Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Question about skills and weapon compatibility

So during my first playthrough of the early access content, I was using pretty cookie cutter stuff. Wands with hydrosophist, sword/board with battle skill, bow with ranger skills.

However, when I got to fancier weapons, like a one-handed sword that also does magic damage, I started to notice the skills I was using started to change their damage. Whirlwind started to deal some of the same magic damage as the weapon I'm using, for example.

So basically, what I'm wanting to know is how deep does this interaction go? For example, Snipe says "requires a ranged weapon". Do wands qualify? They are ranged, after all.

Another example, "whirlwind" says "requires melee weapon". Could I then use it with a staff, and deal magic damage to every enemy around me?

With damage scaling, what happens when I equip two weapons? If I have two daggers and use whirlwind, will it deal more damage than if I had one dagger and a shield?

As an aside, really loving the game. My first 4 hours involved me getting completely wrecked, followed by understanding the mechanics, then restarting and sweeping through the early game. It's so rewarding and diverse once you actually understand how to play.

Easy solution:
Just test it. Change the weapon and see if the skill is still available. Some skills are more specific as others. If I remember correctly Whirlwind works fine with staff to deal magic damage instead physical. Not sure about two handed, some could use only the main hand. Just change the weapons and compare the damage. Surely easier than asking here, don't thing anyone knows every little possibility. Not every weapon dependent skill adds in also the elemental damage, I think.

Daggers are for sure the worst kind of weapon for Warfare skills like Whirlwind, their damage is really low and depends on backstabbing.

I was afraid that would be the answer I was actually heading to bed last night when I made the topic, so I was hoping I'd be able to save some time in case someone already knew the answers. But now I can test these things once I'm finished with the daily ritual.

Will post back the results!

Okay! So I made a quick multiplayer LAN on my PC to get 4 custom characters and various sets of weapons so I could study the effects of different weapons on different skills, and the results were pretty interesting.

>Warfare
Crippling Blow - usable with any melee weapon, does damage based on the damage of the weapon, equipping a second weapon will increase the damage, but not by as much as the main weapon. with 0 finesse and 2 daggers that each do 3-4 damage, it does "4-5 physical + 2-3 physical". It does NOT work with wands or bows, but it DOES work with a staff; with the staff having 5-6 fire damage and 15 int, this ability will do 8-10 fire damage. The saving throw is still listed as physical armor, though, so the effectiveness of this as a solo character is questionable.

Battle stomp - Has the same weapon limitations as crippling blow, but is locked into physical damage and the damage scaling is likewise unrelated to the used weapon. For example, you can use it with a staff, but it will still do physical damage.

Battering ram - Works exactly the same as crippling blow. Damage is based upon weapon, equipping another weapon will increase the damage, and the second weapon will scale with less damage than the first weapon.

Of note: On the weapon-related skills above, equipping a dagger + a wand makes the skill still usable, and it will deal both physical and poison damage according to the tooltip. However, it only works if the dagger is the main hand. Equipping a wand mainhand and dagger off-hand will have the tooltip tell you "no melee weapon equipped!" even though you do, in fact, have a melee weapon equipped. This leads me to believe that weapon requirements are entirely fulfilled by the main hand.

> Pyrokinetic - Due to oversight, none of my characters started with one of these abilities unlocked. Whoops!

> Scoundrel
Vault: True to its word, the skill is unusable without a dagger. It does scale with the dagger's damage, and will deal more damage if you have two daggers. With two daggers, this ability reads "3-4 physical + 2-3 physical damage". However, once again it's usable with a dagger in the main hand and a wand in the off hand.

Chloroform: This ability is usable with any weapon, or no weapon at all, and the damage is entirely independent of weapon damage.

> Necromancer
Mosquito Swarm: This ability is usable with any weapon and damage does not scale with weapon.

> Aerotheurge
Electric Discharge: usable with any weapon, damage does not scale with weapon

> Huntsman
Ricochet: Now here's an interesting one. Though wands may deliver attacks at range and are weapons, they are not considered ranged weapons, unlike the warfare skills. This ability will only work with a bow or a crossbow. However, the interesting thing is that even though the skill is unusable when other weapons are equipped, it will continue to update its tooltip with how much damage it would be doing if you were allowed to use the ability. So, for example, if it allowed two wands, it updates it to say "3-4 poison + 2-3 poison".

Marksman's Fang: Same as ricochet; only usuable with bow or crossbow, but the damage continues to update based on the weapon. However, due to the unique property of the ability, it adds together all of the damage and displays it as "x-y piercing damage". Oddly enough, two daggers makes that number go to 9-12 piercing, when the bow only has it at 8-9 piercing.

> Geomancer
Magical Poison Dart: usable regardless of weapon type, no weapon damage scaling

Fossil Strike: usable regardless of weapon type, no weapon damage scaling

> Hydrosophist
Hail Strike: usable regardless of weapon type, no weapon damage scaling

---

Some pretty interesting stuff.

To answer a few of my own questions:
- Anything that says "requires a melee weapon" is usable with any melee weapon, including a staff.
- Anything that says "requires a ranged weapon" is usable only with a bow and crossbow. I recommend they change these abilitys to read "requires bow or crossbow", because there appears to be no weaponskills that key off wands specifically or off any ranged weapon, and this opens some design space. For example, it'd be pretty cool if there were a weaponskill "aimed shot" that was like a regular ranged attack but has a cooldown and higher crit chance, and this skill would be usable with any ranged weapon
- Any weaponskill that scales with weapon damage will indeed deal more damage if a second weapon is equipped.


Neat stuff!

Now... time to make a properly built staff wielding frontliner warrior mage...

Just as a general fact: If a skill mentions no weapon limitations, it is not dependent of your weapon anyway, so testing is not required.

Also Warfare, Hunter and Scoundrel are the only classes with weapon dependent skills, all others are classic 'mage' classes. Wich does not mean, you can't multi-class. Some skills are pretty neat for melee fighters or even only neat for those.

Some skills might still affect the physical armor regarding the effect like crippling. But it could be used to go for the life points, if the magic armor is already gone, but physical still there. At least my unproved guess.

Yeah, that's what I meant by the comment about solo playability.

A weaponskill would deal magical damage matching the weapon, but a status effect always seems to be blocked by the appropriate armor, no matter what the weaponskill might be doing. So if you built a character that only has weaponskills and a staff, he wouldn't be a very good choice for "one man army" for example, because he essentially only functions to deal damage, unless a friendly character can whittle down the physical armor for him.

On the other hand: This game is not really meant to be played 'solo', using only one character. And since the latest patch is hardly possible, without using many cheesy tactics, I guess. Even the specific trait only refers to playing not with other players. The game is still not in final state, so no one can tell how 'solo'-playability will be available in the end.

But this knowledge can be used for changing weapons at appropiate time I guess.

That's true! I can see a situation where you're facing a clump of enemies with high physical armor and low magic armor. Your mage whittles down the magic armor, so you have your melee guy switch to a staff, then charge in and deal some damage instead of bashing his head against their physical armor.

The only problem I see with that is the skill, if I'm right, is entirely based upon weapon damage. So, for example, if you've invested in strength, the intelligence based staff won't be as effective.

Having tested it... While it is true people who don't invest the attributes into skills won't do as much damage...

It is still significant oddly enough. At least in the first eight levels.

But it is better for the warrior to instead dish out magic skills and/or Chloroform (an AMAZING magic armor destroyer) anyway.

I had a thought: is there any possibility of non-weapon skills indicating what stat they're keyed to? or is it a "per tree" thing?

I think, it is a per tree thing, wich mens most are int based. But on the other hand: A skill Chloroform could rely on int as well because it does magic damage, so not so sure.

But the current problem with magic is: the base damage is so low, that the int-damage boost hast hardly any effect.

I have a question dealing with attributes. I see the two following statements listed:

"Strength increases your damage with strength-based weapons and skills and provides a bonus to Physical Armor." and "Skills and attacks based on Strength have +20% damage."

What I'm trying to figure out is whether this means that:
+20% Strength-based weapons
+20% Skills
+8% Physical Armour

OR

+20% Strength-based weapons
+20% Strength-based skills
+8% Physical Armour

Due to the lack of a serial comma, I have no idea which one is correct in either of the statements. These are largely game changing distinctions for me. The prior would lead me to believe that I can go as an Intelligence-based Warfare character and still have my skills non-Weapon based skills, such as Battle Stomp, scale in damage.

I feel that the experimentation potential in the first example would be amazing, though I don't know if this is the case. I'd basically allow for you to be an Intelligence-based melee wizard, which the Inquisitor class seems to imply if viable, and not suffer massive damage penalties (on non-Weapon based skills, or a Strength-based caster that's magic would actually be potent.

I think that would be a nice way to handle the scaling, so you have the freedom to dip into other stats, which was also seemingly encouraged by the developers during one of their YouTube videos. It was suggesting that as a mage, you may want to put some points into Strength in order to pass Physical Saves. Though that would be a very terrible opportunity cost just to put that point in to get the +2% Physical Armour! But if the point in Strength did +5% to your Skills still (assuming all non-Weapon based skills), and you'd only be missing out on the +5% to the Intelligence-based weapons that you would have gotten previously, which seems like a lot better incentive for dipping into other stats.

This basically would mean that if you had a character, their non-Weapon based skills damage would essentially be determined by their total primary attributes, which would be interesting.

STR 14, FIN 14, INT 14 being the following:
+20% Strength/Intelligence/Finesse-based Weapons
+60% Skills
+8% Physical/Magic Armour
+4% Dodge

would be much more interesting than
+20% Strength-based Skills and Weapons
+20% Intelligence-based Skills and Weapons
+20% Dexterity-based Skills and Weapons
+8% Physical/Magic Armour
+4% Dodge

Again, I feel as if the first example, I would definitely get a lot more creative with my builds as I feel the penalty for doing so is not nearly as severe as the second example, though still in place. If the second example is actually how the game is intending these values, then I highly doubt I'll dip into any other stat, which is a shame.

Having each character as a pure stat would result in so much more damage, cross attribute builds would be weak, especially since the points into the Skills themselves tend to favor traditional attribute distribution.

They mean always the second one. The system is still pretty oversimplified. Better than the first, but still not much better. ^^

Gotcha, I was hoping that experimental builds would be more viable, but I guess I'll stick with more traditional builds then.

Keep in mind that an inquisitor can still be very good! Even building pure intelligence, they're getting full scaling out of battering ram, crippling blow, whirlwind, etc. I found that when I made the inquistor go before my mage, he was able to group up enemies with teleport and use all those warfare weaponskills to soften up large aoes of magic armor, which allowed the mage to go to town on them with AOE magic skills. he can even use his last AP to netherswap out of there so there's another enemy in the clump and he won't take any of the damage. In addition, being an intelligence build, he does just as much damage at range as he can dish out at melee, with the added advantage of being able to take advantage of the lack of physical armor on enemies his physical friends are dealing with.

It's a pretty versatile build, and one I enjoyed using.

I'm making an Inquisitor at the moment, and I'm giving them a focus of AP and Movement. So instead of Necromancy, I gave them Pyromancy for Haste, and at level 2 I picked up Scoundrel for Adrenaline, and I made them an Elf for Flesh Sacrifice, so that's a bunch of extra AP to spare. And of course the Inquisitor starts with the Warlord Talent as well.