Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Will Earth Resistance get the shaft yet again?

I'm just wondering why characters in this game have an "Earth Resistance" stat. Because Larian seems very focused on making Earth damage = Poison damage. They even removed Earth-type damage from Wands and Staves a few months back for absolutely no good reason at all.

I think there are two Earth damage skills in the game, and both of those are used more because they also spread huge pools of oil.

Am I missing sources of Earth Damage? Are there Earth Damage arrows or grenades? Are there a whole bunch of Earth Damage skills sitting on a desk in Larian Studios?

Because if those two skills are the only things in the game, then just switch the boulder to do Crushing damage and the Spikes to do Piercing damage, and then delete Earth Resistance from the game.

That will be one fewer useless magical prefix which can appear on random items (delete Indestructible from magic prefixes as well if you haven't already), and therefore removing it will make magic items fractionally better.

I thought the swap to poison on Staves/Wands was to give Geomancer's a weapon that scaled with their skill passive damage boost.

I agree with the suggestion. Earth seems underutilized, and Crush/Pierce makes more sense if those are the only sources using it. Not much reason to have an extra stat that is rarely/never used, and the fact that Earth damage isn't even boosted by any skills makes it even more likely to get forgotten.

Hm i could totally see a physical armor shredder being created with warfare + necro + geomancer thanks to that change

If the Earth Damage ability did not have a passive boost to Earth Damage, that was also a problem. Alternatively, Larian could have ADDED poison damage as a type to wands and staves without simply deleting Earth damage.

I would like if they modified Geomancy to boost both Poison and Earth damage.
Geomancy is clearly about Earth, Poison, and Fortify. So why the heck are are the Earth abilities just left out? A high skill Geomancer will have wimpy Earth skills compared to their Poison ones.

And then there's Ice/Water which don't get damage boosts at all.

I think the passive Skill bonuses could use some work.

It does seem lame that Earth skills are left out. It wouldn't be a huge deal if they got rid of Earth damage entirely, but even a few more earth damage skills would make a big difference.

For the ability, how about another leech effect like Necro, where damage to armor gives you X% of your armor back? Say, earth damage leeches physical armor and poison leeches from magic armor? Though that would only make sense if earth damage actually damaged physical armor, which could be an interesting change.

I think a armor leech effect would be much more unique than a plain damage boost and encourage different strategies, like focusing on attacking an armored opponent instead of unarmored for the self-heal.

Regarding water damage not gaining a bonus from the ability, it's not a huge deal for me, since hydrosophist is more about healing and buffs. You still get a dmg bonus from int.

I was never a huge fan of earth damage. Yet I understand it because this world is ruled my the elements and as such earth does a bit more then just batter people/monsters.

You know what would be interesting? If the reason why earth was removed from Wands is because they are fully embracing the whole "Dual Armor/Magic Armor attack tree" (which I hope they go with) and are going to make Earth a sort of exclusive to physical damaging weapons.

Earth = Poison is a really dumb side effect of the way they decided to arrange and categorize the skills.

There would be nothing stopping the mushroom spores become exploding corpses or other Necromancy themed stuff to put those skills there, and have it work that way.

Hell, they might as well add an extra skill group called "Venomancer" or something just for poison related abilities, since there's enough of those from the previous game to spare, while keeping Geomancy about earth and fossils.

It is because Earth includes nature.

It isn't just Rock-o-Mancy :P

I like the idea of making Earth magic more viable, never thought about it causing Physical damage > Magic damage though, that would synergize well if you were a mage with a group of mostly melee. Looks like you could pretty easily have a Rock throw type ability, raise an earth wall to restrict movement or provide cover or provide height advantage, and a huge CD ranged petrify ability for starters. I would like to have some floating rocks around me to absorb ranged attacks as well. Meteor Doom - Source ability

Sure, you get a damage bonus from Int, but the Skill bonuses are all multiplicative with the Attribute bonus. Maxing a similar Skill is worth way more than 10 Int worth of damage, it's worth 10 Int and 50% of any extra Int you have. High Skill Pyromancer's will always do 1.5x the damage of Hydrophists, and the Healing and Frost Armour don't even scale with Int anyway, only with level.
This Skill bonus multiplying damage is why Weapon users have such an easy time of getting better damage, all of their abilities get buffed a significant amount by the Weapon Skill passive.

And why is Hydrophist all about "healing and buffs"? Sure it has a few, but it also has damaging skills like Winter Blast, Global Cooling, Hail Strike, etc.
This is just another case where a large portion of a Skill school is entirely unaffected by increasing the level of that school. Other trees also have the huge upswing of buffing the weapon attacks, in addition to buffing the Skills themselves. It just feels disjoint to me. It doesn't leave anything for someone wanting to be good with Ice/Water either.

Huh, I didn't realize multiple sources of damage bonus were multiplied, not added. That does make a big difference.

I just feel like if water damage compared with fire damage AND has several healing/buff skills, that makes pyro seem lackluster. Pyro after all seems to be the go-to damage tree. A water mage might have some damage skills at their disposal, but that's never going to be their main niche. Maybe some other source (like a talent) could improve water damage, maybe sacrificing healing, if you really want to go for a water/ice damage build.

However, I have to agree that it feels lame that MANY skills are entirely unaffected by leveling up the ability tree and/or the attribute. The issue is its hard to subtly improve certain skills over time. How do you buff, say, Haste? I suppose you could increase the movement speed it granted. What about Walk in Shadows? Pretty much either reduce its cooldown or increase duration, but that has to be over several points rather than per point of ability or attribute, and the benefits can greatly swing its power. A 4 turn CD to 3 turn CD is significant.

So I dunno. Probably simply not possible to make every skill affected by improvement, or it would take a lot of individual tweaking (and coding) of each skill to improve them over time. But it does seem like attributes and abilities are overly narrow in their benefits. I hope they find some better middle ground between universal benefits and simplicity and balance.

Same time you don't want to limit trees TOO much... Water isn't a tertiary damage dealer.

The way I see water offensively is that it is a midpoint between Air and Fire, yet is air leaning. While earth is more fire leaning.

Air <-> Water <-> Earth <-> Fire

If Witchcraft still existed I'd draw the diagram like this

Air <-> Water <-> Fire <-> Earth <-> Witchcraft

(No Necromancy isn't Witchcraft... they are functionally different right now... I miss Witchcraft)

One reason I kind of like Divinity Original sin is that all the magics have a bit of everything but how they pull them off differs and they don't entirely overlap.

So for example while each of the elements have summons, their styles are different:

-Fire is the "weakest" of the four, but recharges quickly and explodes when killed. Making it sort of a bomb.
-Ice is a bit more sturdy and has more CC on its side.
-Air is the most CC heavy but is a bit less potent.
-Earth is the most directly combative and sturdy, as well they often had a good array of immunity and soft CC. It had a strong summon focus
-Witchcraft had outright the strongest physical summon, but in return it had no tricks.
(-Summoner has weak summons, but they can escalate quickly and adapt to the situation.)

All of them get good solid summons. NONE of them are bad at summons (well arguably Air... but not intentionally).

Which should follow into this game.

An unknown person slipped a note under my door. I didn't get a chance to see who it was. All it says is "Throw Dust. Oilblob. Pyroclastic Rock. Rockspikes. Wormtremor. Earthquake. Petrifying Visage. etc..."

That sounds like it might be a list of Earth-type damage skills. So maybe this thread is worrying over nothing.

Oh, and Summoners Oil Totems also deal Earth-type damage.

The reason why Earth Damage was removed from wands was because it was basically hax synergy with a fire wand. Poison still has synergy with the fire wand, though.

Hehe, sounds like I'm not the only one who knows a few things.

Larian, watch out, someone might steal your thunder! One word: APOTHEOSIS

The Oil pool it would create is a lot stronger than the Poison pool too. Not only are Undead not immune to Oil as they are with Poison, but the Oil also hits enemies through armor, and the slowdown and loss of AP is very potent.