Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General One Man Army challenge

I decided to perform another one-man-army challenge, this time as a Ranged Weapon user.

I had some pretty high moments, especially when enemies could be sniped off, but sustained damage was lower than my Fire Mage.

I started as the Enchanter template just so I'd have some good accompanying CC early on.
Final Build was:
Level 8 (/w 41% XP towards lvl 9, I did a full slaughter run)
31 Finesse
14 Memory
1 Ranged
9 Huntsman
Talents: Guerilla->Pawn->Warlord.

For fights, I'd first gain high-ground pre-combat (easy with Tactical Retreat). This allowed me to capitalize on the damage bonus from +9 Huntsman, and it was easy to do with the increased Range (90% Bonus!). I'd then buff with Flesh-Sacrifice, Rage, and Bedroll, and stealth before the fight (Didn't have time to squeeze in anymore) and open with Snipe. At lvl 7 I was able to 1-shot Bishop Alexandar with a 1711 damage shot!, which leveled me to 8 for the rest.
Most fights, if you are far away, and 1-shot your opponent, you won't even get pulled into combat. Because of this, I mostly could snipe down enemies one at a time from afar.
This proved to be a problem against the Worm, as I no longer had anyone to tank him for me when he came out.

Early game I used CC a bit, and fights were a lot tougher, but once I peaked with Snipe 1-shotting everything, it was just a matter of hitting each person without the others seeing it, when that was even necessary.

Didn't use flee.
Only used Sneak for combat openers to gain Guerilla and Snipe damage bonuses.

I'm planning to start another solo run as a Strength 2H user next.

Of note, I got a pretty insane wand off the final fight. 121.5 average damage per shot, making it the strongest weapon I have seen so far, per AP cost.

I like the playthrough recaps. I'm sure the devs get a lot of this information by your data, but the verbal walk through might be useful too. And is fun for us to see.

Glad to hear it!

I've got another actually, recently finished my playthrough as a 2H Strength character.

I gotta say, this was hands-down the easiest one so far. I was worried that a solo challenge wouldn't go well for someone who had to get in close, but the incredible power offered allowed me to literally one-shot everything most of the time.
I actually decided to end the run early (it was too easy compared to the others) and went to the final fight at level 6.

I started as the Knight, final build was the following:
Level 7
Strength 27 (25+2)
Memory 12 (10+2)
Two-Handed: 8
Scoundrel: 1 (I couldn't dump all 3 of the starting points in 2H, so I had to put one somewhere else; and this was 2nd best)
Talents: Pawn->Warlord->??? (Didn't spend the 3rd, was saving it for One-Man-Army. Guerilla would have been useful though with my ambush style)
Right from the get-go, fights were easy. I could pre-buff Rage/FleshSacrifice/Bedroll, then Sneak up and Crippling Blow a group of enemies. This technique got way easier at level 4 when I picked up Cloak and Dagger (teleport while stealthed)

Two-Handed is the natural dump for all of our combat points. It provides a 3% damage buff, and a 3% critical buff; and we crit on every attack due to Rage. No other stat comes close in damage gains.
One actually doesn't even need to abuse +Skill gear for more abilities as the 1 point in scoundrel lets us learn Cloak and Dagger and Adrenaline, and the warrior abilities we start with are awesome throughout the whole run.
I picked up Magic Armor and Fortify from different corpses you can eat early in the game, but I didn't really need to pre-buff with them much. They can help in the 1-on-1 against the Worm though.

The other solo playthroughs I did started weak, and eventually picked up, but the Warrior could handily defeat fights that took effort with other playstyles, and with just the default abilities. After the initial ambush, I could usually Battering Ram through stragglers and with Warlord chain my way through my enemies.
The Warfare skills Crippling Blow and Battering Ram provided Strong and Cheap AoE that scaled off of my weapon and Strength to very high values. These abilities when used with 2H and Strength are OP.
Also, the Unique Axe sold by the vendor just outside of the fort is really powerful for the rest of act 1. The high damage and FREE access to the source ability Overpower made the rest of the run trivial, and finally allowed me to use a source ability.

For the final fight, I just picked off enemies with stealth and a buffed up Crippling Blow ambush.
I used teleport gloves to pull in the archer for a kill and then pulled back from combat.
I ended up killing all humans before the Worm showed up. I was able to get out of combat and hide around the corner before he attacked. The worm was actually pretty strong and was harder to beat as a Warrior 1-on-1. Swap abilities before engaging the worm and use Fortify/Magic Armour and you can soak his hits as you beat him down.

This is definitely the MVP build, play this if you want to be stronger than anyone else can be; but don't expect to have much of a challenge.

I'm pretty sure that if I ever go up against error3 in Arena, I'm going to lose.