Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General A thought exercise: Balance

Okay, I rose from the grave because I heard the cosmos calling out to me and telling me that this was brought up again.

Let me use an example as to why this system is flawed. Right now, there is nothing that a warrior cannot kill in one turn, with the sole exception of the last bosses. If a warrior could spend 3 AP to eliminate most targets, and a mage has to spend at least 4 to just get armor down (assuming no hail strike, which the majority of mage classes do not start out with), which is being conservative, let's say I have flesh sacrifice and can still cast Winter Blast. Now, if at this point I only have a chance to CC them, then if my CC fails, then I have effectively acted as an objectively worse archer with less range, less damage, and less synergy with any warriors that might be in the group (not exactly an advantage for me, but an advantage nonetheless), who can benefit each other by all acting on physical armor. Whereas the mage must burn through a totally seperate bar just to do damage. Now, failing to CC on this first turn (which, due to how enemies are spaced out nowadays, I could probably only do it to one dude if I'm trying to chew through his magic armor), essentially gives this enemy a free turn that he wouldn't otherwise have. If I have Glass Cannon, or less than around a hundred armor (with loot being as it is, this is all too common an occurence), this opens me up to being CC'd, and in my experience with EE, enemy CC chances are way higher than player CC chances, so being CC'd is almost guaranteed here. Even if it's not, it's likely, and this ends up with me effectively losing even more turns. Now, I like to play with one person. This means that my entire party is eliminated for the duration of the CC. Now let's say I did not have glass cannon. Let's say I also had good loot RNG, and ended up with decent magic armor. Well, I certainly am not building physical armor on a mage, so I am still vulnerable to Battle Stomp, Battering Ram, Crippling Blow (instant death, actually), knockdown arrows, and armor piercing grenades actually do enough damage to be completely lethal from full health. I am completely vulnerable for a full turn, it's not my fault, and there was nothing I could do about it. This was a frequent occurance if you played your mage suboptimally in EE, and was quite annoying. Once you got Drain Willpower and 15 INT, this wasn't so much of a problem, but Drain Willpower only affects one enemy, and has a cooldown. So we run into the same issue of, "why am I not just playing a warrior who can casually hit for over a thousand damage instead, and has CC that is just as if not more effective?" This was not helped by warrior's better mobility, better survivability, and the luxury of being able to afford points for Bodybuilding and Willpower because you are spared the nightmare of investing into Hydro, Aero, Witchcraft, Wand, Single Handed/Dual Wielding, etc. You just need maaaaybe a little bit of two handed, enough man-at-arms for maybe 5 useful skills, and that was it. The rest of your points were free to be spent on bodybuilding and willpower.

So let's see what this amounts to.

In the current implementation of the game, if you do not have Hail Strike, or are in an area where it is glitched (High Judge Orivander boss fight), then your best hope is wands. The terrible downgrade to bows and/or crossbows. So you devolve into a left clicker in order to shred magic armor,
and once it's down, you are relying on luck, and luck alone, to allow you to serve any viable purpose against enemies. You could create surfaces. Attempt to utilize zone control. But in my experience, they're just going to Phoenix Dive across it, or shoot over it. You could stay back and try to heal and buff your allies. But if you were an archer or warrior, then you could just kill the enemies, giving them no chance to do damage, and effectively saving health. The warrior is also harder to CC once his armor goes down, or if you use an armor check that is of a type that he does not have. The warrior probably has more health because of Picture of Health, the warrior has teleports to get around surfaces, and to put the icing on the cake, the most powerful abilities in the game right now - spells like Teleport, and Restoration - only require one point in a school to get, are unaffected by chance or intelligence, and are therefore exactly as effective as the mage's variants of those skills. This means that even if you need to get an ally out of a surface, or you want to put an enemy in one for some reason, then it's just as easy to have a warrior do it. So equal utility, similar CC that acts on armor that can feasibly be shredded in one turn and still leave AP for using the CC itself (something a mage can't hope to do), and the best part? A mage using fire wands is going to burn his target, preventing him from being frozen. The same goes for if they combo pyro/geo. So their own actions can easily lead to locking themselves out of their own CC, something which is not an issue for warriors. And you want to hear the sad part? 400 damage is the lowest amount of damage I've ever done with Crippling Blow at level 7. With stat investment in 2 handed and Scoundrel, flesh sacrifice and rage, and a baller weapon, I have seen warriors crit for upwards of 1000 damage. So even better than removing an enemy from the fight for a turn or two, you can implement a permanent solution instead. Let's look at this in a very specific example.

Bishop Alexander. Turn 1: Warrior uses Flesh Sacrifice, Rage, Phoenix Dive, Crippling Blow, and Battering Ram. The boss is halfway dead, has no physical armor, has a large chance to be CC'd, and the warrior is out of opportunity attack range in addition to still having plenty of armor and a decent chance to resist CC even when it's gone.

Now.

Bishop Alexander. Turn 1: Mage uses Flesh Sacrifice. Mage uses wand attack to burn off some armor. Then, mage follows with Hail Strike, potentially chilling him. Then, you have one chance to CC him. If you fail, he walks up to you, and kills you in exactly one hit. If you succeed, then you are offered a small chance at victory, but you have not dealt with any of the other enemies, and using Hail Strike and Winter Blast put them on cooldown, meaning you are no longer in any position to deal with them anyways.

The warrior is now in a position where he could feasibly tank Alexander's hit, where he is positioned exactly how he intends to be, and where Alexander has roughly the same chance of being CC'd as the mage's Alexander does, but with significantly more damage done and the strategic advantage of having been able to move close to the wall where the archer cannot hit you and the mage cannot see you. He still has Battle Stomp off of cooldown for additional CC should he need it, and he's still raged, so his damage is still well within the realm of "good", allowing him to two shot the warrior, one shot the Rogue, Ranger or Mage, or potentially kill Alexander next turn. Even if someone uses a thunder grenade, or Bishop casts Blinding Radiance, he has a decent chance to resist from Willpower and Bodybuilding.

The mage has not yet positioned herself. She cannot take a single hit from Alexander, the mage probably has enough AP on turn 1 to kill her from full magical armor, the Rogue can kill or CC her with ease, and her main CC is on cooldown, meaning she has to resort to CC's that are weaker, shredding less magic armor and costing more AP to achieve the same end result that Winter Blast could, which is CC'ing a target. With Hail Strike on cd, there goes her shred, and hitting a target with fire wands (the type the guaranteed-to-drop Purging Wands are, strongest wands I've found yet) means that once Winter Blast is off cooldown, it will not work due to the fact that the target is either warm or on fire. So your best bet is to shred with wands, then use an electricity spell. But you can't shred the mage fast enough, the warrior probably has a decent chance to resist, and so does the rogue, because in classic mode just about every enemy has willpower and bodybuilding, and in Tactician this will be the issue X3. If Bodybuilding and Willpower didn't exist, you could easily chew your way through them methodically and strategically, while kiting and CC'ing the melee guys (namely, zap the warrior, and pray you can tank the rogue for the first turn, when he has to spend AP to get to you) and teleporting them together for AoEs when you get the chance.

So, my warrior's chances have been mostly unaffected. My mage's chances have dropped drastically, including the addition of a nonzero chance of me automatically failing the fight on turn 1 through no fault of my own. The chance to lose the encounter is especially increased since I am not just relying on my CC working once, but multiple times across several opponents distributed over a series of turns, meaning my chance for an eventual failure statistically increases exponentially as the fight goes on. And in this fight, one failure is all that one needs for certain death.

The mage is in a terrible position, and set up for instant death from a lucky Rogue crit.

The warrior is 50% of the time facing a half dead boss and enemies that can't reach/see me, and 50% of the time facing a half dead boss that has been taken out of the fight, in addition to being unreachable, untargetable, having CC remaining that is AoE and off cooldown, as well as still having Rage and Flesh Sacrifice on, meaning that I have plenty of killing power left.

Now. In this scenario, I vastly prefer the current system, clearly. Here is my challenge to you. Can you provide me a single encounter, anywhere in the game, where you think I would instead prefer your proposed system?