guy running at archers should never get near them if cover was not used. Melee will always be behind ranged characters. Melee characters are there to support there ranged team mates, to tank if you will. Why do you think that no one use swords on combat now a days? Anyway ranged is easier YES, but it perfect the way it is, melee will never beat ranged characters if played wrong.

Id say you need a mix of both. Well I guess Cylion already made this point, but that backline of powerfull range bombardment only works as long as you have a frontline to tie enemies up.
Melee characters tends to have more HP and more armor, if this type of char did as much damage as a fragile ranged char, why would anyone make a ranged char?

In terms of a direct fight, it is really context dependent but melee seems to have the highest burst damage.

Yes they kinda have, 2-H Swords + Rage have the best burst damage from what I saw so far. They are quite balanced in my opinion, ranged vs melee that is. But like I sad melee guys are there for the support, unless you play one all damage 2-H or a rogue like chars. Btw Rogue has so much damage if played right.

unsustainableBurst.rage().sacrificeOfFlesh().fatalBlow() // 2k+ ???

everyoneBurns.rage().sacrificeOfFlesh().adrenalineRush().spores().epidemicOfFire() // Lolz.

They also invented this thing called armour.

Well I think I asked the wrong question. I was mostly thinking about offensive-defensive fighting styles. There are many situations (for example the last battle with the bishop) where you can feel that the designers of the game prepared the battlefield for an interesing fight. But if you don't fight there, just pull everyone out, and nuke them to hell then the whole thing is much easier (and boring). So don't you think that the game should somehow encourage or force the players to be offensive instead of just waiting at some gate and throwing any explosive/poison stuff at the exit? Like XCOM2, where the timer is forcing the player to do the boring defensive overwatch traps all the time.

safeBurst.sneak(guerilla=true).heightAdvantage().fleshSacrifice().rage().snipe(sneak=true) //sneak until all off cd for added profit

Not sure how good your history is but, arrows could penetrate most kind of armors, not plate of course but that is why we came up with the crossbow.

I do get what you mean, what I hope for is a harder difficulty where the player must use every type of item and skill/location to it's maximum advantage to win each battle.

I don't think we can use the realism excuse to justify making the game less fun, which is what the OP is getting at. What are they going to say at launch: 'Welcome to DOS:2, it's boring but at least it's realistic'.

Magic's not realistic, I think they ought to take that out of the game too. And what's with a lizard that talks...

Agree with above poster, stop bringing realism into the arguments. If rpg's focused on realism we would all be bored gamers.

As for your general thought tc, i actually felt a specced right 2handed warrior was completely insane wiping out the whole enemy by themselves. I guess that balancing is not complete yet though so its hard to take a firm stance. Shield melee definitely felt completely inferior though.

A lot depends on how lucky you were with drops and how your characters built.

Not really. Even regular mail with proper padding would be able to stop most arrows. Sure, the strongest of bows would propably be able to penetrate under optimal conditions but usage of these were very rare throughout history due to the extreme strenght and training needed to properly use them. It simply wasnt worth the hassle for most armies. English Longbowmen are famous precicely because of their insistence in using heavy bows, but this was far from the norm at the time.

Of course, you always run the risk of the arrow hitting you in a less armored area like the face. But the main point to take from this is that if a guy with padded mail armor and a raised wodden shield came running (jogging more likely) towards an archer there was not really much the archer could do about it but flee.

If your melees aren't effective you play them wrong. Simple.

Indeed.

In Original Sin 1 melees had the by far highest damage output of all characters (I know of not other class that was cappable of dishing out 10k+ damage per attack). And of what I saw of part 2 so far it seems to be no difference, with melees dealing mostly twice the damage of rangers.
Not that I think that to be fitting... It's to much of an advantage, imho, especially as positioning isn't really a problem.

Crossbows were invented because anyone could use them. You don't have to hold tension in the bow to shoot it, aiming is easier, you could even put iron sights on them. They were remarkably weaker, though, except in China, where the cho-ko-nu, or foot archer, was invented. That is a notable exception though, and arrows remained the superior to the inferior bolt in almost all of Europe throughout history. As far as the penetrating power of arrows, only English longbowmen, with their heavy self longbows, could hope to penetrate plate armor, and even then, only at a moderately close range (around 100 yards). Mail was all that was needed to stop most bowmen's arrows, like Geparden said. Padding was just there to stop the superficial scratches that arrows would leave when hitting mail. This was due to the difficulty in drawing and firing a bow. The best archers throughout history often had malformed skeletons, bone spurs, and other deformities, from the strenuous use of bows. Even their skeletons still show this to this day. So no, bows did not have much penetrating power, and crossbows were not more powerful than bows. Take it from a renaissance European history major.

I actually enjoyed playing with melee characters and didn't feel like they were at a disadvantage against ranged enemies and companions. 2-handed weapons and skills like rage, whirlwind, battering ram, and phoenix dive made them efficient killing machines, while their high armor rating and hp made them hard to kill.

Ranged characters can be pretty effective, but I don't think they're unbalanced compared to melee characters.

Not to mention supplying archers with enough arrows in a prolonged engagement presented huge problems in logistics for a moving army. You don't want to be hauling literally tons of arrows for months just to stick most of them into the ground after 30 min of continuous firing. That's why archers had always been part of an auxiliary rather than the main force since the Roman time - they weren't designed to do most of the killing. They were mostly there to annoy the enemies and provoke them into doing something stupid like charging into a defensive position.

On the other hand, for gameplay reasons it's probably better to have more power parity between an individual archer and a melee swordsman. After all, we are not playing Total War: Original Sin. It's a game with low number of combatants where each should be tactically useful in their own right.

I very much agree with your post in general, just wanted to nitpick a bit since I find the subject interesting

Well... depends on what you mean by superficial I guess. While mail was pretty consistent in actually stopping an arrow it was not unheard of for a ring or two of the mail to give in and break from impact. This could give enough room for a particularly pointy arrowhead like the bodkin to give you a nice cut, not necessarily deadly but enough to impact your combat abilities.

Proper padding not only helped alleviate damage from partial penetrations but would actually make the rings of the mail less likely to break from impact due to its ability as a surface to give in and absorb force. For this reason the best (but also uncomfortably warm) padding was not leather or anything like it but layers of wool.

Padding had a similar role in melee combat. If a sword hits your mail it will not be able to cut you, but the sword is still a metal stick basically and being hit with it will hurt a lot unless you have something to help absorb that force.


I know the penetrating power of the longbow is a debated issue, but as far as I know the general consensus is that well made 1500s plate armor was pretty much impervious to arrow-penetration under any reasonable circumstance, even from longbows.