Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Talent Discussion - With Survey

Let’s discuss some Talents which were carried over from D:OS 1 with some minor changes. To me, a lot of them seem underwhelming (a problem carried over from D:OS 1 as well). But perhaps I’m just alone in my opinions and others have thought up uses which I have not considered.

So tell me why you would take these talents, or if you wouldn’t what would have to change to make you take them.

Airhead* / Demon / Grounded* / Ice King

(* Currently, Airhead and Grounded do not actually exist)

These Talents increase your maximum [Element] Resistance by 15%, decrease your [Opposite Element] Resistance by 15%, and increase your maximum [Element] Resistance by 10%.

These Talents are in the “only okay” category. If you want to boost your resistance to one specific element, you can pick them. I don’t know the resistance cap. If the default resistance cap is 80-90%, then these Talents could be useful to make one almost impervious to one element. It’s the weakness to another which makes me hesitant to take one of these, though. The net benefit for taking one of these talents is almost cancelled out by the drawbacks. I’d probably take a different Talent instead.

Am I alone in thinking this? Do you think that these Talents are good as they are, or do you think they need something more?

Taking these Talents also introduces an additional potential complication – to get full use, you’ll need to maintain a set of equipment which allows you to reach the resistance cap. Most of the equipment is random, and you may want to keep some pieces for other bonuses instead of resistances, so crafting will be needed to make up for the shortfall. (But are there recipes that let you add resistances to equipment?)


Escapist

Escapist lets you flee from battle even if there are enemies right next to you. Without Escapist, you must be at least 3.5 meters away from the enemy (I tested this). Needless to say, this is very underwhelming. The big use for Escapist is cases for where you want to flee combat, but are at low health and would trigger a potentially lethal Attack of Opportunity if you tried running away manually.

But even in those cases, there are two other Talents which would be better: Comeback Kid, which would revive you after a fatal AoO and allow you to flee, and Duck Duck Goose, which prevents you from triggering AoO’s in the first place. Both of those have more use than just fleeing battle, too.

I’d recommend adding the benefits and requirements of Duck Duck Goose to Escapist and remove Duck Duck Goose.


Five Star Diner

There’s nothing wrong with this Talent itself, but food could use some tweaking. That 80 minute video made the valid point that because attribute points are less important than before, food which still has the numbers carried over from D:OS 1 is much less impressive even with this Talent. (Additionally, I’d also recommend that food heal a small amount per turn for its duration. That would leave Potions good for emergency burst healing, but food could be used for smaller ticks of healing over a longer time.)



Guerrilla

When I rolled up my Rogue, I wasn’t paying attention and mistakenly thought that Guerrilla retained its D:OS value of “doubles attack damage while sneaking”. It’s actually only +50%. That means that just like D:OS EE, Guerrilla is basically a waste of a Talent point.

Here’s an example to show why.

Dagger A = 50 damage, 150% Critical modifier (75 damage backstab)
Dagger B = 50 damage, 150% Critical modifier (75 damage backstab)
Guerrilla Talent = +50% damage while Sneaking
Sneak costs 1AP, which has to be factored in when considering Guerrilla attacks.

If you use one of those daggers in a single-wielding style:

1 Regular backstab = 75 damage for 1 AP (75/AP)
2 regular backstabs = 150 damage for 2 AP
1 Sneak + Guerrilla backstab = 75 dam * 1.5 = 112.5 damage for 2 AP
S+G = 56.25 damage per AP – barely better than a frontal attack!

Dual Wielding both daggers:

1 Regular backstab = 150 damage for 2 AP (75/AP)
2 regular backstabs = 300 damage for 4 AP
1 Sneak + Guerrilla backstab = 150 dam * 1.5 = 225 damage for 3 AP
S+G = 75 damage per AP – Exactly as efficient as not using Sneak at all!

In other words, Guerrilla in D:OS 2, just like in D:OS EE, is basically useless – only good for starting outside a fight and sneak-attacking into one. You’ll get more value from ignoring Sneak in combat and doing normal attacks.

Some people might say that Guerrilla is good with skills such as Snipe, which is true, but I feel that is slightly missing the point – Snipe is good regardless of whether you have Guerrilla or not. Another thing to consider is that AI to look around for sneaking characters will be coming, which should ruin the “enter sneak behind target at the end of your turn” use.

In order for Guerrilla to actually be useful for regular combat, it at least needs to do more damage per AP than regular attacks. Even +75% would make it marginally more effective (that would give an additional 12 damage on pair of 50-damage daggers when backstabbing). That’s for dual-wielding, though - single-wielding would still be bad and would need over +100% to be efficient, but just making it worthwhile for dual-wielding would be enough.


Walk It Off

Just like in D:OS 1, this Talent remains “meh”. It’s true that there are more positive than negative status effects, but this talent still seems to be mediocre. To me, the downside of also losing a turn from positive status effects just cripples it.

Am I alone in thinking this? Would you use Walk It Off as it is now? If not, what would make you want to use it?

***

In addition, D:OS 2 could use more Talents, because like D:OS 1, there could always be more good Talents. Of particular note, there's a distinct lack of good Talents aimed at mages.

In DOS 1 the ultimate Air-trait was stun immunity, I totally loved that on my rogue. The ultimate Geomancer was pretty useless I think. About Demon and Ice king I think we didn't care at all. About those last two in DOS2 it is hard to tell, how easy it will be achievable to reach max resistance, so hard to tell at current state. Demon king probably is a must have for someone who takes zombie.

I guess, I would support your suggestion of melting Duck Duck Goose and Escapist together. So far we didn't care for either of them.

5 Star Dinner, hardly ever cared about food in either game, not sure if my friend did, but guess not really. So I guess, it really could use some tweaking.

Honestly, I think sneaking inside of a battle should be pretty much impossible. We heard about pretty op combos in DOS1 an, but we never used them, because the concept it just ridiculous in itself. Guerilla attacks are surprise attacks, it should be something you use in the first round to engage the enemie and kill of the weak ones to thin the hord. But sneak => attack => sneak => attack as concept of exploiting guerilla in middle of a fight should be removed. If you just attacked an enemie from behing, you shouldn't be able to turn back in a barrel or a rock. My rogue in DOS1 did in late game enough damage without such cheap tactics. If the enemie lost vision because of invisibility for example: okey, sneaking is fine again, but not on plain sight.

Walk it off: Not sure, does the talent mean, you are immune to CC like stun and knock down if they would last only one turn? I that case, it could be pretty strong, but if the effect will always be at least one turn, still meh.


I think what should be adressed as well is zombie:
While bleeding blood can get you stunned, bleeding poison can get you killed quite fast, if there is any kind of fire near you because of the explosive interaction. Also spells like Healing Ritual which jump from ally to ally could make it even more deadly, if you are not playing full zombie team.

Oh you are SO wrong on this (considering DOS:EE). Air trait was absolutely useless and a waste of a talent point, as you could get stun immunity on a ring, and it wasnt that big of a rarity after level 10 or 11 or so (sometimes much earlier). Iceking was kinda meh, yeah, but demon - you serious? Coupled with zombie, you could get over 100% fire immunity, and then explode-immolate-meteor-dedly spores on ground on yourself, and you not only damage anyone really badly, you also heal up.

In DOS 1 it didn't give you resistance, just chance to set enemy on fire. In EE it was like in DOS2 now, so I was talking about Not EE regarding to the divinity wiki just to clarify. But anyway, never used zombie, no need for it and also does not really appeal in RP perspective. Not sure about the over 100% immunity though, in EE there was a cap at 80% if I remember correctly, so I guess you would still need spell to get over it.

Not sure about rarity of stun immunity stuff, we never finished EE, kind of got bored from Tactical mode. But in DOS1 it did not feel wasted.

For me one thing that could be nice to add it's specific Class talent, to better fill your class choice during the lvl up

So I'll take a shot:

Guerilla:
A boost to this would make it much better but I don't think people should forget one handed is for action economy and dual wield is for damage per attack on rogues. Also, when AI starts looking for sneak characters it's not gonna kills sneak but balance it so that you should need to actually have invested in the ability to make truly battle worthy. 1 point in sneak for God Mode invisibility vs single targets shouldn't be a thing.....being able to sneak a lot in combat if you have 5+ though....

The elemental talents:
As a whole I agree, the gains and losses canacek out unless we find out more on resistances. But even if the max is below 100, I'm willing to bet we can combine skills to get around that (i.e. Absorb elements and elemental tortoise and Iron Hide talent from D:OS...not to mention avatar/shield spells). These all generally better boosts. Maybe gimmicks like +50% damage for a given element? Ooooh. Why not make them give giant large boosts that stack with a given elemental ability. The air talent would do what the air ability does but much much better and stack with it, for instance. You can also make it so they grant you the same benefits a summoned elemental get (ie air takes half physical damage) but at a lesser degree. This would offset the tangible vulnerability you take. Also make it so you can only take one.

Of course the requirements for such a talent should be that you heavily specialize in a givens element in combat abilities.

Food talented:
The stat system needs fixing to make each stat actually meaningful, first. And then a generous reworking on how strong the benefits food give should be accounted for. Not a large boost mind, but I definitely never felt them really adding anything to combat in the other games ultimately aside from healing in a pitch or the odd moment I needed a boost to my stats for something out of combat or something.

Escapist:
I like your suggestion and analysis as is.

Walk it off:
They really need to re tweak this. Either have it not effect positive effects or add a general chance to resist effects inherently or in the new system give inherent magic/physical armor?

Mages definitely need more talents but the elemental talents (and hoping they include the two user made up ones) would help with this if changed and shield users need better talents for them specifically.

If Sneaking in battle is intended to be impossible, then Larian could simply disable Sneak entirely in combat. However, several DOS 2 skills explicitly have damage bonuses when used while Sneaking.

That suggests to me that being able to sneak during combat is intentional.




I don’t know, someone would have to check, but I suspect the effect will always last at least one turn.




Ah right, I thought I forgot something. Yes, there was a thread talking about Zombies flaws.

I believe that thread essentially mentioned three major issues:

1) Few skills synergize with Zombie to allow for self-healing
2) It makes a lot of alternate healing useless or dangerous
3) You’re much more vulnerable to fire

Point 1 can be fixed by adding more poison skills and allowing drinking of poison bottles (which return an empty bottle once consumed).

Point 2 could be fixed if healing skills could be split into Neutral and Positive Energy types of healing.

Bless and all skills using a Source point or Necromancy could be Neutral-type healing, which is unaffected by Zombie.

Hydrosophist and all other healing skills (plus potions) would be Positive Energy which hurts Zombies.





Yes, Guerrilla with 1H weapons would need to do more than double damage (+100%) to be useful for 1-handed, so I would be fine with Guerrilla only being efficient when dual-wielding. Boosting it from +50% to somewhere between +60% to +90% would work for that.




An idea I just came up with for improving those talents is this: For every 5 points in [Element type] damage you take, you’ll restore 1 point of magic armor. This is added after the attack completes, so it will not block any status effects which the attack caused.

So if you have Demon, 150 Magic Armor and take 100 points of Fire damage, after the attack you’ll have 70 magic armor left (50 + 20). If you have Airhead and 30 magic armor, and take 50 points in air damage, you’ll be stunned, but get back 10 magic armor.

***

I've just suggested some additional magic talents, but I'll re-post them here for convenience.

EDIT: Note: I've since changed some of the original ideas based on feedback.


Synergist AKA "Elemental Infusion" AKA "Elemental Retribution"

When standing in a surface or cloud, your next spell will inflict some additional damage based on the surface/cloud type. (This idea is really rough)


Some ideas based on specific Elemental masteries:

A Touch of Frost - Requires: Hydrosophist 10

A 5% chance for hits from any non-fire melee or spell attacks to inflict Frozen for one turn. (Check: Magic armor)


Convection - Requires: Pyrokinetic 10.
If Warm or Burning at the start of your turn, active skill cooldowns are reduced by 1 turn to a minimum of 0. If Wet, Chilled, or Frozen at the start of your turn, active cooldowns are increased by 1 turn.

So if after you previous turn ended, you had 3 skills on cooldown, one with 5 turns, one with 3 turns, and one with 2 turns, and you got set on fire before your next turn came back up, the cooldowns would do the usual tick down, so 4, 2, 1 turns left, then Convection would kick in and they would go to 3, 1, 0 turns. You could use that 0 turn cooldown right away.


Fully Charged - Requires: Aerothurge 10. Incompatible with Glass Cannon.

For every 25% of your maximum health that you take in Air-type damage in the course of one turn, you gain +1 Maximum and +1 Turn AP for your next turn only. Capped at +3.

Absorb electricity from surfaces - taking damage instead of being stunned - to gain 1 AP per surface cleared.

(Perhaps absorbing a surface in this way will do a flat 25% or 33% of your maximum health in air damage, bypassing magic armor, but maybe that 25/33% amount is then reduced by whatever your air resistance is?)


Made of Stone - Requires: Geomancer 10. (Possibly Incompatible with What a Rush?)

When under 30% Health, all physical damage you receive is reduced by 67%.

I never said, sneaking is intended to be impossible in combats. I just said, I would wish it to be or at least be much harder, because it is just ridiculous. Not on good ridiculous way as the sneaking animation itself.

Also I would think, those 'sneaking' skills are mainly planed for guerilla tactics, thinning the herd with a surprise attack. Otherwise they are pretty overpowered (for example snipe)?

Synergist: I'm not even sure, if elemental ranger is any good, but a lightning spell that makes suddenly fire as well sounds strange. Only think that would make some kind of sense would be if every water attack would also do some lightning damage and possible stun chance. But on the other hand, there is hardly any pure water attacks, most water attacks are ice, so lightning does not make sense at all anymore.

A Touch of Frost: 3-5% chance seems pretty low and most non fire attacks do stun or freeze anyway I think, at least magical. Earth attacks normally get chained with fire, so frozen does not help anyway. The skill sounds like the old Ice King from DOS1, not sure how high chances were there.

Conviction sounds interesting, but perhaps more something like Passion as a name? But could be a bit strong. Perhaps if you are warm or burning shorter coulddown, if you are wet, chilled or frozen longer cooldowns. Guess would make Demon more interesting.

Fully charge: If you get hit by lightning attacks, most of the time, you would get stunned, if your magic armor is gone. So the extra AP would just be lost. And even when you don't get stunned, I'm not sure, it would be likely enough to get hit often enough with air attack to be worth. Perhaps if the skill would make you drain all electicity out of surfaces, 'suffering' damage doing so, but offering stun immunity? Living lightning rod?

Made of Stone: I think it would make playing with 'What a rush' less risky, if you could combine those two. So not sure, if that is good or bad. Probably good, not sure how many would pick 'What a rush' at the moment.

I was trying to think of Talents for magic users which were passive

Considering it uses a Source Point, I wouldn't say that Mortal Blow is overpowered. But if some skills which get bonuses from Sneak are overpowered, it's more because of the skills themselves than the Guerrilla bonus in my opinion. Something does likely need balance there though.


Synergist - Yeah, it might not make a lot of sense. This one was inspired by Elemental Affinity, but I didn't want to copy it. The idea is that the mage is using the surface/cloud around them to enhance their spells.


Touch of Frost - In my mind, it is a 5% chance on almost every attack, not just limited to spells. That's 1 in 20, so it could come up pretty often. Probabilities could be tweaked.


Convection - Convection, not Conviction - it's a term referring to the movement of liquid or gas due to temperature differences. It's a change in energy based on heat.

I like your suggestion to increase the cooldowns if wet, chilled or frozen, though. That's a good idea.


Fully Charged - I might have been unclear, I didn't mean that the damage has to be to your health, it could be absorbed by magic armor, but as long as the amount dealt passes X percent of your health pool, you get a certain amount of AP. I also didn't say that the air damage had to come from enemy attacks - one possible strategy would be to zap your teammate. But that's a very good point that you could get easily stunned and lose the AP. Your idea of absorbing lighting damage from surfaces is better. How about:

Absorb electricity from surfaces - taking damage instead of being stunned - to gain 1 AP per surface cleared.

(Perhaps absorbing a surface in this way will do a flat 25% or 33% of your maximum health in air damage, bypassing magic armor, but maybe that 25/33% amount is then reduced by whatever your air resistance is?)


Made of Stone - Oh right. That one can be incompatible with What a Rush. Although it is true that I don't know how many people pick What a Rush.

I don't like the idea of making guerilla a simple dps boost. Maybe a cooldown to sneak along with a higher damage boost would be better for it to feel like a sneak attack, but would be hard to balance for abilities.

I think, they halved the effect of guerilla because of those heavy sneak attack bonus damage attacks, because guerilla improves those attacks even more.

The problem with Touch of Frost remains: Its a Hydrosophist Level 10 spells. A Water mage mainly supports or freezes anyway, so I'm not sure, which attacks would really profit from 5% freeze chance.

So really Convection, thought you meant something in direction of zeal/fanatic, flaming passion.

I know, that you meant also damage to magic armor, but it would be still be a bit unreliable. And attacking your self just to get more AP? Such an attack would cost 2 AP aswell, another AP to replenish shield or health, so hardly worth. But cleansing electrified surface can be have tactical purpose aswell. It is surely an idea, that is would bypass the magical armor.

Regarding Made of Stone I think the synergy could be good to make the other talent more appealing.

I guess my problem with Guerrilla is that those heavy sneak attack bonus damage attacks and enter-combat-with-sneak-attacks are really the only things benefiting from Guerrilla, which makes it seem lacking.




True enough. My instinct was to put it at Rank 5 or 7, but I moved it with 10 to match the others. I was thinking that it might also be useful for hybrid characters.




Yeah, more good points, I crossed out my idea and replaced it with the cleansing surface one.



Hmmm. Okay I guess that would make sense too. Made of Stone does only protect from physical damage so there's still a vulnerability to make it somewhat balanced.