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?

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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.